Have a J.D. and a Dream? Persevere through Troubled Times

The news about the legal profession has been unseasonably grim lately, with reports of underemployed lawyers, unemployed law schoolgraduates, and a shrinking profession marked by increasing competition. For those fresh-faced young lawyers looking to save the world, think grand thoughts, and swagger through courthouses, marketplace realities might sometimes get them down. No matter what the profession or the times, it can be a long slog through some personal torment to achieve any goal. Remember wannabe doctors who had to go to the Caribbean to get their medical degrees because they couldn’t get admitted to a school in the United States? Well, those graduates are practicing today. How about the glut of teachers, or of M.B.A.s, in previous decades? Those folks are still around. Sure, legal competition is intense today. Even a top-tier law school grad may not be able to sashay into a big-firm job in Manhattan.

Reality getting you down? Think about a few others who endured career challenges: Ruth Bader Ginsburg couldn’t land a job as a big-firm associate despite attending Harvard and Columbia. Thurgood Marshall couldn’t get admitted to his first-choice law school not because he wasn’t qualified but on account of his race. Those two were going up against far more than a crappy economy and still managed to land pretty high-caliber gigs as justices of the Supreme Court.

No one is going to hand you a career. There will be challenges in good times and bad. Some might be universal, others might be self-inflicted, many will likely be due to plain bad luck. But if you have a diploma and a dream, do something with it. Don’t let a few, or a hundred, closed doors deter you. Sure, you might have to take an alternative path. Your accomplishment might be that much greater for it.

—Lori Tripoli