As a Pepperdine faculty member and former administrator, I often interview applicants for teaching and staff positions at the law school.  I start every single interview with the same simple, informal question: “What are the three most important things to you, and why?”

My hope is to casually catch the applicant in a moment of candor – before we get into pre-rehearsed canned responses about how much he or she wants the job.  I can think of no better way to cut through the smoke screen than to learn what the applicant truly values.  The applicant’s answer is unquestionably the most important aspect of the interview for me.

Because I ask this question so often, I have had the opportunity to reflect on this myself on numerous occasions.  My three:

 

 

Last month, I interviewed applicants for summer internships with Pepperdine’ Global Justice Program in Uganda, Rwanda, and India.  Once again, I started by asking the students to tell me the three most important things to them.  The answers were interesting, varied, and insightful.  They included: Jesus/God/faith, family, friends, relationships, significance, intellectual curiosity/knowledge, education, culture, independence, community/connectedness, reading, purpose, growth, loyalty, ending human trafficking, wholeness/well-being, justice, service, love, and pizza.

Yes, pizza.

While most students provided a single word or short-phrase responses before I pressed them on why they chose those answers, one stood out to me.  I actually got misty, though this happens to me way too often.

Her answer is a prayer I now pray for my children.

I desperately yearn for her words to penetrate my kids to the marrow – for this to be the one thing that remains when all else is stripped away.  I won’t care what the second, third, or thirtieth most important thing is to them if the first is the same as this student’s:

“The most important thing to me is the assurance that I am known and deeply loved by God.”

Yet another reason that I have the best job in the world – I learn way more from my students than they learn from me.

I will be praying that whoever reads this will intensely experience that same love from the Creator who desperately wants you to know how much He loves you.

In the wake of my ignorant faux pas with the literary agent I really wanted — described at the end of Confessions of an Amateur Writer, Part I — I sent a draft of my first seven chapters to some dear friends in Dallas – Amy and Colin Batchelor.  They were on the list of those to whom I’d been e-mailing daily updates about the unfolding events in Uganda, and Amy was a frequent commenter and encourager on the updates.  She was also among the first to suggest that I turn my experiences into a book.  So while I was visiting them in Dallas, I took a risk and asked Amy to read what I’d written.

Her first reaction: “This reminds me of ‘Same Kind of Different as Me.’”

As often happens, my blank stare betrayed my ignorance.  “Um, what?” I asked.

You haven’t read “Same Kind of Different as Me?”

“Um, no.  Is that a book?”  I decided then wasn’t the time to burden her with the knowledge that I didn’t actually read books, other than the text books from which I taught Torts and Evidence at Pepperdine Law.  My astounding (and embarrassing) lack of literary engagement is yet another reason I had no business trying to write a book at that time.

Amy explained that I had unwittingly structured my book the same way as “Same Kind of Different as Me” – dual first-person narratives told from the perspective of two very different people unlikely to ever meet.  So the next day, I bought it and read it on the plane home.  It is brilliant.

Soon thereafter, one of my former students Chris DeRose got a book deal to publish a historical/political analysis of an important election early in our nation’s history.

Chris was generous with his time and liberal with his patience as I peppered him with questions about the process of getting a book deal.  He was even kind enough to connect me with his agent who, in turn, graciously agreed to read a couple chapters of what I’d written and talk with me on the phone afterward.

That conversation with Chris’s agent was equal parts enlightening and humiliating.  His first question was, “What’s the book about?”

This momentarily knocked me off balance.  I thought he’d read what I sent him. My pause before answering clued him into my cluelessness.

“I know the book is about you and a boy you met in prison and what happened thereafter, but what is the book about?  What is the theme?  What is the point?  What do you want the reader to learn?” he inquired.

To call me perplexed as to how to answer his question is way too charitable to me.  I initially mumbled something about “God” and “love,” but ultimately confessed that I hadn’t really thought about it.

“OK . . .” he said.  “Well, who’s the antagonist in this story?”

“Antagonist?” I asked, trying to stall while I desperately searched my tenth grade English memory banks.

“Yes – the villain.  Who’s the bad guy that creates the conflict and drives the action?”

“Um.  I guess I would say . . . injustice is the villain?”

My closed-eye swing missed the pitch by at least three feet.

“Listen,” he said, “there’s a process to storytelling that audiences expect that’s more complex than people think.”  In his sentence, “people” played the role of gentle euphemism for “wannabe morons like you.”

“I recommend, Jim, you read a couple books about storytelling as you continue with your project.  You have a good story, but investing some time in learning how to tell your story will be quite helpful.  I’d start with ‘Save the Cat’ and ‘Story.’”

Before we hung up, he gave me the “It’s not you, it’s me” line about why he wouldn’t be able to take me on as a client.  It felt like a foot to the groin.

For a few weeks, I seriously contemplated giving up.  But once again, Amazon kindly placed on my doorstep a couple more tools wannabe morons like me needed if I had a prayer of getting a publisher, much less an agent, interested in what I was writing.

I started with Save the Cat because, well, it was shorter.  I read it – twice.  I laughed out loud every few pages – not because the author was funny (though he was) – but because the concepts he talked about were so simple and so blatantly absent from my story.  For example, one chapter explains that every character in your story needs a limp or an eyepatch – something (other than just a name) to allow the reader to recall which character you are referring to.  Don’t expect the reader to be able to keep everyone straight without visual cues to trigger memories.  (Incidentally, the Save the Cat title derives from the notion that if you want your main character to be liked by your audience, that character needs to do something admirable (like saving a cat) near the beginning of the story).

I next tackled the other book – Story.  It’s much more complex, but it pounded home the elements of a story that need to be present (in almost all cases) in order to meet the reader’s expectations.  Anyone contemplating writing a book or screenplay (both books are actually targeted at screenplay writing) should read at least one of these books, if not both.

That next summer, I was back at the Yates & Yates firm.  I had sent another draft, and Curtis was kind enough to meet with me.

We started off talking about where things were in Henry’s life and mine.  “You’re moving to Uganda in a few months, right?  And Henry’s appeal still hasn’t been argued, right?  What’s your hurry with finishing the book – why not let the events play out before trying to get it published?”

He, of course, had a point.  But I was still laboring under the misconception that writing a book shouldn’t be that difficult or take that long.

With respect to the content of the book, he was quite encouraging about how the underlying events would make a good story, but he was equally clear about the quality of my writing.  “You write like a lawyer,” he said.  And this wasn’t a compliment.  “I’m a lawyer, so I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but storytelling requires a different kind of writing.  You’ve written a report – it needs to be a story; your book is an architectural drawing – it needs to be a painting.  What you are writing is a memoir, and that needs to be as good as a novel in order to get published.”

I tried to sound out memoir (mem-wahr) and tried to figure out what it was.  It sounded like armoire, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about furniture.

Mercifully, he explained that a memoir is a literary genre that involves a first-person, non-fiction narrative about an important part of (memory in) the author’s life.

“Have you read many memoirs, or novels, for that matter?”

Cricket, cricket.

“Well, I recommend you take a few months and read as much as you can so you can get a better idea of what publishers are looking for.”

So I did.  In fact, over the next three years, I read close to half of the books that made the NYT Bestsellers list – both fiction and nonfiction.  (At this point, my kids would correct me, so I’ll admit that I only read a few – more accurately, I listened to audiobooks for more than a hundred bestsellers).

Some of my favorites are:

And all things Harlan Coben (I read at least a dozen).

To say this experience was a bit eye-opening is like saying the Sahara is a bit sandy.

In the next installment of this Confessions of an Amateur Writer series, I’ll discuss how the editor of Guideposts Magazine helped me overcome my biggest struggle in applying what I learned from reading the hundred-plus bestsellers – how to handle writing dialogue that occurred years earlier — and then I’ll describe how I finally got to the point where Yates & Yates took me on as a client.

Thanks for reading.

Perhaps the study of law has something to add to the study of medicine, at least in one context.  A few weeks ago, I was talking with my brother and sister-in-law about their decision to invest a sizable chunk o’ change on their boys learning to “swim” when they were about eight months old.  These lessons are designed to ensure that if the boy falls into a pool, even fully clothed, he can quickly roll onto his back and float and cry until rescued.  The iterative training takes place over a several-week period and scares the hell out of the kid at the beginning. It is done under very strict conditions and almost always results in the kid learning how to stay alive for several critical minutes should the unthinkable happen.

So my sister-in-law is telling me about a conversation she had with one of her friends who criticized her for putting her sons through this training because of the “trauma” and the little bit of water the kids occasionally ingest during the training that some sometimes hurts their “wittle tummies.”  Her friend vowed never to subject her children to such cruelty.

“The BPL on that one is easy,” I said.  “No question that you were right and your friend was wrong.”

“BPL?” she quite reasonably asked.

“Why yes, BPL,” I responded.  “It is life’s most important formula.  It works for swimming training just as well as it works for Ebola.”  Knowing I was being coy – I like to yank her chain from time to time – I finally explained:

This is a simple formula I teach my students in Torts as they learn to analyze whether an individual acted negligently in any given situation.  P equals the probability of harm and L equals the gravity of harm risked by the conduct in question. (No one really knows why L was chosen instead of G for this formula – probably something to do with Latin).  When multiplied together, they give you the magnitude of risk posed by a given activity.  B equals the burden of avoiding the risk.  If B is less than P multiplied by L (B<PL), then the rational (reasonable) decision is to engage in the activity.

To illustrate, look at the choice faced in deciding whether to get the swimming lessons.  The first task is to define the activity to be evaluated – Should the parents give their kids these swimming lessons?  Set P as the probability of the kid falling into a body of water when momentarily unsupervised, and L as the gravity of harm if this happens.  The probability of the kid falling into water is pretty low – say 1/100 of 1%.  But the gravity of harm that would be suffered is quite high – death or serious injury.  So while the probability of harm is low, the gravity is astronomical.  The burden to be evaluated is the activity necessary to avoid the risk — the fleeting fear and tummy trouble junior suffers, plus the cost (financial, emotional, and inconvenience) associated with the lessons.

When measured against the relatively minor burden of putting junior through the lessons and paying the cost, the results should be clear for most people: B<PL.  In other words, the magnitude of the risk outweighs the burden associated with avoiding it.  Accordingly, the rational decision would be to give the kid the lessons.

Whether we acknowledge it or not, we make BPL decisions during most moments we are awake.  We are constantly weighing costs and benefits in what we eat, what we buy, what time we go to bed, etc.

The recent measles outbreak has sparked a debate that will only increase in volume and intensity over the next few years as such outbreaks increase in size and scope. Why?  Because too many parents reached different BPL decisions than others.  The way to keep diseases such as measles at bay is to inoculate the entire herd – that way no one gets it or spreads it.  But several years ago, many parents looked around and decided that since all the other kids in the herd were getting inoculated, then they didn’t need to inoculate their kids.  After all, if the other kids in the herd don’t catch measles because they are inoculated, then their kids can’t catch it even though they aren’t inoculated because the disease isn’t in the herd.

Here is the BPL equation by the parents.  First, identify the question being evaluated – Should I get junior vaccinated against the measles?  The probability of getting measles is really low because the entire herd is getting inoculated (and has been for years) so there will be no one to infect their kids with measles.  And while the gravity of harm associated with measles is potentially somewhat severe, it isn’t life-threating for most of those infected.  Thus, the magnitude of risk associated with contracting measles (probability multiplied by gravity) is relatively low, or so the parents believed.  On the other side of the equation is the burden encountered to avoid the risk – getting the inoculation.  Most parents considered this to be very low – getting junior jabbed with a needle just after his first birthday is little more than an afterthought.  The kid cries for thirty seconds, but the kid cries every hour or two anyway – no big deal.  So most parents had their kids vaccinated because the minor burden is less than the moderate risk – B<PL.

But we are now finding out that the “sophisticated” parents (usually wealthy & highly educated) saw the equation a bit differently.  Like most parents, they concluded that since the other parents were vaccinating their kids, the probability of junior getting measles was very low because there would be no other kids with measles to spread the disease.  Thus, they reasoned, the magnitude of risk (PL) approached zero.  But, and this is critical, these parents read or heard about a study that suggested autism and other similar conditions might be traced to these vaccinations, so the burden of avoiding the risk (B) was actually higher than the momentary hissy fit junior would pitch after getting jabbed.  So much higher, they reasoned, that now the burden outweighed the risk (B>PL), so they found it rational not to inoculate junior.  (Incidentally, the study these parents relied upon was quite heavily criticized and controverted when it was issued, and later thoroughly discredited, withdrawn, and labeled as “an elaborate fraud”).

As a direct consequence, we get a measles outbreak, at the happiest place on earth (Disneyland), no less.  Why?  Because the parents many call “savvy” or “clever” (others call “selfish”) were larger in number than the “savvy” parents supposed when they made the decision – it turns out quite a few other members of the herd weren’t inoculated either.  So when one of them contracted measles, it spread quickly throughout the herd.  In fact, the vaccination rate in some wealthy areas of Southern California is now as low as impoverished and war-torn South Sudan.  I suspect this will change, however, in the wake of this outbreak because most people act rationally, and when armed with the actual (rather than supposed) information that informs a BPL analysis, they will make more rational choices.

This highlights an important point – a correct BPL analysis requires accurate data points.  It is simply an empirical question.  Which brings me to Ebola.

The same formula must be applied to the ongoing, though thankfully diminishing, discussion about how to handle people coming from locations where they were potentially exposed to Ebola.  It was as disappointing as it was unsurprising that the majority of Republican politicians accused the Obama Administration of playing politics with Ebola, while the majority of Democrat politicians were accusing Republicans of doing the same thing.  One side argued that anyone coming from an infected region should be quarantined for twenty-one days, while the other argued that doing so amounted to unnecessary scare tactics and would hamper the work on the ground in Africa because fewer people would be willing to go and help stop the spread of the disease at its source if they were thereafter quarantined.

So here is the question – Should we quarantine people, even if they don’t currently have a fever (and are thus potentially contagious), for twenty-one days after they return from an infected area?  At bottom, this isn’t a political question, but an empirical one.  The only rational approach to this conundrum is to apply the BPL formula.

Is the probability of harm (virus spreading in the United States) multiplied by the gravity of this harm (mass death and suffering) outweighed by the burden encountered by holding people in quarantine for twenty-one days?  In order to answer that question, one needs to assign values to the variables.  We can all agree that gravity of harm is quite high if Ebola were to break out in the United States.  Thus, L is HUGE.

The more important question is what is the probability of the virus spreading associated with allowing one who has come into contact with those infected by the virus, but isn’t currently running a fever, to roam freely in his or her community?  Relatedly, how big is the burden of confining those who have been exposed until we are confident that person isn’t a threat to the community?  This, of course, includes the financial and personal burdens placed upon those paying for the confinement and on those who have to be confined.  It also includes the deterrent effect that such confinement would have on medical professionals who might be willing to go to Sierra Leone, etc., for four to eight weeks if they could go straight home (assuming they had no fever), but wouldn’t go at all if they had to be confined for three weeks thereafter.

This question was brought into sharp relief when nurse Kaci Hickox resisted being quarantined after returning from West Africa.  She received roughly equal parts praise for asserting her “civil rights” and scorn for “selfishly putting others at potential risk.”  But who was right?

Once again, this should be an empirical and scientific question, and not a political one.  While I am not at all an expert on Ebola, I can read.  Experts tell us that for those infected, on average, there is a sudden onset of flu-like symptoms 12.7 days after exposure.  But it is also apparently true that for 4.1 percent of patients, their symptoms will emerge more than 21 days after exposure.  And according to the New England Journal of medicine, approximately 13 percent of those infected never ran a fever.  So how does this affect the application of the BPL formula?

As noted above, the gravity of harm is quite high if Ebola were to spread in the United States.  But what is the probability of it spreading if we don’t quarantine for 21 days those who come back from an infected region?  It is probably fairly low, but far from non-existent.  In order to virtually eliminate the risk, it appears that they would need to be quarantined for something like 30 days because 1 in 25 won’t show symptoms (and thus be presumptively contagious) until after the initial 21-day period.  Likewise, the solution can’t be simply to quarantine those running a fever because 1 in 8 apparently won’t even run a fever when they are contagious.

And how big is the burden that would be encountered by quarantining for 21 days (or 30) all who go to West Africa to assist in containing the outbreak?  The financial cost is not significant, at least when weighed against the risks.  But the deterrent effect is likely quite significant – convincing a doctor or nurse to spend a month or three in West Africa is pretty tough.  Adding another month in relative isolation after the return raises the burden even higher.

So what is the solution?  It is simple – put some really smart and informed (and apolitical) scientists/doctors/nurses in a room and have them apply the BPL formula.  Whatever they decide, we accept.

Just one guy’s opinion, but remember that all of life is a BPL.

Bill Belichick is the luckiest man in America this week.  While Pete Carroll is being pilloried in the press and at the water cooler following a questionable play call at the end of the game, it should have been Belichick whose coaching reputation took a throat punch on Sunday night.

But wait, you say: Everyone, and I mean everyone, contends that the worst coaching decision in Super Bowl (Football??) history was indisputably Pete Carroll’s decision to throw the ball on second and goal from the one-yard line with twenty-five seconds to go in a game his team was trailing 28-24, especially when he had one timeout and the beastly Marshawn Lynch in the backfield.  At first glance, this view seems rational.  This was likely the wrong call.  In fact, I will agree that it was probably a bad call, but not as bad as Belichick’s call forty seconds earlier.  Not nearly so.

Do I have your attention?

Rational football fans (and economists who aren’t football fans) can agree that whether or not a play call is a good one or a bad one must be judged from the standpoint of the decision maker at the time the decision was made – before the outcome of the call is known.  It is simply disingenuous to evaluate a call after considering what actually happened.  The only honest and fair analysis involves evaluating percentages.

Furthermore, the most accurate measure of just how bad a coaching decision was can best be determined by measuring the difference between the probability of success of the course taken and the probability of success of the course that would have maximized the probability of success.

So, for example, determining whether Carroll’s decision to run a passing play (rather than kicking a field goal) from the 10-yard line with 0:06 left on the clock at the end of the first half while trailing 14-7 was or was not a good call cannot take into account what actually happened.  On that play, a variety of outcomes could have occurred – incomplete pass in less than six seconds (leaving time for a field goal), incomplete pass that ran out the clock, a completed pass short of the goal line than ran out the clock, a sack that ran out the clock, an interception, etc.  I am fairly confident that Nate Silver would tell us that the rational (efficient) move in that situation would have been to kick a field goal.  Take the points and the momentum into halftime. But Carroll rolled the dice . . . and scored a touchdown.  It was a “gutsy” call, many would claim, and shows his coaching prowess.  But it was only a gutsy call because the 15-25% probability event occurred.  But that is simply not a rational way of evaluating the play call.

Likewise, had Russell Wilson completed the pass for a touchdown at the end of the game, Carroll’s call would have been labeled “inspired” because everyone on the field, in the stadium, and in the television audience knew the rational decision would be to give the ball to the Beast.  But the call that was made, even had it resulted in a touchdown, would have been the same call.  Again, we need to judge the wisdom of the call by evaluating the relative percentages of the possible outcomes.

Let’s break it down.  Here is what we knew the moment Marshawn Lynch’s knee hit the ground with 1:02 left in the game after being tackled at the one-yard line after a four-yard gain on first down:

Seattle had one time out left and the clock was running;

Marshawn Lynch is in the backfield, and he had gained four yards in the prior carry;

Russell Wilson is a smart quarterback (who won last year’s Super Bowl) and isn’t prone to boneheaded mistakes; and

New England is expecting a run.

But here are two other things Carroll knew, at least generally understood:

Marshawn Lynch had carried the ball five times from the one-yard line this season and had scored only once.

Over 100 passes had been thrown in the NFL from the one-yard line this season, and none had been intercepted.

Simplifying things just a bit (by removing a run/pass option that could have been called for Wilson), Seattle had two arguably rational courses of conduct at this point.  First, it could hand the ball to Lynch on second down (by this point, there were 25 seconds to go – no shame in huddling up here, especially since the clock was running).  If he scored, great.  If he didn’t, Seattle could either call a time out or spike the ball.  If they spiked the ball, they would get only one more play because the next play would be fourth down.  If they called a timeout, they would have 20 seconds left and it would be third down, but they would have no timeouts left.  At that point, they could either pass twice, pass once then run once, or run once.  It is unlikely they would have had time to run twice more if Lynch was stopped the first time on third down.  So if they ran on second down from the one, they would very likely get either two running plays, or one running play and two passing plays.  It is highly improbable that they would get two running plays and a passing play or three running plays.  (This could only happen if one of the running plays ended with the runner getting out of bounds).

The second rational course of conduct would be to choose to throw on second down.  If this happened, they could: score, the pass could be incomplete (thus stopping the clock), Wilson could be sacked, or it could be intercepted.  Let’s presume Wilson is smart enough that he wouldn’t have allowed a sack.  If the pass was complete, it would very likely be a touchdown and Carroll would be applauded for his courage and cunning.  If it was incomplete, then Seattle still had two runs from the one with Lynch, calling a timeout after the first one if he didn’t score.  So under this scenario – throwing on first down – the odds were very, very high that Seattle would get two running plays and one passing play from the one yard line.  The only risk was a miniscule chance of an interception.  Incidentally, the odds of Lynch fumbling were likely as high — or higher — than of Wilson throwing an interception.

Give any NFL, College, High School, or Pee-Wee Coach the following multiple choice question, and you will get the same answer:

If you are coaching the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl and have three plays to score from the one-yard line, which combination of plays would you choose?

1. One run by Lynch and two passing plays;
2. Two runs by Lynch;
3. Two runs by Lynch and one passing play.

This is not a hard question.  “C” is the correct answer.

Once again, I am not arguing the Coach Carroll made the right call.  He probably should have run the ball with Lynch.

But his decision is not nearly as irrational as it seems, given the benefit of hindsight.

So, pray tell, what call by Belichick was worse?

As noted earlier, when Lynch was tackled at the one on first down, there was exactly 1:02 left in the game.  New England had two timeouts and Belichick had a decision to make.  Once again, it is simply not acceptable to take an end view of what actually happened (interception on the goal line) and then judge Belichick’s decision not to call a timeout as wise.  If Belichick knew Carroll was going to call a pass play that New England would intercept, Belichick is a much better cheater than we even knew.  Instead, we must judge his decision from the standpoint of what we knew at the time.  We must examine the probabilities as they then existed.

The probability was that Seattle would score a touchdown.  And it would probably happen on second down.  (Lynch had just run for four yards on the prior play).  Belichick is a smart guy, so he knew that.  He knew that if Seattle scored, his team would trail 31-28.  He also knew that he had arguably the best quarterback to play the game standing behind him, and he had one of the best field-goal kickers in the NFL standing next to him.

Here is another easy multiple choice question.  If you are trailing by three points in the Super Bowl, would you rather have:

1. Two timeouts and 20 seconds to go 45 yards to kick a field goal to tie the game;
2. One timeout and 55 seconds to go 45 yards to kick a field goal to tie the game.

This is not a hard question.  Ten out of ten times, you call a timeout.

Play this out.  Say Belichick called a time out with 1:00 to go.  If Seattle scored on the next play, he would have no less than 55 seconds left and one timeout.  If Seattle didn’t score, then he would burn his final timeout, and then Seattle would have likely scored on third down.  If so, then Belichick would have no less than 50 seconds left and no timeouts.  If Seattle didn’t score on third down, then it would likely have taken the clock down to three seconds and then called a timeout.  After which the one remaining play would determine the season.  But the odds of that happening were vanishing small.  The best bet would have been that Seattle would score on second or third down.  In such an event, Belichick would have had at least 50 seconds, needing only a field goal to tie.  And remember, Brady and Gostkowski are stellar in the clutch.

Instead, Belichick chooses to let the clock run, and the ball is snapped with 25 seconds remaining.  This means that Seattle can run two or three plays (see discussion above) to take a three-point lead.  It also means that New England will have, at best, 20-22 seconds remaining to kick a field goal, assuming Seattle scored on second down.  If Wilson’s pass had been incomplete, then the best-case scenario for New England would have been 16-18 seconds to score if Seattle scored on third down.

In conclusion, I am confident that Nate Silver (or other number crunchers) could mathematically demonstrate that Belichick would have maximized New England’s chances of winning by calling a timeout with one minute to go.  I would also bet my left you-choose-the-body-part that Belichick’s decision deviated further from the optimal coaching decision than did Carroll’s decision to throw on second down.

Prove me wrong.