Law Schools

You Aren't As Alone As You Think You Are: Stevin George Has Great Advice For Aspiring First Gen Lawyers

The role models are out there, even if you have to look a little harder than the others.

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CertificateSome people grow up in families where the college, traveling abroad, an advanced degree, and lifelong financial stability are givens. For the rest of us, it can be a slog just to finish high school. The good news is that a deck stacked against you need not mean a losing hand — many people who did not grow up with the safety net of lawyer moms and uncles have gone on to have thriving legal careers. When esquires aren’t at your childhood family dinner table, it can be hard to see yourself on the better side of legal interactions, let alone jumping through all the mental and economic hoops required to practice. But the inspiration is out there if you know the right places to look. From The Starting Line on LinkedIn:

During a trip with his college honors program to Washington D.C., Stevin George found a new professional dream — one day, he would like to work at the Supreme Court.

“I remember seeing a statue of John Marshall in the main hall, and it struck me as very awe-inspiring and impressive,” says George. “And I remember saying to myself, ‘I wonder what it would be like to be a lawyer.’”

Your motivation may have been different — a favorite TV show or an annoyed teacher whose complaint that you love to argue had some merit to it, but the source is less important than the fact that something stirred the desire in you to practice law. The next step is to take the steps to make those ideas reality. It is scary, especially when your support group, if you have one, lacks the experience to quell your anxieties or answer the questions Google just doesn’t seem to have the answers to. But you won’t get to where you want if you aren’t willing to go out on a limb.

George’s Supreme Court dreams came to fruition when he landed a coveted judicial internship at the High Court as an undergraduate at The University of Texas at Dallas. And after spending a few years working for Teach for America, he took the next step and enrolled in law school at the University of Michigan.

George’s path to the Supreme Court began with a small leap of faith, he says. When he discovered a program that offered two undergraduates across the country a chance to work as judicial interns in the Supreme Court, he found his opening. But when it came to the application, he had no idea where to start.

“I thought to myself, ‘I don’t have parents who are lawyers, I’m first-gen, I don’t know the first thing about the law,’” he says.

But through a bit of Google searching, George found a friend of a friend who had once been a part of the same internship program. With no expectation of a response, George sent an email asking for advice at 11:30pm one Friday night. Five minutes later, he got a reply. The pair hopped on a call that lasted 40 minutes, where George was told what kind of essay he should write, which experiences to highlight on his resume and how to stand out as an applicant. Six months later, he got the position.

“It really countered everything I’ve learned — keep your head down, do well in school,” he says. “It wasn’t really something I learned in my upbringing, to send something into the void and hope something comes back.”

So start sending into the void. If you’re in college, talk to career services to see what steps you ought to take next. If that’s too scary a place to start — and understandably so — get some firsthand advice from easier to approach sources. If you’ve been looking for a place to start with writing your clerkship cover letter, here is as good a place to start as any.

I’d also recommend that you get a sense of what information you should heed and what you should set aside. Scare stories about your classmates ripping pages out of textbooks to have an edge on the test? Everyone is learning from Quimbee anyway — you’ll probably be fine. Worried that you’ll finish law school and not have the job prospects you want? That is real — law school is an investment and you should treat it as such. Some people graduate and start at six-figure salaries. Most of them do not. To make matters worse, I was serious about that stacked deck I mentioned earlier. There’s also some shorthand you should familiarize yourself with as you do your research: Do you need to get into a T14 to achieve your goals, or would a well-respected regional school get you where you need to go with less debt? Questions will present themselves. Lean in to searching for the answers. And remember, you are not the only one searching for the answers.

Law school had no shortage of students whose parents were lawyers or even managing partners of major American firms, George recalls. But he also remembers meeting students who, like him, were the oldest children of immigrant families; people who had little idea how to land their first summer job or build relationships with professors.

“We felt like we were starting at home base and some of our classmates were starting on third,” he says.

Rather than view each other as competitors, George and his first-gen classmates formed their own community on campus. They often shared notes and other resources to help each other succeed — a philosophy that George has carried with him throughout his legal career.

“The idea was that if one of us succeeds, we’re in a much better position to help the rest,” George says. “We’re trying to make sure that pipeline stays open and keeps going forward.”

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Make the most of initiatives meant to help aspiring lawyers break into the trade. And don’t forget to start where you are — if you’re a member of a BLSA, APALSA, Women in Law group, or most other affinity groups for that matter, you likely have peers who are also first gen or alumni who have been in your shoes and have emotional ties to the programs you share. If you find someone who has overcome similar barriers, reach out to them. Work those networking skills! And as important as it is to have a game plan for how to relate with others, make sure you also take the time to think about how you relate to yourself.

Even after six years in the legal world, George continues to grapple with imposter syndrome.

“There’s very much a sense that when you’re a first-gen kid, you’ve got to get it right. There is no Plan B,” George says.

While first-gen students might feel pressure to be perfect, it’s more important to learn and grow from your mistakes, he maintains. And while it’s easy to feel as though you’re a step behind your peers, let your work and experiences speak for themselves.

He’s not the only person to share the sentiment. Our ideas don’t always match up with our reality.

That doesn’t mean it won’t all be worth it though.

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“Objectively list out what you’ve done,” he recommends. “Move away from the ephemeral sense of whether or not you belong here and say, ‘Here are the metrics by which I can gauge how I’m doing.’ The fruit speaks to the tree, right?”

You’ve got this, future esquire! Once you make it to that firm, clerkship, or courtroom you’ve got your eye on, be sure to let us know how you got there by emailing tips@abovethelaw.com.

One First-Gen Lawyer’s Leap Of Faith — And How It Changed His Life [Starting Line / LinkedIn]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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