Career alternatives for attorneys

A Guide for Surviving On-Campus Interviewing With Style

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Would that it were easy for women to dress professionally without being critiqued on every aspect of their ensemble. If that were the case, then we wouldn’t have so much to write about when it comes to the intersection of fashion and women’s issues. From hairstyle to hemline to heel height, women are constantly bombarded with differing opinions as to what’s acceptable to wear in the workplace.

With on-campus interviewing season right around the corner, you’ll need to look and act the part. The hour has drawn nigh for some tips that will allow our female readers to maintain a stylish appearance from a day in the office to a night out, all at the click of a button. Because fashion should be a piece of cake, even for lawyerly ladies who are too busy to shop….

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Your J.D. Didn’t Build That

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Your J.D. isn't actually like this, but it costs WAY more.

As we mentioned in Morning Docket, there was a brilliant piece in Am Law Daily the other day about the “versatility” of a J.D. — or lack thereof. Matt Leichter argues that if you believe your J.D. is a utilitarian degree, you are living in an illogical dreamworld.

Of course, nobody ever accused prospective law students of being logical. Many people justify time and treasure expended on going to law school on the supposed versatility of the J.D., and like most things involving the decision to go to law school, the students have done little research to back up the claim.

That thought about the degree is so ingrained that you regularly see vast numbers of students heading off to law school who say they don’t want to be lawyers. Think about that. You don’t hear med students say, “I don’t want to be a doctor, I just thought it would be good to know how to save a life.” Heck, you don’t hear plumbers say, “I didn’t really want to be a plumber, but you never know when being able to make raw sewage flow freely will come in handy.”

Make no mistake, going to law school in order to do non-law stuff is stupid….

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Morning Docket: 08.15.12

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Jaynie Mae Baker

* What do Tiger Woods’s sexts, Anthony Weiner’s wiener, and the newsworthiness exception to copyright infringement have in common? They’re all in this colorful Ninth Circuit dissent. [National Law Journal]

* Dewey have any idea when this “clawback” deadline will stop being extended? Partners have again been granted another extension to sign on the dotted line, but this time for only 48 hours. [WSJ Law Blog]

* If your reason for resigning from your position as a congressman has to do with “increasing parenting challenges,” becoming the managing director of Biglaw practice group likely isn’t a wise choice. [POLITICO]

* A shareholder suit filed against Goldman Sachs over mortgage-backed securities and early TARP repayment was dismissed. I didn’t watch the Daily Show last night, but I’m sure Jon Stewart had a great joke. [Reuters]

* Musical deans? Hot on the heels of Jeremy Paul’s announcement that he was leaving for Northeastern, Professor Willajeanne McLean has been appointed as interim dean at UConn Law. [Connecticut Law Tribune]

* Law school didn’t build that: as it turns out, a juris doctor isn’t as versatile a degree as it’s made out to be. Just because you managed to get a good non-law job, it doesn’t mean a J.D. helped you. [Am Law Daily]

* Jaynie Mae Baker, the Millionaire Madam’s sidekick, has struck a plea deal with the DA. She won’t be going to jail for her adventures in high-class hooking, and might walk away without a criminal record. [New York Post]

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Lawyer of the Month: July Reader Poll

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While many would-be lawyers were busy taking the bar exam in July, actual lawyers (and law students) were allegedly busy behaving badly. We’ve singled out a lucky few for our Lawyer of the Month honors.

Some of our nominees have adopted unusual career alternatives, and others have allegedly adopted unusual sexual relationships. But who will come out on top in our monthly contest?

Take a look at our nominees for July’s Lawyer of the Month and find out….

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D.C. Attorney Gives Up Law for Her True Passion: Booze

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Lawyers tend to overindulge in the finer things in life — things like designer clothes, fast cars, and luxurious lawyerly lairs. Unfortunately, lawyers also tend to overindulge in alcohol. In fact, according to the ABA, about 13 percent of lawyers qualify as alcoholics. Keeping that in mind, practicing law may be fine preparation for a new career in the wine bar business.

Meet Elizabeth Banker. This former in-house lawyer for Yahoo! and current counsel at ZwillGen is putting her legal career aside to follow something she’s been passionate about since her college days: wine. (Despite sharing a surname, apparently she’s not a fan of Banker’s Club vodka.)

Back in the day, Banker drank gallon-sized jugs of Chablis. Since then, her “tastes have evolved,” and now she’s more of a high-class sommelier. Let’s learn more about Banker’s new business, and find out when opening day will be….

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The Life and Times of Erika Awakening, Professional Pickup Artist and Harvard Law Grad

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Erika Awakening

Sometimes attorneys are desperate to find a way out of the legal profession. Sometimes that desperation will lead them down a strange road to an entirely new career — and not just a new career, but a new way of life.

Meet Erika Frick, a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School. After graduating from HLS, Frick worked for the antitrust division of the Department of Justice and for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. But if you’re a member of the pickup artist community, you know Frick better as Erika Awakening, a New Age life coach and self-proclaimed guru of the seduction community. How frickin’ fabulous is that?

What would cause a Harvard-educated attorney on a rather prestigious career track to turn her focus to the Law of Attraction? Let’s find out….

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Cooley Law Grad or Troll… Is There Even a Difference?
(C/O ’93 Grad Claims He’s Employed as a Shoeshiner)

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Yesterday, we brought you a story about Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s lack of interest in reducing its class sizes based on a “perceived benefit to society.” If you haven’t been paying attention, that “perceived benefit” could mean improved employment opportunities for Cooley Law graduates in a challenging legal job market. But perhaps the school’s administration could be convinced to change course when they catch wind of this purported graduate’s entrepreneurial employment situation.

We recently received a tip from a fellow who claims that he graduated from Cooley Law in 1993. It would seem that even as a graduate of the second-best law school in the nation, the job market was so tough that when someone told him to get his shine box, he took the phrase literally. He says he’s been working as a shoeshiner ever since.

We know that this seems absolutely wild, but to be honest, we couldn’t tell if we were being legitimately trolled, if only because he claimed to be a graduate of Cooley Law. We’ve provided our correspondence with this fellow after the jump….

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A Lawyer Attempts to Slice, Dice, and Julienne Fry All of the Competition on ‘MasterChef’

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Here at Above the Law, we frequently write about lawyers and law students who have put their legal careers on hold to compete on reality television shows. In the past year or so, we’ve profiled two former Bachelor contestants whose hearts were broken (one from Illinois Law, and one from Houston Law Center); a Harvard Law student who tried to win over his tribe on Survivor; a Northwestern Law student who attempted to weasel his way out of getting fired on The Apprentice; and a former Biglaw attorney whose health-food dishes made the judges want to choke on America’s Next Great Restaurant.

That being said, imagine our surprise when we found out that yet another attorney had decided to make a foray into the wonderful world of reality TV. If you recall, back in May, we brought your attention to a job advertisement for an attorney chef. We thought that was a unique career alternative, but apparently someone had already beaten us to the punch. The latest lawyer turned reality competitor actually is an attorney chef — one who will appear on the new season of MasterChef, which is set to premiere tonight on Fox.

So who is this attorney chef? Was he able to roast the competition like he would have during oral arguments?

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Why Didn’t a Lawyer Think of This?

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What did we do in a world before we could find out if Tree Wardens had their own logo in fewer than two seconds?

Usually only people who run for president like Mitt Romney are allowed to run for office despite not having a job. Down ticket, you usually have to be “a something” before voters will take you seriously. This morning, there was a nice story on Am Law Daily about an associate, Justin Wagner, who is taking a leave of absence from Weil to run for New York State Senate.

That’s how it’s supposed to work: have job, pause job, ask the people to elect you to another job.

Well, one Massachusetts woman is turning that on its head, and I’m not talking about Elizabeth Warren….

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Is A Law Degree Still The Best Way To Get Into Politics?

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Going to law school worked out great for this guy.

And now we come to the real reason I, and so many others, went to law school: I wanted to go into politics. Before I was married, before my father’s name recognition spiked, before I was in debt, before I realized I had no talent asking people for money, I thought elected office was in my future and a law degree was an important credential.

Don’t act like I’m the only one. For as long as anybody can remember, a training in law has been viewed as a good foundation for an eventual career in politics. Even if you never practice, it makes sense that a person who would make laws would have a fundamental understanding of how laws work. A law degree also suggests a certain respect for the rules, a useful quality for those who would be in charge of the rules. In the modern era, law has been the best “career” for would-be politicians to start out in, and historically only military service has been a more common way to elected office.

But maybe that’s all changing? Catherine Rampell of the New York Times has a great piece showing that while lawyers are still the dominant profession among our senators and congresspeople, there are fewer former lawyers running Washington than there have been for a generation.

So, you know, just add one more way in which law school isn’t as valuable as it used to be…

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