Old Lady Lawyer: There’s Nothing Wrong With “Undecided”

It really is okay to be undecided about what kind of law you want to practice.

Ed. note: It’s not the battle of the sexes, but the battle of the ages, between the graying of the legal profession and those lawyers not yet eligible for Medicare or even an AARP membership. Can they co-exist in the legal world’s new normal? Please welcome our newest columnist, Jill Switzer.

I’ve sat on various committees of different kinds over the past few years, discussing the state of legal education and how to best prepare law students and then the brand new baby lawyers for the careers ahead.

One suggestion I’ve heard made on more than one occasion and from more than one source is that law students should decide, while in law school, what field they want to practice in and gear their education (aside from the required courses) toward that end. Really? What are these people thinking? IMHO, that’s like asking a kindergartener to declare a college major, and even many college students, when asked their major, respond “undecided.”

Granted, there are always a few of those precocious law students who know exactly what they want to do and proceed to do exactly that. One of my law classmates, with whom I used to play endless games of dots (if you don’t know what that is, look it up) while in classes, knew that he wanted to represent landlords exclusively in unlawful detainer actions. He and another classmate have done exactly that for their whole careers and been very successful.

Several other classmates knew that they wanted solo practices from the get-go and that’s exactly what they have done. Some lawyers have been at one firm for their entire careers and, if not happy, at least content to go for the ride. However, for the vast unwashed, oops, undecided, figuring out while in law school what you want to do for the next forty or fifty years takes brainpower that should be spent in other ways.

What happens if you decide, while in law school, that you want to be a family law lawyer (in other states, it’s called matrimonial law, domestic relations, or whatever) and so you focus on that to the exclusion of other areas of possible interest?

You spend the first seven to ten years of your practice in family law and then wake up one morning and decide that you never, ever again want to represent clients who are arguing over the division of household trifles. Now what? Are you stuck? Can you make a move into another area or is it too late?

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What if you decide you want to be a trial lawyer? Ha! Very few lawyers ever actually get to try cases, so what the vast majority of lawyers do is litigate, which sounds a lot more distinguished than “paper-shuffling motion practice.”

I think some dissatisfaction with practice has to do with the committing to an area of practice without first figuring out if it is something you really want to do. If it isn’t, no wonder you’re unhappy.

So, what I propose is heresy, especially in these times of serious underemployment for new lawyers: it’s okay not to know where you want to focus your practice when you’re a new lawyer. How are you to know what you want to do when you haven’t had much, if any, opportunity, to figure that out? (Speed dating won’t work here, since you need to spend at least a little time in an area that initially interests you.)

Some of you will have some idea of what you don’t want to do, based on personal experiences (divorce, auto accident, or being involved in litigation not of your making, or perhaps even of your own making.) If you didn’t like it then, you won’t like it now and you won’t want to make a career of it, unless you are the Crusader Rabbit type (look it up) who is energized to fight for “justice.”

I can hear the howls now from new lawyers burdened with six figures of debt (a topic for another day) who need to take whatever job they can find, if indeed they can find one, to start paying down that debt. So stipulated, counsel. Take that job if you think that’s best for you, but don’t sign up for a lifetime commitment at that job if you find that it’s not what you want to do.  Law school is an unreal environment. No one tells you that a lot of the law is drudgery, mind-numbing work such as propounding, objecting and even occasionally responding to discovery (my personal Exhibit A), drafting repetitious documents, sticking yourself with a fork to keep awake while listening to a client drone on about matters that are irrelevant to the case at hand.

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Actually, when you think about it, the unreality is no surprise, given that many law school faculty either never practiced or practiced briefly before retreating into academia. It’s usually the adjunct professors who provide whatever doses of reality and real life understanding law students get.

I agree that the longer you practice in an area that you don’t like, the harder it is to make a switch, but it’s not impossible. It’s like a marriage that has run its course. It’s not a failure on your part that you can’t generate sufficient enthusiasm for an area that bores you to tears; instead, putting a positive spin on it, you’ve decided that a certain practice area is no longer for you. That’s okay, but make that change sooner, rather than later. As the first stanza of Nikki Giovanni’s poem Choices says:

If i can’t do
what i want to do
then my job is to not
do what i don’t want
to do
It’s not the same thing

Remember that we practice law, we don’t perfect it. Does practice make perfect? Maybe, but if you’re practicing in an area that only makes you and everyone around you unhappy, frustrated, dissatisfied (choose whatever adjective you like), it’s time to change things up. It’s certainly not easy, but whoever told you that law practice was?


Jill Switzer is closing in on 40 (not a typo) years as a active member of the State Bar of California. Yes, folks, California, that state west of the Sierra Nevada, which everyone likes to diss. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see old lawyers, young lawyers, and those in-between interact — it’s not always pretty. You can reach her by email atoldladylawyer@gmail.com.