At many points throughout my professional career, after I graduated from law school, I’ve questioned whether what I’m doing is the right thing. I have needed to make adjustments from time to time, and the last couple of years have occasioned a more extensive look at my path. But generally, I’ve been pretty happy with my route, even though it has certainly meant less financial success than I would have achieved otherwise.
When I went to law school, having grown up in a small town as the only member to have graduated from college, I didn’t have a ton of guidance. I went directly to law school, even though I would have been much better off had I taken a few years off first. In my small liberal arts program within a mega-university, that was what you did — went to grad school or law school. At that time, there was virtually no career services guidance, and many of the employers who interviewed through the university’s career service office wouldn’t even interview graduates of my program, because they didn’t know what it was.
I had decided in 5th grade that I wanted to be a lawyer, and so my attitude was, “why wait?” Why work in a low-level job, when in just three years, I would be “a lawyer?” Of course, I was miserable during my first year of law school, because I had expected an extension of college, and instead I got junior high. The atmosphere in my law school was petty, competitive, and immature. It was filled with a number of people who didn’t get into better (T1) schools, and feared that as a result, they would never make the big bucks unless they were at the top of the class.
Where I had come from, law was a noble profession, and virtually everyone in my small town had turned to the local lawyer at some time or another (unless they were conflicted out, and had to go to the next town.) In law school, I was introduced to the world of lawyer jokes, and when I looked around me, often I saw the people who would deserve to be the butt of future jokes. (I met some great people too — don’t get me wrong, especially if you are a law school friend reading this — but by and large, I was not terribly impressed.)
So after surviving the first year, with decidedly average grades, at my good but not spectacular law school, I had to figure out where I would interview for a job my second summer. In many ways, that is the job that could end up determining your fate — that is, if you’re a particular type of lawyer.
Your first year grades decide what firm will hire you for their summer associate program. If you do well in the summer associate program, they will extend you an offer. You will then go to work in their law firm/sweatshop, and your performance will determine whether you eventually become a partner. If you become a partner, you could theoretically stay there until you retire (which used to be at a specific age, until some high-profile lawsuits made firms take a long, hard look at that practice). This model is becoming increasingly less common, as people make lateral moves to other law firms, deliberately choose to step off the treadmill by going to a smaller firm, in-house counsel, or government position, or pursue other careers outside of law using their law degree, but there are still a whole bunch of law firms who depend on this model for a steady stream of new lawyers.
I should also point out that I had some naive visions in my head (who doesn’t at 23?) that all lawyers made enough money to make it possible to have a decent lifestyle and pay back all the law school loans. It was barely true then, and I’m sure it isn’t true now, with students graduating hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I am firmly convinced that over the years, if I had not gone to law school, even staying in the nonprofit sector, financially I would have been better off not having gone to law school, when you factor in the difference of my loan payment. My law degree has never commanded such a premium that it has made up for that difference. But oh well…
I remember going through a certain amount of angst before on-campus interviewing my second year. If a firm wanted to shower money upon me for a summer, I was confident that I could do the work. But should I get one of those jobs if I wasn’t sure I wanted to work in a law firm? I didn’t think I wanted to, but how did I know that — should I try it and see before summarily rejecting the concept?
There was also a little wrinkle in that I had worked for a gay rights organization my first summer. It had to be on the resume, but it was long enough ago that there were firms for which this was a problem. (There probably still are some firms that feel that way, but the number has diminished considerably). Which is pretty humorous if you think about it, because I wasn’t gay. But they couldn’t exactly ask me that, could they? (Even then, that would have been a no-no.)
So I did it — for the experience — and pretty quickly realized that not only were none of these firms likely to hire me, but that I had very little interest in working for a law firm. I ended up withdrawing from several interviews I had snagged, because I knew it would be a mutual waste of time. But among the interviews I did, there was a public interest organization that participated — a rarity at the time — and hired me for the summer. The organization specialized in employment law, which became my career focus.
Now each job that I have seems to take me further from my law degree, enough that I am questioning whether to maintain my active bar status next year. It’s expensive, and there’s nothing that I do these days that could be considered the practice of law. At this point, my exposure to how the other half lives is primarily through Above the Law, billed as “a legal tabloid.” Anytime I feel the need for the cattiness and cut-throat competition I experienced in law school, I can just read the comments section for virtually any article.
But I ran across this article (For Lawyers, Perks to Fit a Lifestyle) today, and it really created some feelings of ambivalence. Sometimes, I wish my life had some perks that I didn’t have to pay for. Granted, some of these present in the corporate world (outside law) as well, but after a career spent in the nonprofit world, it’s not likely that I could step into one of those jobs either. After reading The Four-Hour Workweek, I do have a personal assistant help me out sometimes, but beyond that, I’m on my own.
Obviously, the perks are there so people work longer hours without leaving the office, and are able to focus all of their brainpower on work instead of the details that keep their lives from falling apart. But if you’re working crazy hours anyway (which I have been for the last couple of months), then working them in an environment which cushions the effect a little starts to look more attractive.
