Plan to Pivot: Embracing Change in Law School and Beyond

Episode Notes

Transcript

Todd Berger:

Students frequently come into law school with a vision of their own future. Television and movies, families and friends, passions and interests. Each of these can create an idea in the mind of a student of what their career is definitely going to look like until something changes and you’re faced with a crisis of identity and that’s okay. It’s normal and it’s important to remember that law school isn’t just a straight path from point A to point B. It’s an opportunity for you to explore the many career avenues the law can afford. Today we discussed not only how law school can help you find your true path, but even how your early career can be a time for exploration and change. This is the ABA Law Student podcast.

Chay Rodriguez:

Todd. I love your intro just because I really do think that television, movies, families and friends really do impact the ideas that we have when we think about being an attorney. I know I always reference Jack McCoy, so people are probably sick of it, but Jack McCoy, if I had the stomach for criminal law, Jack McCoy would be my go-to, I think he always pulled a lot of legal strategy from out of thin air and I loved especially those older episodes, watching him squirm and struggle and argue in those back offices trying to figure out what he was going to say in court. So I think that’s accurate. What about you? Do you think television at a point or movies influenced your idea of what you thought being an attorney was going to be?

Todd Berger:

Not for me in particular. I didn’t fall into the television. In movies part of it, I fell into the family part of it. I actually had a decent amount of exposure to a certain type of legal practice. My father practiced for over 40 years. He was a Solo practitioner, so I actually was exposed to it, meaning the practice of law when I was pretty young, going to court, watching my father being with him in the office. So I had a sense of what a certain kind of practice looked like. But I will say what I ended up doing has some similarities, but a lot of differences too. And I had to figure a lot of that out when I went to law school. So even though I had sort of seen the practice of law growing up when I got to law school, candidly I didn’t really know what I wanted to do or maybe embarrassingly I had an idea of what I thought I would do. I thought I would be a trial lawyer that tried intellectual property law cases and then I realized at some point there’s probably five people in America who do that and this is exactly that easy to build a career around. So I had to go through my own process of exploration even though I had come from a legal background so to speak.

Chay Rodriguez:

You are like a kind of combination of a story that is similar to our guest and a story that is not so similar to our guest. Katie Winchenbach, who is currently a commercial Counsel for Motorola Solutions is our guest for this show, and she was actually a first gen law student, so dissimilar to you, she didn’t have that experience of seeing an attorney in her family or in near proximity, but she also had an interest in IP law when she kind of first started her journey in law school and it quickly changed similar to you. And she also works with an amazing nonprofit, Ms. jd that helps to help women in their early career as attorneys develop and get to that next level. So I think that’s kind of cool. We have similarities here within our group and some differences and we can really break that down through this episode.

Todd Berger:

That’s great. I’m excited to hear the interviews, so let’s get into it.

Chay Rodriguez:

Did you ever have that kind of feeling, that anxiety, that angst or just that kind of overall anxiousness of what’s going to come after this three year stretch?

Katie Winchenbach:

Oh, a hundred percent. I actually went into law school thinking that I wanted to focus on intellectual property law and I was extremely set on that. I know they tell you you don’t have to come into law school with something in mind, but I was one of those people who was like, I know myself, I know my interests. I’m here for intellectual property law and I did an internship after my one L year at an intellectual property firm and I hated it. It was not for me. I was miserable. And I remember starting my two L year and thinking, oh my gosh, what am I even doing in law school now that I don’t even know what type of lawyer I want to be? And just total panic moment.

Chay Rodriguez:

I bet that’s pretty early on. You said it was your one L year, correct? Right after one L year, so two L year, you still have a little bit of time, but that can be unnerving. I feel like a little unnerving.

Katie Winchenbach:

It was because I felt like I had this whole plan for how I wanted to do everything. My law school, I went to Quinnipiac and they had an intellectual property concentration. So I had started down that path. I had made all these plans for my two L and three L year that I was going to take all of these electives. I felt like I knew where the path was and then all of a sudden I had no clue what I was doing. And I actually found that my professors were a fantastic resource. I became close to a couple of professors my one L year and thankfully had those kind of mentorship relationships with them and was able to set up some office hours and go in and just say, I’m so confused. I have no clue what’s going on. This is what I thought I was going to do. I really dislike it and now I’m feeling totally lost. And they were such a support,

Chay Rodriguez:

If you remember, how was their reaction? Did they kind of look at you in an understanding? Did you think it kind of made them chuckle? And especially hindsight is 2020, so now when you think of your one L self, when you think of one l Katie, do you even laugh and say it’s going to be okay? You didn’t need to be that worried.

Katie Winchenbach:

Oh my gosh, yes. I think my professors were so not surprised. They were very understanding. I think they could tell that I was totally stressing, but they were also like, yeah, of course this happens. This happens to everybody. This is not a big deal. Relax, you’ve got two more years of law school and you’ve got a whole career. You can pivot in your career. You don’t need to pick something in law school. And definitely looking back, I’m like, oh my gosh, I stressed for nothing. I honestly was like, should I even be in law school? What type of lawyer am I going to be? And I’m like, girl, that was so dramatic.

Chay Rodriguez:

What advice would you give to a student that may feel like they’ve lost themselves in law school and now they don’t really know how to pick their interests out of studying the same way for every class in order to make a grade or don’t know how to authentically be themselves in class because they’re so nervous about being cold called or the three L that might be bored out of their mind and just ready to get out and they’re just like, I just need to get out of here. I’m barely going to class at this point.

Katie Winchenbach:

First off, I was that three L, so I’m right there with you. I was there. It’s so hard because hindsight really is 2020 and the best tip I can say as hard as it is, is try to take that pressure off yourself. You do not need to know what you want to do. You do not need to get perfect grades. You do not need to be the top and the best at all of these different activities. And I know there’s so much pressure in the law school environment that comes from the environment and that we put on ourselves and it’s a lot easier said than done to just kind of try to relax. But that really is the best thing. When you take that pressure off yourself of being the top in everything and finding your path right away, you actually find like, oh, I took this class that I wasn’t expecting to enjoy and I’m really enjoying it and I might want to pursue this a little bit more. There’s a lot of trial and error and I think in law school sometimes we get too worried about following that most direct path to the end goal and doing those things that we know we’re going to be good at. And I think we need to be a little more open to exploring different things and having a little bit of trial and error

Chay Rodriguez:

In regards to that trial and error period. For you, what did you try your two L year and that two L summer to figure out your next move or where you may have wanted to practice next in that practice area?

Katie Winchenbach:

I took as many electives as I could and I did all sorts of different kind of coffee chats with attorneys that were alums of the school, just reaching out to anybody whose job I thought may seem interesting and asking them to get a cup of coffee. And there were so many that were willing to talk to me. First of all, they were so generous with their time and I think a lot of law students hesitate to reach out to practicing attorneys like that. Please do. We’re all very nice. We love talking about ourselves really. We’re happy to help. We’ve been where you are. We would love to grab a cup of coffee with you and help you and explain to you what we do.

Chay Rodriguez:

So I actually, I’m recently doing this as recent as a couple of days ago, I sat down with an attorney and did a coffee chat and I subsequently did that probably a day or so after as well, both in the same field but both working for different companies, both different demographics so that I could get just a well-rounded picture of what this type of lawyer does and I can 130% agree with you. They were so open to talk to me and then they asked me to follow up and I’m like, well, I don’t have theBar for a while. And they’re like, no, no, I want to have the details. I want to know what happens. And they sent me resources and this is all from scrolling LinkedIn, which I think is an amazing tool. What are some of the tools, so you mentioned the alumni at your school. Would you say LinkedIn is also an amazing tool to find other attorneys or what other tools have you found best for students to look into to find different attorneys to speak with?

Katie Winchenbach:

LinkedIn was definitely amazing. I sent so many just cold connection requests and messages just saying, hi, I’m a law student at this school. I’m trying to figure out what I’m looking to do. I’m really interested in your job. I would love to learn more about it. That gets incredible results. And then I also made an effort to be part of local bar associations and other nonprofit organizations. I actually had a big role in Ms. JD while I was in law school as well. And being part of organizations like that really gives you the opportunity to meet a lot of like-minded practicing attorneys. And when you’re in that environment, it feels very supportive and you can build those deeper connections with those folks and feel more comfortable asking them those kinds of questions that you might want to ask, but you might be a little bit shy.

Chay Rodriguez:

I love that you took us here because I definitely wanted to talk about the importance of joining professional organizations while you are still a law student. For those who do not know, Ms. JD is a nonprofit nonpartisan organization and they’re dedicated to the success of aspiring and early career women lawyers, and it’s really a forum for development and networking among women lawyers and law students. What drew you to Miss JD as a professional organization and what should students look for to draw them to professional organizations if they’re considering taking part in one while still in school?

Katie Winchenbach:

I would say really what you want to look for is an organization that you feel comfortable with, that you feel like is providing the resources that you need. For all of us, that’s going to be really different. I didn’t rely as much on local bar associations because I knew that where I went to law school was not where I wanted to practice and I didn’t really know where I wanted to practice. I had a few different options, but I didn’t think it was going to be in Connecticut. So I focused more on joining organizations with a national or more regional reach so that way I could meet different attorneys that were in different areas of the United States and build connections all over. For folks who know that they want to stay where they are, the local bar associations are a tremendous resource. The attorneys in every group are usually so welcoming and really want to support the law students. So it’s just about finding what do you feel like is most helpful for where you are. And for me, Ms. JD has a focus on diverse individuals, women and on first generation students. So I felt like when I was there and I was going to those events, there were a lot of similarly situated women and it was really for me, helpful to be able to find those people that were having a shared experience that I could really connect with on a different level.

Chay Rodriguez:

Katie, you brought up such an amazing point in joining organizations with the more regional or national reach because not every student wants to practice where they go to school. And I wonder, what is your take on the job search for that type of student? Do you think it’s harder because they’re not in an environment that they’re going to be able to cultivate relationships with employers as easily and person or do you think with the internet the playing field is leveled?

Katie Winchenbach:

I think the internet has definitely leveled the playing field a little bit more, but I think at the end of the day, the saying it’s not what, it’s who that does ring true. So I did feel like it was a little bit more challenging for me to try to job search someplace where I didn’t have as many close connections just because you don’t hear about things via word of mouth. Some other folks do. You are relying on those online searches when your name crosses someone’s desk, they’re not looking down and going, oh, I recognize that law student or that early career attorney. I met them at a X function. They’re like, oh, I don’t know this person, but there are really good resources to leverage a lot of law schools partner with other law schools. So when I graduated and I decided where I was moving, I reached out to my career services dean and told her, I’m moving to Maine.

I don’t really know anybody in the city that I’m moving to. What do I do? How do I find a job? And she actually was able to partner with the local law school here in Maine and get me access to their career database. So it’s just about asking those questions. Yeah, that’s something I never thought, but it was so helpful because then I had access to the same resources that Maine law students did and could see those jobs that were on their career portal. So there’s a lot of reciprocity between law schools that, and I didn’t know about that when I was in law school, so thankfully I had a career counselor who was very invested in all of us and was willing to look into that. But it’s just a good thing to know that there are kind of resources that you might not think of that are out there to help you. If you want to move,

Todd Berger:

We’ll be right back. So Chay, great interview so far with Katie as a law student, someone trying to find your own way in terms of what you want your career to look like, what parts of your discussion with her so far have really jumped out at you? Anything that you thought, oh, I didn’t know that beforehand or That’s a great idea, that’s something I want to try moving forward.

Chay Rodriguez:

Todd, admittedly, I think I am guilty of not using my school’s resources to probably the amount that I should have or at all. So I think Katie’s last point actually really got to me. I think that I need to start using those resources a little more. I mean, I am paying for them and I should have a conversation with career services and ask if there’s some more opportunities for me out there. I don’t plan on practicing in Georgia. So I think that point really hit home for me. And even though I would love to, a lot of the students I think already know because talked about this before, I’m not a traditional student. I go to school, I would love to stay with my company and work for one of their New York offices. That might not be possible when I first step out of law school.

So it might be a conversation that I need to have with career services at my school and see what it is that I can do to prepare me for life outside of Georgia in the legal field. So I think that was really good advice. Not to say that everyone’s school will be able to help them get a placement in a different state, but just to utilize those resources to go have a visit, have them look at your resume, have them hook you up with maybe some opportunities that internships, externships, volunteer work or whatever your school might be connected to that can help you grow in the field that you would like to while you’re still a student. I think that would be beneficial.

Todd Berger:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really good point. I mean, I just had an interaction with a student literally maybe a week or two ago, and he’s telling me how he wants to go into entertainment law, but specifically the music side of things. And in case you didn’t know, Syracuse New York is not exactly the music, entertainment capital of the world, but believe it or not, we actually have a lot of alums who do different things in the entertainment law space. And as I’m talking to him, someone from our alumni office walks by and I was literally right in the hallway able to make the connection between the two of ’em. And so one thing that can happen is your school can have alums all over the country, people you might not even know about. They’ve also had to go into these markets different than where the law school is and sort of make their own way. And if your alumni office knows about them, they can connect you with them and oftentimes they’re a tremendous resource because they were exactly where you are and they want to help to make inroads for your school in different parts of the country.

Chay Rodriguez:

So can you tell me a little bit about your first role, your first position as an attorney right after the Bar?

Katie Winchenbach:

So I started as an associate attorney at a law firm that did real estate and estate planning. That was not my dream job, but it was a really wonderful opportunity for me to get my foot in the door to get experience having clients. And that was what I tried to focus on. And I think that’s what’s really important is once you get that first job, it is really easy to pivot. You can change your career, you can change your focus many times. Just take that opportunity to get your foot in the door. Don’t stress if you’re like, this isn’t exactly what I want to do, or this isn’t the exact type of law firm that I want to be at or the exact location, or don’t put so much pressure on yourself to dive in with the ideal job because that was not my dream job, but I still got so much out of it and I was able to leverage it to get closer and closer and closer to that dream job over time.

Chay Rodriguez:

And I think that’s a huge, huge point because you’re really talking about reconciling with the opportunities you’re afforded after law school and the reality that you’re faced with versus the type of law that you thought you wanted to practice after you got over that first heartbreak, you’re one oh year, but for everyone else, whenever else that time was when you’re kind of like, okay, I think I maybe like this thing. I just running down the checklist that you said, I’ve talked to my professors, I’ve taken electives that I may or may not have been interested in. I’ve went to these different networking opportunities with different professional organizations. I think I kind of know what I want to do. And then you look at the market and you look at your bills and you’re like, but this is what I have to do. So coming to terms with that, were there many, I’m just trying to set the stage here for expectations. Were there many conversations with yourself where you talked yourself into, okay, day 364, I’ve done this, we’re here, this won’t be forever? Or did you fall in line relatively quickly and was your mindset kind of one of, I know I can pivot?

Katie Winchenbach:

Oh no, it was the first. It was like, alright, we’re going to do this. You start, and I think every job when you start it, especially when you’re a new attorney, you’re just kind of like, okay, this might not be perfect, but I’m kind of excited because clients and I’ve passed theBar and you’re kind of on a little bit of a, I just passed theBar and I’m a real lawyer. Hi. It wore off kind of quickly for me. It really just was not a great fit for me and I was definitely doing that of, okay, you know what? This is necessary. This is what we need to do. This is like you said, day 300 and whatever and we’re going to make the best of it. But one thing I will say that was helpful for me is kind of keeping my eye on the prize.

I didn’t kind of wallow in that, okay, I’m here and this is what I have to do. I kind of created goalposts for myself. I looked up the job that I wanted next, it kind of figured out what I thought a next step be, and then I would look at those job postings and say, alright, what do these jobs require? Okay, they’re looking for at least a year of legal practice. That one just biting my time to get there. Okay, they’re looking for experience with these three things. How can I get that type of experience in this role that I have? And I really spent that first several months when I was at the law firm thinking about how I could position myself for the next step and how I could make the most out of it.

Chay Rodriguez:

I think that what you just said as a law student’s dream because to some extent I think all law students like to strategize whether we’re strategizing what classes we’re going to take and the path to get out of school, whether we’re strategizing the next career moves we’re going to make, whether we’re strategizing how we’re going to get our favorite pasta dish that is 20 minutes away and class starts in 15 minutes. We love a good strategy and I think strategies are kind of what keeps, like you said, your eye on the ball when it comes to navigating your career path. One thing that I hear repeatedly is that a job at your DA’s office or a job at your local public defender’s office is good ground zero training for early career attorneys and for young lawyers. Is that something that you’d agree with?

Katie Winchenbach:

I would think really think of your first job as trading. Whether it is in one of those places or whether it’s in a law firm or whether it’s at a nonprofit, it doesn’t matter where that first job is. You have so much to learn when you start, and when I say when you start, I really mean for your first 10 years of practice, I still have so much to learn all the time. And if you can frame it as this is an opportunity for me to sharpen my basic skills for me to grow in these different ways, you’re going to make so much more out of that experience. And that’s really the biggest benefit of that first job is gaining all of that knowledge and that experience that you can then leverage down the road.

Chay Rodriguez:

When do you think is a good time? I know you said you had kind of looked up the job that you wanted to see the requirements there while you were in your first job. When do you think is a good time to do that? Do you think you should be six months into that first position? Should you do it day three if you realize it really isn’t going to work? I’m wondering how do you kind of play the middle between really one foot out the door and that strategy point that you’re talking to that, okay, I want to look into this and set up my next goal. Because sometimes I think that we can be so focused on that next opportunity and that next thing that we could check out. And I wouldn’t want students either. It could be an intern position as well, right? Students or early career lawyers to kind of check out too early and maybe shoot themselves in the foot with their current position. So when do you think would be a good time to start looking at your next step?

Katie Winchenbach:

Yeah, Chay, I think that’s a great point. You need to be committed to the role that you’re in, even if it’s not exactly what you want to be doing. Even if you are planning your next step, be there and be a hundred percent in for that job because you owe it to yourself to show up and put your best foot forward every day and you owe it to those people you’re working with and to your clients to be all in. It definitely is a balance for me. I was fortunate to intern in-house my last year of law school. I interned at an advertising agency doing contracts and assisting with contracts, which is when I really fell in love with contracts and knew that that was what I wanted to do. So I knew the day that I started my job that this is not where I wanted to be.

I knew it. I knew I wanted to go, I knew I wanted to focus on contract law. So I definitely had that kind of path very early on. Like you said, I was a day three person. I was like, alright, I’ve been here three days, this is great, but what’s next? But I think part of that, what’s next is also thinking about that current role. I was very mindful of how I could dive into my job at the law firm to build skills. What can I learn here? You need to think about that too as opposed to just, okay, these are the next steps, but thinking like, okay, I am going to be here for a little bit, so what am I going to learn here and what am I going to bring here? And really look at that opportunity and see what you could get out of it because you can learn so much from every position. And there are a lot of things that I didn’t expect to learn from being at the law firm either about myself or useful skills that I wouldn’t have gotten if I wasn’t all into that.

Chay Rodriguez:

I love that internship point because you said that you interned in-house and there is this, I don’t know if it’s because it’s not a misconception, it’s just maybe kind of an unspoken or at this point spoken truth that a lot of places may not hire a baby lawyer as in-house because they have very expensive in-house problems and they don’t have in-house time to teach you how to deal with those. So you might not get an in-house position right out of school. Not saying never, of course it’s been done, but that’s kind of what some lawyers will tell you, don’t hang your hat there. You need a little bit more experience. How do you navigate through these different rumors or stereotypes or whatever you want to call them about the workforce and being a lawyer and not just resign to, okay, well this is the job I got, so let me be just happy that I’m here and I got this.

Katie Winchenbach:

I think first off I will say it is true, it is very challenging to get an in-house position right out of school in-house teams usually run pretty lean so they don’t have a lot of time for training or resources for training. So I think in a way that’s almost a good thing because you can look at those other experiences that you’re having and realize that you’re getting what you wouldn’t be able to get in-house. Law firms and some other organizations are incredible training grants. They know what you need to know. There are associate attorneys, there are partners there that are dedicated to training associate attorneys. They bring in new classes of associates every single year and they know what you need. They know how to really get you set up for success. And I think that’s a really great experience to be able to have.

So it is just you don’t want to just be complacent and say, okay, this is the job that I have, so I’ll take it and I need to be grateful for that because I have a job. But I think if you can shift that perspective to, okay, I can think about this, I can get something out of this, I can provide a benefit here. And then when you go and you do move on, you leverage all of that experience and you really do end up kind of being grateful for that initial position and the things that you got.

Speaker 4:

We will be right back.

Chay Rodriguez:

Todd talking to Katie about her first few years coming out of law school has me looking towards my first couple of years soon and I don’t know, I can appreciate that she was able to find a place that she really genuinely accepted, I need to be here so that I can learn. She was also very realistic in that she needed to be there so that she could pay bills, which I think is something that we all kind of deal with when the student loan collector comes knocking. But I really appreciate the fact that she harped on you needing to want to be there in order to take as much as you can from the experience but still perform because it’s still a position, whether that’s your dream job right out of law school or not. What do you think or what did you think when you were a student coming out of law school in regards to your first position where you like, okay, I’m just going to take whatever I can. Or did your position at the public defender’s office serve as something that you really wanted to work hard at working and do? So you had a different take on it?

Todd Berger:

No, it’s a great question. I mean, I think for me, I was fortunate that I figured out exactly what I wanted to do in law school really between my second and third year and then I just focused on that goal. I think what’s kind of interesting is I was one of those people, probably like a lot of listeners who are K through JD and I came into law school and I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to do. Or like I said earlier, I had some vague concept that was totally unrealistic and we get that sometimes there. I think students who come to law school, the big one I think is international law students are like, I want to practice international law. And they have this image in their head that they’re going to be going back and forth to Geneva for business and stuff like that. It’s like, you’re not going to doing anything like that. They’re a handful of people on earth who practice international law. Most of them are self-funded or am mall Clooney.

Chay Rodriguez:

Yes, we all can’t be a mall Clooney, even though we can try really hard guys,

Todd Berger:

But everyone thinks they’re going to be a mall Clooney. Lots of times people are like, I’m going to be a sports agent or whatever. And might, I don’t mean to say that your dreams aren’t possible, but I think what you have to do is focus on what is a realistic thing that you can do and then try early on in your career, try and find different things. So between my first and second year, I’ve worked at a personal injury law firm that had tremendous value to me because I realized this is not at all what I want to do. And so I think the thing is, it’s okay early on in your law school career to sort of say, this isn’t what I want to do that, and it can help put you on the right path. And realizing I didn’t want to do that.

It kind help put me on the public interest path and then the public defender path from there. I think that it’s okay to know that early on in your career, certainly people switch jobs. The thing about it is that is less a time for just sort of exploration than early on in your first year law school or your second year law school in particular jobs you might take or the elective classes you take, of course. But I think you want to try and have a certain kind of focus to what you want to do. And it doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind and it doesn’t mean you should do something that would make you miserable. But I do think that employers look at somebody who bounces around from a lot of different jobs and they don’t get the sense that this person is passionate about this or this person wants to stay. So try some things early on in your career, particularly in law school, something doesn’t work. There’s a value to that. But I guess I’d just say after you graduate, try and get a little focused. Don’t go too crazy. Otherwise you might have a resume that looks like you don’t know what you want to do and that’s not attractive.

Chay Rodriguez:

I think something too, I’ve had a conversation with some classmates and some people in different classes and we talk about different things like the different types of law. And some people do say, for example, I’ll pick on personal injury because that’s something that you talked about. Oh, personal injury, it’s great money and I might not want to do it fresh out, but I’m going to do it just because I know the money is going to be there eventually and I can set something up, but I just don’t want to get sucked into it. Or you meet certain attorneys that go into a field thinking that, okay, no, I know that I don’t want to do this. But they never quite actually make the jump. And then 5, 10, 15 years later, they’re still in an industry where they’re like, it was just never the right time to get out. And I feel like that’s also a pitfall.

Todd Berger:

I mean, that can definitely happen to people. I guess the one concrete piece of advice I would say is sometimes you find people who say, alright, I wanted to do public interest law and I just couldn’t because I had an opportunity to make money out of law school, whether it’s go to a big firm or do personal injury work or whatever it is, and I just couldn’t turn it down at that time, but I plan to go into public interest law later. That’s what I really find rewarding. And then what happens is almost invariably, and we know this through studies, the number of people who say, I will do it eventually, almost no one ever does. There’s very few people and I think that there’s one reason for that, and we call it golden handcuffs. You get the money and maybe you don’t even like what you do.

So you sort of deal with that by spending the money. That’s kind of how you compensate for all of that. And then you have a certain kind of lifestyle, and then what you find is public interest work doesn’t pay that well. So it becomes very hard once you have that kind of lifestyle to leave. Now obviously having a job where you make a lot of money and being stuck in it is not the worst thing that’s ever happened to people. A lot of people have stuck in jobs where they don’t make any money. But I guess what I would tell people is if you think there’s something out there in the law that is going to be fulfilling and you don’t do it right away, you just want to set up your career in a certain way where you can make that jump later and you don’t have those golden handcuffs, you’re not stuck with the lifestyle that you’ve created for yourself. Once you do that, it’s going to be really hard to ultimately end up making the transition.

Chay Rodriguez:

Is that kind of an approach or strategy that you used when you kind of transferred over to lecturing or did that kind of fall into your lap?

Todd Berger:

Yeah, it’s interesting. So when I was a public defender, you would go through different rotations at the office, you’d make a three-year commitment and then you’d different things. And I decided that I was going to do as many things as possible as a public defender because each rotation that I went through, I learned more about being a public defender, maybe a different part of the practice, a different area of law, the court system, whatever it was. And the public defender’s office that I was at in Philadelphia, it teaches all of the criminal defense clinics for the local law schools. And you’re a full-time public defender, but your job is to teach that clinic as well as carry your own caseload. And after five years, an opportunity presented itself to teach the clinic at the University of Pennsylvania. I did that while I was full-time, public defender for two years.

And then it was like everything just kind of clicked. I mean, I love that I was doing as public defender, I think like most people, I didn’t go to law school thinking I would be a law professor, but I thought to myself, well, wait a minute. I get to practice law and do the work that I love and work with students and mentor students as they learn, not just to be public defenders, but to be better lawyers, generally prepare them for the profession. And then there’s a little piece of it where I get to write and think about ideas in a more in-depth way than you get to do in practice when you have this crushing caseload and a million things going on. And I was like, oh, this is the job. This is exactly what I want to do. How do I get from A to B, so to speak? And I was just lucky. I just hustled and opportunities presented themselves, and I got fortunate at that time in my career.

Chay Rodriguez:

I think that’s something that students kind of missed too. You also, outside of you having your plan, you just have to also let life happen to you because then opportunities like this similar to yours will pop up and you’ll be able to take advantage of them. But if you’re so busy trying to make it stick to the plan that you are plotting out, you might miss it.

Todd Berger:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s important early in your career to take advantage of those opportunities, not to say no to stuff. Obviously you have to at some point if you can’t keep up with the work or you have your priorities and clients come first, of course. But yeah, just to pursue different kinds of things and different avenues open up for sure. And that’s really important. I think that stage early in your career where a lot of our listeners are in law school or may have graduated a few years ago. For many people, obviously people go to law school on a different kind of trajectory, but for many people, that’s a time in your life where you want to be focused. You want to know what you want to do, but you also have different flexibility than later in life. Sometimes people aren’t married and don’t have to worry about two people’s jobs.

People don’t have kids. They don’t have to worry about where are my kid going to go to school? Where am I going to move? What’s my income going to look like? So that’s the time to say, yes, take advantage of some things, and if it leads you in different directions, you’re going to have a lot more career flexibility earlier on in your career, then you’re going to have later. So I would really stress that this is the time where, like I said, you don’t want to be all over the place. You want to, I think, be trying some things, but do it strategically. Want to act intentionally. But that’s the time where you can take advantage of the fact you don’t have all of these other kind of wonderful, great attachments, but nevertheless, things that factor into choices you make later. Right, because a balancing act. Yeah, a hundred percent. Before we go, if you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Be sure to share our podcast with your friends and fellow students. We want to hear from you, so send us your thoughts about the show or issues you’d like to hear about in a review. We at the ABA Law Student Podcast would like to express our thanks to our production team at the Legal Talk Network and the professionals at the ABA Law Student Division.

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