“ [Debate] really piqued my interest, so I ended up going to law school. To me, it was going pro. You don’t have a pro circuit in debate like you do in football, but you do have the law.”—Jared Hager


He says that because his leg was


taken off at the hip, a prosthetic device would be useful primarily for aesthetic purposes. “I’m most comfortable without a pros-


thetic device,” he says. “So I get around on my walking sticks. Rather than try to be normal, I celebrate my abnormality.” Not only did his determination


help him to climb Mount St. Helens but to become a Senior Attorney at Perkins Coie in only six years, the author of a number of journal articles, the litigator in a high profile inter- national commercial arbitration case involving hundreds of millions of dol- lars at stake, and an adjunct professor at Seattle University School of Law. Looking back it seems like an impos- sible road for someone to navigate. “I had a rare form of cancer at age


12,” he recounts, “it started in my right femur, but broke the bone and spread into the quadriceps. It hurt so badly I wanted them to take it off.” Just one month after diagnosis,


his leg had ballooned to twice its normal size, and it was amputated. Hager missed seventh and eighth grade while undergoing a regimen of chemotherapy, radiation, and physical therapy, and finally the cancer went into remission.


MCCA.COM “I was 14 and they weren’t sure


what to do next,” he explains about going back to school. “I always got straight As, so they decided to put me in high school rather than make me make up seventh and eighth grade.” Hager explained that before his


illness he had been very competitive in sports, challenged by playing with his older brothers. Now, he threw that competitive energy into his academics, and he fondly recalls the encouragement of his grandmother who gave him $2 bills as a reward when he got straight As. “I still carry a couple of them in my


wallet,” he says. In his junior year of high school, he


found the speech and debate team. “It wasn’t until I joined the speech


and debate team that I truly became comfortable in my skin. It gave me a voice. It empowered me in ways a second leg never could. Plus I enjoyed the research, putting together the argu- ments, and arguing both sides,” he says. His debate team took third place in


Oregon’s state competition his senior year, and he was awarded a scholar- ship to Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. “Without that scholarship I prob-


ably would not have been able to go to college,” he says. “And if I had two


legs and invested in athletics instead of academics, I most certainly would not have gotten a scholarship.” At Lewis & Clark, he continued


his success in speech and debate. “I competed for four years, and we


won some national tournaments,” he says. “Some called us the Harvard of the West.” In his junior year, he spent much


of his time in Lewis & Clark’s law school library, researching that year’s debate topic. It required the affirma- tive to increase protections against employment discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or national origin. Hager’s case proposed incorporating the Americans with Disabilities Act’s requirement of reasonable accommoda- tion into the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to give women a choice to continue working during their pregnancy rather than rely on unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Coming from a family with modest means, Hager understood the need for such opportunities for low-wage single mothers and other low-wage families. “It was the first real experience I


had with the law,” he says. “I really loved it, loved reading the law reviews and cases, and thinking about prob- lems and solutions. Te law seemed dynamic, legally and politically, with real-world impacts at stake. It grabbed my interest, so I went to law school. To me, it was like going pro, debate’s pro circuit.” At the University of Minnesota


Law School, Hager excelled. “I had six years’ experience research-


ing, constructing, and defending arguments,” he says, referring to his debating experience, “and I was trained to argue both sides of every issue at every step of an argument, and my professors seemed to appreciate that.” Te most meaningful preparation


for his career, however, came outside the classroom when he clerked for the Honorable Ronald M. Gould, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Seattle, Washington.


NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 DIVERSITY & THE BAR®


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