School of Rock founder Paul Green’s latest riff is to graduate from Temple law

When he was nearly finished with law school, right at the point when Led Zeppelin-loving Paul Green was about to shed his Telecaster and T-shirts for wing tips and Windsor knots, he decided on a change of venue.

At 48 and despite a plum internship at one of Philadelphia’s most distinguished law firms, the School of Rock founder took a fresh look at the legal profession with its 60-hour workweeks and its buttoned-down culture, and said: no thanks.

“At the beginning of my fourth year of law school, I decided I needed to get serious,” Green said recently. “So I started going on interviews and reading about what life in a firm is like. That’s when I realized that if I got my dream law job, I might have to give up everything I like in life.”

Green — whose story was the basis of the successful 2003 movie — will finish his last four classes next month and start cramming for a July bar exam. But his future won’t include a job at Ballard Spahr, where he’s been interning the last year, or at any other firm. Instead, the new lawyer will commence his latest riff, creating another music-related business, one he hopes will benefit from his legal knowledge.

“I’m a punk-rocker,” Green said, laughing, “and what’s more punk rock then getting a law degree and then not using it?”

» READ MORE: Paul Green has chilled out. But he is still ready to teach kids to rock (from 2018)

A lawyer unmoored from the legal profession, Green will also be an example of a relatively recent trend: pursuing a legal education not as an end in itself but to supplement a prior degree or a career in another business. In Philadelphia and elsewhere, there are lawyers who also are CEOs, CPAs and physicians.

“It’s a trend that’s increasing,” said Greg Seltzer, Green’s mentor at Ballard and the leader of that firm’s Emerging Companies and Venture Capital Group. “Almost half the people we hire out of law school have some sort of job between undergraduate and law school. I think law is intriguing to people in a lot of respects.”

It was for Green, the bearded guitarist who grew up in Fishtown and at 15 moved to Center City on his own. He considered the law both before and after creating, franchising and in 2009 selling School of Rock. (That company, purchased by Massachusetts-based Sterling Partners, now operates 230 schools in nine countries.)

Nearing 30 in the late 1990s, he was a Penn philosophy major, one who in addition to preparing for law school was operating a successful music-instruction business.

“I was studying for the LSATs,” he said. “My plan was to keep School of Rock as an avocation and become a lawyer. But then School of Rock just sort of exploded. I figured if I didn’t take it to its logical conclusion, someone else would. So I graduated and didn’t go to law school and what a fortunate, wonderful life I got to live there for a while.”

Following the sale, Green, who physically resembles Jack Black, the comic actor who starred in School of Rock, moved his family, aptly enough, to Woodstock, N.Y. There he partnered with one of the 1969 Woodstock music festival’s producers, Michael Lang, to create a college of music. Financing problems scuttled those plans and he relocated to New York City where, while playing bass in a Billy Joel cover band, he hunted another opportunity.

He found it about five years ago, back in Philadelphia.

“We played a show in Philly and when we got here, we did a sound check and I went outside to walk around,” Green said. " I was like, `Yeah, this is my hometown.’ My wife and I then went down to a Sixers game. We were sitting upstairs with 20,000 of our best friends and I said, `You know what, it’s time to go to law school.’”

He applied to six, was accepted at three. But the transition to first-year student at Temple’s Beasley School of Law wasn’t easy. Decades older than his classmates, Green didn’t know where to sit in class, where to eat lunch, where to stow his backpack.

“I made friendships, mostly with 24-year-olds, and those social aspects were really magical,” he said. “But by the third year, they all had jobs and were showing up just to finish their degrees. Then COVID hit. My last 1½ years have been on Zoom. Everything that made law school tolerable sort of fell away and I was left writing papers and reading cases.”

At some point, Green heard about Seltzer, who apart from his duties at Ballard had founded the Philly Music Fest, an annual showcase for local players.

“I’ll never be able to work at Ballard Spahr,” Green told him. “I’m not going to be a super impressive lawyer. But I’d really like to learn from you.”

Seltzer liked the pitch. So last fall, when despite the pandemic Ballard Spahr was swamped with mergers and acquisitions work, Seltzer got permission to hire Green, believing the law student could do basic legal chores and also assist budding entrepreneurs.

“It’s been a wonderful partnership,” Seltzer said. “He’s helped with basic work and created a lot of value for our clients. He gives them advice on their message, narrative, mission. Numerous clients have said they love this guy. He’s funny. He’s helpful.”

But as much as he enjoys it all, Green is also raising a family and operating the Paul Green Rock Academy — what he calls the food-truck version of School of Rock. That and a close-up view of Ballard’s lawyers led to his unusual decision.

“I see these lawyers I report to come in at 6 a.m. and leave at 10 p.m. I can’t do that. I have a family,” he said. “And they’re so good. Watching them is like watching Stevie Ray Vaughan play guitar. At the same time I recognize the things I’m good at. I don’t need to be the drummer in this band.”

Seltzer helped him decide to use his degree to help launch a new music-related enterprise. Green won’t disclose details, except to say it’s “cued up” and “we’re ready to start raising money.”

“There’s room out there for a guy from School of Rock who has a law degree to do consulting, to build businesses,” Green said. “Paul Green should never be the last person to read your contract before you sign it. But Paul Green would be a great first person to talk you through your idea.”

“Paul is not built to work at a law firm,” Seltzer agreed. “He’s best-served by being an entrepreneur. His passion and energy for education is really where he should focus his time. His Ballard experience has been useful for him. I think he’s picked up some self skills, in terms of demeanor, poise, being concise, prepared and organized.”

In what likely is a sneak preview of what Green’s future holds, on April 29, he’ll conduct quick guitar lessons for participants at “What’s Next,” a Ballard-sponsored virtual conference for start-up businesses.

“Paul gravitates to anything creative,” said Seltzer. “He got one look at what we’re doing with `What’s Next’ and immediately got it.

“That’s the power of Paul. He recognized something creative and innovative. He’s going to do big things.”