My Storied Legal Career
Fun fact: I used to be a lawyer. I graduated college in 2000, when the dot com bubble had burst and there were no jobs for the taking. So I did what every dummy does and studied for the LSAT, thinking I could simply continue following in my father’s footsteps and everything would be fine.
I went off to Washington D.C. for law school, with the goal of becoming a diplomat, or an attorney for an international organization, or something. The idea was pretty vague at the time, but I had studied international politics during college and just loved it. In hindsight, what I loved was international political theory, which is really different from actual politics, but I was filled with both youthful optimism and a relentless desire to not turn into my mother, so off to law school I went.
Wow, I hated law school. With every fiber of my being. The first year was really boring. Particularly terrible was my Property class. I didn’t understand one word of what the professor said the entire time. Apparently, he was an intellectual property expert (note: intellectual property is extremely different from real property – copyrights vs. land parcels) but they made him teach first year classes and he was bad at it. I got a 37% on a midterm or a final (I cannot remember which) and on the curve, that was a B. That’s how well we all understood. What I was great at in law school was having fun with my friends. I made amazing friends there! And we used to go OUT. Man, would we go out. All the bars. All the drinks.
My second year improved because I was able to take classes I was more interested in. I became somewhat of a tax law nerd. Something about the structure of it really appealed to me, and it didn’t hurt that the advanced seminars were much smaller in enrollment and I could actually understand what the professors were talking about. I dropped out of my master’s program (did I mention I had enrolled in a joint JD/MA in International Relations program?) and focused solely on law.
Then came September 11. And that day truly changed the course of my career. Besides being a devastating day for our country, it was also a devastating day for the federal government. All federal agencies instituted a hiring freeze. That was particularly problematic for me, since I deeply wanted to be employed by either the State Department or the Department of Justice or even the INS – except they dismantled the INS in the wake of 9/11 and created ICE. Who wasn’t hiring. Okay.
So there I was, in Washington D.C., a 2L (second year law student) who couldn’t get the summer internship she actually wanted because none of the places she wanted the internship were hiring at all. I did what I always did – called my dad. And asked if he had any ideas. And of course he did. He got me an interview with his friend’s law firm. I do not at all remember the interview, but I do remember my summer associate summer very well. I mean, I remember the parties! And the dinners! I did not learn much law, but it was fun to get dressed up every day and go to the Starbucks for coffee breaks and have people take me out to lunch.
It has certainly occurred to me over the years that I was extraordinarily lucky that I had a father who could secure a law firm interview for me with just a phone call. Now, I know he didn’t pressure anyone into giving me that job. I know he did secure me an interview. I recognize the extraordinary privilege that I had in being able to get that interview.
Privileged though I was, I found the actual practice of law to be…not like it was on TV, and not like I even thought it would be. I graduated from law school, packed up my apartment and ran home as fast as I could to study for the bar exam. Then I went on an amazing trip to Ireland and finally began working as a real-life lawyer lady. Watch out Ally McBeal! I was here in PANTS! Ready to dazzle and impress.
There was no dazzling. There was no impressing. During my third year of law school – the year in between my summer employment and my actual employment – apparently many of the firm’s corporate clients had moved their business elsewhere. Apparently there was not any work for the firm’s newest corporate associate (me). So actually I spent a lot of time in my office, alone, emailing people. And planning girls’ nights with friends. And planning vacations. And going to long lunches. I actually took a 2 week vacation to Australia in the middle of my first year of lawyering because I had absolutely no work to do. This is fairly unheard of. More traditionally, first-year associates get slammed with work. They are staffed on cases, or deals, or projects, spend hours researching or drafting, and start generating their stomach ulcers. Not me. I was sitting pretty. And the longer that went on, the longer I knew I became a sitting duck. Before the firm could fire me because I had no billable work, I decided to look elsewhere.
Things could have been different. If any of the senior attorneys had taken the time to mentor me, or to work with me, I might have had more of a future there. But I felt like more of a nuisance than a new team member. There was so little billable work to go around that rarely did it ever trickle down to me. And when it did, it was truly garbage. I will absolutely elaborate on that in other posts. Who knows what would have happened had I been a billing machine there. Lucky for me (or unluckily for me?), I became a billing machine elsewhere. More on that next time.
