Two Attorneys Are Having More Fun Than Law Allows

Jack Schwartz puts some zip into his legal career via the cases he takes.

James Robertson accomplishes the same task via the cases he does not take.

Two approaches, two men, one truth: The law is not an intrinsically adventurous career. Lucrative, often--especially these days--but fun, rarely.

“Practicing law is not what you see on TV shows, which is gross fiction, and the movies, which are even worse,” says Robertson, who practices in Santa Barbara. “For every five minutes in court, you spend five hours doing research. It’s like watching grass grow, doing research.”

So what’s a lawyer to do?

If you’re Robertson, you practice law half the year and spend the rest of the time as a ski patroller, making sure mountains are safe to ski, performing first aid and doing avalanche control--tossing dynamite to move the heavy white stuff before it moves on its own and pins someone underneath it.

If you’re Schwartz, you start your career defending Native Americans accused of murder, segue to protecting Indian fishing rights in Oregon and end up on the Westside of Los Angeles evicting drug pushers and gang members from low-income housing.

“In the eight years I’ve been back here, my car’s been shot three times,” says Schwartz, 45. “I assume every once in a while it’s a gangbanger I evict. I’ve lost two windshields and one driver’s door. My office address is not on my pleadings.”

Robertson, 58, decided to become a lawyer when he got his first lawyer’s bill in 1960. He was 20 and was billed for $100--which was quite a bit at the time.

With only a ninth-grade education, it took the Canadian native another full decade to make it into the University of Vancouver, where he graduated with a degree in English before heading off to law school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Nowadays he spends roughly April to December in Santa Barbara doing civil litigation, working as an associate counsel for a number of firms and focusing on personal injury, medical malpractice and employment law.

“There are some stimulating parts to it,” Robertson says, “like getting a settlement where everyone’s happy, or winning a case, where your clients are tremendously happy until they see the bill. But there are so many other things to do.”

Robertson’s law practice bankrolls those “other things.”

The recession of the early 1990s is over for the nation’s largest law firms, according to the Law Employment Center (https://www. lawjobs.com), which is affiliated with the National Law Journal.

Of 30 large firms surveyed in 1996 as part of the Journal’s ninth-annual look at legal salaries, 29 saw a rise in revenues. Median salaries for associates rose, too.

The highest-paid lawyers toil in corporate law departments. Wages for those working for the federal government stayed stagnant in 1996. And public interest law--which tends to offer more excitement--is still the lowest-paying legal career.

Robertson generally earns between $33,000 and $37,000 in his six months wearing dark suits and taking depositions. That money supports his six months at Heavenly Ski Resort, where he risks life and limb for about $5,000.

Ski patrol is “darn hard work,” Robertson says. “But when you get up there the stress level goes down to zero. You look at that beautiful scenery. You couldn’t put a value on it.

“The beauty of it is, as much as I play around and fool around, I know I can drop back into the system at any time, put on the three-piece suit,” he says. But not any time soon.

On the other hand, Schwartz has found a way to practice law full-time generally sans suit and without tedium. OK, so he only really started making money at it in the last three years. But the entire career, he says, has been entertaining.

He went to law school at age 20, he says, because he didn’t know how to do anything else. On graduating, he roamed the country representing American Indian Movement members charged with murder.

“I was 23, I was young and foolish,” Schwartz recounts. “I had nothing to do except keep my head down and win cases.”

Today he spends his time emptying buildings for nonprofit agencies. Some of the people he evicts are dealers. Some “are just poor folk who smoke up their rent in crack,” he says.

His major clients include Catholic Charities, the Skid Row Housing Trust and West Hollywood Community Housing--groups fighting for affordable housing for the needy.

“I like working for nuns,” Schwartz says. “Every nun needs a Jewish lawyer. I don’t do morally reprehensible work. I figure, after a couple of nuns have authorized the evictions, they should be OK.”