Help This University Of Arizona 3L Go to Space -- Literally

Some of you may know (I did not until an hour ago) that this year is the 50th anniversary of the Seattle Space Needle. Pretty exciting, right? I know, not really.

Except for one thing. In honor of the anniversary, the Space Needle is holding a contest to send one lucky person on a trip to space. The 20 contest finalists were recently announced, and among the chosen few is a 3L at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law.

The grand prize winner will be chosen in part based on user votes. Keep reading to learn about this aspiring lawyer-to-be, see why his head is in the clouds, and watch his application video. You can help make his wildest dreams come true

Here is the note we got from Arizona 3L Gregory Schneider this morning:

I write today to ask for your help. You may have heard that this year is the Space Needle’s 50th anniversary. To celebrate, they are holding a Space Race competition the grand prize of which is a real trip to outer space. Part of the competition was to create a two-minute video entry explaining why I want to go to space. Today I was selected as a finalist. To move on to the next round I need everyone with a working mouse finger to vote for my video on the Space Needle’s Facebook page: https://apps.facebook.com/spaceracecompetition/entries — my video is titled “Young Astronauts.” The thumbnail image shows a picture of my son wearing some dinosaur pajamas. Can you help me go to space by spreading the word faster than anyone else in the legal community that a future law student also has the chance to be an astronaut? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I would be tremendously grateful for any help or support you could give.

To be honest, I was a bit skeptical when I first saw Schneider’s email. We get a lot of tips from people asking us to watch and link to their videos. Most are, how shall we say, underwhelming. Even so, I clicked through to watch his video on the official Space Race page.

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Here it is:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viXwsT5QK_g]

To my surprise, it was kind of cute. For those who can’t watch at work, most of the clip consists of Schneider building a cardboard box fort/rocketship in the yard with his two small children. There is also some humorously low-budget footage of stuffed animals in antigravity. The video struck a chord with me, because I loved building forts with my brother when I was a kid.

We might get a little jaded sometimes on this site, so it’s cool to see a future lawyer take off his professional hat for a minute and express genuine passion for something distinctly un-lawyerly. Not to mention, it’s refreshing to see the positive flipside of the “work-life balance” struggle that many legal professionals must deal with on a daily basis. (To be fair, Schneider is still in law school, so who knows what will happen to playing outside with his kids once he graduates and has to start real work.)

In any case, if you like the video, do Schneider a solid and vote for him. If he wins, you can bet we will have a follow-up post. If we are lucky, maybe Above the Law will be able to get a spaceship ride-along press pass. That would flippin’ sweet.

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