Luzzatto, whose family founded the patent law firm Luzzatto & Luzzatto in Italy in 1869, is now a senior partner in the firm. He said while he was never pressured to become an attorney, he does think his family would have been disappointed if he had chosen to follow a different route. He also said that since patent lawyers have to earn technical degrees before they can be licensed, he knew that he would always have something to fall back on if patent law didn't work out for him.
"I felt that I had at least to make the effort to learn enough about it to be able to make an educated decision," he said. "Luckily enough, I got hooked both on my technical field (chemical engineering) and on patent law."
When asked if he thinks being a fourth-generation attorney and working daily with his father helped him become a better attorney, Luzzatto said there are both pros and cons to it.
"The fact that you have the responsibility of a family tradition is a burden and something you always keep in mind before you make important decisions," he said. "On the other hand, at least in my experience, it is that very same responsibility that makes you work harder and strive to achieve a professional level at least as high as the one you have stepped into when you joined the family business."
"Working with and under a parent is not the easiest thing to do, but the good news is that it gives you a chance to be better trained, because the trainer has more patience and an obvious interest in your education," he said.
In addition to having a father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who were attorneys, Luzzatto is also married to an attorney who is a partner in his firm. The couple has three daughters and a son. Currently, their oldest daughter is attending law school, but Luzzatto swears that no one pressured her to become an attorney.
"Quite on the contrary," he said. "We supported her when she decided to try different studies, and it was her own and independent decision to abandon them in favor of law school. Did our environment influence that decision? I don't know, but I guess that it may have, at least to some extent."
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"I have seen quite a number of second- and third-generation attorneys who have gone into the profession only because their parents expected them to do so," he said. "Those will often be miserable throughout their lives and will seldom make good attorneys. As a parent with a long tradition and a thriving firm, you need to exercise admirable restraint not to channel your children's lives into a dead end and to allow them to make their own decision without any pressure from you."
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"It's a difficult profession. It's different now than when I went into it," he said. "It's lost a certain sense of gentility. Modern lawyers believe that fighting hard for their clients means filing a lot of nasty motions. Gone are the days of attorneys sitting down together and trying to resolve things on behalf of their clients."
Pendleton misses the aura of honor and respect that the legal profession seemed to have in his eyes when he was growing up, an aura he attributes to the respect his father and his father's colleagues received.
"When I was growing up, my dad was a very well-respected attorney in Concord, NH, and he worked at a well-respected firm," he said. "My image of the profession was that it was just that, a profession. It was made up of an impressive group of people, and you were supposed to be in awe of it. I held it in high esteem."
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"I think there are other ways to build esteem for the legal profession, even if you didn't grow up around attorneys," he said. "You can get involved in professional organizations such as the American Bar Association. By being a part of groups like this one, you can meet people in a social setting and make connections that other people have because of their family."
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"I think you have to have a unique relationship with your family to make it work," he said. "You have to ask yourself if you have the kind of relationship in which you can work together on a day-to-day basis, even if there are personal problems within the family."
