A Legal Preference for Business

Hoyt Zia

This was not the first time the question has come up. Maybe it has something to do with it being springtime when a young person's fancy turns to thoughts of graduation and careers, but I have been asked for guidance along these lines by more than a couple of college students in the last month or two. Since I'm hardly the first one to have switched from law to business, I thought I'd poll a few much more notable "reformed-lawyer"-businessmen about what they thought.

I found that my preference for business over practicing law is shared by some others who had significant law careers before moving over to business. Mitch D'Olier, who spent nearly twenty years practicing law with the Goodsill firm en route to his present position as President and CEO of Kaneohe Ranch Company, says he enjoys business more because he finds that there is more room for creativity and flexibility in business than there was in law. Colbert Matsumoto, now Chairman and CEO of Island Insurance Company but formerly the managing partner of Fujiyama Duffy & Fujiyama and then his own firm, also greatly enjoys what he does now as does Tim Johns, Damon Estate COO and Parker Ranch Trustee, who worked with me in the Amfac Law Department before making the leap to business while still at Amfac. Tim observed that lawyers are trained to minimize risk for their clients while businessmen and -women are inherently risk-takers, and that is perhaps one of the defining differences between them.

At the same time, they all emphasized how critical law school and/or their legal training was in preparing them for business. If they had to do it all over again, none of them would skip law school in favor of business school, but they might consider a joint degree.

Personally, I enjoyed being a lawyer working in-house with companies like Motorola and Amfac where some of the elements of practicing law that all lawyers complain about, like keeping timesheets, did not exist. Being in-house provided the opportunity to work closely with business units and to become immersed in their problems and decisions. But even in that role, I felt more like a spectator rather than a full participant in the actual business, and I realized that I would prefer to have responsibility for pursuing and achieving business goals and objectives on my own rather than simply advising someone else how to achieve theirs.

But ultimately, I told Emily, it's not about whether business or law is better. As the old saying goes, it's doing whatever turns you on. And not everyone gets it right the first time.