Why I Became a Lawyer

Hi I'm Brian Wiklendt an attorney with Garfinkel Schwartz. I’m here in our Maitland, Florida, office---that’s a suburb of Orlando. It’s July and very, very hot here.

Today Brian Wiklendt is a top DBA lawyer.

We natives consider this season the winter and the reason for that it is it is so hot you can’t even play golf or do anything. So what we do is kind of stay indoors like pretending it was a snowy winter day but it’s just hot summer. So we’re in the middle of winter here and trying to suffer through it. 

Why I Became a Lawyer

I was asked to explain to people why I became a lawyer and I thought about it for a little while and I know the usual answers. I unfortunately don’t have those usual answers. It was kind of a weird story and I’ll explain it.

I Was Going to Be a Doctor

I went to college originally to be a doctor. That was just what people did that were smart and got good grades. And so I hated the classes when I was a freshman but the biology class was the big weed out class. And I had no idea what they were talking about in that class so I was a little disgruntled.

Fraternity Shenanigans Spur Legal Insights  

I pledged a fraternity my second semester of freshman year and there are basically three instances that happened where it just turned into like wow I think I should be a lawyer. 

First Look at the Power of the Law 

The first one was first of all you have to understand that being a pledge in a fraternity a lot of times you have to do stupid things. When you are eighteen years old you tend to do things like that and listen to people like you shouldn’t. But our fraternity kind of specialized in road we’d call them road trips and elder members of the fraternity would like throw you in a car unsuspecting and drop you off somewhere and just leave you there.

And so obviously there was drinking involved and I was not necessarily involved in too many of these things but the first one was we knew that we were going to be road tripped from this particular establishment by our big brothers and we heard through the grapevine was going to happen.

So what we did is we grabbed the guy’s keys and we took his car. Little did we know that he was going to report it stolen.

So we’re on our way from Atlanta to New Orleans and this guy’s car and all of a sudden a police officer stops the car. My friend was driving the car. I was in the backseat. He gets out of the car and starts talking to the police officer instead of the police officer coming to us. And somehow he came back to the car and we got a police escort back to our college and there were no charges or anything filed.

How to Handle a Cop

I asked him. I said what did you say? How did you get out of this? He was like, "well my dad is a lawyer in New Orleans and I know how to get out of these kinds of things. I did my stuff I’m supposed to do. I went to talk to the officer, apologized kept my hands out."

He knew all these things and I just thought that was really interesting as to how he got out of this jam with us getting a police escort home. So that was kind of a story about what I thought about being a lawyer and the law and the power of the law.

The Atlanta Zoo, Women's Stockings and a Quarter

The second one was a little bit more serious. One of my fraternity member friends in my pledge class was sent to the Atlanta Zoo with only women’s stockings on and he was just left there. He had a quarter and women’s stockings and so what happened was when we found out about that and these guys dropped him off there he never showed back up to school for like days.

And everyone was all nervous and everyone was like what happened to him? Something terrible must have happened to him. They’re afraid to report this to anyone and they’re coming to me. I was a freshman in college and these guys were coming to me like Brian what do you think we should do? What’s going on? What do we do? I was like well I don’t know why’re you coming to me?

The Impact of Law Firm Letterhead

But this started to become a pattern that people came to me for advice like this and so I explained. I was like you’re going to really have to kind of fess up to this. And what happened was the guy that was road tripped in the stockings he ended up getting his father to write an official letter on a law firm letterhead to the school explaining that his son was missing and he was going to hold everyone responsible and all this other stuff. And obviously it was a joke and he came back the next day.

Fear in Their Eyes

But the scare and the fear in people’s eyes about that letterhead. I never forgot that big letterhead with all these lawyers’ names on it scaring to death the people that did that road trip. They probably were never the same. I’m sure they’ve never done anything bad in their lives since that time because of that letterhead and so I thought that was kind of part of my progression of wanting to be a lawyer.

It’s kind of funny when you’re talking about things like that and reminiscing. These stories seem funny at the time but they’re not funny when they’re happening. They’re funny now but they weren’t funny at the time really. 

The Great Ping-Pong Escapade

Brian is lead counsel at Garfinkel Schwartz.

My last brush with the law was that we had to do things to other fraternities and things as part of the hazing process. One of the things was to try to steal something of worth and then of course you give it back later. It’s just a prank but two of my fraternity brothers decided to steal a ping pong table from the recreational center which was next door to our fraternity house.

And these ping-pong tables are not regular ping-pong tables. They’re like professional Olympic style super expensive ping-pong tables. Well they steal it because we knew how to get into the place. They steal it. They put it in the back of the truck and they’re taking it off campus and of course they get caught with this big thing in the back of their truck and they find out it is a ping pong table.

Of course they go to the campus police. They first thing to do they call me and I’m still just a freshman in college and they’re calling me asking me what should we do? Can you come here and help us? Blah blah blah. I guess they were business majors or something. So I go there and I explain this is what you have to do apologize. Tell them it was a prank. You meant to bring it back. It was just a prize. Blah blah blah.

Return to the Scene of the Crime 

So it turns out that basically what happened was if they could get it back in the exact same spot without anyone knowing that they stole it from before the opening of the recreational center they’re off the hook and so of course five guys are all trying to help take care of this get back into the place in the middle of the night put it exactly where it was and belonged and then leave and of course we got out of that.

So another thing is simply I just kind of naturally progressed into people asking me their advice on certain things and the power of the law. And what to do and I just felt that that was my calling and what I should do to try to help people in whatever area of law it is.

Now My Road Trips Are to Visit Longshoremen & Contractors 

And now I’m helping overseas contractors and longshoremen who are injured which gives me an even better sense of reward other than helping my stupid fraternity brothers trying to get out of jams. But that’s my story.

It’s not a normal story but that’s the truth of what happened as to why I went from going to biology classes to going to political science and economics classes and prelaw classes and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

So thanks for listening to my story. Again this is Brian Wiklendt with Garfinkel Schwartz. I hope you have a great day.