Albanian-born Daniel Terpollari said he grew up in a totalitarian society that imbued him with a desire for justice that led him to law school. While Americans were enjoying freedom of speech, he said, "we weren't able to speak, we weren't able to think, we weren't able to do anything that a free person should do. Some of our relatives were executed for speaking out by that horrible regime."
"When I was 10 or 15 years old, I would think to myself and say, 'One day I will become an attorney...and fight injustice in the world, because unless you experience it you never know what freedom means, what freedom of speech is, and what great opportunities this country has to offer people," Terpollari said. After completing law school, he says, "I'm still passionate, and I still love the legal profession and I'll be able to fight for people in the future."
After arriving in the U.S., Daniel met his wife, Aurora, a foreign exchange student and they decided to go to law school together, which he described as "not a piece of cake" for a married couple, either. "You have to just keep plugging, keep on pushing, you have to work in law school as never before. And even though we had our hard times and our trials, we just kept talking to each other, put our heads down, and worked hard," he said.
As immigrants, he said, "We have had to surpass all the challenges with a foreign language, and also the financial difficulties, and also other social and economic difficulties that everyone has but are more difficult for us being foreigners in America." In the process of overcoming those challenges, however, Daniel said the dedication and motivation created in him a work ethic "that will help you in the future."
Being bilingual, Daniel said, will equip him to help other Europeans who have settled in the U.S. but do not seek legal counsel as needed due to the language barrier. These immigrants, he says, "don't have friends, they don't have connections..and I know for sure that so many people suffer because of that." He concluded that law school had made him "a different person" by enhancing his levels of confidence and knowledge and prepared him to fulfill his dream of helping people in need of a lawyer.
Daniel's wife, Aurora, added she believes that "everybody should go through law school because the knowledge you get is so broad and deep it makes you more confident going towards the future" and "what I learned for myself made me a stronger person."
"Another graduating lawyer is one of the rare individuals who also possess a medical degree. Adam Beck told interviewer Coyne that he was inspired to attend by San Francisco Forty-Niners quarterback Steve Young, who got his law degree on the side and, in fact, had to be in class the day after he won the Super Bowl. Beck thought if Young could do it, he could do it as well. Asked how earning a law degree had helped him in his medical practice, Beck replied, "It's really forced me to look at both sides. Going in, I was (as an expert witness) always on the doctor's side, pro-doctor everything, and there really are two sides to every story. So I think I try to be as fair as possible."
Beck says that he also learned to be more careful going over documents such as consent for surgery. "Before I started law school I wasn't able to even read a contract and make heads or tails of it. Now I can pick up almost anything and read it, and decipher it without calling somebody." What's more, he added, he no longer fears lawyers as do a lot of doctors. Additionally, becoming a lawyer has reinforced his approach to treating patients. "In medicine we try not to direct the patient anywhere. We just let them speak and we're able to formulate a diagnosis. It's very similar to law in that way. We categorize in our brains where we want to go with a different set of symptoms so I think the two (professions) overlap in that way."
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