“Transitions” is the perfect theme for this month’s round of contributions if, like me, you’re a recent law school graduate. Many law school graduates around the country are facing an economic environment they didn’t anticipate when they began law school. Some graduates had been planning on becoming an attorney even before they began their undergraduate education — before most people saw the Great Recession coming. There is quite a bit of uncertainty among recent graduates, especially those who don’t have permanent employment lined up after the bar exam. Some graduates have families to think about and most have loans to repay. It can be a scary time to be in transition.
It’s helpful to remember, though, that this is a period of transition rather than an end. Many graduates fall into the trap of thinking of this period as the end of one thing (law school) and the beginning of another (unemployment). We’ve identified ourselves as being law students for the past few years, a title that allows us to be held in somewhat high esteem among our friends and family. Now we worry that those friends and family will see us as something different: unemployed. “A lot of good law school did you,” we’re afraid they’ll say, “you chose to rack up tens of thousands of dollars in student loans only to graduate without a job.”
But what if we thought about it differently? What if rather than being the end of one period of our lives followed by another we saw it as transitioning from being a law student to becoming a lawyer? That’s actually the practical effect of what’s happening, anyway. We can’t graduate and automatically begin practicing law. We have to first study for, then pass our state bar exams. Only then does anybody know whether or not he has a job. Getting an offer from a big firm doesn’t help much if you can’t get licensed to practice in your state.
What I’m getting at is that having a “job” is different than being a “lawyer.” Most law students don’t want to graduate law school and find a job. We want to graduate law school and become lawyers. It’s the natural progression of things, the most logical transition. Fortunately, being a lawyer doesn’t require us to have a “job.”
You see, in other fields jobs depend on somebody else having the ability to hire. For instance, a meteorologist needs a weather center in order to do his job, a teacher needs a school, a stock broker needs a brokerage, and so on. A person can’t do his job without somebody else letting them.
As we’ve said, though, being a lawyer is different than having a job. We don’t need to depend on somebody else to allow us to have the chance to practice law. We give ourselves that chance. We create our own opportunity by graduating law school and passing the bar exam. Once we’re licensed we can do our jobs without getting approval from someone else. Once we’re licensed it’s up to us.
You only need two things to become an attorney. First, you need the drive to succeed. If you’ve made it this far then you already have it. Second, you need training. When it comes time to get sworn in, you’ll have that too.
Don’t get tied up in “getting a job.” Getting a job isn’t what we went to law school for. We wanted more than that, remember? We went to law school to become lawyers and that’s what we’ll be a few months from now. Lawyers are always employed, no matter if you work in a big law firm or out of a home office. We work for our clients. We work for justice. But that doesn’t mean we have to work for somebody else.