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John Cleese[/caption]It focuses on the hard legal work that is done in the agonistic arena of the court room, where the lawyer eloquently argues their case in front of a panel of stony faced jurors, and ultimately wins freedom for their client. Many lawyers do this actual kind of work, but there have been quite a few famous creative people in history that started their lives as lawyers. Although the President of the States, Barack Obama, is probably the most famous lawyer in America right now, others have been as equally influential in their lifetimes.
Before he was dazzling the art world with his groundbreaking color innovations, the French painter Henri Matisse earned his law degree in 1887. Although Matisse's father was a lawyer and Matisse studied law to make his father happy, a bout with appendicitis caused his mother to give him a box of paints to give him something to do while he recovered. Matisse was floored and consequently put his law degree behind him. Matisse is considered important in art history for his invention of Fauvism, but his law degree served him in good stead since Matisse remained a shrewd businessman throughout his long and wealthy career.
Although not as well-known outside the art world, the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky began his professional life as lawyer. Even more, Kandinsky taught law for many years, and did not shift his attention to a career in the arts until he was 30 years old. Kandinsky is important in art history because he is considered the inventor of abstraction in painting, and he wrote widely on the subject establishing the theoretical foundation for abstraction in painting.
There are quite a few actors who got their starts in the law business, and these people can give someone a humorously thoughtful pause to their deliveries in the courtroom. For example, John Cleese was actually studying law at Cambridge University before he helped to found the acting troupe Monty Python. At Cambridge, Cleese met Graham Chapman, who was also studying law and who was also studying law there. The two started their acting group, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Geraldo Rivera was a top lawyer graduating from Brooklyn Law School in 1969, and he was an activist lawyer before he got noticed and began his foray into journalism. The actor Ben Stein graduated from Yale Law School, and the rabble rouser Jerry Springer got his law degree in 1968 and briefly worked as a campaign aide to Robert Kennedy before he was assassinated.
Of course, two famous lawyers to have changed the world in a very dramatic way were Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Although Gandhi earned his law degree, he quickly realized that he was too shy to actually speak in court, and he turned to other ways to promote justice in the world. Nelson Mandela created the first black law practice in South Africa, and more than anyone, Mandela's efforts were responsible for abolishing apartheid there.
For anyone considering a career as a lawyer, it is important to measure their efforts against the broader context of history. Life is not a single path, and many people find that their efforts channel them in very different paths than the lawyerly ones that they may have begun with.
About the Author
Gary Leonard writes for several education sites .