Law school is a lot easier to take when you can balance it with something,” says Matt Rubba. He should know. As a second-year student at Rutgers School of Law— Camden, Rubba is balancing law school with business school, a busy music career, and a cartooning hobby.
Rubba is the lead guitarist, a principal songwriter, and band manager for The Medium, a rock band that plays in the tri-state area of Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York. The band often plays multiple shows a month, in venues that range from 50-person clubs to 1,300-seat theatres.
The Medium is also recording its first full-length album, which means Rubba and his band mates are spending their free time in the studio. But considering Rubba is in both law and business school, exactly how much free time can he have?
During the summer of 2007 Rubba managed to find time for the studio while also interning for Chief Justice Judith H. Wizmur at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey. He also took a full course load at the Rutgers Graduate School of Business in Camden.
“There are times when I wish I had a night off,” says Rubba, “but the back and forth between the different arenas keeps everything fresh and makes it easier to keep going forward.”
Combining music, law, and business is the long-term goal for Rubba, who is interested in sports, entertainment, and corporate law. “I’m always looking into ways to combine the things I enjoy.”
Being immersed in both the academic and music worlds has given Rubba an interesting perspective on each—and, not surprisingly, he’s concluded they’re very different.
“Everyone in law school is very bright and organized; they’re impressive students,” says Rubba. “The music world is completely different and brilliant in its own right. It’s driven by a very loose and inspired creativity.”
These differing worlds compelled Rubba to continue playing with The Medium when he started law and business school.
“Law and music blend, and each side helps the other,” explains Rubba. “I have always been a creative thinker. One of my interests in attending law school was to improve my structural thinking capabilities to balance my creative side.
“Music is my creative side. The creative side spills over into law and the structure of law flows over into the music side.”
Music isn’t Rubba’s only creative outlet. He’s also an in-demand cartoonist, at least on his law school campus.
“I started doing drawings when I needed a reading break,” says Rubba. “I began by drawing my professors, and then I drew caricatures of a few friends.”
Rubba’s drawings have become a hit with classmates who request cartoon portraits of themselves and have even suggested that he do a cartoon yearbook of the entire class.
“I like challenging myself to more effectively capture personal nuances in my cartoons. The fact that it is appreciated by my classmates is a bonus.”
Between music and cartooning, Rubba has seen how his creative endeavors benefit his experience in law school. For example, he says that performing and being on stage gave him an edge when it was time for his first oral argument during his 1L year.
The skills he’s learned in law school have helped Rubba musically as well.
“Law school conditions you to tolerate, organize, and use massive amounts of information,” notes Rubba. “This is just as effective for putting together thoughts and emotions during songwriting as it is in compiling hundreds of cases into an outline.”
Rubba started his involvement with music in middle school, experimenting with the piano and drums before picking up the guitar. By the time he was in high school, he and a friend had formed a band. They took a break while Rubba went to college and his friend joined the Navy, and then reunited during Rubba’s last year in college to form The Medium.
The now four-piece group, which Rubba describes as “melodic power-pop rock,” has worked its way from open mic nights to headlining some of the biggest venues in Philadelphia.
“I’m most interested in progressing,” adds Rubba. “With music, and with school, I just want to keep moving forward.”
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