People

By Guy D. Garcia

The lad was reading restaurant menus at two, got out of high school at twelve, earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Miami at the sagacious age of 14 and graduated from Miami's law school when he was 16. But Prodigy Stephen Baccus had to molder away until the senescent age of 17 before he was able to become the youngest known person ever sworn in as a lawyer in the U.S. After he passed the bar exam this summer, his father Miami Attorney James Baccus petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a waiver of the 18-year- old age requirement for those being admitted to practice. "A judge called Stephen and asked if he really wanted to be a lawyer and if he understood what it meant," recalls his mother Florence Baccus. "I guess he gave them the right answers." Probably didn't miss one. He does not really plan to practice, though, maybe just take a few cases "when I'm between classes." He is up in New York City going for his master's, then Ph.D. in computer science and also writing a book on that subject. He may try to join the New York bar next year. About the only place he is having trouble getting in seems to be the Guinness Book of World Records. Asked to consider Stephen as a record early achiever, the editors declined, citing a 14th century king who graduated from college at eleven.