There were three advantages (and a few disadvantages) to going to law school at age 58. My first leg-up was that the stakes were different. I’d had a moderately successful career as a publisher and author, and if law school didn’t work out, I could slink back into a more familiar role. (It might be with my tail between my legs, but I could probably fake that.) The second advantage was that I had a reasonable sense of how the world worked. I understood business, had been involved in politics, knew about the media, had been an adjunct professor for years, and had even served in the military—briefly and long ago. I didn’t consider myself an expert about anything, but I had far more exposure to most things than my classmates, and often recognized the events described in the cases we were reading.

But the most significant advantage was that I wasn’t afraid to admit it when I didn’t understand something. I would often raise my hand—not as a gunner volunteering an answer to a professor’s question, but to say, “Sorry, I don’t understand. Could you please explain it again?” I would hear a collective sigh of relief from about a third of the class, and the occasional muttered comment, “Thank God the old guy doesn’t get it either.”