An Ending and a Beginning

-- By DavidGoldin - 14 Apr 2010

The World is Changing

Everything is different now. We've discussed a multitude of issues in this class, but for better or worse, the one that has resonated most strongly with me is that the big law firm model of selling hours is no longer viable and that employment structure of the legal field has changed dramatically. Even if we want to, we can no longer count on pawning our licenses for $160,000 per year. Coming into this semester, my plan was to stick my head in the sand. Before coming to law school, I spent two years working at a big Wall Street law firm that fired a large number of people and I knew that things were changing. But this wasn't going to deter me. I was going to go to EIP and snag that one last position at X & Y LLP, where I would serendipitously not be furloughed or laid off and would end up making partner and getting paid $3 million a year. And I would do this all without hurting anyone. Now, I realize that if I want to achieve what I came to law school for, which I wrote about in my introduction, I need to give up this fantasy.

It is easy for me to pity myself and to bemoan the plight of us lawyers-to-be in the Columbia Law School class of 2012. But it is important to take a step back and realize that the world isn't just changing for us - it's changing for non-lawyers as well. One of the main industries of coastal Maine was canning. The industry "employed thousands of workers at more than 50 canneries". Now, the last one is about to go out of business. As the sardine canning factories that used to dot the coast of Maine disappear, so do the $18 an hour jobs that came with them. People who have worked at the factories for over 40 years are losing their jobs. Unemployment will soon get even higher, and this impoverished part of Maine will become even poorer.

A New Path

Unlike the sardine packer of 50 years, however, I am just beginning on my career path. Following the road that many Columbia Law students have taken before me may no longer be a viable option, but I now understand this is a good thing. It is far easier to develop a realistic plan now than it would be to start anew after being laid off by a law firm, or a sardine cannery, for that matter.

In addition to accepting that the big law firm model is no longer viable, I have also come to realize that there are two issues that are particularly important to consider in developing my legal career - the effect that my actions will have on others and how I can separate myself from the masses. In a most basic sense, I don't want to do more harm than good and I need to develop a niche. I did not need a semester long class to teach me this. These are seemingly simple points, and can be communicated easily. This class has impressed upon me that my real work for the rest of law school is going to be figuring out how to incorporate these into a viable career plan.

Starting Out

So, how am I going to go about this? As Eben has pointed out, it isn't something that I can learn in Torts, or by having my resume reviewed by a career counselor in Jerome Green Annex, or even by attending a touchy feely workshop from 12:10 to 1:10 about the changing legal market. My plan is a simple one: first, to pick something that interests me, and then figure out a way that I can do work in the field that will allow me to be the type of lawyer that I want to be. Perhaps this is a naïve approach. Perhaps I will fail. Perhaps I won't be able to find meaningful legal work in the areas that interest me most. But I have two more years of law school to test the waters, and as I stated earlier, I now have an idea of what not to do, and an idea of what I'd like to learn.

The Immediate Future

I've already started thinking about this. I know what interests me - prescription drug policy. Prescription drugs have helped shape the world that we live in - penicillin, for example, has turned strep throat from a life threatening disease into a minor ailment, and has extended the life spans of millions. But there are a huge number of problems with the way that these drugs are patented, marketed and priced. We need to figure out a way to fund research and development of the new drugs that will help many in the future without making drugs today so expensive that those who need them the most are unable to afford them. This is what interests me, and this is a field that I believe needs good lawyers.

Because of that, I will be working in the legal department of a drug company this summer. I want to gain more experience in the industry and learn about how drug companies operate. Ideally, this will actually happen. It may not. But this is just a first step. Hopefully, I will eventually gain the knowledge necessary to contribute meaningfully to the discourse on the issue and access to those who make the decisions that matter.

If anything, this class has forced me to pull my head out of the sand and think meaningfully about the ways I can use my license to fight for change where I believe it is needed most. I am looking forward to using the next two years to do this.

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