(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. (http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2009/02/official-latham-to-cut-190-associates-250-staff-.html) Firms are “freezing” salaries and reducing end of the year bonuses. The law firm business model, as it stands, is apparently unsustainable. The whole situation feels absolutely terrifying to me. I have always considered law to be one of the most stable professions in the world. The system that has been in place for so many years suddenly appears no longer workable. I do not want to sound alarmist so maybe “workable” is not the right term. However, the entire situation is certainly disconcerting. For me, it feels a little like our recent class discussion when we talked about how making a deal works best when it is good and rational. Two years ago, I would have said that it made complete sense to take out loans in order to attend law school. The benefits would surely outweigh the costs in the long run. But now, the law profession’s trademark stability is being called into question. I definitely do not think that I have been swindled or conned. But in this economic climate, I find myself questioning the rationality of the deal that I made. Why am I here? And is it going to be worth it in the end? I think it is important to constantly probe one’s decisions in order to make sure one is on the right path. Using my own experiences, the purpose of this essay is to explore how one avoids becomes someone that they do not want to be. 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 think I decided to become a lawyer when I was about four years old. I’m not entirely sure why or how. Maybe it was partly because my mom is a lawyer. Or maybe it was because there was something so decidedly adult and almost mystifying about the idea. It also 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. Finally, I would get a chance to be in an environment where people were practicing law. 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 wanted to become the best lawyer I could be. But how I could do that if I actually did not know what that meant in practice? 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. There did not seem to be anything particularly incredible about it. It actually appeared pretty ordinary and mundane. I wondered how many of the attorneys I interacted with had great plans to save the world and whether they were happy with the choices they had made.

Conclusion

As a second semester 1L, I am still not sure what it means to be a practicing lawyer. But maybe that is the point. Perhaps being a lawyer is not something that you just learn about 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 can know what I am getting myself into. I worry about becoming just another cog in the wheel of a major law firm because that is certainly not who I want to be. I do think, however, that law school has taught me to constantly question and probe the presumably accepted (and unchangeable) realities. With this, 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.