That has prepared me most is my degree in economics.

I thought I would be an economist, go to the University of Chicago, study the Austrian School of Economics under Milton Friedman and his wife. I don’t like the Harvard school, and going to law school gave me insight into business because of my economics degree. That gave me a different perspective on the cases and what I do today. So that’s very important.

But I think a lawyer needs a broad range of experience—a broad range of talking to people, a broad range of being able to communicate with people.

I’ve always laughed and told people that you’ve got to be a good Sunday school teacher to be a good trial lawyer, because you have to captivate the class. You have to captivate the jury, and they have to believe you.

I grew up as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was always speaking in front of people from a very young age. I went on a mission for my church to Chicago and went door to door, talking to people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ—having doors slammed in my face, dogs sicced on me, got arrested in Milwaukee one time and escorted to the edge of town and told never to come back. These sorts of experiences polish you for what you need in the courtroom.

I do two other things that kind of help me with my practice of law, although they don’t seem to be directly related. One, I’m a concert pianist, and every morning before I come to work, I play classical music and thoroughly enjoy that. The other thing I do is I’m a scriptorian—every day I study the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I have thousands of pages of exegetical analysis. I figure that if I can understand what somebody like Ezekiel wrote 2,600 years ago and make sense of his very complex writing and figures of speech, there’s nothing a judge can say that I can’t parse or understand, even though a decision may seem cryptic or obtuse to someone else.

You need a broad range of experience to be a trial lawyer. Being a member of the church, going to BYU, studying economics, being on my mission, and doing these other things I’ve done in my life round me out so I’m a good lawyer.