Solo’s Regret: Wish I Had Taken The Long Term View

When the ABA announced its contest, the game being to write an essay on “What innovation will be most valuable to you in your future practice as a solo practitioner?,” my guess was that it was going to get ugly.  Rarely have I been as happily surprised to be wrong as I was to read the essay by solo Randi Menendez.

Menendez, a business lawyer in San Diego, went from legal assistant at a big firm to solo practitioner. 

Christmas Day, six years ago, I spent my 4,112th hour in the office that year. I was a mere legal assistant at a big-name law firm in Boston, and it was on that day that I realized I could be exactly where I was, doing the exact same thing, only making several times my current salary, if I were a bona fide lawyer.

Like any reasonable person, she asked those around her for advice.  What was the most important factor in deciding what to do?

“The debt!” they exclaimed. “I wouldn’t sacrifice my life, my family, my happiness to take on so much debt!” An acceptance letter to Columbia Law School, they explained, was a beeline for a miserable existence in which one’s soul was sold to Big Firm LLC for a mere $150,000 a year, plus bonus. “Who needs a soul,” one of them quipped, “when you only have a few hours each week to yourself, and those are spent dejected, alone and likely drunk as well?” It was unanimous: Going to a good school was important, but going to a cheap school was paramount.

There was also a lone voice from the corner office telling her not to worry about the debt, but consider the opportunity instead.  She ignored it and  “embraced the admonitions of the younger contingent of Big Firm LLC.” 

In her essay, the innovation Randi would find most valuable is a time machine,

Now, in my third year as a solo practitioner, that seasoned old voice I ignored as a legal assistant is the one I turn to for dependable advice and mentoring. As I listen to his wise and careful words, I contemplate a reality in which I had heeded his advice six years ago and attended a Columbia or a Yale. For my own professional aspirations, I am convinced that I have missed certain invaluable experiences, precious relationships and a myriad of opportunities over the years, due to one crucial decision I made before my career even began.

Of course, there is no such thing as a time machine.  No iPad will help.  There is no “game changer” to allow her a second chance to revisit a decision that was based on short-term myopia of youth, to give her the full wealth of opportunity she could have had if she heeded the advice of the silly old voice from the corner office.

A lot of bandwidth is dedicated to the anger and angst of new lawyers who are saddled with debt and no place to go every morning.  The law is a scam.  Law schools suck.  Lawyers are evil.  It’s certainly a very difficult time for newly-minted lawyers to find employment with Biglaw at big salaries.  Jobs are scarce.  Of course, those complaining have the ability to practice law, but no desire to find anything beyond a well-paying job.  The flip side of the lousy job market is their lousy attitude and lack of interest in actually being lawyers, but they don’t want to hear that.

The adage, you can’t see the forest through the trees, seems particularly applicable.  There are ups and downs to anything, and it can be difficult to see beyond the immediate problem, the one blocking your view of the big picture.  But there is a big picture, nonetheless.  When you’re young, ten years seems like forever.  When you get a bit older, 25 years goes in a flash.  Immediate problems that seemed so overwhelming at the time are just a fond memory, a chuckle in the scheme of things.  Age provides perspective that youth can’t see.

As one of the older guys in the blawgosphere, I’ve offered some views to newer and younger lawyers about what they have to look forward to, what they should concern themselves with now, even though other things appear more important at the moment.  I’ve told them to control their impulses, not to make fools of themselves with silly transient ideas of what’s fun and cool, I’ve seized on Dan Hull’s word, the Slackoisie, to push others to overcome youthful narcissism and entitlement, even though us boomers may be to blame for all that ails them,

Times will get better.  Lawyers aren’t going away.  We won’t be replaced by some shiny, new gadget that you desperately need on your belt or bag to show that you’re hep with the jive.  And then, you will cringe at the choices you make now, the things you say now, the thoughts that you were so certain were absolutely right.  You will wonder why you surrounded yourself with others who confirm your thoughts rather than those who challenge them.  The validation you needed so desperately as a young lawyer will prove empty and meaningless as you develop maturity.

Randi Menendez has cut off opportunity by having listened to the voices of the “younger contingent.”  They were honest to her, but they just didn’t know any better.  The good news is that she still has a wealth of opportunity, even though she will have to struggle a bit more to overcome the advice she took.  But she’s in the game, which is more than can be said for the whiners.  

If only Apple would come up iTime Machine.

27 thoughts on “Solo’s Regret: Wish I Had Taken The Long Term View

  1. Jamison

    While I don’t have the excuse of youth, I myself have made some mistakes as a new solo and blogger that I wish I could take back. I am very much like my children in this regard: You can tell them all you want but sometimes they need to just figure these things out for themselves.

  2. Max Kennerly

    “An acceptance letter to Columbia Law School” is for most of them “a beeline for a miserable existence in which one’s soul was sold to Big Firm LLC for a mere $150,000 a year.” Most of those schools haven’t the faintest clue how to set someone up for anything other than Big Firm or, to a much more limited extent, work as a prosecutor.

    Criminal defense? For losers, unless it’s white collar, which you do after a stint as a prosecutor. Public interest? Uh, well, we have an office for it, but they don’t have any contacts or resources. Why don’t you stop asking about that kind of work and instead focus on your on-campus interview so we can see just which large corporate firm you’ll be at.

    Your career is what you make of it. If he thinks a different school would have magically set him up for sipping Cristal in the Swiss Alps while reflecting upon the truly rewarded work he’s doing for Halliburton and Altria, then he’s missed the point of his experience entirely.

  3. Lee

    That’s atually entirely untrue, Max. Most of the top schools do everything they can to get students to consider public interest work from scholarships to clinics to OCI for public interest to loan forgiveness. The problem, and there are actually two, is that even with some loan forgiveness, etc…making 25-30% of what you could elsewhere is tough to do with 150-250K in debt in your early 20s and, worse, most of the folks who go to these schools do so because they know they’ve punched their golden ticket to the high paying big firm job.

    I went to NYU and paid absolutely no attention to anything but getting a big firm job. I got there and was absolutely miserable. It wouldn’t have mattered much for me if I hadn’t had the tremendous good fortune to receive a full scholarship and, thanks to my parent’s generosity in undergrad, leave law school with almost zero debt. Because I did, I was able to slap on the brakes and become a public defender (with great assistance from NYU’s career services).

    This is why I continue to give friends the same advice Toni got. Go to whichever school will allow you to leave with the least amount of debt. I’m a little over 6 years out of law school and I’m pretty sure nobody, but nobody, gives a flying shit where I went to school. They want to know if I’m a good lawyer.

  4. SHG

    You’ve fallen into the same trap as those who gave the same advice to Randi (who you mistakenly call Toni); You use your own limited experience as the bar for decision making under the assumption that whatever worked for you is what will work for others.  You had the opportunity to decide where to go.  Randi’s point is that she didn’t have that opportunity because of following advice such as you’ve suggested.  It’s great that you found the right niche for yourself, but why would you urge Randi not to have the same opportunity?

    You’re out six years, twice as long as Randi.  When you’ve been out 16 years, do you think you’ll look back and think that you knew everything there was to know?  I’ve been out more than 26 years. I “know” much less now than when I was out only 6.

  5. Justin T.

    “even though us boomers may be to blame for all that ails them”

    I think there’s no question that the boomers are to blame for most the problems of the Slackoisie* (I mean, we didn’t raise ourselves). I also think it’s an entirely futile endeavor to play the blame game. Yes, boomers are to blame for our problems. Now what? It’s still our responsibility to make sure our lives turn out the way we want, and our fault if it doesn’t turn out the way we had hoped.

    *Although I am a member of the “Slackoisie” generation, I recognize that my future and my happiness are directly correlated to the amount of effort I put forth, a concept which seems to elude most of my contemporaries.

  6. Lee

    No, the question is providing yourself the most opportunity. How are you more likely to accomplish that? The prestige and connections of a top school or the freedom of being as close to debt free as possible? I believe the latter, based on personal experience and the experiences of others. I sincerely doubt that my mind will change about this in 20 years, but I suppose it might.

    Incidentally, until I got the scholarship from NYU, I had the same decision to make and was going to make the opposite decision from Randi, I was going to go to the expensive big name school without aid. I figured I’d make it up in earnings. What I didn’t think about then was that I would be locked in to making it up in earnings. I would not, financially, have been able to make the career change I did had I done so. That would have been an opportunity I would have missed.

    You can’t proscribe people giving advice until they’re 30 years into a career, Scott. It doesn’t make any sense, especially because the situation I dealt with 6 years ago is a lot closer to those of people currently facing the choice than the situation you dealt with back during prohibition when you started law school.

  7. BRIAN TANNEBAUM

    And then there are those children who never grow up and keep talking as if they have any clue what they are talking about or think that others should listen to what they have to say, all the while never realizing that they are merely fueled by those who tell them they are of some value.

  8. John R.

    This may seem paradoxical, but you might entertain the thought that you should make other people’s happiness, and not your own, the primary concern. The idea is that when you stop consciously trying to be happy you might actually become happy.

    Happiness is the by-product of practicing virtue. I think Aristotle said that.

  9. SHG

    The cost of an education, amortized over a lifetime, looks trivial from this side of the divide.  It gets paid off.  The cost of lost opportunity is never recaptured. 

    I don’t proscribe people giving advice until they’re 30 years out.  I can’t proscribe anyone doing much of anything.  What I can do is warn about seeing the forest through the trees.  Maybe some with 6 years out will step back a bit after some thought.  Maybe they will stare intently at the tree and keep insisting that he knows what he sees.  I can only offer my view, for what it’s worth.

  10. SHG

    It’s no crime to seek happiness in one’s life.  Where that’s found is another matter about which people will differ.

  11. Lee

    So humble and self-deprecating. You remind me of a guy i know from Connecticut.

    The real place we differ is that I don’t think the big name schools offer a whole lot more in terms of opportunity, unless the opportunity you seek is to go be a big law slave. I’ve offered a concrete example of an opportunity I would have missed had I been saddled with debt. You’ve offered vague rhetoric about seeing the forest and unspecified missed opportunities.

  12. mirriam

    I too went to the school that gave me a full scholarship. I have some debt, but not what others have. There are times I wish I would’ve gone to the Ivy league big money school, but at the end of the day I think I’m right where I am supposed to be. For better or worse.

    I do wonder, though, at what advice I would give to someone who had to make that choice. I think I’d go with the better ranked school.

  13. SHG

    Humble and self-deprecating is a wonderful rhetorical trick, even if when it’s utter horseshit.  See how I’m still learning?

    As for opportunities, I trust you don’t require concrete examples to understand the concept.  Playing dumb is a great trick as well.  But just in case, I’ll give you an example.  Not too long ago, I was approached by a white shoe law firm inquiring about my interest in joining their white collar criminal defense team, as they were looking for some lateral talent to bolster their “paper talent” of former AUSAs.  I have no problem earning Biglaw PPP while having minions carrying my bag for me, so I said, “sure”. 

    The next day, I was told that my law school didn’t suffice.  Ridiculous that decades later, anyone would care what school I went to, but someone did.  And that, Lee, is why I still have to work for a living.

  14. BRIAN TANNEBAUM

    About 10 years ago a statewide firm of whom a up and coming senior associate was my good friend in college and law school asked me if I was interested in his firm. He knew of my still young but good reputation here in Miami and they were looking to build the office here. I wasn’t interested because first, it was a civil firm, and second, because after he approached me, and sought my interest, he asked me if I had above a 3.0 average in law school.

    I didn’t. The conversation ended.

    Schools, grades, they’re great for jobs, not careers. I recommend great schools for those that are going to law school to get a “good job.” For those who want to build a career as a lawyer, and can bootstrap their way into a great profession, it’s less relevant.

  15. Lee

    I imagine that they didn’t wait till after talking to you about the job to find out where you went to school. It was probably a cover story because they didn’t like your proletariat mustache.

  16. BRIAN TANNEBAUM

    Actually, according to some of the social media for lawyers marketers, there is a way to calculate my GPA to get it to a 3.0, but it will cost me $299 a month for 3 months to get the formula.

    And you told me that I could comment here when I told you I wasn’t on law review.

  17. mirriam

    Was there a law review requirement on here at one point? Shit, you’d have uh, two commentators, commentors? commentions if that was a requirement.

  18. Max Kennerly

    Those schools claim to support public interest and claim to have all kinds of networking opportunities for students with that sort of interest. As you admit, you didn’t follow that path, you just heard that NYU supported that path.

    I know dozens of people at Yale, HLS, Columbia, NYU who tried to do public interest. Most were talked out of it by the administration. The handful who wanted to do it got to the lavish public interest offices and were told: “we don’t know how to help you. Send out some resumes or something.”

    And that’s for a field (public interest) with a dedicated office at most 1st and 2nd tier law schools! Outside of public interest, there’s nothing at all. Thus: 90% are shuttled into Big Law, 9% are shuttled into prosecutor’s offices, and 1% do something different.

  19. Lee

    Pay attention: I’M A PUBLIC DEFENDER WHO WENT TO NYU AND HAD LOTS OF HELP FROM NYU WHEN I TRANSITIONED TO PUBLIC INTEREST.

    You speak of things you clearly do not know anything about. Your numbers are made up and entirely wrong.

    I’m done.

  20. Max Kennerly

    At some point long after graduation you “got lots of help” when you transitioned to being a public defender.

    Maybe NYU’s different. I call tell you most aren’t — I estimated the numbers based upon one of HLS’s recent graduating classes, in which I knew a number of the graduates. Out of over 500 graduates, 4 were going into public interest, and the ones I knew personally had to cold-call to get the jobs.

    “Lots of help.”

  21. Ernie Menard

    I think that whether some person that could be accepted at a top tier school to emerge with a load of debt chooses that route or the route of a lesser ranked, less expensive school is so necessarily an individual decision to make there is no good advice; unless the adviser knows beyond a reasonable doubt the person that they are attempting to advise should be able to land a Biglaw job. There are simply far too many factors to give any good blanket advice.

    Taking to task SHG’s rebuttal example of how a law school can affect opportunites far in the future:

    SHG’s personal example is that recently, after years of law practice, he was offered a position or partnership that was rescinded when the school he graduated from became known. Is that the gamble that everyone should take?

    Directly out of law school, prior to the development of his skills and reputation, would SHG have definitely landed a Biglaw job had he applied? Is being hired as an AUSA as difficult as obtaining a Biglaw job? I’m reasonably certain the pay isn’t equal, by far. Further, there seem to be a lot of vacanices at the USDOJ; are there currently that many positions open in Biglaw firms?

    In Randi Menendez’s case, maybe he should’ve went to more of an elite school.

Comments are closed.