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

Lawyer as Psychologist: Soothing Clients in Stress

This AmLaw Daily piece about a Dish television executive who both cried at the courthouse and was mean to an opposing counsel’s elderly father serves as a good reminder that what’s day-to-day work for us as lawyers or paralegals is life-upending for some clients, even if they’re just getting help with a dispute over something like access to TV channels. (Sara Randazzo, Dish Network Executive Apologizes for Emotional Outburst Aimed at Gibson Dunn Lawyer’s Father, AmLaw Daily, Oct. 22, 2012.) Certainly, litigators might mention the stresses of going through a trial to clients, but lawyers should also be prepared to aid a client who is having a meltdown.

Soothing someone who is angry, seething, crying, ranting, or all of these within the confines of a courtroom is no doubt a challenge. What would you do? Are you prepared to have to treat an out-of-control client as you would your having-a-tantrum two-year-old? If only just giving out a lollipop would be guaranteed to work in this context. If minor measures—a whisper, a pat on the back, a scribbled note suggesting the client ratchet down the emotionalism a bit—aren’t successful, will you be prepared to hiss, You are ruining your case. Shut up and save it for later, in the ear of a client on the verge of a breakdown?

If you cannot save your client from himself, be prepared for some crisis management afterward.

See also:

Claire Atkinson, Dish exec mea culpa expected, N.Y. Post, Oct. 18, 2012.

Hint of settlement in Dish, AMC standoff, Reuters, Oct. 18, 2012.

“Proud of Your Son?” Dish Executive Shoves 83-Year-Old Father of an Opposing Counsel in the Back, JD Journal, Oct. 23, 2012.

—Lori Tripoli

Finding the Right Specialty

I was enthused to learn about a new online service, LawFit, that helps lawyers and law students identify where, or on what, in the field they would like to work. Using an online assessment, the service measures preferences, values, and interests to help currently practicing attorneys as well as those about to enter the workforce, find the right niche in the legal marketplace, whether that is in a law firm or elsewhere.

I haven’t tried LawFit, but I would likely be interested if I were less sure of where I was going. When I was a young associate, many of my colleagues seemed to fall into specialties by chance. Their firm had a need, and they followed. Some opted out of potentially vibrant practice areas because the group leaders were dour, or more than typically difficult. Others had goals in mind that didn’t quite seem in line with the firm they’d opted to work for. Want to help the poor? Working at a large law firm might not be the most direct route to do so, unless you’re planning on helping simply by writing big checks.

A career counselor can provide some validation. I sought one out after I ditched my big-firm existence. I’d been kicking around a dream of becoming a writer. All of the testing I did pointed to exactly that. I felt far more comfortable pursuing a writing track than I had when I was fresh out of law school and too timid to veer from the path seemingly set for me.

A service like that of LawFit, or of any career counselor, could be helpful even mid-career. People change. In my early 20s, I had no interest at all in being a litigator, wasn’t quick on my feet, and would not have enjoyed the pressure associated with courtroom performance. As I matured—and practiced—my speaking skills improved and I became more comfortable being on the spot. Judges and others are no longer quite so intimidating. I don’t stumble as much if I cannot quickly come up with an answer. By my early 40s, I’d found a different venue: teaching. I’ve been fortunate to combine my law background and my communications skills to introduce others to a vibrant field. I am grateful that way back when, a bunch of test results confirmed that I’d be well-suited to the me I had in mind rather than the me I was at the time.

—Lori Tripoli

 

From Hispaniola to the Columbian Lawyers Association

As an American of Italian descent, I have an affinity for Columbus Day, even if the explorer himself was far from the ideal person, especially by 21st-century standards. Having landed in the New World on October 12, 1492, Columbus probably couldn’t foresee that he’d be the emblem for certain legal societies five hundred years hence. As the first leading Italian in the New World, he’s a logical choice for a bit of reverence from some bar associations that have honored him (hence, the Columbian Lawyers Association). Given how his relations with the locals on Hispaniola (today, home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic) turned out, I’m reminded that socializing and fostering good relations with one’s colleagues and with others in one’s locale was important for explorers as it is today for lawyers. Happy Columbus Day to the Columbian Lawyer Associations, and thanks for all of your contributions.

—Lori Tripoli

 

The Versatility of a J.D.

I was heartened to see that the cover subject of the most recent edition of my law school’s alumni magazine is someone who pursued an alternative path. Savannah Guthrie, Georgetown University Law Center class of 2002, opted out of law review and big-firm life to pursue her broadcasting career. Now the co-anchor of the Today show, she still remembers her gig answering phones in the dean’s office while she was in school.

At a moment when law schools are under fire for, possibly, fudging the post-employment statistics of their graduates, and in an era when big law is facing some big struggles, remembering the versatility of a law degree seems especially opportune. Not everyone has to march from associate to partner or counsel. Nontraditional paths abound.

Some lawyers ditched their day jobs back when the economy was good to become investors and financial advisors on their own; they realized they could make a lot more money if they were doing more than the paperwork on any transaction. The analytical and decision-making skills learned during law school certainly bode well for leaders in the business world. Any number of legal marketing folks, both in-house and out-, have J.D.s in their pockets.

In D.C., the federal government beckons; plenty of policy makers don’t practice law but are admitted to the bar. Publishing, P.R., small business—any arena where the ability to research, reason, and think are especially useful—all provide viable avenues for a lawyer longing to leave the legal biz. The only time my J.D. held me back was when I was trying to break into publishing. Having moved from D.C. to New York, I was told by one interviewer that he worried about giving me a job for fear that I would stay just long enough to pass the bar in a new state. I’d been surprised at the time; back in Washington, plenty of people at the federal agency at which I had worked had law degrees and no intention of practicing. I persisted and became a writer and editor and have never begrudged my legal education. Habits I picked up during my own years at the Georgetown University Law Center, my reading and research skills, my tenacity, have only helped me over the years. J.D.s can help any number of people in any number of fields nowadays, too.

—Lori Tripoli