“You just can't spend every waking moment of your life thinking about the law,” said Stephen Roth, a partner at intellectual property firm Lerner David Littenberg Krumholz & Mentlik in Westfield, New Jersey, in an interview about his life as a lawyer… and a woodworker.

Woodworking predated law school for Roth, who wondered when he began law school whether he would be as good a lawyer as he is a tradesman, he said.

What Roth found was, “you can be creative in the law.”