What D.C. Attorney Learned from ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’

The sudden death of movie director John Hughes last week at age 59 has put Washington, D.C., attorney Edward McNally—who grew up on the same Northbrook, Ill., street as the famous creator of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club—in a reminiscent mood.

By the time his younger brothers got to high school, a suspicious administrator had seen so many excuses for McNally's absences written by a sister that he flagged their own mother's penmanship as seemingly bogus, McNally recounts in a Washington Post guest column.

And then there was the time that, seeking to eliminate the 113 miles he'd put on his dad's car during a secret trip to Chicago, he raised the rear of the purple Cadillac El Dorado on a pair of jacks and ran in it reverse. Unfortunately, that resulted in a precise 10,000-mile rollback, which definitely caught his dad's attention, McNally writes. Oops.

The former assistant presidential counsel, prosecutor, defense attorney and presidential speechwriter during the administration of the senior George Bush borrowed from the "Tao of Ferris" for at least one talk given at Wellesley College by Barbara Bush.

Many critical life lessons can be derived from the movie, a number of them of particular interest to lawyers, he says. Perhaps the most important of all: "Your current situation doesn't have to be your fate. There's always another way."