During my nearly twenty years in Washington, DC, I've probably met more
lawyers than folks from any other profession. Not all are practicing attorneys;
most, in fact, work in government or for corporations or trade associations. The
next largest population group I've encountered, however, might just be
ex-lawyers. Not folks kicked out of the profession; no, people with law degrees
who at some point decided to work in a field not requiring a law degree.

I've known quite a number of reporters in my day that fit that description,
and worked closely with some of them. Their output, of course, is covered by
copyright. But some individuals leave the law to pursue careers in other
copyrighted fields. Take Will Hopkins, who is a top-20 finalist in American
Idol's first-ever songwriting competition. The
warm reception for his song "When You Come From Nothing" shows he's a rising
songwriter, and he now considers his primary profession to be songwriting. His
previous full-time profession? Lawyer.

Hopkins tells The Wall Street Journal that he is not going back to
full-time law, that he has found his calling. (The WSJ piece is subscriber-only,
but the Law Blog interview with Hopkins is available.)
I applaud him for that, just as I would applaud someone who felt the law was his
calling. I also found it interesting that, according to the WSJ piece, his
decision to really pursue his fantasy of songwriting came after he was diagnosed
with attention-deficit disorder and went on Ritalin. He says it allowed him to
focus his creativity and produce.

There is a belief – perhaps a canard – in the creative community that
prescription medication for diagnosed conditions can dull the creative juices
and stifle artistic expression. That may be true with some artists, I'm not
qualified to say. But Hopkins' increasing success would suggest that sometimes
it takes medication to help that creativity take meaningful form.

Still, that debate is not one in which the Copyright Alliance participates,
nor are we qualified to do so. What we can do is applaud yet another creator
emerging on the scene, and say that the legal profession's loss will be the
music-loving society's gain.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 1:59 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under creators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.