BOSTON. Amy Linehan thinks the legal profession is boring, and doesn’t want to be a lawyer. So what’s she doing in the library at Bay State School of Law, studying for mid-term exams?
“I want to be a poet, and Wallace Stevens was a poet and a lawyer, so there must be some connection,” she says before turning her attention back to Calamari on Contracts, a standard “horn book” law students use to bone up on particular legal topics. “If I fail in the miserably unremunerative field of poetry, I can always fall back on a boring but highly-paid job as a legal drone.”
Stevens: “I can write you a sonnet, but it’s gonna cost you two hundred bucks an hour.”
Stevens, one of the most highly-regarded American poets of the 20th century, was indeed a lawyer, and he practiced in one of the drier areas of commercial law, suretyship. “The bar sets the bar very high in terms of boredom,” says Ted Fonsworth, who teaches at Bay State Law. “Suretyship law flies over that bar with inches to spare.”
“Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
who never to himself hath said–
“I’m tired, I’m going to go to bed,
I’ve stuffed enuff law inside my head.”
And Fonsworth, who teaches suretyship law, finds his students include a high concentration of would-be poets, who spend their time in his classrooms not texting each other or checking their fantasy football league standings, but scribbling sonnets and sestinas in their notebooks.
Shaw: “Did I say that?”
“I guess I shouldn’t complain,” he says. “A kid last year wore a t-shirt to class with a picture of George Bernard Shaw with the quote ‘Those who can–do; those who can’t–teach.’”
A typical day in Fonsworth’s class involves a principle taken from the Restatement of Suretyship, which students are then asked to explicate. Today’s lesson is taken from Chapter 3, section 32, and Fonsworth recites the rule as illustrated in the text:
“S borrows $1,000 from C, to be repaid February 1st. P assumes S’s obligation to repay C, and S sends C a letter to that effect. C throws the letter out along with solicitations from his college alumni association and Publisher’s Clearing House. P asks C for an extension until March 1st. Can S raise suretyship defenses in an action by C?”
Amy has been scribbling out a villanelle, and is caught by surprise when Fonsworth calls on her.
“I’m . . . uh . . . not prepared today, Professor,” she says with chagrin.
“Well, this isn’t a class where you can take a day off,” he says. “As a lawyer, you have to learn to think on your feet. Take a stab at it.”
Amy swallows a lump in her throat, looks down at the problem in her book, collects herself, then begins:
What is it with S, always borrowing money?
Doesn’t he know that C won’t think it funny
When the time comes to pay
and he’s heard to say–
“Hey, don’t look at me, go after P!”
She pauses and looks up at Fonsworth. “Good start on the facts,” he says, “but you need to include a statement of the rule.” Amy nods, says “Okay,” then begins again:
If C was so stupid to throw out the letter,
Suretyship law says he shoulda known better.
It’s not an excuse when to sue S you go–
He gets off scot-free, and keeps all your dough.
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection poetry is kind of important.
