From Student to Lawyer: The Transition to the Real World

I've been out of law school for about a year and half and I can honestly say that nothing in law school prepared me for life afterwards. Okay maybe not nothing (sorry for the use of a double negative), but few things prepared me for some of the things that I did face after I took the bar, packed up my apartment, and moved back to my home city into an affordable apartment with no job and anxiety about the future.

When you graduate you are studying for the bar exam, looking for a job or getting ready to start one, your loans are still in deferment and life is basically at that stage of transition.

I paid rent in law school out of the abundance of loans, I didn't really budget or anything like that. It wasn't until after law school when I was unemployed for a few months, that I knew what it was really like to struggle, to budget, and to cut corners to make ends meet. I sold books and cds to make money while waiting for job interviews.

With this economy I understand that many law students, recent graduates, and newly minted lawyers are worried about their job prospects. My advice: Be wise and creative and take any job that pays the bills. You can always transfer or move to a new position once better opportunities arise. I know I got desperate and started applying for internships and temp positions with temp agencies. You can even ask if any law professors need research done and see if the law school would be willing to pay.

Eventually times will get better and more jobs will be available for lawyers. In the meantime, you may have to take a non-legal position or a job that pays less than you want. Just make the best of whatever job you do get, shine in that job, and learn from every experience, because that's what will make you a better employee and a better job candidate in the future.

This post feels rather rambly! Let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Also now I do have a full-time job with benefits! Nope, it doesn't pay as well as I would like, but I am gaining valuable experience and learning a lot. I was unemployed several months after law school and that was not fun at all and I had to live a different lifestyle in order to survive. Now that all my loans are coming due, I also have to be careful and budget so that I can make my payments. This is the real world! I no longer live off borrowed money. Furthermore, God was in control of this situation the whole time. Even though I did have to cut back on spending, I always had enough to pay my rent and utilities, buy groceries, and get the necessities. He took care of me and continues to and I'll trust Him to do what's best.

If you are in law school, please be wise about how much you borrow. Just because you can borrow the maximum amount, don't unless you really need to, because you will end up paying that back three times over! Try not to live to frivolously in law school, because again you will end up paying for it for many years, maybe even 20-25 years! Do you really want to be paying off your 2008 Spring Break Trip in 2038!!

Anyway, this is just my unsolicited advice. Good luck for all you job hunters out there and for those of you who have a job, consider yourselves blessed!

Also check out some books that offer advice and tips for transitioning from law student to lawyer!


-The Legal Career Guide, Fifth Edition: From Student to Lawyer
-The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law
-A Lawyer's Guide to Networking
-What Can You Do With a Law Degree?: A Lawyer's Guide to Career Alternatives Inside, Outside & Around the Law

Round & About

1) Using facebook to capture criminals.

2) Teacher-student sex ban doesn't apply at 18.

3) "Los Angeles Police Department fingerprint examiners who falsely implicated at least two people in crimes have been linked to nearly 1,000 other criminal cases that authorities say must now be reviewed to ensure that similar errors weren't made.">Los Angeles Police Department fingerprint examiners who falsely implicated at least two people in crimes have been linked to nearly 1,000 other criminal cases that authorities say must now be reviewed to ensure that similar errors weren't made."

4) "Speaking before the annual meeting of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association, Watkins acknowledged his strategy of overturning other prosecutors' work hasn't won him any popularity contests in his field – 'though politically, personally ... I get on TV just about every night.'"

Explanations - Speech Patterns

At various times in my career I've noticed that I fall into speech patterns. As a defense attorney there were certain explanations that I found to work and continued to use. However, I do wonder if they would work for defendants here in Appalachia as well as they did for the city kids whom I was defending. Anyway, there are two patterns I have fallen into using as a prosecutor, one with victims and the other with defense attorneys.

Victims: Hammer

Victims come in with varying degrees distress and all sorts of expectations, hopes, and demands as to what prosecution should accomplish. Consequently, I've had to come up with a way to describe what I can actually do and the "hammer" explanation seems to work most of the time.

"You've got to understand, I can only do certain things. In fact, I can only really do two things. I can send someone to jail or get them put on probation. I can't fix them or condemn their soul. The Commonwealth of Virginia has given me a hammer and it's not the perfect tool for all situations. All I can do is hit them over the head if they do the wrong thing. I can't make things right, all I can do is punish and hope the message gets through so he, or others, don't do it again."

Of course, the explanation varies from person to person, depending on their state of mind and ability to comprehend. I sometimes use a whack-a-mole analogy, but I worry that too many people won't remember what whack-a-mole was. All in all, this seems to be an explanation that works. Everybody knows what a hammer is and that it only really has one use - to hit something.

Defense Attorneys: My Job to be Obstinate

Then there's a phrase that I find myself using with the defense attorneys. Usually, it's during an equity negotiation (facts not in dispute, just trying to figure out proper punishment). There comes that point in the negotiation where we are talking about different people. The defense attorney is talking about the mother of two who needs to keep her job and has a lortab addiction she needs help kicking. I'm talking about the person who has six misdemeanor convictions in the last 3 years and has been caught shoplifting from the Wal*Mart the 4th time.

"Sorry, Bob, but some times it's just my job to be obstinate. This is the best offer I'm going to make."

There are variations on this as well. On Monday, I found myself saying that "sometimes it's my job to be the bad guy" (I blame Edintally for that). It's a polite way to end the conversation and state your final position. Usually it means we part ways amicably, agreeing to disagree, and move on with whatever comes next. I'm sure there are other ways to do the same thing; it's just a pattern I've noticed myself adopting over time.

Now Starts the 7th Year

6 years of the various incarnations of CrimLaw have gone by. Tried all sorts of other online projects at the same time, but this is the one that has stuck. Why? Not sure, but I think this blogging stuff is more addictive than crack.

I look forward to afflicting another year on those of you masochistic enough to read my rambling. ;-)

The Young Criminal Lawyer: What Path to Take?

Edintally, one of the more interesting recent commenters, dropped me a couple emails asking as to my status (prosecutor or defense attorney?). When I clarified that I'd been a defense attorney and moved over to prosecutor he allowed as how he had never heard of someone doing that before.

And that's a shame. Not his fault, but I think it's symptomatic of a failing we have in our system. For some reason, we seem to think people should choose a side and stay there. That's just wrong. Long term practice on one side only tends to lead to the kind of bunker mentality we see all too often wherein both sides dig in, see everything the other side does as motivated by pure evil, and lob invectives (or worse, dirty tricks) at each other.

So, here's my suggestion to those of you interested in starting a career in criminal law. I know that no one will listen to me, but I think the world would be a better place if they did. Whichever side you feel are "the good guys", start on the other. Practice there not for 6 months - or even 2 years; practice there for at least five years - enough time that it becomes second nature. Then flip sides. Stay there for at least 3 years. Then put some serious thought into where you want to put your efforts.

As you might guess, this somewhat mirrors my journey, except for the fact that not having planned on becoming a criminal lawyer I didn't have strong feelings as to which side I'd start on. I applied for jobs both at Commonwealth Attorney offices and Public Defenders. Then I started my own practice doing court appointed work, built it up and eventually folded it (out of business reasons and wanting to move closer to where I grew up) and joined a prosecutor's office on the far end of the State. I consider my path something of a happy accident. However, that's not why I commend it to you.

Part of what makes anyone a good attorney is understanding the problems, motivations, and mindset of the attorney on the other side. No matter how smart you are, you cannot do this without walking that mile in the other guy's moccasins. I'm sure you think you can. In fact, I'm fairly certain that I'll get comments from people telling me they've observed the other side for years and they don't need to live it to understand it. They're wrong. There will always be issues you'll never know, priorities which you'll never suss out, and problems you'll never even have heard about if you haven't been there yourself.

Personally, my hope is that working both sides will lead a person to have more loyalty to the system than a side. That's not to say I don't expect people to play their part in the system to the fullest extent of their ability. The system doesn't work if they don't. Still, all this silliness about being at "war" with the other side tends to come from "True Believers" and True Believers tend to come from people who have never seen and don't understand the other side. It's not a war, it's a test. Those who have worked on both sides usually understand this and the prejudices, priorities, and anxieties of the other side. I'd go so far as to say, if you couldn't do either job in a manner meant to lead to justice you should seriously consider doing neither.

Comment Cavalcade (3):Denying the Immorality of Pleading Not Guilty to an Offense Committed

More Commentary:

It is not possible to plead not guilty when one is guilty because one is not guilty until the government lawyers have proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.

It is the right of every American to force the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, no matter what the particular circumstances might be.

Yes, that would be the correct if my discussion was about civil rights and criminal procedure, instead of personal moral responsibility. As I stated in the initial post, the system doesn't care about the defendant's personal moral responsibility as it relates to his plea and the guilt/innocence part of the trial. Nevertheless, the fact that we have chosen as a society to implement a criminal justice system based upon the idea that "it is better that 10 (Blackstone) or 100 (Franklin) guilty go free rather than one innocent be jailed" does not speak to the personal morality of the defendant's plea. A system based upon the principle above and having infinite resources and time would ideally forgo a plea and try each defendant to force the prosecution to prove his case. Of course, the system does not have infinite resources and time.

If one person pleads guilty, he permits the government to throw more resources at its other cases. The government prosecutes factually guilty people and factually innocent people. It can’t tell the difference. The more resources the government throws at a case, the more likely it is to convict that accused. So by pleading guilty the factually guilty accused makes it more likely that a factually innocent person will be convicted. That sounds immoral to me.

I'm pretty sure that Mark's tweaking me with this one because I just can't see him advising his client "Yeah, Bob, I know they're offering you 5 years on a murder charge despite having video tape of you doing it and your admission of the crime to 17 people before the police even arrested you. However, you need to think about how many resources the State will have to waste on you instead of on other people charged with crimes. The State might not have enough resources to convict an innocent man if you plead not guilty and make them waste those resources. It's the right thing to do." I'm sure he'd love for all you other defense attorneys to do that so there are less resources to be used against his clients, but I don't see him doing that to his. Nevertheless, let's assume his client came to that thought all by himself. Would he be correct? Would it be moral to plead not guilty because it would make it harder to convict an innocent person?

No. Well, it would be if that was as far as it goes. However, there's a pretty obvious flaw not addressed in the model set out by Mark. By pleading not guilty a defendant takes away resources from cases in which the defendant did it. No matter how you look at the criminal justice system there are far more people in the system who did what they are accused of than didn't. So, if a plea of not guilty by a murderer makes it 5% less likely that the prosecution is able to convict the next 10 murderers and 9 of them are factually guilty then the initial defendant has done more harm than good. So, instead of being just individually morally wrong the defendant is also wrong for the extenuated damage he has done to society.

Comment Cavalcade (2): On Laws

Riffing off of more comments:

"Speeding" is immoral?

Is setting the speed limit unreasonably low so that all traffic is "speeding" in order to write more tickets immoral? After installing a red-light camera at an intersection the politicians and bureaucrats have been known to shorten the yellow cycle in order to raise more revenue from "violators" even though the shorter yellow cycle increases accidents. Is that moral?

What is immoral is creating a dangerous situation for others. If politicians and bureaucrats had a sense of shame it might be immoral to speed because the speed limit would be set and enforced solely for safety reasons. But that is not the case and it never will be.

and

I just can't agree that all laws deserve our deference. At least not at all times.
......
Of course, in the end, our legal system breaks down to "might makes right." So ignoring a law which should not exist can bring consequences.

That still doesn't make the law right. And, for some people, it still doesn't justify giving it deference.

Yes, speeding is immoral, it and all other laws are due deference, and we all give them deference (if for no other reason then we have to). The deference is, at its base, because we are the ones responsible for our laws. We vote our lawmakers into office. We either vote into office the judges who are the gatekeepers or we vote into office the people who choose the judges. Laws cannot be without, at the very least, the acquiescence of the majority of us. And, while the majority of a town may approve their council passing laws to create speed traps the town council can't do so unless allowed to do so by the county, the State, and the federal government (in other words, the rest of us voting citizens).

That does not mean that breaking a law is not justified if there is a superior moral claim. This can be a claim that the law is immoral, such as suffrage laws denying people the vote, or an individualized claim, such as speeding to get a dying person to the hospital. Laws can and should be challenged when perceived to be in error. However, if we choose not to give deference to the law at all, then there is no reason to follow it, except for the claim of enforcement by force.

Of course, there is always some level of force to law enforcement. A minority of people will violate the law of the majority whether it has a justifiable reason or not. Saying "Pretty-please with sugar on top, don't drive 65 mph in front of the elementary school while kids are there" isn't going to stop such people. The threat and actuality of enforcement will decrease the number of people violating a law. The question is whether enforcement and/or resistence to it is just/moral.

I don't think we can limit the morality of the law to approve only laws which "creat[e] a dangerous situation for others" unless we widen our definition of "dangerous situation." If we are limiting it to a proximate cause /immediately dangerous situation that ignores long-term needs and effects. Sometimes, other necessities mandate an enforceable law. For instance, were OPEC to embargo the US the speed limit might be lowered because of the necessity of reducing the demand for gasoline. There's no immediate danger to individuals. Nevertheless, there is a danger for great, long-term damage to society as a whole. That law is, IMO, just.

So then, where exactly are the lines for just/unjust laws and just/unjust violations? I'm not sure exactly. Some day I may sit down and write my magnum opus, The Unified CrimLaw Just Law Theory. It'll be one of those 200 page books which law profs praise, people put on their shelves to show their sophistication, and nobody reads. Until then we are all just going to have to muddle through. :-)