Jan. 13, 2016 (Mimesis Law) — Ed. Note:  Scott Greenfield crosses Michigan criminal defense lawyer Noel Erinjeri, who traveled from Missouri public defender to Michigan solo, and now practices with Neil Rockind.

Q. With Merit Scholarship finalist on your application, you went to the University of Michigan, majored in physics and had your eye on practicing medicine. What went so horribly wrong? Did there come a point in time when you realized that being a physician wasn’t right for you? Why? There seems to be a surprising number of lawyers who studied physics. Is there a connection?

A. I was basically pre-med by default, in that I didn’t really have a strong idea of what I wanted to do, and medicine seemed like a good option. College was also a big adjustment for me in that it was the first time I ran into a situation where I couldn’t just “get” something, no matter how hard I was studying.

I realized that being a doctor wasn’t for me when I realized that I didn’t actually like biology or chemistry (especially chemistry), and that 8-10 more years of studying exclusively bio and chem wasn’t for me. As for physics majors becoming lawyers, I don’t know if there’s any kind of direct connection. There definitely wasn’t for me, it was just the way life worked out.

Q. Looking back from the vantage point of an experienced trial lawyer, how did your college education frame who you are today? In particular, physics is a very rigorous course of study, and some (like me) might say that the demands are far tougher than the softer field of humanities. Should lawyers study hard science in order to train their minds for a future of trying cases? Did physics make you a better lawyer, or have no impact on your perspective?  On the other hand, do you think there’s a gap in your breadth of education because of your focus on science rather than, say, history or philosophy? Which way would you recommend future lawyers to go?

A. My physics knowledge at this point has probably regressed to that of a college sophomore. But the intangibles remain. Specifically, studying physics taught me how to stare at a problem set for as long as it took to solve the problem. And if I didn’t know how to solve the problem, how to figure it out. There have been quite a few times, the night before trial, where I’ve been staring at a case file deep into the night, and all of a sudden, there’s that light bulb moment where I think of something important. The parallels between that and suddenly realizing at 2 a.m. how to solve a weird line integral are uncanny.

Physics was good preparation for law school, not because physics has anything to do with law, but because it was a step down in terms of difficulty. After quantum mechanics and general relativity, the elements of negligence and the Rule Against Perpetuities just aren’t that hard. Reading 500 pages a week of caselaw is practically a vacation compared with a problem set a week in upper-level physics courses.

As for future lawyers, I would say study what you’re interested in, whether it’s science or the fuzzy subjects. The content of your undergrad degree probably won’t matter much, either in law school or in practice. What’s important is that you “learn how to learn,” how to think your way to a solution without consulting the answer book.

Q. Then you decided that for a physician, you would make a good lawyer. Despite the fact that you had a strong educational background and were clearly a very smart guy, you did the one thing that would dumbfound most law students today: you went to Cooley. Why? Was it the scholarship? Sure, it was close to home, but wouldn’t Harvard be worth the trip? Did you have any concerns about its rep? Did you know about its rep? Did you care?

A. Heh. Harvard wasn’t really an option in any case. Part of it was the scholarship (full ride, based on my LSAT score), was because I had a job in the Lansing area working for Kaplan as an MCAT and LSAT teacher. Between the scholarship and the scheduling flexibility Cooley offered, I could work all I wanted for Kaplan and still go to school and graduate in three years. I used to joke that I was the only law student in America who made money while in law school. Also, I managed to graduate debt-free, and that becomes more significant with each passing year.

As for Cooley’s reputation, it was probably somewhat better then than it is now. Everyone knew they had a liberal admissions policy, but I started before the size of their entering classes went from “very large” to “colossally enormous.” Their attitude seemed to be that they would give almost anyone a shot, and if you couldn’t hack it, out you go. “Large entrance, small exit” was the way we put it. I was completely willing to take them up on it.

Q. So Thomas M. Cooley Law School. It doesn’t have the best reputation around, and given its 2015 bar exam pass rate of about 38%, it would seem the rep is well deserved. What gives? What was your experience at Cooley? How does a guy who attended Michigan view his legal education at a law school so far down the list that it doesn’t even make the Third Tier Toilet?

A. I actually had a very good experience there. The quality of instruction was very high, in my opinion; and law school is a little bit different in that Palsgraf and International Shoe read the same whether you’re in Lansing or Cambridge. It also helped that criminal law is not an area where pedigree is very important. That said, I did realize pretty early on that working on Wall Street or becoming a Supreme Court clerk was probably out even if I graduated at the top of my class.

There were definitely “two Cooleys.” The part-time students (mostly in their 30s and 40s) pursuing second careers tended to be serious and dedicated, and did an amazing job of balancing school and adult responsibilities. There were also a lot of twentysomethings for whom law school was more in the realm of post-undergrad babysitting. But like anything else, you got out what you put in, no matter how old you were. The school would teach you how to “think like a lawyer.” The rest of it was up to us.

For the record, the bar pass rate is a more recent phenomenon. For my bar class, the pass rate for (first-time test takers) was around 80%, which was competitive with other schools in the state not named the University of Michigan. Re-applicants were a different story.

Q. From law school, you went to the Missouri State Public Defenders Office. What kind of cases were you handling? You did a ton of bench trials, and a few jury trials. Did you experience the normal “first trial debacle” like so many other lawyers? What did you learn from it? Was it what you expected? Did you knock it out of the park from day one, or did you learn a little humility in the trenches?

A. I handled, quite literally, every kind of case that didn’t involve a dead body in Callaway County, Missouri. My first trial came about a year and a half after I started the job. (The prosecutors had a habit of not taking BS cases to trial, and of making pretty reasonable offers for the most part, the bastards.) It wasn’t a debacle, but it was a tough case and the prosecutor ate my lunch. In any case, I lost, and the jury wasn’t out very long either.

The biggest lesson from trying a case for the first time is the amount of time and effort it takes in the weeks and months leading up to trial to do it right. Instructions, opening and closing, voir dire questions, direct and cross, anticipating possible objections, coming up with backup plans and backups to the backups; and in the end something unexpected will happen and you’ll have to improvise. But if you haven’t done the work beforehand, you and your client are sunk. My wife learned quickly that the phrase “I have a trial next week” meant that we wouldn’t be seeing much of each other for a while. That was the main lesson, that it was so all-absorbing.

I was incredibly lucky in that I got to work with an amazing group of co-workers, all of whom loved the job and took it seriously. Especially my boss, Justin Carver, who took an inordinate amount of time in mentoring me and answering all my stupid questions.

Q. You spent five years at the Mizzou PD. What did you realize coming out that you didn’t realize going in? Was it your goal coming out of law school to represent the indigent, or was that just a job opportunity, a place to hone your trial chops? Was representing the poor what you expected? Did you enjoy the respect and confidence of your clients, or were you called “public pretender” as they wished for a “real lawyer”?

A. I actually wanted to be a prosecutor coming out of law school. Unfortunately, I graduated in 2008, when Michigan basically became a 3^rd world economy. Prosecutor’s offices were getting literally hundreds of applications, and they were turning away people with five years of prosecutor experience for part time positions. I ended up with MSPD because it was really important to me to work in criminal law, regardless of which side, and they were the first to offer me a job.

The clients were a mixed bag. Most of them were ordinary people who had done something dumb. Some of them were just chuckleheads, and unpleasant ones to boot. The “public pretender” thing was there, that prejudice is almost inevitable when people aren’t choosing (and paying for) their own counsel. But the cool thing was that even with the most cynical, suspicious, clients; I never heard any BS about “public pretenders” after a contested hearing. There was something about the first time I stood up and said “Objection!” that actually opened their eyes to the fact that I was there to fight for them, not sell them out.

But what was worse than suspicion was indifference. From time to time, I’d be filling out a new PD application with a client I’d represented on a previous case. One of the questions on the applications was “Have you ever had a lawyer before?” Many former clients would check “No.” I’d give them a look, and they’d say, “Oh yeah, you, but I thought you meant a real lawyer.”

Q. When you left the public defender’s office to return to your Michigan roots, it wasn’t so much a matter of choice but because you followed your wife, whose job brought her back to Michigan. Any regrets? While five years as a PD isn’t exactly a life time, it’s long enough to establish some serious roots. Having put in the time in the Missouri trenches, what was it like picking up and moving on to your legal career?

A. No regrets. Neither my wife nor I wanted to settle long-term in Missouri, and for lawyers in government service, five years is probably about the point where either you commit to making a career out of it or start looking for greener pastures. I miss the hell out of my friends and colleagues in Missouri, but it was the right decision.

Actually, moving to Michigan wasn’t as much of a problem as opening my own practice. I’d kept my Michigan license current since 2008, so there weren’t any worries about passing the bar or waiving in. What I thought would be really complicated, setting up an LLC, only took $100 and a two page application. What worried me was that I had talked to several Michigan lawyers in the months before the move, and all of them said that it would be almost impossible to make a living doing criminal law alone. This bothered me, because I have about as much interest in civil law as I do in watching grass grow. I was really lucky that my wife had a good job and that I had some room to try and get off the ground. In my head I gave myself three years. If I wasn’t making a decent living by then, or at least on the way to it, I was gonna have to do something radical. Forunately, it never got to that point.

Q. When you returned to Michigan, you hung up your own shingle. I have to add, the pic on your website is my all-time favorite for a criminal defense lawyer.

What did you anticipate when you struck out on your own? Was this what you wanted to do, or did circumstances not offer you a choice? Were you ready to open up shop? Did your time in the PDs office prepare you to run a law office? Did you have a clue where your clients were coming from? After all, your reputation was established in Missouri, and you were basically a Michigan virgin. How hard was it to open your doors? How scared were you that the phone would never ring?

A. My guess was that I would go from relief that I no longer had a giant caseload, to nostalgia, to stir-crazy in about six months. I was wrong, it took about three months. Five years of being a PD had turned me into an adrenalin junkie, and I’d lost my fix. If it had been up to me, I would have liked to been an associate in a criminal defense firm, as opposed to out on my own. Unfortunately, most criminal defense firms are pretty small, and probably wouldn’t hire some unknown quantity from Missouri anyway. So it had to be the shingle.

There was absolutely nothing about being a PD that prepared me for running my own business. I was lucky enough to find a “workspace” that would cover everything I needed (desk, mail, fax, copier, internet, conference room) for the absurdly low price of $178.00 a month. (The next cheapest place I had found was about $650 a month.) It was also good for my morale. On days the phone wasn’t ringing, at least I was still at “the office” where things were being done. An illusion, but a comforting one.

Q. Your solo practice lasted ten months. What did you learn during that time? Where did your clients come from? What did it feel like when you sat down at your desk and stared at the silent phone? Too many people think that just because you’re a lawyer, people start throwing oodles of money at you. Did anybody throw oodles of money at Noel Erinjeri?

A. I had to learn all the procedural stuff all over again, along with the differences in plea-bargaining that come with a determinate sentencing scheme. Also, big-city practice was different from a county where there were three prosecutors and two public defenders. Things I used to settle in a 30-second phone call now took two weeks. I thought it would take at least a year to get the hang of it. I was pleasantly surprised that I feel like I was back up to Missouri standards in about six months. I had one really big win in this period (sentencing, not trial) that was as good a piece of work as anything I had managed in Missouri.

Most of my first couple months was about getting my name on the indigent roster of every court that would have me. (Metro Detroit doesn’t have a public defender office. It has a court-appointed attorney system, a really crucial difference.) Money wise, the big adjustment was not having a steady paycheck. It was feast or famine. It really gave me some perspective on the pressures that private attorneys who take on indigent defense face: I was making more money on retained traffic tickets than I was on appointed felonies.

The silent phone was definitely rough. I got some retained work, referrals from a more experienced attorney who was helping me out, and was trying to get my name out there. Criminal law isn’t really a field that lends itself to generating business by “networking,” as you can’t really encourage people to put themselves in a situation where they require your professional services. Of course, maybe I just wasn’t doing it right.

As to “oodles” of money being thrown at me, if you totaled up all the money I made on my own, it might make half an oodle. I turned a profit, in that I made more money than I took in, but it wasn’t enough to live on. It wouldn’t have been possible if my wife wasn’t working. I was about a week away from signing up to take some courses on family law and bankruptcy law to expand my practice areas (tough for me, because I’m a criminal defense attorney) when another opportunity came along.

Q. After ten months solo, you were taken on as an associate by Neil Rockind, who obviously saw your talent and recognized that you would make a strong addition to his firm. What type of work did you do? Was it easier to hook up with an established, well-regarded lawyer than do it on your own? Now that you’ve found a new home in Michigan, are you happy with your decision to go to law school?  Are you happy that you didn’t decide to pursue medical school?  Where do you plan to go next?

A. To paraphrase Lou Gehrig, today I consider myself to be the luckiest lawyer in Detroit. I’m working for the best, and best-known, criminal defense firm in Michigan. The cases we get tend to be more complex and more challenging; and, in the end, much more satisfying. I definitely like working for Neil better than being on my own. It’s the best of being a PD and private attorney. I have a manageable and interesting caseload, and I only have to worry about the practice of law, not the business of law.

It’s been ten years since I started law school, and seven since I became a lawyer. What a long, strange trip it’s been. As for what’s next, I’ve got a pretty sweet gig going now. But eventually, I’d like a robe and a gavel. We’ll see.