When lawyer Eric Riess was a kid he wanted to be a firefighter or a movie star.
His inspiration was the 1970s television series ‘Emergency!’ Riess would get on his bike and pretend he was a firefighter on the show’s Squad 51 and ride around the neighborhood with sirens blaring; the sirens being his own voice. Riess didn’t exactly grow up to be a firefighter, instead he manages the corporate practice group at St. Louis-based Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale P.C., where his specialty is franchising law. ‘I ended up being this, and I end up putting out fires on a daily basis. Isn’t that ironic?’
Why did you become a lawyer?
I was a CPA for many years, but I decided to be a lawyer, as hokey as it sounds, because I wanted to be a politician. I thought it was the only way I could change things I was dissatisfied with. Who knows what are you dissatisfied with when you are in your mid 20s? You name it, you’re dissatisfied with it.
I would say 80 percent of the politicians are lawyers, so I said I needed to go to law school. … I had so much debt coming out of law school that I couldn’t afford to go into public service. I had to just take the highest-paying job that was offered.
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