National Jurist - March 2009 - (Page 16) From the patrol car to the classroom Though Wesley Luckey misses being a full-time police officer, he says his experience has certainly been an asset in his first year of law school at Mississippi College School of Law. esley “Bo” Luckey might be the only first-year law student who has ever helped a third-year get ready for the bar exam. While he hasn’t been helping anyone study, Luckey’s previous career as a police officer allowed him to assist Mississippi bar applicants in getting their fingerprints taken. Luckey, who attends Mississippi College School of Law, said a routine announcement reminding bar applicants to get fingerprinted gave him a chance to help his fellow students. When Luckey heard the announcement, he immediately offered to fingerprint students at the law school in order to save them the trouble of going down to the police station — a task that many bar applicants find to be tedious and time consuming. “I saw that other students had a need, and I volunteered to help them out,” he said. It’s Luckey’s past experience as a police officer that brought him to law school in the first place. At age 27, with three and a half years under his belt as a police officer, and just under two years with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Luckey found himself at a crossroads. Following his 2004 graduation from Mississippi College with a degree in administration of justice, he applied for a special agent position with the DEA. Right around the same time, he got engaged. By the time Luckey was offered a position with the DEA, he and his future wife had already set a wedding date and made plans that conflicted with the job. Luckey began By Jennifer Pohlman working as a police officer in Brandon, Miss., but found that his undergraduate degree wasn’t being put to much use. “While I was at Brandon, I realized that if I was going to do something with my undergraduate degree, I needed to do it soon,” Luckey said. “I did a lot of reconstruction work and expert witness testimony for attorneys while I was a police officer, and I really got to see both sides of it — arresting the criminals and then watching the attorneys help prosecute them or help defend them.” With his interest in that side of the law, he took the opportunity to go to law school. Initially, Luckey’s decision met some resistance. His father, who has been in law enforce“A lot of people that are in law ment for 25 years, was wary of his decision to go back to school are going to be shocked school. Luckey’s wife welto see the things they will comed the decision, as it encounter on a daily basis when meant her husband would give up night shifts and the they get out.” danger of serving as his local SWAT team commander. Though he was excited for the change, leaving fulltime work in law enforcement wasn’t as easy as Luckey had hoped. He found it a hard transition because he loved his job as a police officer so much. “Whenever I got a call to go to work, I looked forward to it,” he said. “Once I got out of a patrol car and moved into a classroom for six hours a day and studying all night, I wanted to go back. I’ve missed it.” THE NATIONAL JURIST March 2009 16
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