“Not all those who wander are lost.”
My college senior self scoffs at the idea, even now.
After all, my 21 year-old self had a very specific plan to execute: become a lawyer, work for the government for the benefits, make at least $50,000 (yes, I was that specific), get married by 25 and have the first of my three children by age 30.
(If you were wondering, the only things that did occur from my list was that I became a lawyer and started out making 60K – but that’s not the point of this post)
Rather, I want to dispel the myth that you have to know exactly the kind of law you want to practice to become a successful lawyer.
How do I know?
I am your case-in-point.
I came to law school to be an immigration lawyer. (I was inspired by my parents, who were refugees, and I had aspirations of giving back to my Khmer community). So the summer after my 1L year, I volunteered at a non-profit, doing family immigration work. I enjoyed the social work aspect of the job, but the legal part was absolutely boring to me (sorry my immigration friends!).
Maybe I should try the other side?
So half of the summer after my 2L year, I interned at the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services, which further disillusioned me from immigration law. After those two experiences, I decided that immigration work was not what I wanted to do.
Now what?
I hadn’t thought of a Plan B.
What transpired next in my journey can only be called intentional exploration. Basically, if something interested me, I ran it down. Sometimes it consisted of talking to attorneys who practiced in specific areas, but the best form of exploration for me came from doing — interning or clerking if I could, or sometimes juggling a couple of 10-15 hr a week “gigs” just to try it so I could narrow the possibilities and figure out what I wanted to do.
In addition to the experiences referenced above, I have:
- interned for the Texas Supreme Court because I thought I might love appellate law
- combed over hundreds of testing documents at a Plaintiff’s mass toxic tort firm because environmental law sounded interesting (at least I got to meet the real Erin Brokovich!)
- reviewed parts of the Code of Federal Regulations and drafted international trade opinions
- assisted in supplementing an employment law publication for a prominent partner in a Plaintiff’s employment firm
My point is that as a law student, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and it took me exploring various areas for me to finally realize that I wanted to practice employment law.
And while to some, my exploration (and subsequent resume) seemed random, I think that it provided me confidence — confidence in knowing that I could do a lot of different things, but even more importantly, confidence in knowing what I wanted to practice and why.
By the way, it took me about five years after graduation to get there, but that’s a story for another time.
