Student Profile: Trading the Army for Law

After more than two decades as an officer in the Army, Paul Marks was ready for career No. 2, as a lawyer. "I had it in the back of my mind as something I would do if I ever left the Army. I just didn't expect it to take 21 years," says Marks, now 44. He took the LSAT (on two weeks' notice) and got into Fordham's Evening Division program.

Paul Marks

Day job: For his first two years at law school, Marks taught Chinese full time at West Point and then drove the hour after work to Manhattan for class. He switched to teaching Chinese at a private school in Greenwich, Conn.

Education: B.S. in Area Studies (East Asia), U.S. Military Academy, 1986. Marks was West Point's third British George C. Marshall scholar, gaining a master's in Chinese Studies from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies in 1988.

Family affair: Marks's oldest son (he has five children) is a One-L at the University of Indiana Law School. "I've tried to emphasize to him the importance of getting off on the right foot from the beginning, which I didn't really do my first year."

Next chapter: Marks is leaving Fordham Law School with a stellar job offer. His teaching job gave him the summer off, so he went to Shanghai and Hong Kong to work for the British law firm of Allen & Overy. After graduation and the New York bar exam, he'll take a job working in capital markets for them.