Reyes, Summer Y.

I remember walking from my grammar school in the late 1960's.  I would have been ten or eleven years old. I could walk into downtown Lowell from school in front the War Memorial Auditorium, across a barren parking lot with a burned out building the site. I could then cross the canal on a foot bridge through another municipal lot and up to a new gleaming glass three story building.

On the third floor, were my father's offices where he practiced law with his father and brother.

Occasionally, I would walk in and he would be with a client. If he was wrapping up, he would introduce me.  At other times I would walk in and see my uncle at the door of this father's office, JP he was called, talking about a case or a judge or a lawyer or just excitedly talking about something going on in his life I imagine.

Then there were family gatherings at the Mansur Street house, a house later sold to U.S. Senator Paul E. Tsongas, a neighbor and for who I interned in Washington when I was in high school. My grandfather would sit in the corner chair in his library and his sons would gather and talk business, finance, politics, law or sports you name it. 

There was talk of cases, the wrongful death cases, murders, bad business deals, bad clients, land use matters, zoning, etc.

There was controversy, Chappaquiddick (Joseph P. Donahue Jr. represented Joe Gargen) and an aid to the governor who committed suicide.  This is where I grew up, on the step stool of law and politics, business and deals. Unknown to me, I was a 4th generation lawyer in training.

I enjoy the challenges a client presents.  I have observed lawyers at their trade my entire life -- the stress, strain, the fights and finger pointing and the research and the opinion and the what do you think discussions.

And it continues today.  I practice in space across the hall from where I visited as a child.  My grandfather's corner office is across the hall occupied by my partner, Bill Martin, and I operate from his desk in my office.

It is the most natural thing in the world for me to represent a client. I learned how to do is somewhere between walking, talking and dining at home with a father who took every call from a client to my mother's rage!

I feel like a farmer, who grew up where he works and carries on the trade that was started by my great grandfather in 1887.

And I have four sons, so as the saying goes in my family, not only do you have to become a lawyer, you have to make one too! 

We'll see.