I’m continually mystified by how many people in this field can delude themselves into thinking they’re doing good things.
Yes, sure, of course, some lawyers, hero lawyers, represent the indigent and the desperate, for next to no pay, in an endearing and enviable effort to right the many shocking wrongs wrought upon the earth by an indifferent capitalistic superstructure driven by the engine of brutal, violent survival of the fittest.
The New Way Litigators Handle Depositions Applies AI Every Step Of The Way
Depositions by Filevine help with scheduling, tracking goals, and trial prep.
But most of the legal work for rich people and powerful corporations is neither noble nor admirable (including much of my own work most of the time, though I have been, ya know, nationally recognized for heroic pro bono efforts on the side). Representing rich people and powerful corporations is lucrative. It is not venerable.
And there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that: getting paid, and getting paid well, to do a hard job. One the other hand, there is something wrong with getting paid to do a hard job and then trying to make all the other people who’ve been paid less well to do equally hard jobs feel like they’re less accomplished than you, which is one of the reasons I approach many of my fellow lawyers with suspicion, if not outright disdain.
This approach has been unconventional. It’s now been five years since I was invited to write for Above the Law. Getting that invitation was not easy. Anyone who wants to write and get paid for it (even modestly) will face multiple crushing rejections.
When you do finally get that opportunity (or at least when I did within the context of the early echelons of the legal profession), you will be told it is career suicide to write honestly for a wide audience. You will be promised ethereal treasures to abandon this pursuit, you will be threatened, you will be cajoled, harangued — pick your synonym. Old, established, moneymaking law firms have a ridiculously good deal going for them given their state-sanctioned monopoly on the legal market. It makes sense that the oligarchs of this system would protect their river of cashflow. They are incentivized to resist change, to squash differences of opinion, and to discourage independent thought.
Legal Is Changing. And NeoSummit Is Where The Future Is Being Built.
Legal and operational leaders are gathering May 6–7 in Fort Lauderdale to confront the questions the industry hasn't answered—with a keynote from Amanda Knox setting the tone.
But what I never did, and what I hope you never do if you have a similar dream and an equivalent opportunity, is give up your power for nothing in return. Five years into this, it’s still better for me than blindly acquiescing to uncalculated external demands unlikely to benefit me or anyone else.
Criticizing your profession, where it is deserved, is not disloyalty: it’s love. Unthinking nationalistic zeal is a disease; don’t mistake it for patriotism. Misogynism, homophobia, racism, religious bigotry: repulsive, the lot of them, and if you offend any clients by saying so, get better clients.
When you are told by your employer not to rock the boat or to give something up that gives you power external to their whims, don’t listen. Writing for Above the Law has cost me a great deal, and doing something similar might have similar costs for anyone else. Sometimes, though, you get what you pay for.
For me, writing for Above the Law has paid dividends. Where else can someone meaningfully contribute to getting Rudy Giuliani disbarred? Where else can someone say that a member of the highest court in the land with lifetime tenure sucks dicks? Where else can a gun-owning lunatic spar with other gun-owning lunatics over Second Amendment nuances without actually being shot or shooting?
You are a whole, valuable human being independent of your primary job. Your primary employer does not know what is good for you. You know what is good for you. I didn’t give up my freedom to make my own decisions, and neither should you.
Five years into writing for Above the Law, I have a lot of scars, but no regrets. I can’t thank the advertisers who have allowed for this enough. Even more importantly, you, the readers, have my eternal gratitude. It’s truly been a privilege.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].