There’s a mini meme sweeping through the MILPs (Mothers In the Legal Profession). The meme is to talk about why we went to law school, and whether we recommend it for others. I’m perhaps not the best person to postulate on this stuff, since I haven’t started working yet – so I don’t know if mine is a success story or not. But I know considerably more about this situation (and myself) than I did in 2009, so what the heck. Here’s my take.
In 2009 I was in my fourth year of working in an untenable job. I’ve already password protected or deleted most of the posts I wrote while I was working there. I think it’s wise to leave that stuff in the past – all I’ll say is I still sometimes think I need therapy to process everything that went on there. I was in a very extreme situation that had to change. I tried very hard to find work in the same field (of Human Resources), but between the recession, my being shackled to a fellow professional with his own geographic limitations*, and an unplanned pregnancy (ever interviewed while heavily pregnant? how about in a manufacturing setting in a rural community? they laugh you out of the room), I was unable to get out into a new job. I was willing to take a step down, in both authority and pay – willing to take a step UP if somebody would let me! – but it was the beginning of this terrible recession, and my resume was one of hundreds and thousands on each hiring manager’s desk. I only got a handful of interviews, and all of those jobs (also in manufacturing) would almost certainly have put me in a similar situation anyway.
Meanwhile, several things put law school on my radar. Some of these are ridiculous, but I swore I’d be honest with you. The first small thing was that I read a detective series by Margaret Maron which follows the hijinks (professional, personal, and crime-solving) of an awesome female lawyer-cum-judge named Deborah Knott. (She lives in North Carolina in the area where I used to live, which is why I LOVE this series.) This was clearly fiction, but still – reading about a lawyer’s day pricked my ears. Like Deborah, I’m good at a mile wide and an inch deep (this is probably why I struggled in my Masters program, which requires the opposite). I work best on lots of different projects that are in different stages of maturity. I work best when I am totally flexible and can come and go as I please (within the limits of the work demands, of course!) Deborah had all these things in her (admittedly fictional) job.
The second small thing was that I received tons of working mom magazines at this time, and almost all of them listed law firms and law jobs as best for working moms because of their flexibility. In addition to the flexible schedule (you have to work a zillion hours, but you can also leave the office for a kid function pretty easily), many Big Law firms had excellent benefits and maternity leaves at this time. (The Great Recession has since killed many of those, as it has for pretty much every field.) Even Fortune Magazine, Business Weekly, and many of the other HR and business mags that I saw would routinely include several law firms in their Top 100 Places to Work lists. My former workplace would easily have fallen on the Worst 100 Places to Work, and I was really worried about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire with a new job. It seemed that I had a better chance of having personal satisfaction at a law job than I would in a manufacturing environment. I also knew that the law would probably be just as sexist and non-mom-friendly as most other fields – but that there was no WAY it could POSSIBLY be as bad as manufacturing, which is a very conservative industry and way behind the curve in this arena. I think I maybe could have had it worse if I was trying to work on an oil rig . . . but otherwise, my old job was as bad as it gets.
Thirdly, I was making this decision around the time of the last primaries and the presidential election. I surveyed the women of the field. I was more impressed by women with law degrees than those without, and felt a kind of obligation to be a well educated and smart female voice in my community.
Fourthly – and I recognize that this is silly – I thought that perhaps I’d be less likely to encounter the dismissive and demeaning behavior that was a regular part of my working day if people thought I was a lawyer and were afraid of me being able to sue them. There’s a power dynamic at play, and I wanted to adjust the scales a bit.
The final reason, the one that was The Actual Reason, was that a quick glance at law school statistics showed that most graduates were employed within 9 months of graduation, and most of those employed were making $150,000 or more. My husband and I were already deep into student loan debt. I hated the thought of keeping the status quo – which is to say, leaving home at 7 am, driving an hour and a half to my awful job and dropping my lovely kid off at daycare on the way, working til 5:30, driving an hour and a half home, being too exhausted to enjoy my child when I got home at 7 or so, and still having to make dinner, tidy the house, prep the daycare bags for the next day, do laundry, blah blah blah. Making what I made, and working as far from home as I worked, I was spending no time with my kid, and having pretty much no money to show for it after loan payments came out. If I could make six figures and live close to work, I could pay down those loans aggressively, and we would have some chance of perhaps possibly one day in the very distant future having the possibility of not being weighed down by the load of a home-mortgage’s worth of debt. I could also afford the kind of support services that I think all working moms would love – saving me precious weekend and evening time to be able to enjoy my children and relax (rather than get the laundry and dishes caught up). I now know, of course, that the school employment statistics I was looking at are total BS. But at the time, I was still just messing around, only 10% serious, so a quick look is all I gave.
So anyway, things were coming to a head at work, and I got job rejection after job rejection, and I remember tentatively mentioning to my husband during a long drive one day that I was thinking about escaping my job by heading to law school. I just wanted to ponder the possibility, I said. He was enthusiastic. I decided to do more research. It was mid-November. Within a matter of minutes of googling I learned there was only one more chance to take the LSAT in order to get scores in enough time to go to law school the next fall. (I could not have lasted longer than that at my job, I’m telling you now.) That chance was two weeks away.
I shrugged and signed up for the LSAT. I’m good at standardized tests, and I did well on this one. (If I hadn’t done well, that would have been the end of that road, and I’d have thought up some other way out of hell.)
I hurriedly applied to a handful of schools – all in cities where my husband was applying for jobs. We agreed that I’d only go if I got a full scholarship. We weren’t willing to add significant amounts to our student loan debt. Making six figures wouldn’t help our dire student loan situation if we doubled down on the debt to get there! At this point, it was still kind of a lark. The expenditure on the LSAT and apps was minimal. I wasn’t committed.
Then I got a full scholarship at two schools, and suddenly this was real. And the thought of having an end date for my terrible job was just like a million angels singing the Hallelujah Chorus while I lounged on a beach and sipped martinis and also lots of other positive and excellent imagery. I was drunk on the possibility of Getting Out. I read about a zillion blogs on why you shouldn’t go to law school, started reading all of the MILPs blogs, read Planet Law School II, and in spite of all they said I made the decision. By this time I knew the real (dire) employment statistics for lawyers, but I didn’t care. I had faith in my ability to work it out, and also pinned a lot of hopes on the recession ending while I was in.
After a few more awful days at work, we decided to take the leap. We decided that I’d figure out during my first year of school whether I liked being a lawyer or not. If not, I wasn’t paying tuition, so no harm done. I’d have gotten out of my awful job, and I could start looking for another immediately upon the realization that the law sucks. But if it didn’t suck - well then, I’d keep going.
I liked it. I stayed.
So, three years later, I did find that job. It was largely luck, and willingness to move to a small sleepy southern city that many of my (much younger) fellow students would rather die than live in. I worked hard, too, but a lot of people work just as hard or harder than I, and still don’t get this outcome. If I had it to do again, I’m telling you truly I think I’d research nursing school. I love the law – I really do! The research, the writing, the arguing before a judge – it’s all great.** It suits my skill set to a tee. I think I’m going to love my law job. But nurses are in demand, whereas lawyers are a dime a dozen. Also, I think nursing school is shorter, cheaper, and where you go doesn’t much matter. And nurses can pick their hours, whereas there isn’t a real part time (or even normal 40-hours-per-week) job option for lawyers. At least not one that isn’t hugely, almost unfathomably competitive.*** (Congrats to our own LL for making that dream come true!) The thought of being in demand, for the first time in my working life, is a dizzying thought. But that’s not the road I chose, and I’m darn committed to this one. I’m done getting degrees. I’ve chosen my career. I’m lucky enough that I was able to get a job doing it, at a firm that I love and (just as importantly) has TONS of work.
A lot of my story involves luck, and not diligent research. It was luck that I got scholarships (I think the fact that I applied late in the cycle helped, as schools had already received lots of rejections). It was luck that I liked what I was doing, even though I had never had much experience in law before. It was luck that I got a great job when so few people do. It was luck that the job is within a 2 hour drive of my husband’s great job. Most people going to law school would not be so lucky.
So if you’re thinking about it – think very hard. I’m almost inclined to say that unless you are absolutely certain this is the life you want and no other will do, then do NOT go to law school for full price. If you can’t get a significant break on your tuition, don’t go. Even if you love your job, you’ll hate the loan payments. They will bring you DOWN, man, big style. There are lots of other paths to pursue, paths that aren’t crowded with zillions of other jobless individuals with qualifications as good as yours or better. It isn’t easy to get a job in any field right now, but the surplus of lawyers is not a fiction – it’s a real problem, and with like five new law schools being built right now, it ain’t a problem that’s going to go away anytime soon. Think HAAAAAARD before you go.
But if it’s your dream and you’re willing to work like crazy, don’t let me talk you out of it.
Signed – me, at 10pm, about to go off and do about 3 hours’ work on assignments, because sometimes law school BLOWS.
*happily shackled, of course, but being a wedded pair of professionals does limit one’s own career in certain ways.
**at my firm, first-years argue motions and take depositions. Somehow, I landed at Medium Law, where I get the decent salary and also am not relegated to doc review for six years. Again with the LUCK LUCK LUCK.
***Also, I never want to move again, not ever never never. And I’d almost certainly have to move to get one of these way competitive in-house jobs.