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| | | Make a Choice
As statistics show, Ruth will consider the cautionary tale outlined above, but she will eventually accept her offer from Reputable. This choice, though, is not a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom, especially if her model of influencing the world conforms to the firm’s mission. This is perhaps the most critical aspect of the choice. Ruth, as someone committed to her personalized vision of change, should attempt to work for an organization whose philosophies are closely aligned with her own. No one organization will have an institutional paradigm exactly conforming to Ruth’s values. However, minimizing the importance of prestige and salary in the calculation could lead her to a job that does not necessitate a sea change in her basic worldview. | |
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< | Ruth could easily encounter the same problems if she chooses a job outside the firm arena. Potentially, the issues surrounding a future change in consumptive habits and the volume of work would be mitigated by such an alternative choice. But her “autonomous” model of change must necessarily be altered by whatever work she does. Any novice lawyer, with few skills and no experience, will have to take a great deal of direction from on high. Therefore, Ruth’s goal of creating change in her preferred substance and form will be best served if she finds an organization that, while sharing her central ideals, also permits her to have some stake in decision-making, a reasonable amount of time outside of work to read and think, and the ability to cultivate a broad range of skills. With these relative freedoms, Ruth can prepare for the likely contingency of changing jobs, building on her multifaceted understanding of the world and experiencing a minimum level of interference with her most fundamental principles. | >
> | Ruth could easily encounter the same problems if she chooses a job outside the firm arena. Potentially, the issues surrounding a future change in consumptive habits and the volume of work would be mitigated by such an alternative choice. But her “autonomous” model of change must necessarily be altered by whatever work she does. Any novice lawyer, with few skills and no experience, will have to take a great deal of direction from on high. | | | | |
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- But any novice lawyer with solidly-built expertise in a specialized subject area and good collaboration skills could gain a great deal of valuable experience while serving clients for decent remuneration by helping more experienced generalists to deal with matters involving her area of specialization. A novice lawyer with two of those to trade for mentoring in other aspects of practice, and with some training in law school that she could get if she persistently asked for it, particularly if she stopped spending her summers inside bloated and irrelevant time-brokerages and instead interned with smaller and more skills-oriented practices, would be able to earn a fair living while building up her practice.
Therefore, Ruth’s goal of creating change in her preferred substance and form will be best served if she finds an organization that, while sharing her central ideals, also permits her to have some stake in decision-making, a reasonable amount of time outside of work to read and think, and the ability to cultivate a broad range of skills.
- Not unless that organization is building her practice for her at least as well as she could do herself. You keep forgetting about that, as they want you to, as though you weren't supposed to have a practice. As though your license were supposed to be permanently in hock to someone else. Got the point?
With these relative freedoms, Ruth can prepare for the likely contingency of changing jobs, building on her multifaceted understanding of the world and experiencing a minimum level of interference with her most fundamental principles.
- She shouldn't be changing jobs, she's a lawyer. She should be driving her practice. A job is a thing I lawyer could have, but the license should always be there and it should never be more than temporarily on someone else's shelf. If you don't know what it's worth, it's too early to take it to the pawnshop.
- The essay is a great improvement. More could happen, but that's up to you.
| | | ORIGINAL PAPER BELOW | | | This is obviously a legitimate criticism of the paper, and I will revise with this in mind, but I feel compelled to briefly respond. I don't believe that the story I tell is as disconnected from "the real world" as you suggest. I am discussing the initial choice that a law student has in choosing their first job - while the implication that this decision is permanently-binding may be derived from the writing if the reader chooses, it is nowhere explicitly suggested. Your illustrations of the dynamism of career paths in the present day are, I'm sure, true. | |
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< | However, I still believe that a lawyer's initial choice of work will prove to be significant. Will a law student who starts as a 160K associate be comfortable taking a 60K job later down the road? Veblen would say no. This does not refute your contentions; far from it. But I think that it does ascribe more importance to where a lawyer starts out, especially if that individual is interested in the nebulous thing I have called "change". | >
> | However, I still believe that a lawyer's initial choice of work will prove to be significant. Will a law student who starts as a 160K associate be comfortable taking a 60K job later down the road? Veblen would say no.
- I'm as fond of Veblen as the next man, my dear fellow, but you shouldn't do that. In the first place, what Veblen says is that people find downshifting hard because they lose reputability. But when people reduce income to do some more honorable and reputable, whether it is becoming judges and giving up expensive partnerships, or taking jobs they love in which they serve noble causes and giving up high-salary rat-race associateships, they don't lose reputability among parties who count, particularly peers. In the second place, using a book written one hundred years ago to provide theory with which to look at facts is great, but using it to give you an answer so you can ignore facts is not. I say, "this happens." You say, "thanks, and I totally believe you but I think it must not really happen very much because Veblen says it won't."
- Which is sort of my problem with the exercise overall. I say, "one of the problems we have is that people weigh overweight the difficulty of building agile careers, so they take jobs that make everything much harder because they believe otherwise it would be impossible instead of easy. If only they wouldn't take so much trouble over the first job while in law school." You show why firm careers don't lead to agility, but, when I say agility does exist and you could learn to have it, you just fall back on the heavy foot. Watch for it....
This does not refute your contentions; far from it. But I think that it does ascribe more importance to where a lawyer starts out, especially if that individual is interested in the nebulous thing I have called "change".
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