Raymond Lindholm performs in the classroom and the music halls
November 30, 2010
ATLANTA -- Georgia State University College of Law student Raymond Lindholm was born to perform, whether showering the audience with inspiring melodies from his violin or winning the jury’s vote with his powerful closing arguments.
After receiving a music degree in violin performance from GSU, Lindholm combined his passion for music and entrepreneurial skills to launch The Lindholm School. The school provided consulting services, instrumental programs and private lessons to Atlanta area private schools.
“My dad was a violinist who specialized in folk, blue grass and fiddle music. I grew up listening to my dad play and for my 4th birthday he gave me a violin,” said Lindholm, who has been teaching violin and playing with orchestras all over the country since he was in middle school.
In addition, Lindholm acquired Atlanta Classic Weddings, a business that provided live classical and jazz ensembles for weddings and corporate events. Under his leadership, the award-winning business received accolades for customer satisfaction three years in a row and was featured in the Knot.com’s nationally distributed magazine.
In spite of his business success, Lindholm’s heartstrings pulled him in a new direction: the law. So he returned to GSU to pursue a degree and legal career, setting his sights on health law.
“I really enjoyed certain aspects about business, including all the problem solving and growing the businesses, but law has always been something that interested me and it was a very good move for a new career path,” Lindholm said.
It was Georgia State’s part time law program that provided him the opportunity to study law while raising his family, he says. However, he was inspired to go into health law after learning about Georgia State’s nationally ranked program during a tort class with College of Law Professor Charity Scott.
“Health law is a burgeoning field and from a job perspective it makes sense, because it’s one of the few areas of law that continues to actively be hiring,” he said. “Health law is like a microcosm of the legal field itself, you can practice just about anything and if you primarily work on issues affecting health care providers and doctors then you are also a health lawyer.”
Lindholm’s studies have allowed him to work with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to help draft legislation to help permanently disabled children having difficulty accessing home health care. Also, his research paper titled, “Legal Analysis of Childhood Obesity and the Built Environment in Minority and Low-Income Populations,” will be published in the journal Environmental Health Reviews.
“Childhood obesity in the U.S. has become an epidemic. For the first time in history, experts are predicting that children today will have a lower life expectancy than their parents,” Lindholm said. “I looked at the laws that shape our built environment and how we can craft legal interventions to provide more access to healthy food to low income and minority children and increase access to physical activity through more connected neighborhoods, better sidewalks safer neighborhoods and access to playgrounds, exercise equipment and bike paths.”
During this past summer, Lindholm began interning as a research fellow with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzing public health law issues regulating prescription drugs. He has also clerked for Judge A. Harris Adams of the Georgia Court of Appeals, and as a case assistant with Alston & Bird law firm.
With less than a year left of law school, Lindholm has his sights set on practicing health law and possibly continuing on to graduate school for health administration.
But teaching music lessons and playing his violin on stage still provide a much needed break from his legal studies.
“[Music and law] use very different parts of the brain, but It has been a nice reprieve from legal studies to be able to pick up my violin and do something different,” Lindholm says. “It was especially nice during my first year when I might not have known what negligent standards were in torts class, but I certainly knew how to fix a kid’s violin hold.”
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Wendy Cromwell
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