Kaulapi World

And expecting a different result. I’m inferring that “over and over again” means at least more than twice.

I overheard a conversation today in the halls at work, something about so and so business (restaurant, coffeehouse, bar, etc) that was being run by “recovering attorneys”. The thought that a legal field might be so traumatizing that recently graduated (within 5 years) attorneys would walk away from a legal practice for something else was an eye-opener, to say the least.  I’ve always heard of those stories of the DOJ lawyer that started baking cakes, or the other that went and became a cop, but honestly I had always thought they were the exception to the rule.

As more and more of such and such lawyers with ever more impressive academic and legal credentials experience a hard enough time that they decide to walk away from the legal profession entirely and not look back, the more troubling sign of the times it is for the rest of us recent grads, current law students and the prospective 0L students cannot afford to ignore.

It makes me think that the old assurance that “a JD is so versatile that you can do anything with it, even outside of the law” needs some serious revisions or caveat to point out that sometimes the alternate career that some JDs take on is more out of necessity rather than choice.  While sometimes it because of burn out, more often it’s from being forced out, or in today’s economy, maybe never even having a chance in the first place.  It seems that the way things are set up, everything banks on getting that first legal job, because without it you can’t get legal experience necessary to move up on the legal food chain.

It really seems like the way things are without some kind of inside track, which often means personal or family connections, your stuck on the outside looking in.  This might not be as bad if it didn’t require more than $100K in tuition and 3-4 years of pretty demanding and grueling academic study that gives you no practical professional skills.  At this rate it trying to practice law might be just as risky business investment as opening a Hawaiian plate lunch stand in downtown DC with no business knowledge or skills to start off with.

Been thinking about something else lately, call it the 2 million dollar question maybe, which is could it be possible that my legal career is now over before it ever started due to the fact that I was simply too average of a law student on paper?

The fact of the matter is that law is an extremely elitist and ultra-conservative field in which your achievements are constantly being rated and compared to others, be it what class rank you were, what ranked school you went to, where you interned over the summer, etc. You see this in the pass/fail nature of the bar, and the subjectivity of law school grading. This would not be a problem if these things started decreasing in importance as time went by, but I’m worried that the remnants of the elitist nitpicking carries on a while after law school. According to the measures that everyone is so obsessed with, I was a decent law student, but nothing exception on paper. I have no published papers, no law review, no moot court experience, achievements that seem like a minimum for a lot of attorney jobs out there right now, and I was ranked in the middle of my class. I had no interest in the big law firms while in school, not that I would’ve been very competitive for on-campus interviews anyway, and for my summer internship I instead opted to work in the school’s legal aid clinic.  All of these things apparently broadcast mediocrity to the employer-elite out there in the legal field.

From a more practical standpoint, I have a lot to offer by way of actual work experience with at the state government and judiciary, more practical legal clinical experience working with actual clients, and more than 5 years of federal work experience at my current job gained concurrently to working on the JD at night.  While I sort out this post-JD limbo, I’m continuing to gain more work experience, and am currently a developing subject matter expertise in a quasi-legal field.   Despite all of this, it seems though that none of this matters, law is such an exclusive field that it disregards any and all experience outside of the law school universe, no matter how relevant it might be to the position.  Also based on sheer market competition grounds, with the flood of licensed JDs out there scrambling for any job, legal or non-legal, I’m more likely to just be another name and resume in a the reject pile.

Whats more is that every year that I go not landing that first legal job, there will be another wave of 45,000 recently graduated JDs out there to compete with. Another thing that I’ve realized about law is that it really favors those students that go straight out of undergrad. Even at the young age of 30, I may be too old for an entry level law position. I noticed that a lot of the recruiting models are better designed for the younger, single types, your mind is much more malleable and you don’t ask as many questions if all you know is undergrad, even more so if you’ve never worked a full time job before. The crazy hours of the law firms would only seem normal if you never worked anywhere else before. A lot of law is being reprogrammed to think like a conservative, risk-adverse, slightly paranoid lawyer, which I’ve come to accept the sometimes counter-intuitive way that legal rulings come down, and more importantly to not ask questions that would suggest that there is a better way of solving societal problems, something that I found myself asking a lot.

This is a sample of informational resources for anyone thinking about law school in the near future should take time to read. While it is never my goal to talk anyone out of going to law school per se, I do believe I have a duty to pass on as much information and experience that I have as a recently graduated JD who did it at night while working full time job during the day. I came across bits and pieces of this information while I was in school, but honestly I was so stressed out and tunnel visioned to really appreciate it for what it was. Since I graduated in 2009 I’ve had more of an opportunity to research more into this area, and can vouch for much of this information to be accurate from a mixture of my own personal experience and conversations with recent law school graduates, and practicing attorneys.

With the sheer volume of information out there and varied opinions about the current status of the legal profession, I think the following blog is a good place to start, a well written, relatively balanced take from a current practicing attorney with 20+ years practicing experience:

Legal Dollar Blog – for prospective law students Part I:
http://thelegaldollar.blogspot.com/2010/01/beginning-prospective-law-students-part.html

Part II here:
http://thelegaldollar.blogspot.com/2010/01/beginning-prospective-law-students-part_15.html

He also has a very good, balanced 4-part post on starting salaries for attorneys
http://thelegaldollar.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-much-will-you-make-as-lawyer-part-1.html

Good Blog/msg boards that have a lot of new content about the current state of the legal market, updated daily:
Above the law – http://abovethelaw.com/
Law Shucks – http://lawshucks.com/
JD Underground – http://www.qfora.com/jdu/

Mainstream newspaper coverage on the recent downturn over the last few years.
LA Times – No more room at the bench
Wall Street Journal Law Blog – Christmas carol by Loyola 2L
Minnesota post – Law school bubble about to burst
Law.com – What to say when friends ask about law school

Informative blogs run by recently graduated and licensed JDs that are struggling to find that first legal job.
Esquire Never – http://esqnever.blogspot.com/
JD Underdog – http://jdunderdog.blogspot.com/
Third Tier Reality – http://thirdtierreality.blogspot.com/