Illustration by Valerie Chiang
From my home studio, Camano Island, Washington, March 2024:
“That was the late great Jimmy Buffett from April 1974 with his first big hit, ‘Come Monday.’ You’re listening to the Off-The-Beat Music Hour with Mike Gianunzio on KMRE-FM in Bellingham, Washington, and streaming on the internet at KMRE.org. I first heard that song when I was a law student at Notre Dame back 50 years ago. I turned to Jimmy Buffett’s songs many times in my law career as a needed escape and solace.”
I paused my recording for a minute to think of the dramatically different life I’ve had these last six years in retirement while doing a radio show. Such a change from the 40 years I spent as a lawyer. I hadn’t known what producing my own radio show would be like, but my time these days is filled with researching songs and scripting my shows. It’s a labor of love; I spend hours and hours listening to all kinds of music. It takes 10 hours on average to produce an hourlong show. Like my approach to my work as a lawyer, I leave nothing for improvisation. My shows are well researched and accurate with the best finished recordings.
The songs got me reminiscing about my life in the law. I hadn’t known what to expect back then, either, and I faced new challenges at every turn along the way, but it was quite an adventure.
In early 1973, at age 21, I got what I thought was the opportunity of my lifetime — admission to Notre Dame Law School. In June that year, I graduated from the University of Michigan, having packed four years of college education into three calendar years with nonstop classes. Three more years, I thought, and I’d be a lawyer, whatever that might entail.
I didn’t really know. No one in my family was a lawyer, I didn’t know any lawyers and, out of dozens of cousins in my big Italian family, I was one of the few to go to college at that time. I excelled in math and science; everyone figured I’d be an engineer or scientist, but I dreamed of being a small-town lawyer, involved in my community, respected by peers and loved by clients.
That dream was youthful and naïve and certainly not what I eventually experienced. I was never a “small town lawyer,” but whenever people asked me what I did, I would tell them I was a “poor country lawyer” just to see their reaction, which was usually a smirk or frown.
August 1973, Notre Dame Law School
Nothing prepares you for law school. During my first year at Michigan, I had studied chemical engineering, a humbling experience that resulted in a change of majors to focus on what interested me. I earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and political science, but even a couple of undergraduate constitutional law classes did not steel me for the rigors of law school.
My first day at Notre Dame feels like yesterday. In line with me to pick up our class schedules was Dave Bottger from Ohio, someone I email with frequently 50 years later. Dave and I would share all our first-year law classes, and I soon learned how smart, helpful and gracious my new friend was.
From the beginning of our studies, I was scared and excited. I had read about the Socratic method that law professors use in class. First-year students are asked questions in a way that examines their understanding of the cases they read beforehand. Participants in these dialogues gain a deeper understanding of legal concepts than they would if they simply memorized information provided to them. I understood how prepared I needed to be for each class in order to respond.
That first semester, our professors kept their class rosters close at hand, ready to interrogate and demoralize us neophytes. I wondered if any professors would call on me; my name can be difficult to pronounce. On the first day, I was called on in all five classes. By the evening, I was shaken, exhausted and convinced that all five professors had conspired to humiliate me. However, I had prepared, and I made it through. And even though I made sure I knew all the case facts and rulings for every class the rest of that first semester, I was never called on again. That daily preparation stuck with me for the next 40 years.
Law school was an intense educational endurance marathon. In any 24-hour period, how well can you digest complicated concepts that developed over centuries? How well can you take notes as these things are explained? Fortunately, Dave helped me understand so many absurd, esoteric legal concepts, like the Rule Against Perpetuities, en route to his graduating in the top three of our class.
But further, how much can you endure those students who like to hear themselves talk as they volunteer to answer questions in class? How well can you make clear and convincing arguments, with supporting law and facts, on your feet and in writing? These exercises all prepare one for the practice of law — and for plenty of other kinds of work as well.
In May 1976, after graduation, everyone went in different directions. Some classmates took jobs at law firms, government agencies, corporate legal departments or appellate court clerkships. Nearly everyone landed a position somewhere. We were ready academically, but I had yet to learn what the practice of law was all about.
Lawyers do not really understand or appreciate how unlikeable they are as lawyers. Many view themselves as smart, lovable pillars of their communities worth hundreds of dollars per hour for their services.
First job, June 1976
In my entire 40-year career as a lawyer and corporate executive, I never had a mentor, a senior attorney who made sure I learned the business and practice well, who gave practical advice and answered questions. However, several younger lawyers helped me significantly.
During my first week at a small, seven-lawyer firm in northern Indiana, one of the partners came in with a stack of two dozen files, dropped them on my empty, polished desk, barely looked at me, and said, “These are from the bank. They want us to sue these deadbeats they loaned money to and recover whatever we can. They don’t care how much time we spend on them. Report back to me when you get written judgments. Then do wage garnishments. Keep track of every minute of your time.” He walked out before I could get a question out of my mouth.
I had no idea where to begin. Gary Boyn, another attorney, overheard all that and came in. “Welcome to the firm,” he said. “I’ll get you a sample file to look at that I worked on. First thing you need to do is go across the street to the courthouse and introduce yourself to all the judges and their clerks. If they like you, they will help you. I’ll answer your questions once you get going.”
I spent the rest of that day meeting the judges, their clerks and staff. They liked me and appreciated that I came first to introduce myself. They were tremendously helpful in teaching me how to practice law. For the most part, I figured things out.
Eighteen months later I started my second job as an in-house lawyer for Miles Laboratories, Inc., an Indiana-based pharmaceutical company. Another in-house lawyer, Fred Giel ’75J.D., was a great help to me when I joined that legal department. Fred had lots of good advice about fitting into a big corporation as a new lawyer and was very well respected.
I will never forget the company’s assistant general counsel calling me into his office when he learned I had taken a class on environmental law at Notre Dame — actually, it was an independent study under a visiting law professor. He told me the company was getting letters and demands from federal agencies to comply with the Clean Water Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the new Toxic Substances Control Act. He said, “You are now our legal expert on those matters. I’m giving you a month to find out what the company has to do. I’ll expect a comprehensive report for our board and CEO. Good luck.” What a challenge! I got it done in a month, an immersion into a new regulatory area of law that I would deal with for the rest of my career.
A year later, I was on my way to Colorado Springs with an offer to be a corporate attorney for a large gas pipeline company. Like many others mesmerized by John Denver’s song about being “Rocky Mountain High,” my wife, Jackie, and I left the Midwest and never looked back.
For the next three years, I worked on lawsuits filed and heard in Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. And that’s how I learned how much lawyers on the other side of cases love to take advantage of new attorneys or lawyers from out of town.
On one of the cases in Texas, a colleague and I met with a local judge and an attorney on the other side for a pretrial conference. When we got into the judge’s chambers, the attorney smirked at us and said, “Your honor, I’m sure these city boys will agree to the usual stipulations in this case.” I said we did not know what those were. The judge replied, “Don’t worry about that. Boys, before you came in, I heard from counsel here about his offer to you to settle this case. I suggest you take his offer, and we can be done today.” We answered that we had no authority to settle for his offer; further, we felt our case was solid. The judge said that was a shame, but we argued our case that day anyway.
The next day, he ruled against us on every aspect of our lawsuit and dismissed it. We had been “hometowned” and never went back to that little West Texas town again.
Another opportunity arose from my volunteer activities in Colorado Springs. In 1982, as the chairman of a two-year committee, I led the writing of a new plan for the development of the city. I joined a small, private law firm that represented the city utilities in legal matters, a great position as a partner that lasted 13 years.
All these job changes were good for me professionally and financially. I wanted as wide a range of professional experiences as possible, and these opportunities provided a wealth of personal insight and expertise in different aspects of the energy and utility business in the United States.
In 1995, I took a new direction to become general counsel of the Snohomish County Public Utility District, a large electric and water utility that serves the northern suburbs of Seattle. Eventually, I led the utility’s six-year federal court battle with the Enron Corporation over its manipulation of energy markets.
The biggest challenge was dealing with their attorneys. When we were suing the company for fraud, the lawyer in charge of its bankruptcy team told me he had tens of millions of dollars to spend and would “bury me and the smart-ass little backwoods utility” I represented. In the end, Enron went out of business and some of its executives went to jail. The utility and I survived.
Closing arguments
I finished my career in a nonlawyer position with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, a consumer-owned electric utility with 1.5 million customers that I served as chief legislative and regulatory officer from 2008 to 2017. And I found anew that beyond all the cases, rules of law, statutes and regulations I learned at Notre Dame, whatever else it was they taught us worked really well in different kinds of legal practice and in related corporate jobs.
I can also say that of all the people I regularly interacted with throughout my career, the worst ones at times were the lawyers.
Lawyers do not really understand or appreciate how unlikeable they are as lawyers. Many view themselves as smart, lovable pillars of their communities worth hundreds of dollars per hour for their services. Unfortunately, some lawyers — not all — seem to believe that every day they must prove they are smarter, cleverer and quicker to respond than anyone else with whom they come in contact. A license to practice law and be a paid advocate in the legal system is a privilege, not a right. It should come with a modicum of humility and the responsibility for every lawyer to seek just and reasonable results in their work, not notoriety for themselves.
One phenomenon we witness in American politics is lawyers who become professional “celebrity” politicians. I believe this is the worst combination of identities for any human being. Many American patriots in the early days of our country were lawyers, but that was their training, and it helped to create and sustain our constitutional democracy. After a short time as public servants, they returned home to their work and communities. Today, too many lawyer-politicians spend more time as television celebrities than in the service of the American people.
My most intellectually fulfilling years as a lawyer were those I spent as an in-house counsel. The best legal work is complicated and often has no answers in existing law. Drug manufacturing and energy law may seem boring, but they provided tremendous challenges for me. These specialties required me to grasp science, capitalism and government regulation in order to serve the common good and protect the environment.
My most challenging and exhausting years came while I managed the small firm in Colorado Springs from 1982 to 1996. The work absorbed every waking minute. Our busy practice, representing the city’s utilities and a dozen school districts, generated daily tests of my ability to keep eight lawyers and our six staff members happy and productive.
Many lawyers become the CEOs of American corporations. My turn at this, from 2002 to 2004, was very stressful. The board had fired the CEO because of his hiring of an expensive management consultant whom the staff and managers hated. They turned to me to keep things going while they searched for a new CEO. I dealt daily with investigative reporters who wrote scathing articles for months about the utility’s having hired consultants for a variety of services.
It was a lonely experience. I will never forget that meeting with the county executive when he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Good luck keeping your ship above water, Mike.” Meanwhile, I had little support from the executive management team, who sized me up quickly and began campaigning for the job as soon as they learned I did not want to be the next full-time CEO. None of them got the job.
My very best years were the last nine before my retirement from the law in 2017. I had a first-class professional staff of lawyers, engineers, economists and political scientists and an outstanding, supportive CEO. I learned a lot about how to manage people and about lobbying Congress and navigating the currents of power in Washington, D.C.
What about clients? In law school, I had naively believed that clients would always listen to their lawyer’s advice, good or bad, and would be reasonable in their decision-making. In practice, I soon discovered that was not the norm. Under the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct, it is a lawyer’s ethical obligation to “zealously” assert the client’s position “under the rules of the adversary system.” But at the same time, the lawyer “should use the law’s procedures only for legitimate purposes and not to harass or intimidate others.”
The best clients are not angry people fixing to use the legal system to destroy their enemies — their soon-to-be former spouses or business partners, government regulators and competitors. Unfortunately, very few of my clients wanted me to employ mediation to resolve their battles with others. Most wanted me to “take no prisoners.”
Another lesson was the importance of having good relationships with local lawyers, community and business leaders, legislators, government officials and the board members of organizations I represented. A successful law practice is built on good, well-maintained relationships.
As for judges, I have never been one, but I have appeared in court before dozens of federal and state judges. What does it take to be a good courtroom judge?
My dear friend from the first day of law school, Dave Bottger ’76J.D., served as the chief judge of the Mesa County District Court in Grand Junction, Colorado, until he retired in 2016. In 2010, he received the Colorado Judicial Officer of the Year Award for his “thoughtfulness and caring” for court employees and his community. I surprised him with a visit to his courtroom one morning. His respect for lawyers — and for everyone before him — came through. Dave would be a great mentor for anyone wanting to be a judge.
The ultimate key to one’s sanity as a lawyer is to make many friends who are not lawyers and to spend as much time with them as one can. When we moved to Washington state and I took the position at Snohomish, Jackie made me promise that our social lives would no longer be dominated by lawyers and legal talk. That was nearly 30 years ago, and I tried to keep that promise.
Another sanity-saving strategy is to balance work with life outside of being a lawyer — a lesson that applies whatever your profession may be. Hobbies are not for everyone, I know. But so many people today fail to take time outside of work to enrich their personal lives.
Music provided me a badly needed escape. Across my law career, my music collection expanded into thousands of compact discs of rock, pop, folk, blues and country music. I’ve used that collection for my radio show over the past six years and just recorded my 300th episode. It has been a lot of work and a lot of fun playing all those songs I grew up with and loved throughout my adult life. Today, when people learn I spent decades as a lawyer, they cannot believe it.
I still have days when I cannot believe it, either, but I don’t know what would have been a better alternative for me. While I was in law school, it was all about being a “traditional” lawyer, and a law degree was the ticket to that life. I do not think students of my generation appreciated what a very marketable and substantial education a law degree represented, but it certainly was for me and many of my classmates. We squeezed the most out of our legal educations and professional relationships. The law provided us diverse and challenging careers. Nothing could be better than that.
Mike Gianunzio is a radio host, winemaker, Harley rider, amateur watercolor artist and antique radio collector who lives and writes on Camano Island, Washington.