Law Schools

Fisking An Instagram Law School Decision

Breaking down someone's law school woes, line by line.

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As I continue to be enveloped by parenthood, and more broadly, adulthood, I have developed a morning routine.  I am typically awoken no later than 6:00 a.m. by the sounds of one or more of my children coming through the video monitor; though on a more frequent basis than I would like, I have already been up for at least an hour due to the mewing cries of a cat who is befuddled as to why 4 a.m. is not a good time to play, seeing as how he’s been asleep for much of the daylight hours.  Before getting the kids, or while my sainted wife is getting them, like many in our technological age, I instinctively reach for my phone.  While some might start their day by checking email, their schedule, or the weather for that day, I typically begin by diving into the hellscape that is Twitter.  Why?  For starters, I want to see what potential global calamities the Tweeter-in-Chief has thrown us into overnight.  A war with Portugal?  The sale of Texas and the U.S. Navy?  Potentially aligning with a supermarket tabloid to blackmail the richest man in the world?  That can be a typical Monday.  Twitter also serves as the quickest way to digest the seemingly non-stop flow of news and information that surrounds us all.  It was from the Twitter app on my phone that I first found out that the corrupt cartel known as the NCAA levied an outrageous two-year ban on University of Kansas basketball player Silvio De Sousa for actions that everyone admits he did not commit.  After getting my fix in, I will typically bypass the privacy nightmare that is Facebook and launch Instagram.  Yes, I know that it is yet another part of the Zuckerberg universe with all the baggage that brings, but, I mean, have you seen Chrissy Teigen’s account, or watched former The Simpsons co-showrunner Bill Oakley review fast food?  I am only human.

Aside from witty supermodels/cookbook authors and comedy writers willing to gorge themselves, one of my favorite Instagram accounts is Humans of New York, which aims to tell the stories of those residing in Gotham.  While the stories are often interesting and sometimes even moving — the series from Rwanda talking to survivors of the 1994 genocide should win some type of award — one post from last month stood out among the rest.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsyUPQLA_8T/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

Upon reading this post, I knew I had found a topic for a future column.  But how best to order what you might imagine are my voluminous thoughts on this entry?  And that’s when it hit me, fisking.

No, this column has not taken a sudden turn toward the obscene.  For those of you who were not enmeshed in the online culture of the early 2000s, before Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., blogs were the coin of the internet opinion realm.  What blogs lacked in modern day virality, they made up for with sheer word count.  Where ever one looked online, you could find a 5,000-word blog post on nearly any subject.  One popular form of blog posts was the line by line refutation of a mainstream opinion or news piece.  The term “fisking” is derived from British journalist Robert Fisk, not because he founded or perfect the form, but rather because his work was often the subject of these in-depth refutations.  In one of the earliest definitions dating back to 2002, UCLA Law Professor, and blogger extraordinaire, Eugene Volokh stated that “[a] [g]ood Fisking tends to be (or at least aim to be) quite logical, and often quotes the other article in detail, interspersing criticisms with the original article’s text.”  Ironically, fisking got its start on the vehemently pro-war American political right of the early 2000s, making this term the lone non-terrible contribution from that subset of the population during those dark years.

Now that we all understand the history, it is time to fisk this Instagram post.

I was at an anthropology field school in Guatemala. I was twenty-two. And I was having a crisis. I had no idea what I wanted to do after college.

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This is not inherently problematic.  Indeed, many brilliant attorneys took a circuitous path to law school.  As the founder of this blog has said, “[l]aw school is the great American default option for smart kids who can’t stand the sight of blood.”  Nor is coming to law school with an anthropology degree necessarily bad.  While many, if not the majority, of students I work with at Vanderbilt were political science or government majors in college, they do not automatically do better academically than those with a more science-based educational background.  In fact, having a knowledge base outside of the law can often make one a better law student and lawyer.  The one caveat to this is that recent college graduates who have not come from an academic field which requires a lot of writing should recognize that they might be behind their peers and should be willing to put in the extra time and effort when it comes to mastering legal writing.

I remember sitting at a café with my favorite professor, and he told me: ‘If you were my daughter, I’d tell you to go into law. From there you can work on anything: healthcare, policy, human rights.’

This is problematic.  Many people, especially non-lawyers, like to tell young people that they can do anything with a law degree.  My response to this claim is some variation of “such as?”  Yes, there are people with J.D.s in a wide range of professional fields, but many times those individuals are in those positions in spite of, not because of, their law degree.  The best analogy is the polling strength of the generic political candidate.  A few minutes in Political Science 101 will teach you that generic candidates are always going to poll better than named candidates because without an actual candidate, people will substitute in their ideal choice.  So when a group of prospective voters are asked if they would vote for a generic Democrat over Donald Trump, some will be envisioning Elizabeth Warren, some Cory Booker, and some Joe Biden.  But when you poll Elizabeth Warren versus Donald Trump, her numbers will be lower because some of the voters who had envisioned Biden in the generic Democrat role have no interest in voting for Warren.  So while people look at a J.D. as a pathway to anything and everything, recognize that it can actually only be one thing at a time.

I spent four years getting my Master’s in International Law, with a concentration in human rights and environmental justice.

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So, it is one thing to spend three years getting a J.D. with a focus on human rights and environmental justice, and we will talk about the long-term issue with such an approach in a minute, but tacking on an extra year to obtain an LL.M. in the field feels like throwing good money after bad.  This is not to say that domestic LL.M.s are inherently suspect.  The single best way to be employed as a Biglaw attorney for the next several decades is to go get an LL.M. in Tax.  This is because regardless of the fluctuations in American tax law, there is always going to be a tax system in place and that means there will need to be lawyers interpreting said system.  But. the same is not true for the intersection of human rights and environmental justice.

Then last year I moved to New York to pursue a job in my chosen field.

Moving to one’s preferred market can help a great deal with networking and potentially landing a job, but ideally you move to a city with a job already in hand and while working said job, you attempt to line up the dream job.  Also, while New York City has a tremendous number of legal positions, the competition is remarkably fierce, not to mention the cost of living can be prohibitive for those who want to go into public interest work.

I’ve arranged meetings with twenty-five different attorneys to ‘better understand the field.’ And I’m always hoping to say the right words to catch their attention. It’s poor form to say: ‘I need a job.’ But at the end of every meeting, I always ask: ‘Do you know any opportunities that I should be pursuing?’ And the answer is always ‘no.’

If you have asked the same question 25 times and gotten the same disappointing response, it might be time to ask a new question.  Rather than asking about available positions, inquire if there is anyone else this networking contact thinks you should speak to.  While someone might not know of a job, they might have a friend who does.  See if there is any work you can be doing, even if it’s volunteering in the non-profit world, just to build up your skills in this niche market.  Also, while 25 coffee meetings might sound like a lot, in reality, it might just be the tip of the iceberg of that which is needed to crack into this area of the law.

I do have a job right now, and I work hard at it, but it’s mainly reviewing records and writing letters. It’s not the path I wanted to be on.

The document review path is one that few people want to be on for the long-run.  But working while pursuing your dream job is important, as a gap on a résumé can cause real problems in the job search.

And the longer you work in another field, the harder it can be to transition.

True.

I’ve always wanted to make an impact. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is my idol.

I love the Notorious RBG meme as much as anyone and am excited to see On the Basis of Sex when it comes to a streaming service — having small children precludes a lot of trips to the theater — but the number of attorneys who “make an impact” on the scale of Justice Ginsburg is infinitesimally small.  A professional goal that big is only going to lead to disappointment.  When working with 1Ls, I often hear students profess a desire to become a Supreme Court litigator.  It is an understandable dream and one that I harbored throughout my law school career.  The problem is that the size of the informal SCOTUS bar, i.e., those who actually appear before the Court on a regular basis, is small enough to fit around a Thanksgiving table, without having to spill over into the kids section.  Could you join their ranks?  It’s possible, but the odds are daunting.

I worked hard on this. I studied my ass off, I was valedictorian, I got into a great school, and got great scholarship money.

The problem here is that at most law schools, especially those that make up the tier of “great” or “elite,” this describes the entire student body.  Everyone studies extremely hard and has excelled throughout their academic career up until this point.  If they had not, they would not be attending a top-flight law school.

I’ve had a job since I was sixteen. I focused on two or three friends. I didn’t date. This was supposed to be my thing.

This does not seem particularly healthy.  Yes, putting an importance on law school is a good idea, especially if you want to break into a very small area of the law. But one also needs a balance.  Without a support structure, or even ways to blow off steam, it is not just law school which will be more difficult, it is life in general.

I’ll never be in my twenties again. Or living in New York. But I’m having a hard time enjoying it because I’m so focused on this one path that’s not opening up.

As someone who spent a couple of years in their twenties in New York, let me put on my Dad hat for a moment and say this is entirely accurate.  My favorite book I read last year was Lizzy Goodman’s Meet Me in the Bathroom, an oral history about the rock music scene in New York during the peak of fisking, aka the first decade of the 2000s.  In the introduction, Goodman describes the city as a massive video game, “[e]very choice, from what you wear to how you walk to which street you turn down next is a potential portal to another level, to a part of the game you haven’t even seen yet, to the unimaginable.”  Journalist Conor McNicholas aptly stated, “[e]verybody is living through their own golden age, but you only realize it afterward, so start living it now.”  You do not have to give up on the dream just yet young attorney, but do not get so wrapped up in the pursuit that you forget to live.

Nicholas Alexiou is the Director of LL.M. and Alumni Advising as well as the Associate Director of Career Services at Vanderbilt University Law School. He will, hopefully, respond to your emails at abovethelawcso@gmail.com.

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