Law Schools

Don’t Waste Your Time Collecting Golden Tickets

The downside to spending your life chasing credentials.

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This is just the beginning, he captioned ironically …

I went to law school because I wanted to have a big impact on the world. For some reason I told myself that could only happen if I had the right credentials. Like working at a prestigious firm and doing a fancy clerkship. That’s why I set my sights on getting admitted to a top 10 school. Which oddly enough, includes 14 of them.

Something strange happened along the way, though. I found myself trying to get credentials for their own sake. I guess you kind of have to, because everything’s so competitive. It’s like I had to put on these blinders so I could properly focus on collecting as many of these Golden Tickets as I could.

“If I can just focus on this for a little while and beat everyone else,” I told myself, “I’ll be all set.”

My laser-like focus helped me win a few Golden Tickets early on. I got into a good school and ended up with decent grades after 1L year. I also somehow ended up making law review, which was unexpected. I had originally wanted to spend my time doing mock trial, which sounded a lot more fun. But everyone in my class seemed to want to be on law review, so how could I turn that down?

And, I mean, it all worked as planned. My Golden Tickets made me a highly sought-after recruit. Firms fell all over themselves trying to hire me during on-campus interviews.

Honestly, it felt good. Really good.

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It came at a price, though. Because when you spend all your time collecting Golden Tickets, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of things that aren’t aligned with your original goals. I knew that for all my “success” I didn’t actually *accomplish* anything. I didn’t help any clients. I didn’t win any cases.

I wasn’t having the impact I had always wanted.

The other thing they never tell you about these Golden Tickets, is that even after you feel like you’ve “made it,” the game doesn’t end. When I started my first week as a summer associate at my fancy Biglaw firm, I realized it was the beginning of yet another competition involving over a hundred other law students, who like me, were all from top schools. We knew this “game” would end with only one or two of us making partner.

I made myself feel better by telling myself that I had earned my place in this exclusive group of well-credentialed lawyers and law students. Wasn’t that an accomplishment in and of itself? I was a child of immigrants who never expected to be a fancy-pants corporate lawyer. This was a win, right?

That’s when I realized that I started to value the game itself. I didn’t want the ambiguity of the real world where I might not be certain about whether I was actually having an impact. My Golden Tickets gave me all the reassurance I needed.

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This delusion lasted for a while. Eventually, I came to my senses and realized that this kind of job wasn’t right for me. At the end of the day, competing for all these stupid Golden Tickets was making me unhappy. It wasn’t at all what I wanted out of my career or my life. And it was starting to impact my health and well being.

That’s when I decided to leave. In 2014, I quit Biglaw for good.

A lot has happened since then. I ended up spending a couple years doing a few things that didn’t work out, but they played a role in helping me find my place in the legal technology space. Which is where I ended up having the impact I was looking for.

If I could talk to my 20-year-old self, I’m not sure what I’d say. How would I explain my current job? What would I say that I do? “Look, you’ll end up becoming a rainmaker in the legal industry. But not as a law firm partner. They’ll call you an ‘influencer’ and you’ll be best known for posting Tik Toks and dumb memes on social media.”

I truly believe I’ve found my place, though. Because even though I’m almost 40 and have an uncertain path ahead of me, I can see the impact I have on a day-to-day basis. Whether it’s evangelizing technology to legal departments or highlighting all of the hard-working associates and legal professionals out there — I’m doing the kind of meaningful work I had been looking for all along.

So to those of you who are exhausted from running around collecting Golden Tickets that lead nowhere, I say, go ahead and be a little bit reckless. Go off the beaten path. You don’t have to mimic my unusual career path, but you should feel empowered to pursue something different. Don’t try to achieve conventional success by collecting all these credentials.

Because what they never tell you — especially in law school — is that “conventional success” is often anything but. They’re just proxies for success.

And they’ll never be a substitute for the real thing.

Alex Su is currently the Head of Community Development at Ironclad, a leading legal technology company that helps accelerate the contracting process. Earlier in his career, he was an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell and clerked for a federal district judge. Alex graduated from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where he was an editor of the law review and the student commencement speaker. In his free time, he writes about his career journey and legal tech in his newsletter Off The Record. You can find Alex on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and yes, even Tik Tok.

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