An End & A Beginning / Louis Goodman - University of Rochester

Louis Goodman

An End  & A Beginning - Transcript

Louis Goodman 00:03 

Welcome to Love Thy Lawyer. I'm Louis Goodman, and today we're gonna talk about an end and a beginning. First, I'm gonna tell you why this is the last podcast of 2022, an end, and then I'll transition to a beginning. 

This is the end of the third season of Lovely Lawyer. This will be the last episode this year, and I'm gonna take the Thanksgiving week through New Year's off, but I wanna assure you that there's going to be a 2023 season and some of the episodes are already recorded. They're in the pipeline. 

I'm taking a break to catch up. I'll still be working on the podcast. I'll still be doing some recordings, but it allows me to simply have a little more time to record a few more episodes and take some of the pressure off of the podcast. 

Louis Goodman 01:05 

Each one of these episodes takes about six hours of time in order to really put together. There's a time factor that I need to deal with and I thought that taking this holiday season off would be a good time to do that. So, bear with me and we will certainly be back. 

I do do the work in advance and I have episodes that are lined up already for next year. I think it's a good time to take a break because people are on vacation, people are spending more time with their families, doing things out of their normal routine.

If you really need to listen to Love Thy Lawyer during the break, there's lots of episodes out there. There's over a hundred episodes that have already been released, and there's a couple that I would just really recommend to you. If you go to the website, lovethylawyer.com, you can easily find them. 

Louis Goodman 02:03 

But the ones that I really like are Mark McGoldrick's episode, he was a former Alameda County Public Defender. There's Charly Weissenbach, she is an Alameda County Deputy District Attorney, and there is Tony Serra, who probably needs no introduction. So there's three episodes to listen to if you haven't heard 'em yet. If you've heard those, you wanna hear some other ones, there's really a bunch of great episodes on the podcast, on the website, so go take a look at it and I would encourage you to catch up on the episodes you haven't heard, just like I'm catching up on the episodes that we're gonna hear. 

Louis Goodman 02:49 

And now to my beginning. I guess I'm gonna start in Brockport, New York. Brockport

is in Western New York. It's between Rochester and Buffalo. And someone would say, “Well, why does a city have the name with Port in it if it's in the middle of Western New York?” Well, the answer is simple, it's the Erie Canal, and Brockport is this really nice little town in Western New York, and it's beautiful. It's classic Americana. 

And when I was in college, I was in Brockport. I was working there for a project and I came across a small garage where they worked on cars and they had a car there for sale. And it was a black Triumph Spitfire with a red interior and a white top. Wire wheels. I fell in love. 

Louis Goodman 03:49 

For anyone who's ever had a Triumph Spitfire, you'll know that it's a car that requires working on for two days and driving for one. And as a result of having that car, I found a place in Rochester that sold car parts for British cars, and it was called Access Automotive. 

Well, not only was I a customer to Access, but I got a job at Access and I started working there part-time during college. And that summer after college I got a job working there full-time and I just worked there through the summer, working full-time, supporting myself at Access Automotive. And it was a great job. It was fun, didn't pay a lot of money, but it was fun. I worked with some great people and I learned a lot about cars. 

And one of the people I worked with there was a guy named Pat Markham. Now, Markham had been in the military. He didn't have a lot of formal education, but he was a very, very smart guy. 

Markham was not a Hells Angel, but if you wanna imagine what he looked like, imagine a Hells Angel. He was a big guy, he'd played football in high school and he played army ball. He had a full beard at times. Markham just looked like a Hells Angel. But he wasn't, he was a great guy and he and I were partners at work.

Louis Goodman 05:18 

They partnered us up with each other because we had skills that sort of complimented each other. Markham was the guy who could lift an engine single handedly, and I was a guy who could figure out how to get little parts off, how to deal with wiring, how to deal with sort of the finesse things. 

And then we had a truck and a trailer and we would transport cars, and I always drove the truck with the trailer. Markham never drove, never wanted to drive. I always drove, but he taught me how to drive a truck with a trailer. He understood how to do it, he just didn't wanna do it. So, I was the driver. We were a great team. 

And as the summer began to come to a close, Markham and I were pulling an engine on an Opel Kadett and we were taking a break, and Markham says to me, "Hey, what ever happened over there at the university?" He'd known I'd been in college at the University of Rochester. Markham says, "What happened over there at the university?" I said, "What? What do you mean what happened?" And Mark says, "Well, I mean, what happened? Did you drop out? Did you just leave? Did you graduate? I mean, what happened?" I said, "No, I, I graduated." He says, "You mean you got a degree?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "I've, I've got a Bachelor of Arts and History." I said, "Yeah, I, I've got a degree." He says, "Well, buddy." He says, "Well buddy, don't you think you could be doing something better than this?" And I said, "Well, I don't know." I said, "I suppose I could go to law school."

Louis Goodman 07:07 

Well, you know, I'd been avoiding going to law school for years. My dad was a lawyer and I just had always been a person who knew he was a lawyer. I'd always been able to argue things. I'd always defended myself and my friends whenever things would come up. Whenever it came to talking to school authorities, I was the one who did the talking.

I was one of these people who was a born lawyer, and I believe that most lawyers are born, not made. And I've kind of born that out in the, my interviews with people on the podcast. It seems to me that most of them knew from a very early time that they were lawyers. And I knew from a very early time that I was a lawyer.

I had been in debate class and that sort of thing, and I'd done pretty well. We had a very, very good debate team that I was part of in high school. And so all through college I just sort of really avoided the subject. But I guess when it came down to it, I started to think about it more. 

Louis Goodman 08:16 

Another thing that had happened that summer, I'd had to go over to the City Hall for some reason, and the court rooms were also at the City Hall in Rochester. So I walked through this big, beautiful building and there were all these offices and bureaus and people walking around there in suits. And I just looked at these offices and I looked at these hallways and I looked at these people and I said, "You know, I could do that." I mean, whatever it is these people are doing, I could do it. 

So when Markham says to me, "What are you doing here?" And I said, "Well, you know, I'm just kind of working and paying the rent." And he says, "Well buddy, don't you think you could be doing something better than this?" And I said, "Well, I suppose I could go to law school." Markham said, "Well buddy," he says, "You do that. You do that." 

Louis Goodman 09:17 

I thought about it for a couple of days. Then I went down to the bookstore and got the Barron's Guide to Law Schools. Started looking through it, and if you know anything about Rochester, it's cold there. It starts to get cold in the middle of October, and it starts snowing by Halloween. And it snows and it snows, and then it snows some more, and there's something called lake effect snow, and then there's more lake effect snow, and then there's other snow, and then there's lake effect snow, and then there's more snow. 

And somewhere around, and I'm serious about this, somewhere around the beginning to the middle of May, it starts warming up a little bit. And I was just done with Rochester winters, so I started looking for some law schools in warmer climates. And I got into Hastings in San Francisco, among some other schools, and I looked at a few schools, but it was quite clear to me that Hastings was where I wanted to be and that is how I ended up in law school.

Louis Goodman 10:26 

So, that was my beginning. That was the beginning of my practice of law. I wanna say here at the end of this year that I wish you have a great Thanksgiving. And I just wanna say that I am so grateful. I'm grateful for my health. I'm grateful for the opportunity to run a law practice. I'm grateful for the opportunities that I've been given in my legal career, and I'm grateful for the incredible gift that's been my life. 

I'm also grateful that I've been able to do this podcast because it's been fun. It's been something that interests me. It's been something that I really like doing. And I wanna say how grateful I am to you for listening. 

Podcasting isn't anything without someone to listen to it, and I really appreciate your listening. And if you've got something to say about this episode or any other episode or about the podcast in general, send me an email. I'm around, I'm available. I answer my emails. You can call me on the phone. I'm around. I'm available. I answer my phone calls. 

Louis Goodman 11:34 

And if I could give you a part of my joy of living, a part of the wonderful life that I live, I would give it to you, and then you would know why I'm so happy in my life and I'm so grateful for every single day. 

I want you to know that I get up every morning, I've got a dog, I take the dog for a walk.

And I go out on the street and I am consciously grateful for the fact that I can walk down that street on my own two legs and look up at the sky with my own two eyes, and breathe the air through my own two lungs and be healthy and be ready to take on whatever challenges that day will bring. 

And for those of you who do practice law, you know that every day is a challenge. It's not an easy profession. We take on the problems of others, we take on the problems of the world, and I am grateful to have the strength to take on those challenges, and I wish you, and I really mean this, I wish you the strength and the happiness and the hope in order to take on those challenges in your own life.

Louis Goodman 12:50 

I will see you back here on this podcast and I really look forward to another great year of podcasting on the Love Thy Lawyer podcast. Thanks for listening. 

That's it for today's episode of Love Thy Lawyer. If you enjoyed listening, please share it with a friend and follow the podcast. If you have comments or suggestions, send me an email. Take a look at our website at lovethylawyer.com, where you can find all of our episodes, transcripts, photographs and information. 

Thanks to my guests and to Joel Katz from music, Bryan Matheson for technical support, Paul Robert for social media and Tracy Harvey. I'm Louis Goodman.

Louis Goodman 13:44 

If I don't make it through this year, those episodes will still be there.