George Franklin Chooses Law over Academics
A wide, warm smile broke over 2L George Franklin's face as he said the words: "Really hard." He was referring to Professor Terry Anderson with whom Franklin has taken two courses: Elements and Analysis of Evidence. The smile betrays fond memories of Prof. Anderson's "intellectually exciting" teaching style and subject matter. But Franklin is no stranger to difficult intellectual matters. After completing his bachelor's degree in Poetry with a minor in Photography in 1975 at Franconia College (now defunct), Franklin would go on to earn his MFA in Writing at Columbia University in 1985.
The University of Miami Reid Scholarship recipient wasn't finished yet. In 1998 he completed his Ph.D. in English and American Literature at Brandeis University. Franklin's dissertation, entitled "In Pursuit of the Real: Skepticism in the Poetry of Eliot, Hardy and Stevens" was a treatment of the influence of skepticism and the concept of the absence of certainty in the works of the three major figures of 20th Century poetry.
Before Franklin pursued his advanced degrees, he wrote and photographed for several years. Then after Columbia, he taught as an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University for 4 years. While working on his doctorate, he adjuncted at Simmons College and at Brandeis University and later served as Assistant Professor of Humanities and Rhetoric at Boston University, where he taught for 5 years. But, Franklin explains, he became convinced that the "stakes in teaching are too low," almost marginalized in society. He feels that two personal experiences also helped to push him in the direction of law: First, after his father's death, he was forced to go to court to obtain custody of his mother, who suffered from Alzheimer's. Then, a few years later, he was the plaintiff in a divorce that went all the way through the trial process. Franklin believes that he was lucky to work on these cases with excellent attorneys who encouraged the Shreveport, Louisiana native to become more actively involved. At his attorney's urging, he wrote summaries of the transcripts and the first draft of the findings of fact for his divorce and discovered that, no matter how personally painful, it was fascinating work. "As a client it's very easy," he says, "to feel in any litigation that events have spun out of your control. I was grateful that my attorney encouraged me to participate in trial preparation. It allowed me to view what was happening from an alternative perspective." Franklin credits these experiences with providing the catalyst for his decision to apply to law school.
Franklin has been on the Dean's List each of his first three semesters and sits on the UM Law Review, observing that "people on the Review have been terrific. There exists a certain camaraderie that I did not expect" prior to attending law school. This semester he presented a paper to the Evidence Law Symposium sponsored by the Law Review. The paper, "Navigating Between Extremes: The Florida Supreme Court's Rulings on the Admission of Similar Fact Evidence in Child Sexual Abuse Cases," will be published as part of the UM Law Review's forthcoming issue on that symposium. He also plans to participate in the Mock Trial competition next year.
Franklin was a Summer Associate in 2000 at the Miami office of Baker & McKenzie, and has accepted a position as a Summer Associate in 2001 at the prestigious firm of Boies, Schiller and Flexner, splitting the summer between their Washington, DC and Hollywood, Florida offices. He will go on to participate in the Clinical Program with the Miami Public Defender's Office in Fall 2001.
Franklin took Commercial Law in the Fall of 2000, and remarks that Professor Hill "actually made the UCC fun." With respect to the Career Planning Center, Franklin considers Director Marcy Cox, Esq. the "goddess of resumes." His overall evaluation of the law school is that it is "surprisingly non-competitive and I am impressed by the level of cooperation among the student body."
The Reid Scholar has 3 children, Toby, 16 and Hadley, 12 from his first marriage and Simon, 2 ½ with his current wife Claudia, who now has plans herself to apply to law school. "She's seen how much I've enjoyed it," he says.
