Famous Career Changers
Individuals who were trained as lawyers, but went on to acquire fame in another field:
- Franz Kafka (writer)
- Rene Descartes (philosopher)
- Francis Scott Key (composer)
- Scott Turow (author)
- Terry Louise Fisher (co-creator of LA Law)
- Paul Robeson (actor/singer/civil rights activist)
- Geraldo Rivera (broadcast journalist)
- Richard Thalheimer (president/The Sharper Image)
- Noah Webster (lexicographer)
- John Wesley Hardin (outlaw)
- Mahatma Gandhi (political/spiritual leader)
- Tony LaRussa (former Oakland A’s manager)
- Henry Fielding (author)
- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (political leader)
- Mortimer Zuckerman (owner of U.S. News & World Report)
- Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry Mason) Sir Thomas More (statesman/saint)
- Pat Haden (former LA Rams quarterback)
- Charlie Rose (broadcast journalist)
- Rossano Brazzi (actor)
- Washington Irving (author)
- Howard Cosell (sportscaster)
- Hoagy Carmichael (songwriter)
- Edgar Lee Masters (poet/novelist)
- Wassily Kandinsky (painter)
- Peter Tchaikovsky (composer)
- Fred Graham (CBS TV reporter)
- Fidel Castro (politician)
- Otto Preminger (film director)
- Madalyn Murray O’Hair (reformer)
- Ralph Nader (consumer advocate/politician)
- Jules Verne (author)
- Archibald MacLeish (poet)
- Studs Terkel (oral historian)