Perhaps no one has told you that you are a creative person, with the seed of an artist in you, or that you are a scientist because you like to figure things out for yourself. Babies are scientists, figuring things out for themselves. Sometimes we knock it out of them by imposing adult preconceptions. Accounts for why things improve so slowly, I guess.
Creativity is one of the things that the First Amendment protects. And encourages.
How do you know you are creative? Or when you're being creative? Are lawyers creative? We're not artists, or like artists, are we?
Maybe we are to some degree. Perhaps more than you might suspect.
When a lawyer, say a lawyer in criminal practice, is given a new challenge, the lawyer must figure out how to deal with it. While the prosecutor may feel that the case is open and shut in favor of guilt, after talking with the client, the defense attorney may see the matter in a different light, one that negates or mitigates blameworthiness. The problem becomes one of getting the rest of the world, which includes the prosecutor, judge, and jury, to see things the client's way. This becomes a challenge to which the solution may be called artistic.
But how does the lawyer arrive at the solution? The solution occurs either right away or very slowly, after a lot of thought. This is why one may choose to sleep with a pad and pen next to the bed, so that when you wake up in the middle of the night with the blinding insight that prevents sleep, you get it down on paper before it evaporates into wherever it is that good thoughts go when you fail to record them. For you will never be able to recall that great thought next morning after you've brushed your teeth, showered, shaved, had your juice and coffee, and decided to head out for the office. Why can't you recall last night's brainstorm? Probably because it wasn't the product of rational thought, but exactly what we call it, a brainstorm.
There's a new movie out about the writer Truman Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as the lisping sprite who had acid for saliva. This drew a column by Laura Deutsch in the S.F. Chronicle concerning an interview she had with him in 1968:
[Capote] talks about writing, claiming his material chose him.
The serious artist, like Proust, as opposed to a mere craftsman, is "like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore, obsessed by his material. It's like a venom working his blood and the art is the antidote."
That seems right to me, and I'm glad that Truman said it, because I've never seen it put so well before, have you?
That's how lawyer's become sometimes, too, as they prepare for trial in important matters.