My Career Plans

-- By NoahJoseph - 02 May 2021

Introduction

Having recently finished my first year of law school, I now have a tentative long-term plan for my career. This plan is based primarily on my work experience, 1L classes, and a variety of conversations that I have had with my professors, classmates, and colleagues. Although my plan is subject to change as I continue through law school, my current goals are outlined below.

My Current Plan

My ultimate goal is to run my own public interest practice. The area in which I am most interested in working is immigration law, but I am also interested in human rights, disability rights, and racial and ethnic justice. Beyond these fields, I am interested in exploring a wide variety of practice areas, both within and outside of public interest law.

Ideally, I would want my practice to be relatively small, as some of my best work experiences have been at small firms. I believe that small firms allow each employee to have a greater impact on the firm’s work. As a result, each employee has more responsibility and will likely feel more inclined to produce better quality work.

I also want my practice to be financially flexible, such that it can adapt to my changing needs. For example, I may need to support a family at some point, so I want to be able to adjust my practice accordingly.

Moreover, I hope to live and work in Southern California in the future. I grew up in the Los Angeles area, and most of my family still lives there. As such, I feel very strong ties to this community. I have also begun to make some professional contacts in Southern California through some of my internships.

A Potential Model

In fact, one such internship has provided me with a model for my future practice. During the summers after my sophomore and junior years of college, I interned with a small business immigration firm in Los Angeles. This firm only had three attorneys: a married couple and their son. Despite the small size of this firm, it is very well respected in its field and it does exceptional work for its clients. The lawyers at this firm seem to have the perfect balance between financial success and control over their time. As such, I hope to use this firm as a template for how I will run my own firm in the future.

Of course, there are certain ways in which my ideal practice would differ from this firm in order to meet my particular needs. For example, although much of this firm’s financial success comes from its work with corporate clients, I would like to incorporate more pro bono work into my practice. Moreover, this firm’s work dynamic was heavily influenced by the fact that all of the attorneys were related to each other. Since there are currently no lawyers in my family, it is unlikely that this will be the case in my own practice. Nevertheless, I do not need to work with family members, and I am prepared to seek future legal partners through other means.

Immediate Concerns

In order to create my ideal practice, there are a number of tasks that I would like to focus on during the remainder of law school. Foremost among these is determining which practice area I will work in. I intend to do this by speaking with lawyers working in a wide variety of fields. The university frequently hosts events dedicated to this exact purpose, but I have not attended many so far. Hopefully, if these events are in person in the Fall, I will be able to converse with different types of lawyers to see which practice area best suits my interests.

Additionally, I will be interning at an immigration law firm over the summer, which will hopefully help me determine whether or not I would like to pursue a career in this particular practice area. Moreover, this internship will be in Los Angeles, so it may give me insights into what running an immigration firm in this area would be like.

Moreover, I would like to determine how much money will be enough for me in the future. Once I have more information about this, I can make informed decisions about various details of my practice, including how much pro bono work I can do.

Finally, I want to continue developing my relationships with my classmates and professors. Hopefully, these relationships will provide me with my future partners and clients.

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