The farther I get into law school, the harder it gets to avoid the reality that, at some point, my education will end. And at that point the real world will begin. The real world will of course include bar prep, the bar exam, and some type of employment: unemployment, funemployment, part-time employment, under-employment, non-legal employment, or the elusive and mystical fulltime legal employment.
As that finish line inches ominously closer, I find myself in more and more conversations with friends and family and random strangers about what I’m going to do next. They ask what I want to do when I graduate, what kind of law I want to practice, what my plan is. Seven months ago, I didn’t know how to answer their questions. I still don’t.
My friends from undergrad ask, their parents ask, family friends ask, the dentist asks, the nurses at the doctor’s office ask, the barista handing me a caramel latte asked. A woman I’ve never seen before in my life asked while I was at Walgreens having my picture taken for the bar exam admission form.
I appreciate their interest, their attempts at making conversation about something so relevant and important to my life. I don’t appreciate how their interest forces me to acknowledge something I’d rather ignore: that I don’t have a plan, can’t have a plan, until I have a job. And that whole getting a job thing is a little tricky right now. If at first you don’t succeed, apply, apply, and apply again?
You’d think that in the last 3 years, at some point, I’d have developed some answer for this, some way to handle it with poise and grace and may even a smile. Nope. I have two responses, and neither of them comes out well.
The first goes like this:
Them: “What kind of law do you want to practice?”
Me: “Why? Do you have a job for me?” with what I hope is a charming, congenial smile.
It often comes out a little too eager, and more often than that, falls flat.
The second is actually somehow worse, a joke that always comes out just a little too harsh, a little too forced, with no one left listening when I try to explain it later. It goes like this:
Them: “What kind of law do you want to practice?”
Me: “Whatever someone will pay me for!” followed by a forced smile and even more forced laughter.
Followed by a pause that’s just long enough to register as awkward, but not long enough for me to mention employment statistics or the legal market in general. Not that I’d ever succeed at casually mentioning those things anyway.
I’m not saying we’re the first class in history to have a market like this. I’m not trying to suggest that the legal field is uniquely affected and afflicted by the economy. I’m aware that in 2013, more than ever before, we have the internet and electronic communication and all kinds of things that make networking and job searching easier than ever.
All I’m really saying is, when it comes to talking about my post-grad “plan” with anyone not in the legal field, I find it hard to be realistic and honest without sounding jaded or cynical or desperate. And I find it even harder to fake enthusiastic optimism. And I don’t know what to do about any of it.
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