Liz Glazer, ’04, Tells ABA Journal About Her Journey from Law School to Stand-up Comedy
Stand-up Student: One attorney's journey from the classroom to the comedy club
Liz Glazer loves to joke that she took the traditional route to becoming a comedian. First, she received her bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Then, she was off to the University of Chicago for law school. She did a two-year stint at a law firm in New York before becoming a tenured law professor at Hofstra University.
After nine years, teaching more than 25 classes and publishing about a dozen scholarly publications, Glazer finally hit the road to perform at comedy clubs, open mic nights and at law schools.
She knew that she was making the right move because, as she explains it, she felt like she was having a professional orgasm, “which was like a regular orgasm, but I was 100% sure that I was having it.”
“People are like, ‘Why did you go to law school?’ I tell them, ‘I’m setting up a joke that I’m going to tell in 14 years. I’m a planner,’” Glazer adds.
Getting to the punchline
Glazer has short brown hair, she wears a single small earring in her right ear, and she has an affinity for button-down dress shirts that must be ironed. Ironing is a big deal for Glazer, who takes it so seriously that she brings extra clothing on her tours and spends time in her hotel rooms each night ironing.
She’s used all this material—plus bits about her sexuality (she came out as a lesbian during her law school years) in her stand-up routines. But she also loves to riff on her law background, which understandably gets her booked at law schools throughout the country at least once per week.
While some may not see law school as a joking matter, Glazer says she has the authority and the background to be able to jump right in and make lawyers laugh at themselves.
Read more at ABA Journal