Legal News

A Life in Six Words: ?Angry Guy Gets Law License, Sues?

By Dan Slater

One of the Law Blog’s favorite literary anecdotes involves Ernest Hemingway (pictured). When challenged in a barroom to write a story in six words or fewer, Hemingway supposedly ginned up the following gem: “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”

Someone else apparently likes that story too. So much so that they compiled a book of six-word memoirs, entitled “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.” The book, which hits stores today, hasn’t landed on the Law Blog’s desk yet. But we’ve learned that one of the memoirists bills by the hour.

Bryan Gates, a single practitioner in Winston-Salem, N.C., submitted this dandy: Angry guy gets law license, sues.

Intrigued, we caught up with Gates, who agreed to take a few minutes out of his schedule representing criminal defendants to discuss the beauty of brevity, the problems of renting trucks, and the meaning of his six-word legal memoir.

Hi Bryan. Thanks for chatting. So tell us, what’s your story? What was the motivation for your six-word memoir?

I guess I was trying to think of something that would relate to becoming a lawyer, which was one of the most significant events in my life. I never thought about practicing law when I got out of college, but after working in journalism for a few years I got interested in law. I was especially sensitive to injustice, especially when it was directed at me. I always got mad when someone stuck it to me and there was nothing I could do about it.

Like what?

One time I needed to move from one rental house to another. I called [the rental place] the night before and tried to reserve a truck. And they said just come in that morning, that I didn’t need a reservation. So I get there at seven a.m. There were 50 trucks in the lot, and I said I’d like to rent a truck. They said they didn’t have anything available. I said, what do you mean? You’re telling me you don’t have any trucks? What are those trucks in the lot? They said, we don’t have to give you a reason, we just don’t have trucks.

So what did you do?

I just blew my stack. But I knew I wasn’t going to get a truck and that there was nothing I could do about it. But the idea that someone could just [do that to you] – well, it wasn’t a pleasant emotion. It wouldn’t have been practical, though, to sue [the company]. I guess the statute of limitations has run on that.

So that’s what inspired you to go to law school? That’s what led to the six-word memoir?

No, it wasn’t just that one thing. But to this day, when I think about it, I still get mad. When I was a journalist all I could do was send letters to the editor, letters to a company, that sort of thing. You can ignore a letter, but you can’t ignore a lawsuit.

True that. Our legal writing professor always told us brevity was the soul of wit. Where’d you learn to write so concisely?

Well, before law school I worked as a copy editor. One of my favorite things to do was write headlines, so that forced me to be terse, to get the essence of the story in just a few words.

Have you seen a copy of the book yet?

Yes. If you get published in the book, they send you a free copy. The winner got an Ipod. At the time, my wife had an Ipod and I didn’t, so I wouldn’t have minded getting an Ipod. But it was easy to enter. It’s just six words.

And what do you think of the final product?

It’s interesting, I think, all the different ways people can sum up their lives.

Law Blog Contest of the Day: Any readers out there care to summarize their legal careers, their law school experience or anything else in six words?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 05, 2008 (boomark / email).