This past weekend I got in my car and drove a couple hundred miles to go see Bum.  I needed to have a face to face conversation.  I have been dropping hints since early September.  In December, when I was home I broached the subject lightly but left it alone.  Then in January and February, I tried four times over the phone to tell Bum my decision.  But, Bum wasn’t having it.   

The first time I tried to tell Bum there was a long silence at the other end of the phone.   When Bum finally said something, the shock, disappointment and anxiousness in Bum’s voice made me back off and my tone changed from certainness to tentativeness.  “Oh, I am still thinking about it.  Um, eventually I would want to leave.”   I understood that telling your parent that you no longer want to do what you wanted to do since you were 13 years old was a conversation that I needed to have face to face.   

I envisioned the conversation would take place in the dining room table at a fixed time with both of us sitting down and facing each other.  I would have my arguments outlined and I would go by them one to one.  But, it didn’t happen that way.  The conversation took place right after Bum and I pulled into the driveway after a grocery store run.  It was dark all around us and we were both staring straight ahead at the garage.   After thinking long and hard for six months I was ready.   I said,  “Bum, I don’t want to be a lawyer. ” 

Bum cut off the engine and we sat there.  It was one of the hardest things to tell Bum and one of the hardest things to admit to myself.

According to the American Bar Association, the average tuition and fees for a private law school rose from $16,798 in 1995 to $26,952 in 2004, including a 5 percent jump from the $25,574 tuition average in 2003. To help pay for that education, students attending private law school borrowed an average of $76,563 in 2004-2005, according to the ABA.

I always stayed away from debt because I wanted to know that after Law School where and what I decided to do would be my own choice.  That choice should only be dictated by my personal preference (and the job market) and not how much I must make to meet my monthly debt payments. 

Having such a huge debt means that students will not only forego an ideal job for one that pays the most, but research shows that student loans will cause 44% to delay buying a house while 28% will delay having children per Mint’s data.   

I don’t believe in the concept of good debt versus bad debt because I think all debt is debt.  Debt for education is not necessarily good because it is for education.  It will only be financially benficial if it will increase your earning power in a significant manner for the amount your paid for the education plus the amount of money you lost by staying out of the job market while pursuing the education.  I think the term ”good debt” causes people to skip the careful analysis that they should be doing whenever they take on any kind of debt. 

Do you agree with the concept of good debt and bad debt?

 There is a very honest article  titled Unemployed law student will work for $160k plus benefits from a third-year Harvard Law student who was “no-offered” by his/her summer firm similar to me.   The author did forget to mention a crucial piece of information.  Harvard Law is taking close to half a million from their endowment and creating jobs for their graduates in the form of public interest fellowships.   Now, that’s an unexpected benefit of going to a top law school.  The law school will actually create jobs for its unemployed students.  

The poll did give me a good laugh.

 The attorney told me that going the non-legal route is not only makes obtaining a legal position down the road difficult but it is also a highly risky path to take.  She said she had seen too many lawyers get stuck in non-legal positions and advised me to proceed with caution.  Also, my legal skills would get shoddy from disuse.  According to her, a law school graduate becomes a lawyer by doing legal work and getting feedback from other lawyers.  It took her three years to feel competent in her skills as a junior lawyer.  Integral to that transformation from law student to lawyer was doing legal work and having feedback from lawyers. 

 I also discussed with her another problem with pursuing a non-legal job.  Your colleagues can feel intimidated by you.  I am already experiencing this at my internship site. 

 A lot of things she said was hard to swallow and the only consolation at the end of the meal was that she picked up the check.

“What do you mean?  I want a job.” 

“No, you don’t.  If you really wanted a job then you would have also applied for state clerkships and you would have…”

Jane: “But, I don’t want to do state clerkships.”

“See, you don’t want a job.”

Jane: “No, I don’t want ANY job.”

“I would much rather you be in a position to turn down a job than have nothing.  You are working on plan A, then on plan B, now plan C.  By working on things consecutively, you are setting yourself up for failure.  You gotta have Plan’s A through Z and work on as many of them as possible.  You have to stagger your approach.  You have to do a full force job search none of this oh, I think I will like this.  I need you to spend at least 2 hours a day looking for a job.” 

Jane: “Two hours a day?!”

 ”There’s 168 hours in a week.  What?  You don’t have two hours to spent searching for jobs?” 

Jane: “I can try to find two hours.”

“And, you can’t be egotistical.  This is not the job market for that.  I graduated from a top law school and worked at some of the best firms.  I applied for 150 jobs last month.  Guess how many calls I got?  I got 4 interviews.  In any other market, my resume would have been snatched up but not in this market.” 

And…

I met this attorney on Friday.  Before then, I didn’t think this consecutive job searching was a bad thing although I knew it wasn’t the best way to go about it.  In some ways she is right about the fact that I don’t want a job.  I don’t want any job just to say that I have a job.  I would much rather leave the legal field behind and jump into something else rather than trying to make my way through a dead end profession where even a former Skadden associate like this attorney can’t find a job based on her superb qualifications.   But, I am thankful for this encounter because it did force me to sit down and make a list of A through Z options to pursue after graduation.  And, it did make me start spending 2 hours each day starting yesterday.

Plan A was to get a job at the firm that I worked as a summer associate at.  The attorney in charge of the summer program told me that I was getting an offer, so I didn’t look at alternatives.  Towards mid to late August, I found out that I was no-offered.

Plan B was to apply for a federal clerkship position.  I was behind in the application process because I abandoned it as soon as I was told about the offer, but somehow I got my applicated together and applied.  I got one invitation to interview from a judge.  He said that he had 600 applications for his one position and of that 600 he was interviewing 20.    I wasn’t the one person out of twenty who ultimately ended up with the position. 

Plan C  I decided to go with my current internship site because I believed I was more likely to obtain an entry level position with this organization than the internship offer from the more prestigious governmental agency.  I applied for two positions with this organization.  I reached out to a recruiter and she informed me competition was stiff these days with each position getting 300 to 600 applications.   If a position with this prospective employer doesn’t work work out then I need to consider alternatives. 

Readers: What, if any, mistakes am I making with my job search?  

Millionairehood

Departure: 2008 – Age 24 

Arrival: 2028 – Age 44

Speed: Aggressive.

 My blogging friend Don and I decided to buddy-up and join J. Money’s Millionaire’s Club.  It is an e-club for prospective millionaires.  The only requirement is that you make the committment and list the steps you will take to achieve your goal. Right now, since I haven’t landed a job yet I have no idea about my earning power but I am going to estimate conservatively and give myself 18 more years to achieve my goal.  I plan to become a millionaire by doing the following things:

1. Develop multiple income streams.
2. Diversify my career.   
3. Invest wisely for retirement.
4. Live below my means.
5. Give back to the community.  

Develop multiple income streams

I will develop multiple income streams that will increase the amount of money that I bring in. 

• Start a business before 30
• Open a Roth 401(k) or other another tax advantaged retirement plan available to the self-employed. 
• Identify and consistently develop five income streams before 2011.  
• Use the “snowballing” technique to keep track of all the small amounts that come in. 

Diversify my career. 

Basic fundamentals of supply and demand tell me the legal field is doomed until the ABA wakes up.  I must diversify my career.   

• Get a job with an organization I can see myself staying at least 5 years. 
• Attend night school or go back to school and obtain a degree in another field where the supply/demand ration isn’t so out of whack. 

Invest wisely for retirement

I will invest wisely for retirement by using every tax advantaged retirement vehicle available to me and by always getting my 401(k) match.

• Max out my Roth IRA as long as I am eligible.  If I cross the eligibility territory then max out a regular IRA.
• Max out or place 20% of my income yearly into a 401(k) before 30.  After 30, I need to max out the 401(k).

Live Below My Means

I will resist the urge to keep up with my cousins.  I will not buy possessions in order to impress other people. I will live on 50% or less of my salary.

Give Back to Family & Community

In my zeal to become a millionaire, I will not forget the importance of staying connected to my family and giving back to my community. 

• I will either give my time or money to worthy causes that match my values. 
• I will stop being a safety net for Bum my parent and help Bum make wise financial decisions to the best of my ability.
• I will look into opening a Vanguard Foundation to best maximize any donations that I wish to make. 

 Don’t forget to head over to Money Reasons to see Don’s list. 

Is a million what it used to be or should we be aiming higher?  Do you believe you can become a millionaire?  What are you doing right now to achieve that goal? 

My externship work is going well.  See my post Getting in the Game for more details about my externship site choice.  I am learning a lot and I am in the process of reworking my resume and cover letter to apply for a regulatory position within the organization.  My boss told that me that managers hate to hire lawyers because after getting one or two years of experience they leave the position quickly in pursuit of better things.  

I went straight through undergrad to grad school and then to law school.  I have no professional experience other than working for Big Law firms during the summer.  For the first time, I am working outside of a law firm context with non-attorneys.  It is a whole new world for me.   Here, are a few things that stood out to me.

No administrative assistance other than an office manager. 

At Big Law, you are told to delegate anything and everything that is non-billable to an administrative assistant.  I used my administrative assistant quite often to sent out jobs to the copy center, print and arrange things for me, handle tech issues, make lunch reservations, keep up with my calendar etc… Now I get to do it all.  I miss having an administrative assistant. 

No social land mines & forced socialization. 

I noticed that there aren’t any social events going on.  You know, those social events that are “optional” but not really.  No awkward social events where you try to decipher what you are supposed to wear.  We were all invited last summer for the annual pool party at a senior partner’s house.  Of course, if you did a little research you would find out that it wasn’t an actual pool party and that there was a complex dress code to follow. 

No one sleeps at the office.

It is not uncommon to see couches inside the offices of lawyers rather than actual chairs.  That is how you know who sleeps in their office (usually from the exhaustion of working around the clock.)  Nor is it uncommon to see lawyers with raccoon eyes–a sure sign they were working all night.  Here, no raccoon eyes and no couches. 

A business casual dress code.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone wear a suit in the past month.  The law firms I worked at were business casual which meant that you wear everything except for your suit jacket.  Here, the emphasis is more on casual than business.  And people get to wear jeans every Friday!  

These observations may not be very accurate because I work in a small department that is very independent from the rest of the organization and my boss has told me that their department is a very casual environment, unlike many departments at the organization. 

What kind of a work environment do you have?  Do you have people sleeping in your office working around the clock?  Do you get to wear jeans to work every Friday? 

I had to make a decision about which internship to go with.  If I am only thinking about the short-term then the best choice would be internship #1 because it is a legal internship that would relate to the kind of courses I am taking right now.  Internship #1 is a highly desirable experience for a law student.   Internship #2 offeres regulatory work which isn’t strictly legal.  It also offered a smaller department to work in and a director who seemed eager to mentor incoming externs. 

I chose internship #2 and here’s why. 

 Mentoring – I felt that internship #2 had a director who was more focused on mentoring.  As a recipient of really good mentoring from many of my current and former mentors I strongly believe in it.  I need to have an ally or a “true fan” on my corner.   Having a mentor can smooth the road to attaining many goals.   I need to be very careful about that crucial “first job” of my career and I can see myself being part of this organization and growing within in it.    My director knows that I turned down a very sweet legal offer for the chance to work with her.  Coming in to an organization with a favorable impression is golden. 

I mentioned in my last post that I needed to get in the game.   By getting an externship I am on the sidelines watching the game closely.  My goal now is to make a move from the sidelines to the actual field and get in the game.  In other words, I need to land a job here. 

s

It’s time to dust myself off and launch a new career strategy. 

Not getting an offer from the firm that I worked for last summer was an absolute blow to my confidence and my skills.  If I ever have been depressed in my life then it would have been from August to November.  Going home for a month allowed me to take a mental break from the big muddle that is my soon-to-be-career.   I am feeling better emotionally and last week I launched a difficult yet strategic move that may help my career. 

 Revised Career Strategy – 2020

Goal: In ten years, become skilled at financial regulatory work and position myself to become a senior associate for a law firm or to obtain a senior position with a financial firm. 

First, get in the game. 

Get a job in the financial regulatory industry to obtain experience. 

 Second, find other good players to model myself after.

Find engaging and skilled mentors with a pay-it-forward attitude. 

 Third, become a really good player.

Build an expectation of excellence and continually deliver on that expectation.  Obtain skills by taking on challenging work.  Take advantage of all educational and training opportunities.  Build and strengthen the personal brand that is Jane. 

Fourth, get true fans. 

Build meaningful relationships not relationships simply for career advancement.  Obtain true fans also through personal branding, networking and mentoring others.  

Fifth,  switch leagues.

Jump ship to become a senior associate for a regional law firm or a senior position with a financial firm.