The Wizard of Law

Dorothy was an average pigtailed Kansas farm girl with a dog named Toto and a fine collection of homespun dresses and picnic baskets.  She loved her Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, who so graciously took her in after her own mother and father were ruined and buried by Mr. Social Injustice.

But Dorothy wanted more than to live a rural middle class life.  She didn't know what, but she wanted to do something.  She had smarts, energy, drive.

Dorothy was reading about her various options - medical school, law school, business school, etc. - and humming some gay song about weather phenomena when TORNADO ALARM.

Despite being the middle of fucking Kansas, everyone seemed surprised by this and was running around like it was emergency or something.  Dorothy somehow got knocked unconscious in the confusion and the next thing she knew her bedroom was swept up by the mighty wind while Pink Floyd's The Great Gig in the Sky just so happened to play on her iTunes.
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When Dorothy awoke, she and Toto stepped out of her house and learned they had landed in Munchkin Village and crushed the Witch of the East, who previously owned all of Munchkin Territory in fee simple defeasible, conditioned on her being a total bitch.

All the Munchkins cheered and celebrated her demise.  Moreover, they celebrated Dorothy for her innovative problem-solving skills.  See, the Munchkins had been trying to kill the Witch of the East for decades.  They had never thought of simply dropping a house on top of her.

"We need that type of problem-solving!  Would you like to be our new judge?!"
"I'd rather not," Dorothy said.  "I really want to get home.  I'm not even a lawyer."

The Munchkins gasped at this.  How could she solve a broad social problem without a law degree.

"You should see the Wizard!"
"Yes, the Wizard!"
"What Wizard?" Dorothy asked.
"Why, the Wizard of Law!" the Munchkins said, as if she were as stupid as she was.  "He lives in the Socratic City!  He can give you a law degree AND help you get home!"
"But I'm not sure I want a law degree," Dorothy said.

The Munchkins then broke out into a medley of songs:

1.  "Ding Dong the Law's Not Dead."
2.  "Mayor and Coroner Talk About Projected Lawyer Shortage After Witch's Slaying."
3.  "The Social Justice Guild."
4.  "The Boomer Retirement Guild."
5.   "The Employment Stats Say You'll be His, You'll be His, You'll be History."

Dorothy was convinced, and, her iPhone not having reception, asked the Munchkins for direction.

Follow the Open Road
Follow the Open Road
Follow follow follow follow follow the Open Road!

And so Dorothy and Toto set out on the widest, most openest road out of town.  All they had to do was sign a simple promissory note on the way out of town, and their passport to Law was firmly in hand.
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About a half mile out of the Village, Dorothy and Toto came to a fork in the road.  Nearby sat a very confused young man wearing a potato sack over his head.

"Excuse me, sir," Dorothy asked.  "Which way is to the Socratic City?"
"Maybe it's this way," he said, pointing behind him.  "Or maybe that way!"
"Do you not know yourself?"
"I don't know which way to go!" the man said.  "Should I go to see the Wizard of Law, or should I take the road to the Wizard of Biz?"
"Why are you wearing that sack on your head?"
"I went to a costume party.  I couldn't decide between Scarecrow from Batman and Fred Flintstone, so I brought this sack and thought maybe I could change."

Dorothy snapped her fingers.  "What you need is a versatile degree.  You should come with me to the Socratic City!  With a law degree, you can do anything, including business!"
"The Wizard can give me versatility?"
"I bet he can, if he can get me home."

And with that little nudge, Scarecrow joined their travels.
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Down the road, they came upon an old cabin.  A young man sat outside, a hideously ugly, bearded, slovenly-dressed, dirty young man.  He was sitting virtually comatose, and was totally unresponsive when Dorothy and Scarecrow tried to wake him, which they did for some mysterious reason despite the foul odor.

Nearby, a bottle of whiskey sat.  "Me drnk," the man mumbled.  Quickly, Dorothy and Scarecrow pour a few drops in the young man's mouth, and soon he was lubricated enough to speak.

"Thanks," he said.  "I have to keep my BAC above .2 or I zone out."
"What's your name?" Dorothy asked, covering her mouth with horror.
"Friends call me Tin Man."
"What a funny name," Scarecrow said.
"I have to fuck tin because I'm so broke and repulsive to the ladies."
"Well, Dorothy and I are off to get law degrees!"
"You should come, too!" Dorothy said.  "A law degree can give you charm."
"I dunno, I ain't got much of a brain.  Does it cost anything?"
"All you have to do is sign a promissory note.  It's free to sign!" the Scarecrow said.

And so Tin Man, too, joined their party.  But all was not happy.  They were soon accosted by the WITCH OF THE WEST.

"My pretty lemmings!  You think you're going to represent Apple some day or something?  That promissory note will cost you dearly!  There's no need for new lawyers and there's no advantage to having these skills in the employment marketplace.  Snarl snarl!"

But they defied her, and kept going anyway.
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They soon found themselves in a nasty, scary, enchanted ghetto.  They felt threatened as naive white people, and matters only got worse when the self-proclaimed famous rapper Lyon jumped out of a boarded up home.

He tried to intimidate them with a protest song, an updated version of Public Enemy's Fight the Power.  But it simply didn't work, and Dorothy soon found herself giggling.

"I'm sorry," she said.  "I know you meant well."
"Dat's just the thing," he said.  "I got the music in me.  I feel the struggle in the street, but I don't know how to express it."
"You should get a law degree," Scarecrow said.  "As a lawyer, you can fight for social justice."

The others convinced Lyon that a law degree was an excellent way for him to seek social justice in the world, and now their foursome was complete.

Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lyon embraced arms and continued along the open road.

We're off to see the wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Law....
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But the Witch of the West was not satisfied.  She watched the foursome from afar, likely bitter because her own legal career had stalled, we can only presume.  I mean, seriously, why on Earth would anyone without any skin in the game want to warn people off of something?  It must be a psychological defect or something, to just go around making up garbage to save others from going on pointless quests to see imaginary wizards.

The Witch of the West was cunning, and used astroturf money from the Coke Brothers to set up a series of signs along the Open Road, saying slanderous and demeaning things like "massive decline in travelers to Socratic City - may be wise to turn around" and "hey, the people in Socratic City charge you $300k in usage taxes and only work fifteen hours a week."

But the foursome ignored every last sign that foretold of peril.  Just before getting to Socratic City, they decided to have a massive bender of a party.  Scarecrow, as it turned out, had a stash of opium.  Things were done to each other that can't be undone, but that wasn't the worst of their problems.

No, the worst of their problems was that they awoke inside the Witch of the West's Dungeon, which looked a lot like a conference room at the local Marriott!

 "My special snowflake lemmings!" the Witch said.  "I really would appreciate if you did some honest research about your decision to go to Socratic City, because, look, I've been there, and it's not what it seems.  I mean, there, the people are nice, but later on a lot of us who went there regretted it."
"KTHXBYE!" Dorothy yelled.  She threw a bottle of water at the Witch of the West.  The Witch was knocked unconscious, and they made their daring escape.

"Wow," Scarecrow said.  "It was really easy to beat that Witch.  Water?  Seriously?"
"Was it just water," Dorothy said, "or logic?"
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Once they got to Socratic City, the door was held open for them, and the red carpet was rolled out.  Good food, good wine, droll lessons in legal instruction.  They sang songs about poor people and songs about women's rights, songs about attorney ethics and songs about social justice.

The Wizard, it turns out, was the nicest guy on the planet.  None of that curtain or smoke and mirrors illusions like the Witch of the West had warned them.  Oh, no.  He left them crash for three years and even gave them special positions for nine months after they formally graduated.  Dorothy was even a Fellow in the Socratic City Institute of Law!

But after a while, Dorothy and the others remembered the plot device of why they had come in the first place.

And so the Wizard bid them well.  Dorothy left with a bus ticket home.  Scarecrow had a set direction in life.  Tin Man had a new suit and "I'm a lawyer" as his newest pickup line.  Lyon had a ticket to social justice.
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 Dorothy awoke in her bed back at the farmhouse, with Uncle Henry and Auntie Em standing over her.

"Oh," Dorothy said.  "I had the most wonderful dream!  I went to a far away land and there was a wizard and he gave me a law degree!"
"That wasn't a dream," Uncle Henry said.  "You went to a third-tier craphole in a far-away state.  You convinced Joe, Jim, and Johnny to go to law school, too."
"I did?" Dorothy said.
"Joe's now a public defender in Utah.  Jim's doing doc review in Manhattan.  And Johnny set up his own private firm in Michigan.  Must be makin' a mint."
"What about me?" Dorothy asked.
"You're 300k in debt and unemployed.  We had to give Toto up because we couldn't afford the food and he wouldn't stop nipping at lawyer commercials.  You've been so depressed, you're drinking all the time and apparently blacked out pretty badly."

Dorothy looked out the window and smiled.  She was a lawyer.  Something would land, and if worse came to worse, she could always go to Munchkin Village for a job, or maybe use the versatility of the JD to start a hedge fund, or something.

Fuck that Witch of the West, she thought.  She fell asleep, thankfully that she had gone to law school, thankful to the Wizard, so thankful that she made a mental note to make a donation.