Bar of the United States District Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

I remember--you know, I remember small things and acts of real genuine appreciation. I worked in a group that was headed by a man named Jerold Solovy who died a few years ago and I remember being a first or second year associate and I was at the office really late working on a memo that I was writing for something, and Jerry and a number of the other partners were on trial, and they were out of town and they called. It must've been one or two o'clock in the morning. I don't know why I was there, but I was there. And he called and he talked to the operator because he was looking desperately for an associate to research a particular question, okay.$$At one or two o'clock in the morning?$$And he searched around and they searched around and I was there. From that moment on, he was one of my absolute ardent supporters. I think that what he appreciated was not the fact that I was there at one or two o'clock in the morning alone, wasn't necessarily the fact that, you know, I got the right answer or whatever it was, I think that what he really valued was commitment, was commitment, and, and the hard work that comes with that. And since that's something that had been instilled in me from the time that I was five, it sort of came naturally (simultaneous)--$$(Simultaneous) You have to work hard.$$--and easily to me, you know, came easily to me and that's something that I could do. That's something that I could do easily. So, I was very happy. I was very happy. There were some cases that I think were more gratifying than others. Some of the cases that I found most gratifying were the habeas corpus cases where I knew that the work that I put in had, you know, a direct effect of having somebody who had been accused of a crime represented with, you know, skill and success. There were others that were disappointing, disappointing not because of the way that the firm [Jenner and Block] handled it by any means, but because I became acutely aware of the fact that your hard work, your diligence in the legal system doesn't always pay off. And some of the instances in which my hard work didn't pay off and resulted in a bad decision were very difficult, were very, very difficult, and I found it difficult to become the kind of lawyer that could see practicing law just as a sport, you make your good argument, the joy and the thrill comes from the argument itself and not from the result. I was much more I think psychologically tied to the result and losing became really defeating, honestly. And I have to say there weren't many losses and there were some cases that I thought, we probably should lose, honestly, and in those instances, you give your client what they deserve, which is the best conceivable representation. But there were some instances where I really thought that we should have won.$And so I'm wondering, as, as you were making up your mind that it's time for you to make a different choice, did you have any feelings of guilt about the possibility of leaving and, and you being one of those people who, oh, they invested in me and, and--$$It's funny. No--well, I think that when I left, there were lots of mixed feelings among the people that I worked with. A lot of people thought that it was sort of wasted talent. I think that Jerry Solovy who was a--just a really amazing mentor to me thought that I would be back, thought that I would be back. And, and I, frankly, wasn't certain that I wouldn't be back. I always held out the possibility in my mind that I could always go back to practicing law. And so when I first decided to change careers, I had to do all the premed things that I didn't do my freshman year in college [Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts], and I started to do those in Chicago [Illinois] while I was still a partner [at Jenner and Block].$$Did you tell anybody you were doing this (simultaneous)?$$(Simultaneous) No.$$So, how in the world--$$No.$$--did you find time if you're still sometimes being at the office at one o'clock in the morning?$$Here's the thing that I found, that the things that I did in--that, that I did in college and high school [Stuyvesant High School, New York, New York] were a lot easier at that point because I was a lot more mature, I was a lot more focused, I was a lot more organized, and because I had been practicing law for so long, I was able to cut through the nonsense and identify really quickly what mattered in various subjects, and that made the work a lot--a lot easier and a lot less time-consuming.$$Well, and people have said that preparation to be a lawyer really can prepare you for anything.$$Oh, yeah, yeah. And, and, and, and preparation to be a lawyer and taking the bar required learning volumes and volumes and volumes of material and sitting through, you know, two or three day exams, and with--even as you're practicing law, each case that you have requires you on some level to become an expert in whatever the subject matter of the case is, and you learn to become an expert really, really quickly. And so the training that I got in practicing law and becoming a lawyer and passing the bar and then practicing law made it a lot easier for me to take those, you know, college courses, and, and devote, you know, whatever time I had to it, at night while I was still practicing.$$Where did you study?$$I started taking courses at Loyola University [Loyola University Chicago] in Chicago and after doing that for about a year, I resigned from the partnership, told people what I was doing, resigned from the partnership and moved to New York [New York] where my father's [Henry Cooper, Jr.] practice was at the time, and took courses at NYU [New York University College of Dentistry, New York, New York] and Hunter [Hunter College, New York, New York].