SPOTLIGHT
A Renaissance Man for a Modern Age
There are a few law school classes which have a doctor in them, maybe even a surgeon. Your class might have a concert violinist in it. You might know a competitive ice skater at your law school, or maybe a professional magician, possibly a cartoonist or an inventor. Oklahoma City University School of Law has all of these. His name is Raymund King. Oh, and he also speaks fluent Tagalog, and some Italian, German and Spanish.
King is a third-year evening-division law student. He is also a doctor, magician, violinist, singer, ice dancer and cartoonist. King sees patients three days a week, works at a law firm two days a week-mostly evaluating medical cases-and goes to school at night.
He has been doing magic since he was 8 years old, and has been performing in public since sixth grade. In fact, he considered going on tour after high school to earn some money for college.
King's father was a surgeon and his grandfather was a trial lawyer. When King entered college at the University of Dallas, he started out pre-law, with a literature major. Later, that changed to philosophy, then to foreign languages. To help pay for books and other things in college, King started doing magic shows to earn money. After doing a few shows in children's hospitals, King started thinking about medicine. He changed his major again, this time to biology, and ended up in medical school in Houston. There, he took up ice skating, then competitive ice dancing to get some exercise and to blow off some steam. Now he and his wife Sandy skate together twice a week at 5 a.m.
King started as a general surgeon, then became an ear, nose and throat specialist. While doing medical research, he invented a process that makes it easier to operate on the parathyroid glands. It's a way to help the surgeon see these glands, which are difficult to get at safely because they are imbedded in the thyroid gland with lots of blood vessels and nerves nearby. King looked into patenting his visualization process, and that got him interested in intellectual property. Never one to sit idly and watch the world go by, he took the LSAT.
He started law school one month later. He didn't get the patent (for technical reasons), but he got an international medical research award. Then the lawyer he had hired to look into patenting his visualization process asked King to take a look at a medical malpractice case, one thing led to another, and pretty soon King was getting all sorts of referrals.
Obviously King is one of those people who would rather be busy than idle. "It hasn't been easy and I wouldn't recommend the schedule for everyone," King says. "I'm a pretty proactive person. Rather than seeing it go by, I'd rather put my hands in it and do something about it."
Although medicine and law are quite different, King says they complement each other. "I feel like my journey into law has made me practice better medicine," he says. "At the same time, my medical background has enhanced my legal training. I am sensitive to a lot of issues physicians face today."
King was vice president of his first-year law school class, and president of his second-year class. He was recently appointed liaison from the American Bar Association's Law Student Division to the ABA's Standing Committee on Continuing Education of the Bar. Who better, since King has now completed 18 years of continuing professional study? "That's what makes life so fun," King says. "I don't know what we'd do if we stopped learning."
King's ultimate goal is to use his law degree to do something about the U.S. health-care system, which he describes as a "monster" driven by money. "The doctor's focus is shifting from the patient to whomever is cutting their paycheck," he says. He's not sure yet what changes he would make, but feels he is ready for this mission. "All these things in my background will just come together and help me in the future," he says.
Lee Farbman
