M&A Lawyer Trades Legal Briefs for Boxing Gloves (Photo)
Photo courtesy of Laura Saperstein.
Updated: The lawyer-entrepreneur is a fairly regular story. TheStreet.com published anecdotes about several this week. But this one from London knocks the rest out cold.
Indeed, about three years ago, Australian native Laura Saperstein was a sought-after mergers and acquisitions lawyer, earning some $155,000 a year (U.S. dollars). But as the Sydney Morning Herald notes, she decided the corporate world wasn’t for her. And she climbed into the boxing ring.
“From the first moment I tried boxing, I knew it was what I wanted to do,” the paper quotes Saperstein, 36, as saying. “It’s like chess on two legs. It involves your entire mental and physical being. To be a good boxer, you need courage, stamina, strength and intelligence.”
Saperstein, who has her own website—http://www.boxergirl.net—is a former journalist who grew up on a farm. She owns several properties in London, eight of which she bought and renovated last year, Saperstein told the ABA Journal in an e-mail interview Tuesday.
She plans to unveil a new Boxergirl clothing line next.
“It’s been the busiest and by far the most difficult year of my life (far more taxing than anything I did in law, but also more rewarding because I have no one to answer to other than my own business sense and conscience),” she writes.
Last week, Saperstein hoped to announce she would be the first female boxer in the UK to be signed by a major promoter. But the deal fell through at the last minute. She says she hopes to resurrect the deal.
Saperstein also hopes to one day go back to Australia to challenge legislation that makes female boxing illegal in her home state.
“Extraordinary that in this day and age the government feels fit to legislate against women doing something of their own free will that men are entitled to do,” she writes.
The odds may be on her side for success. Before her professional debut in November, Saperstein had never been knocked down or hurt in a fight.
Her first pro fight was Nov. 18. She won.
Hat tip to Legal Juice.
Updated 3 p.m. CST, to add Saperstein’s comments and photo.
