From Arts to Law: Two Lawyers’ Career Paths
October 27, 2009
Two unrelated but parallel stories caught my eye this week. Both portray lawyers who chose careers in the legal profession over promising futures in the arts. One is Sergiu Gherman. A talented piano virtuoso from the Eastern European country of Moldova, Gherman’s life took a dramatic about face when, in the middle of pursuing his doctoral degree in classical piano, he decided to go into law and enrolled at the Levin College of Law at the University of Florida. “Are you crazy or something?” one of his closest friends protested at the time. Gherman’s journey from Moldovan musician to Florida lawyer is recounted in a story this week in the Lakeland, Fla., newspaper The Ledger. He started playing piano at age 7 and went on to study on full scholarship at the prestigious Gheorghe Dima Music Academy in Romania, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees. A former piano teacher helped bring him to the United States, where he enrolled in a doctoral program at Temple University in Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, he was impressed by a lawyer who helped him with an immigration issue. It was then that he decided he wanted to become a lawyer. “I wanted to have…