Central to Mercer University School of Law's mission is to help students envision their lives as lawyers and to inspire them to practice in the best traditions of the profession. Those purposes led to the creation of Mercer's Inside the Legal Profession series, a required part of the Mercer curriculum. These programs consist of hour-long interviews with distinguished members of the bench and bar, with the entire first-year class in attendance. More than one hundred lawyers and judges have participated in this program. With this book, Mercer School of Law seeks to expand the audience for these first-person stories of life in the law. We hope that aspiring lawyers, students at other schools, and practicing lawyers will all find lessons and inspiration in these pages. Presented here is a collection of eleven of the most memorable interviews in the series. In these pages, you will learn about what it is like to sit on the Supreme Court of Georgia and to preside as a trial judge on the federal and state courts. You will read about the challenges and rewards of representing indigent criminal defendants, Fortune 500 corporations, domestic violence victims, wrongfully-convicted inmates, and Guantanamo detainees. You will learn about prosecuting crimes and helping injured parties. Most importantly, you will discover in these pages the many paths to success and happiness in the law and that the undeniable challenges that come with life in the law can be met with success and joy.