Too late for law school?

I'm just sitting here and thinking, "Should I have gone to law school in 1972, when I was first accepted at the University of Denver School of Law (now called the Sturm College of Law)?" Is it too late to go to law school now? Will it be too late after four years of sheriffing?

When I was accepted that first year, I had just changed insurance companies and thought I ought to devote my energy to success with the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company. I had finished my C.L.U. and an advanced course in Estate Planning, so I waived the admission in 1972.

They offered me entrance in September 1973 but, by that time, I was getting my private pilot's license and decided to fly up my V.A. dollars and get a Commercial License and Instrument Rating, which I did.

Would I be a tired, old lawyer by now, burned out by the system? I never could have played the game of asking for continuances month after month, while I ran up a client's legal bill. I'm sure that's a game I never would have wanted to play.

Too many clients need a lawyer to protect them from their lawyer. I do wonder if any ever get a second opinion, as they would do if they were facing major surgery. And, if they did, what would a second lawyer tell them?

Unfortunately, a second lawyer might tell them that he couldn't give them any legal advice, since they already had an attorney. "That'll be $200, please."

I recall being accused of practicing law in Denver one time. That was when a lawyer was advising a mutual client to make a change in his life insurance ownership that would result in an unnecessary $75,000 income tax bill when the elderly insured policyholder died. I wanted to go to the lawyer's office and talk with him briefly in person, but he refused to see me.

The lawyer told me just to "peddle" my policies and stop meddling in the legal end of things.

He also told me that he had the best tax attorney in the State of Colorado on his staff, and I told him he'd better go to Wyoming for a second opinion. (We were playing hardball by that time.)

That's when I told the lawyer that I would urge my client to get a letter from his law firm, on his stationery, that the specific income tax consequence would not occur when the old man died, which wasn't going to be very far in the future.

The lawyer said, "Uhh, let me call you back in two hours." He called back in ten minutes and told me the client had decided not to make the change.