"Editorial Note: The following manuscript, which was unsolicited, is not standard Messenger fare. It is about becoming a lawyer, becoming human, and the elusive goal of becoming both at the same time. We hope you enjoy it, and we hope it encourages the creative writers among our own membership to submit their own fictional or non-fictional vignettes touching on the legal profession."

"Letter From the Editor": "And we have a short story: 'The Visitor,' by Lawrence Savell. Mr. Savell, who practices law in the Big Apple, had to remind me that the Messenger published another story of his in 2004. We’d like not to wait 13 years for the next law-themed (however loosely) short story, serial, or poem. Day in and day out, we deal with non-fiction, much of it mundane and almost all of it conflict-ridden. When we find fiction, we blow it up. Legitimate fiction—as an art form—helps keep us, as Rocky Balboa would put it, from getting 'mentally irregular.' Even though the word 'creative' is more often pejorative than complimentary in our profession (I’ve never understood that), my gut tells me creative writers are lurking among our membership, just waiting to bust out of their workaday legal straightjackets."

"Letter From the Editor": "We offer another short story from Lawrence Savell. 'The Bequest' is adapted from the author’s winning entry in the 2016 New York State Bar Association Journal Short Story Contest."