(Career) Identity Crisis

-- By MisanIkomi - 27 Feb 2009

The sky is falling (or is it?)

I should be a lawyer? Okay!

But what does it mean to actually practice law?

Conclusion

The sky is falling (or is it?)

Every day, more and more law firms are conducting layoffs or experiencing a profits decline. Firms are “freezing” salaries and reducing year-end bonuses. Reportedly, a third of the CLS 3L class either have deferred or rescinded job offers. Two weekends ago, I attended a panel that featured law firm partners and they asserted that we are in a time period of great uncertainty. They all confessed that no one seems to understand what is occurring in the economy and what the potential ramifications for the legal industry are. According to them, this present situation is nothing like any one has ever seen before. I thought to myself, “If they don’t know what’s going on, how am I supposed to figure it out?” One of the panelists called the financial crisis “a great equalizer” which, more or less, puts (or can put) lawyers just beginning their careers on nearly the same level as lawyers with long, storied careers at firms. This is because everyone has to adapt to the changing legal landscape. If this partner’s assertions are correct, then the whole situation is absolutely terrifying to me. I like knowing what’s coming next. When I graduated from high school, I knew the next step was college. When I graduated from college, I knew the next step was law school. Upon graduation from law school, I know I want to work at a law firm. But what that will entail or perhaps what it should entail, I have no idea. I know what the traditional trajectory can be: working for a number of years and making partner. But if the partners I talked to are correct, I cannot rely on that. Perhaps, then, it is imperative that evaluate why I chose to attend law school in order to determine what type of career I want to have. In this essay, I will discuss my motivation for deciding to become a lawyer and how my increasing knowledge of what a lawyer actually does has affected it.

I should be a lawyer? Okay!

I decided to become a lawyer when I was four. I’m not sure what my motivation was. Maybe it was partly because my mom is a lawyer. Or maybe it was because there was something so decidedly adult about the idea. It might have been because people told me that I should be a lawyer because I like to argue. Whatever the reason, from a very young age, I felt like I was “Misan, who is going to be a lawyer”. As I got older, this did not change. I do not think I ever thought seriously about any other career option. At the same time, I am really focused on what I can accomplish as an individual to help make positive changes in the world at large. Throughout the course of my experiences, I have come to appreciate the power in the hands of the individual acting solely or in concert with others. I understand how one’s actions can potentially change the world in very profound ways; how every little bit a person does can be significant, particularly when combined with the actions of others. I think the discipline of law is directly relevant to all spheres of life and is therefore the perfect vehicle for effecting change for good in society. Thus, it is possible that I am motivated by the idea that a law degree will give me a more meaningful way of thinking about societal issues. After all, Holmes wrote, in “The Path of Law”, “The training of lawyers is a training in logic.” I am convinced that a law school education will provide me a more rational way of approaching complex global problems. And perhaps with this approach, I will be able to develop comprehensive and successful solutions. Keeping all of this in mind, becoming a lawyer just seemed to fit my goals in life and my skill set.

But what does it mean to actually practice law?

Before law school, I knew next to nothing about what a lawyer did on a daily basis. So last summer, when I received the opportunity to work at a major New York law firm, I was ecstatic. I really enjoyed the time I spent at the law firm. I did a lot of research and writing, which I love. I genuinely liked the people I interacted with. But at the end of the summer, I realized that I still was not entirely sure what practicing lawyers did on a daily basis. I thought back to what I saw the associates and the partners do. They worked at their desks and attended meetings. Associates received assignments, completed them, and then turned them in. It appeared pretty ordinary and mundane. I wondered how many of the attorneys I met had great plans to save the world and whether they were happy with their choices.

Conclusion

I am still not sure what it means to be a practicing lawyer. I am also still not sure what type of career I want to have or what form it should take. But maybe that is the point. Perhaps being a lawyer is not something that you just learn by attending classes, reading cases, and taking law school exams. Possibly being a lawyer is about making it up as you go along. I am not sure how comfortable I am with that thought. I like structure. I like knowing what it means to have a particular career so I know what I am getting myself into. But, I am aware that my discomfort is largely due to my fear of the unknown. Not knowing what comes next is a fact of life. That can be exciting because I get a chance to forge my own path. Law school has taught me to constantly question and probe the presumably accepted realities. With this crucial skill, I think I am going to be just fine.

• Do you think the problem actually lies in being "Misan who is going to be a lawyer who is going to make it up as she goes along," or in being "Misan who is going to make it up as she goes along"? We all make up our lives to a large extent as we go along, because we only get one chance at everything and in this society there is nothing harder to foresee than the course of a single human life. Discomfort with that fact can be pretty sharp in those people who like structure. There are other societies that are easier for people who like structure very intensely to live in. But the freedom to choose how to earn a living for lawyers in this society includes a freedom to choose very structured lives.

• What I don't understand is why you think that the "business model" of law practice has been discredited because law firms that specialize in serving financial services clients are suffering the massive contraction of that industry as everyone else's clients are hurt by the onset of the commercial depression that inevitably follows the credit collapse. When clients suffer their lawyers don't necessarily escape, but that's not a failure of "business model." What is discredited is the theory that capitalism can be "scientifically managed" to prevent episodes like the one we are now having. Economists had awarded themselves Nobel Prizes for figuring out how in a perfect world the regular cycles of boom and bust, panic and exuberance that had always characterized the capitalist economy could be eliminated. We have turned out, to their surprise, not to live in a perfect world. Capitalism, except when it contains only MIT and Princeton professors in addition to people from the University of Chicago, does this. You will know, valuably, that something three generations prior to yours have been taught in law school was, all along, bullshit. That's no small advantage. You're going to watch the global transformation that terminates the era that began in 1945 and began to end with the fall of the Soviet Union and ended with the disasters of the Bush Administration and the eclipse of American power. Like the era of young policy-makers who came of age in the Depression and met their own moments of sober testing, perhaps in WWII and Vietnam, or perhaps in Brown and the Civil Rights movement, you will have your chance to be "present at the creation" of the new era. That era will not start, as the last one did, in a blaze of imperial glory; whether it ends in decline and catastrophe or a transit to greater sustainability and social justice will be for your generation to work out. And no one will be worse off if you cut a path of your own, rather than looking to the established institutions to supply you with one.