Alternate Careers
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.