Syl Sobel ‘83 always knew he was destined for law school.
“I always assumed I’d go to law school someday,” said Sobel, who obtained an interest in all things government from an early age and thought law school would be the place to nurture that passion as an adult.
Growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Sobel was raised to pay close attention to politics. His parents were politically active and ensured their children knew what was going on in the world around them.
“We watched the evening news with Walter Cronkite at our dinner table and discussed politics and current events regularly,” said Sobel. “John F. Kennedy’s assassination had a profound effect on me, as it did for others in my generation.”
As he persisted to learn more about how the government works and understand more about the past, he remembers the day when his mom asked him if he would become a lawyer. His response: “No. I want to write about the law and explain how it works to other people.”
And that’s essentially what he did.
Sobel landed a job at the Federal Judicial Center during the winter of ‘95, where he combined his two favorite interests: writing and the law.
But that wasn’t his first shot at the game. He worked as a court reporter for a newspaper for three years before enrolling at University of Wisconsin Law School in 1980.
“One thing about UW is that I’ve always found it to be a very supportive place,” he said.
On the first day of his Law School career, Sobel recalled Dean Orrin Helstad addressing the incoming class: “If you were a first year student starting at an East Coast law school, your dean would tell you to ‘Look to your left and look to your right: one of those people will not be here when you graduate.’ But this is the University of Wisconsin Law School, and our philosophy is: ‘Look to your left, look to your right: your job is to make sure all three of you graduate together.’”
Outside of the classroom at UW Law, Sobel was involved with Legal Assistance for Institutionalized Persons (LAIP), a clinical program that sends students to state and federal prisons to provide legal assistance to individuals incarcerated there. The experience provided him with the opportunity of serving, interviewing and understanding clients’ legal needs early on in his career.
“UW emphasized law in action, which is simply the effect that law and the legal system have on the lives of real people,” explained Sobel.
He took this approach with him throughout his career and recalled a time when a federal prosecutor echoed what he’d known since his time as a law student: “‘Before we deny someone their liberty,’ the prosecutor said, ‘we better be sure we listen to that person and get to know what is on their mind.’”
“That stuck with me,” said Sobel. “The really good judges — and I worked with a lot of good ones — understand that behind every legal case are real people.”
During his time at UW Law, Sobel learned that law is not about winning or losing, “but doing justice and doing well.”
Taking Wisconsin to the Workplace
When Sobel graduated from UW Law, he left Wisconsin to work at a D.C. law firm, which took up much of his time (and interfered with his personal life as a newlywed). He knew he needed a different lifestyle. He saw an ad for an “attorney/writer,” applied for it and got the job.
He began his career working on several publications for judges, including the “Manual for Complex Litigation, Reference Manual on Scientific Litigation” and the “Benchbook for U.S. District Court Judges.” He also wrote newsletters for the Federal Judicial Center, which served as a forum for judges to share innovations and ideas with each other.
“I got to work with some of the best, most highly respected and prolific federal judges in the country,” he said. “And I also got to work with a lot of well-known law professors who authored guides for us.”
It was a “great education,” Sobel continued.
“And, I got to do one of my favorite things, which is looking at other people’s’ writing, taking suggestions then making it better and then not having to worry about making changes myself,” he continued.
Reading Books to Writing Them
Replicating his own upbringing, Sobel constantly read to his daughters. When his eldest asked him to write a book explaining how the government works, he thought it was a great idea, and decided to write it “in language that a first grader can understand, explaining what each branch does, who gets elected, who gets appointed and things like that.”
He titled his first book, “How the U.S. Government Works.”
Sobel continues to publish new books, including “Presidential Elections and Other Cool Facts,” which was updated in August in preparation for the political season.
He’s doing other things too, like writing a book on the Eastern Basketball League, a minor league that mostly operated in Pennsylvania during the 1950s and ’60s.
For Sobel, it’s all about educating his readers, regardless of the audience.
“Not many people know about the Eastern Basketball League, so I wrote a book on that with my best friend,” he said, adding that a documentary film based on the book is also in the works.
By Tasmiha Khan and Malak Kassem