One Year In

Lessons learned after writing a column about career services at ATL for a year.

(Image via Getty)

This is the 52nd iteration of this weekly column, which if my limited mathematical skills have not failed me, means that I have hit the one-year mark here at Above the Law.  Granted, this “weekly” publication schedule has occasionally been more fortnightly, and my first column went up on March 14 of last year, but let us not let pesky things like the linear nature of time get in the way of a solid premise.  So what have I learned during my first year as a professional writer? Granted, I am not Papa Hemingway (though I do have a cat next to me as I write this), but since I am getting paid for these columns, I am sticking with the term “professional,” though will hold off on new business cards.

First and foremost, writing. is. hard.  This difficulty is not limited to the actual act of writing, though that poses its own set of issues as I will get to in a moment, but extends to all aspects of this column.  Trying to come up with a topic to discuss each and every week can be a remarkable challenge.  As I have previously written, some weeks topics fall in my lap, but more often than not, much of the week is spent solely on trying to come up with something to say.  This is an especially acute problem in the realm of CSO, where there is a limited number of big items of discussion.  Ideally, I could spend each week sharing my outrage at the goings on in Washington — for example, Bill Barr not once, but twice, clearly misleading the public as to why Special Counsel Robert Mueller declined to indict Donald Trump for obstruction of justice — but, alas, that’s not my beat.  Plus, if I wrote those sorts of columns, what would that leave for Elie Mystal?  To make matters worse, my second ever column was a thorough look at résumés, a topic that takes up an inordinate amount of time during my work day and from which I should have gotten several months’ worth of pieces.  Alas.

Once I figure out what it is exactly that I want to write about, there is the small matter of generating 1000+ words on the subject.  Ta-Nehisi Coates has written about the “irreplaceable thrill of transforming a blank page, the search for the right word, like pieces of a puzzle, the surgery of stitching together odd paragraphs.”  And while those moments definitely exist, they often seem far outweighed by the abject terror of a Google Document that is nothing but a sea of white, except for the never-ceasing flashing cursor.  I am tremendously impressed by the team of full-time writers here at Above the Law and elsewhere, both on and offline, who can churn out multiple stories over the course of a day.  On more than one occasion, I have spent hours (plural) trying to write a proper lede.  Once words start to appear on the screen, there is the small matter that I am not sure I ever fully grasped the various rules of English grammar when I was in school, let alone several decades hence.  I throw commas around like a West Virginia doctor distributing opioids and I went from using an em dash once in my writing history to having them pop up in nearly every paragraph.  While I have not done a word cloud of all of my columns, there are certain words like “guidelines” that I have typed so many times that they have pretty much lost all meaning at this point.

David Mamet said, in all places an ad for Masterclass, that “you gotta stand being bad if you wanna be a writer, cause if you don’t you’re never going to write anything good.”  Well, I have gotten the bad writing down, so here is hoping that some of it has/will be good.

Aside from the difficulty, the other surprising revelation about this column is that people actually read it.  Back in the halcyon days of 2012-13, before an Office of Legal Counsel policy was the only thing standing between the President of the United States and a federal indictment for obstruction of justice, when podcasting was still in its infancy, Joe Patrice, Kathryn Rubio, and I, along with others outside the Above the Law universe, hosted a podcast.  It was . . . fine?  If you would like some in-depth discussion of the Labor Force Participation Rate circa the 2012 presidential election, feel free to dive into the archives.  But I reference it now not because of the content but because our listenership probably numbered in the dozen (not plural), and all of those were either family, friends, or people who were confused by their iPhone.  When I first started to write this column, I knew that the reach of Above the Law was far greater than my previous effort and punditry, but the sheer scope of the readership was surprising.  Much like Netflix, the actual number of those individuals consuming this content is not readily available, but I have gotten a good number of emails from readers, which I truly appreciate, even if I do not reply.  More surprising and frequent have been interactions with readers offline, in the real world.  At NALP events, on recruiting visits, and elsewhere, I have had numerous people tell me how much they like these columns.  Such positive feedback is really wonderful and makes the late writing nights worth it.  Some have even praised my work as funny.  Those people get a much more visceral reaction.

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This first year (read: 13 months) of writing for Above the Law has been a truly rewarding experience.  While I have my doubts that this coming year can produce as many major events in the legal recruiting world as we have witnessed since this column started — is there another four-plus decade system the NALP Board can abandon in 2019-2020? — I will be here to share my thoughts on whatever transpires.  I hope you will be as well.


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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