New Career-Planning Information for Prospective Lawyers from Law School Transparency

Many of us have become more forceful in recent years in urging prospective and current students to give serious thought both before and during law school to the use to which they intend to put their law degrees. I regularly tell my first-years "You're much more likely to end up someplace you want to be if you think about where you're going."  Others have been rather more pointed.

It turns out that this kind of introspection is difficult for a number of reasons.  Humans are only so-so at predicting what we're going to enjoy doing when we grow up, at least in something as multifarious as a career, and both our preferences and what's realistically available to us change with experience and results over time.  Just as importantly, it's quite hard to get a handle on all the different kinds of things that lawyers do, and the different work environments in which they do them, which is pretty basic to any meaningful reflection about what you might want to do once you graduate.  We impart startlingly little "what do you do all day" information to our students (think about it), and though I can't claim to have searched exhaustively, I haven't found any easy access to resources that impart this kind of information.  Yes, Mark Hermann's "Curmudgeon’s Guide" and Nancy Rapoport and Jeff Van Niel's "Survival Manual" offer many very useful (and admirably practical and accessible) insights into private law-firm life, and you should definitely read them if that's where you think you're headed, but they address only a small slice of the job market, and even there don't really give the outsider looking in any sense of what capital markets vs. M&A vs. tax vs. various kinds of litigators actually do, let alone address the many other kinds of lawyer work graduates find.

To its credit, Law School Transparency is trying to address this gap.  They've announced a series of video [correction:  podcast] interviews with practitioners portentously entitled (with a hopefully ironic backward glance at Sly Stallone in his "Judge Dredd" gear) "I am the Law."  The press release is here, and the first four interviews are available here.

I confess that I have not yet had the opportunity to listen to the interviews, so I hold no views on whether they are informative, accurate or useful.  If you're a career services professional, a law teacher, a law student, or a practitioner, please check out one or more, and post in the Comments how well you think they serve the intended purpose--to help prospective and current law students and recent graduates make informed career choices.  I imagine any constructive suggestions offered to Kyle McEntee and his friends while they're compiling their library will benefit all concerned.  

Regardless of the early productions' quality, hats off to LST for recognizing and trying to address this real and important need.

Again, please share your thoughts about the interviews in the Comments!

Bernie

Comments

[Kyle McEntee]

Thanks Bernie. We are open to suggestions, as we are with everything we produce for prospective students. We're also open to financial support so that we can scale the library as quickly as possible. We're producing one per week now but I could see producing more informational interviews if we can hire some people.

I'm a big believer in this project because of how well this pairs with all of the quantitative measures we provide on the LST Reports. How can somebody know what the numbers mean to them if they don't really know what they want to do? I also think it's really important to empower prospective students who don't know any lawyers. They can learn about the questions to ask, as well as reach far more people than they could on their own.

One note: they're podcasts rather than videos. This has a number of substantial advantages, not least of which is that you can listen to podcasts while driving, showering, and reading TFL.

[Bernie Burk]

Kyle, Thanks for the correction (which I've added to the post) and the accompanying sensible thoughts. I hope this turns out to be a valuable resource to prospective lawyers everywhere.

Bernie

[anon]

It is so sad the legal academia can't explain to students the reality associated with the careers they are preparing the vast majority of their students to undertake. This is not to say that applicants shouldn't investigate, but, please, this resort to outsourcing knowledge about the practice of law is just about as Orwellian as it can get for a bunch of folks supposedly teaching in law schools.

Moreover, although generalists are hard to come by (despite the fact the law schools strive and claim to provide a generalized legal education), information about "capital markets vs. M&A vs. tax" is irrelevant and immaterial for about 99% of law school students.

As usual, legal academics seem oblivious to the fact that BigLaw (especially, the specialties mentioned) has nothing to do with the practice of law in the United States for the vast majority of lawyers, and is thus a bogus reference group for the vast majority of law students.

[Orin Kerr]

Really good idea, Kyle. Looking forward to listening.

[Former Editor]

anon,

I'm not sure if your comment regarding obliviousness is aimed at law faculty or also at LST. If it's the latter, I encourage you to go over to the LST podcast list and look at who the attorneys there are. I see a public defender, a family law attorney, an immigration lawyer, and two personal injury attorneys. While these attorneys are not generalists, as few successful lawyers are by the middle of their careers, they are certainly folks whose practices are relevant to the majority of law students, not only those who have prospects at BigLaw.

[PopGoesWsl]

FWIW -- The attorneys profiled so far graduated from Northeastern, Tennessee, Santa Clara and Georgia, and the ones listed as coming soon graduated from Texas(x2), Western State an Emory.

[John Steele]

I can’t get the podcasts to play yet, but I’m glad LST is doing this. It’s a nice selection of lawyers and I hope it adds value.

In response to the comment above by anon, it’s important to note that there are law professors in the USA and abroad who study what ordinary lawyers do all day, how they interact with clients, etc. You can meet them at LSA and ILEC conferences, among other places. Or you can read the volume edited by Leslie Lavin and Lynn Mather (Lawyers in Practice: Ethical Decision Making in Context (Chicago Series in Law and Society)). Some of those professors have also done detailed studies of how lawyers behave in law firm settings (and not just big law) and one of those professors, Elizabeth Chambliss, has been cited by appellate courts in the cases dealing with assertions of intra-firm privilege against current clients.

Some of them have panels in law school with practicing lawyers so that students will better understand what a lawyer’s life is like, much like the LST project (which is widely accessible to students and applicants too). We had an LSA panel chaired by John Conley on how to do those panels well. It's my understanding that a lot of schools do that now. At Indiana there is a big program with mandatory attendance for 1Ls.

[Kyle McEntee]

As with FE, I can't tell if anon@1:26's comments are aimed at LST, but we're going to try very hard to keep our percentages in line with reality. So biglaw will not get the focus -- indeed, I don't want more than 10-15% of our interviews to be biglaw. Episode #10 is e-discovery at a large firm, but that doesn't count towards that % fyi.

In addition to the schools mentioned above, the first 12 episodes will be rounded out with graduates from UVA, Pitt, WashU, Vanderbilt, and University of Washington. As with geographic, practice, and every other type of diversity, we'll focus on providing a balance of school diversity.

[Derek Tokaz]

I think one of the great disservices to law students (and to most students in any field, really) is that careers are often presented as just two or three plot points. "John went to law school, now he's a partner at a firm." "Ted also went to law school but chose a different path. Now he's manager of a major league baseball team." What isn't told is the narrative. "John went to a good but sub-T14 school, and made Law Review. He interviewed with 30 large firms in New York, got call backs at 6, and an offer with 2. After putting in 10 years there, he realized he'd hit a wall and wasn't likely to make partner, or if he did, he'd be stuck in the service partner track. So, he lateraled to a smaller firm where he'd earn less, but have better prospects for advancement." "Before Ted went to law school, he spent 3 years in the minor leagues, and 6 years in the majors. Then he went to law school part-time, while working as an assistant coach for a major league team."

Even though everyone's mileage will vary, hearing all the steps someone went through really helps to drive home an idea about what it's like to go on that path, rather than having it as a nebulous journey that just kinda happens on its own.

[John Steele]

Derek, when I do panels like that I always end with, "as concretely as possible, including telling us when you arrived at work, how you ate lunch, who you interacted with, and when you went home, tell us what you do in a typical day." When I forget to ask that question the students often jump in and ask it.

[Derek Tokaz]

John,

While I'm sure some people write it off just a fluff question, you can learn a lot about someone's day to day life just by asking what they've had to eat. When I was an associate there were a lot of sandwiches from the closest deli, and pizza from Two Boots in Grand Central. Dinner was often delivery sushi (either on a client's dime or my own, depending on the day). As an adjunct professor, my last meal was Hamburger Helper, because the first pay day isn't until Feb 12, 5 weeks into the semester. I almost never snack on days when I'm on campus because the campus grocery store (read: Bodega + Subway) marks everything up 100%.

Again, mileage will vary a lot based on location and personal preferences, but it can give you an idea of how long the hours are, their predictability, if they leave you lacking either the time or energy to cook for yourself. It can also give a good sense of the general misery level associated with a job. Long hours and you eat frozen dinners every night is far different from long hours but you go out to a 9pm dinner at a fancy restaurant after work.

[Deborah Merritt]

I serve as one of the moderators for these podcasts and, thanks to Kyle's pre-production preparation and post-recording technical skills (magically, none of us ever say "um" or "uh"!), I think they're pretty good. I've been fascinated by the detail that the lawyers offer. Kyle's practice of talking with the guests before the recorded program gives them a chance to think of relevant stories. And then Kyle's post-recording edits produce a much tighter presentation than in the usual live interview.

In addition to other uses, I recommend using these podcasts to complement law school courses. Students will get some lively detail that puts the appellate case law in context. Every Torts student really should hear how Tricia Dennis works up a personal injury case. The lawyers in these podcasts don't dismiss law school preparation, but they help students see how much more there is to law practice--and that, depending on your particular interests, practice can be an exciting place.

I've posted a little more about this at LawSchoolCafe.org.