Small Law Firms

What Young Solo Lawyers Can Learn From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Finding inspiration and guidance for a young legal career in unorthodox places.

By  
on

Even if you don’t follow New York politics, you’ve probably seen the non-stop news coverage of 28-year old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset over incumbent Joseph Crowley in the Democratic primaries in New York’s 14th Congressional District. Though Crowley was a ten-term Congressman with the backing of the Democratic party and wealthy corporate donors while Ocasio-Cortez never held office and had a shoe-string budget of individual contributions, Ocasio-Cortez bested her opponent nonetheless by breaking the conventional rules of politics and instead charting her own course with strong principles and a crystal-clear message.  In many ways, the legal profession resembles politics: connections and money matters, and youth and inexperience are viewed as a disadvantage. So that’s why Ocasio-Cortez’s victory has so many important lessons for solos starting out.

Don’t Wait Your Turn  As a relative newcomer to politics, it would have taken Ocasio-Cortez decades to reach a point where she might have been approached to run for office by the official party apparatus. And even then, she’d likely have been recruited to compete for a ward-level position rather than a Congressional seat. So instead of biding her time doing grunt work for others to pay her dues, Ocasio-Cortez leapfrogged past the conventional path to office and threw her hat in the ring. Don’t misunderstand — by cutting the line, Ocasio-Cortez didn’t short-circuit the hard work that it takes to succeed in politics. But rather than wasting her energy and ideas on others, she invested in herself.

As in politics, young lawyers are taught to wait their turn — whether to argue a motion in court (though they may have done all the prep) or to gain enough experience to hang a shingle or to kiss up to enough honchos to run for a local bar association office. And many young lawyers, inclined to following rules and believing that they have all the time in the world, obey their elders and waste their best years waiting for these promised opportunities to materialize.

Ocasio-Cortez’s lesson is simple. Don’t. wait. As a young lawyer, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by charging forward — whether to start your own firm or insist on taking the lead on a case — even if the world says that you’re not ready. Most likely, it’s the world that isn’t ready for you.

Open Your Own Doors  This rule applies primarily to young women — who are most frequently advised by people like Sheryl Sandberg (who benefited from strong mentors) to pin their wagon to a star to launch their career. Even in the legal profession, there’s no shortage of well-intentioned elders who want to help young women lawyers urging law firms to let women speak in court or encouraging law firms to commit (albeit kicking and screaming) to diversity.

That’s all well and good, but as Ocasio-Cortez shows, today’s millennial women are perfectly capable of opening their own doors. True, Ocasio-Cortez worked for prominent pols like Ted Kennedy and Bernie Sanders, but she didn’t need their sponsorship to win and was better off without it. After all, why should women lawyers wait for a leg up from others, or play second-fiddle to a guy like Hillary to Bill or Sheryl to Mark Zuckerberg when like Ocasio-Cortez, they can start their own gig and run their own show?

No Excuses  Having graduated with substantial student loans myself, I know that the financial drain of loan repayment can make starting a law firm doubly hard. But young lawyers — particularly those who yearn to start their own firm — shouldn’t use loans, lack of experience, or a JD from a so-called 3rd tier law school — as an excuse for not doing it. Ocasio-Cortez is still repaying student loans and as an educator from a working class, single-parent family, she certainly didn’t have piles of cash lying around to finance her run. But she found a way nevertheless, by knocking on doors to solicit individual contributions which added up to enough money to make a play. Nor did Ocasio-Cortez have experience running her own campaign so she relied on common sense as a guide — getting out in the community and talking to and meeting as many people as possible.

Sponsored

Sure, starting a law firm may be easier with some business background and cash. But let’s face it, running a law firm — just like running for office — isn’t rocket science. Just like Ocasio-Cortez, if you can get out in front of people — whether at local events, on social media, or at networking functions, you increase your chances of finding clients and succeeding.

Lead With the Why and the How Will Follow  Ocasio-Cortez’s most significant advantage in beating Crowley was that she had a powerful “why” (articulated in this viral video) for seeking office: to give voice to working-class Americans just like Ocasio-Crowley and her family whose interests had been ignored by incumbents and who continue to fall behind in today’s political environment. Once Ocasio-Cortez declared her why, she figured out how to implement it.

Used to be that common advice for starting a business or a law firm was to write up a business plan, devise products to sell, predict potential revenues and identify target clients. Trouble is, executing all of the minutiae can be just as mind-numbing as the boring job you left behind unless you have a powerful purpose — otherwise known as your why — to push you forward. Ever-rational lawyers underestimate the power of why — but it’s a force so strong that it enabled Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning to survive the horrors of the Holocaust, Ocasio-Cortez to triumph over a Goliath… and for young lawyers to succeed in starting a firm of their own.

Carolyn ElefantCarolyn Elefant has been blogging about solo and small firm practice at MyShingle.comsince 2002 and operated her firm, the Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant PLLC, even longer than that. She’s also authored a bunch of books on topics like starting a law practice, social media, and 21st century lawyer representation agreements (affiliate links). If you’re really that interested in learning more about Carolyn, just Google her. The Internet never lies, right? You can contact Carolyn by email at [email protected]or follow her on Twitter at @carolynelefant.

Sponsored

Topics

, ,