Alternative Rock God Decides To Be A Lawyer, Joins Biglaw Firm

Where did he go to law school and where does he now work?

Imagine that it’s the year 1993. We were all in different periods of our lives: some of you had already been practicing law for years, some of you were in law school, some of you were in college, some of you (like me) were still in high school or grade school, and some of you weren’t born yet.

But perhaps for every age group mentioned, save for the youngest, one song from a relatively unheard of band became an earworm. It was constantly played on the radio, and the band’s music video, seemingly played on repeat on MTV, caught the attention of those who were still in their formative years. It was the girl dressed as a tap-dancing bee and the fantastic guitar riffs that did it for me. It was the first alternative rock tape — yes, a tape — I ever bought with my babysitting money.

I’m talking, of course, about Blind Melon and the band’s hit song, “No Rain.” Sure, Blind Melon was kind of a one-hit wonder, but what a wonder that song was — and still is. I still get the urge to listen to it every now and then.

Unfortunately, the band was plagued by misfortune. Its lead singer, Shannon Hoon, died just three years later from a drug overdose in 1995 while Blind Melon was on tour. The band later cyclically broke up, got together again, went on hiatus. Now, while they’re still together, they perform for audiences only occasionally.

All of this inactivity gave Blind Melon’s guitarist, Rogers Stevens, the perfect excuse to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a lawyer. He graduated from Temple University in 2011, and the Legal Intelligencer has more on what his next move was:

He was on the other side of 40 when he entered the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the self-described “old guy in the back of the room.” By this spring, despite a two-decade detour that began with that drive to L.A., Stevens finished law school and had several firms interested in his services. …

Within six years, he’d completed an unlikely transition into an entirely different profession.

“When I was touring and making records, there was some part of my brain that I wasn’t using as well as it could be used,” Stevens said. “Lo and behold, it was there.”

Stevens graduated from Penn Law School in 2014. Since making his way from music to the Ivy League to the world of corporate law, he’s abandoned his long, luxurious locks in favor of a corporate buzz cut. But which Biglaw firm did he join after graduation?

Sponsored

Rogers Stevens is now an associate in the labor and employment group at Ballard Spahr in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to John B. Langel, chair of the firm’s litigation department, “Rogers is incredibly bright, disciplined, a successful law student and a force of personality.” That’s much different from what the rock guitarist used to think of himself at the beginning of his journey into the law:

Stevens thought he wouldn’t be taken seriously, but he’s found his background to be a foot in the door.

“People are, in general, interested in success,” he said. “If somebody’s done something and did well at it, maybe that’s an indicator they can do well going forward.”

Given the great success of Blind Melon at the outset of the band’s discography, we have no doubt that Rogers Stevens will be equally as successful in his new career as a lawyer. One thing is for sure: Rogers Stevens’s life is no longer “pretty plain.”

Unlikely Path to Big Law for Blind Melon Guitarist [Legal Intelligencer]
After a career change, Blind Melon guitarist is a BigLaw lawyer [ABA Journal]

Sponsored