Toward my junior and senior year, I thought that studying law would be intriguing and interesting, so I migrated to law school. It just seemed natural to move in that direction, and I did. Deming started out in Murphy s legal department. After two years, he moved to the company s land department, the department responsible for acquiring concessions and leases. Deming feels that lawyers can have an advantage in the business world because of the type of work experience they receive.
Lawyers do a lot of negotiations in the business world.
They do a lot of transactions. They are put in adversarial situations in some circumstances and they get their hands dirty instead of being aloft in an office building. So I think they have a good sense of business and where the pieces fit. But that doesn t mean attorneys are automatically management material. According to Deming, they have to abandon a tendency toward analysis over action.