The Waiting Room

Pi, Kiss My Mike and others have asked me to write about why I gave up being a lawyer. I have given the abbreviated version in some posts, but here’s the full story.

It has been 10 years since I graduated from law school. For as long as I can remember, I loved the law. I always wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer. I wanted to help people who could not help themselves. I started as a pre-law major in college. Some family members discouraged me from entering the profession. I was told that it would be ‘too hard” and I would not be successful. I bought into the garbage that my family spooned me. So I switched my major to education.

After college, I married Husband and earned a Master’s in my content area, With the help of Husband and a good therapist, I decided that it was time for me to do what is right for me and no one else. I was happier and emotionally health so why not. I applied to law school and was accepted. It was tough, but I loved the intellectual challenge. I enjoyed my courses and my professors. Thankfully, I did not have any professors like Professor Kingsfeld from the Paper Chase! I took all the traditional bar exam courses, plus a few criminal law courses. I also clerked for a solo practitioner who handled criminal matters for indigent persons.

One of the things that law school did not prepare me for was the bar exam. The bar exam was the hardest thing I ever had to encounter. I had to take it a few times. This was extremely frustrating, because I had always been successful academically. But for some reason, I could not pass this stupid test. Part of the problem was that I am such a perfectionist. I had to learn that for this one time in my life, it was perfectly acceptable to earn a “D”. Once I grasped that, I passed and was admitted to practice.

It did not take very long for me to find a job. In my zeal to find employment and to start paying off the student loan debt, I took the first offer. My first job was with a small law firm that handled personal injury claims on behalf of insurance companies. It was not criminal practice and it certainly was not helping those that needed help. But unlike most people who start out as lawyers, I was not relegated to doing research. Since the firm was small, the partners wanted the associates to get their feet wet as soon as possible. Three months into my first job, I was handling depositions and motions on my own. So even though I was not doing what I really wanted, I was gaining valuable experience.

The job was like any other lawyer job; long hours and crappy pay. But I was doing what I wanted and I enjoyed doing it. Then one day, as I was getting ready for work, I got a phone call from Angry Partner. He said that my services were no longer needed and he hung up the phone. I was shocked. I did not think I had done anything that would result in my being fired. About five minutes latter, Know It All Partner called and explained that he, Socialite Partner and Angry Partner had a falling out and Angry Partner quit. He and Socialite Partner could not keep all the associates, so one of us had to go. Since I was the last one in, I would be the first to go.

I was out of a job. But that did not last long.

Stay tuned for Part Two!