New Follower Roundup!

I’d like to give a shout out to two new followers this week:

kaymcbri over at lawschoolfitness and patriciya at A Mechanism to Remember. Welcome aboard! You’ve both got some good insight into the law school thing, and reading your entries definitely brings back a lot of memories.

How to Survive Post-Law School and Pre-Bar Part 1

25 27 applications submitted. 1 interview. 0 calls to offer employment. These are my current employment statistics. I’ve applied to just about every available part time position, whether legal, administrative, hospitality, or retail. Most of the jobs that are available are in retail, but even those aren’t very plentiful.

The one interview I had was with a retailer who said it would call on Friday to set up a second interview. It was at a place I like to call Hipster Central, aka a thrift store. It is close to school, so I could eat lunch after bar review, then walk over there. But it’s Sunday now, and I still haven’t heard from them. Bummer.

I’m guessing that part of the reason it is difficult to find a job is that the economy isn’t improving as much as the news says it is. There simply don’t seem to be a lot of jobs available. And I’m guessing that every job is getting many, many more applications than the employer anticipates. That probably means that even if my application is being viewed, it is probably receiving minimal attention.

The other part is probably due to the fact that I have some pretty severe limitations on my time. Studying for the bar exam will require approximately 70 hours per week, or an average of 9 to 10 hours per day. So I can only work about 20 to 25 hours per week. And even those hours are limited to the time from 1pm on, as bar review is from 9am to noon. Part time employment it is then.

And as a result of the fact that all of my work experience over the last five years is in the legal field, I don’t have any recent experience that I can use to sell say, a retailer, on hiring me. At the same time, employers probably look at my resume and rightly assume that I’ll leave to find full time legal work as soon as I’ve taken the bar.

None of this is to say that I’m upset or angry about the situation I’m in. It’s just that when I started law school, I thought things would be smooth sailing from graduation onward. This isn’t true at all. Granted, I’ve been able to spend much more quality time with the Fiancee. And I’ve been able to relax and do nothing for large periods of time, which is nice since it’s taking me a while to recover from the last three years. Still, it’s rough out there, and it’s tough for a lot of people.

All of this suggests that it will be a rather difficult summer, but nothing I can’t handle. I can’t wait to be done with the bar exam. As far as work goes, whether I work full time in the legal field until I get my bar results, or go work in a different field entirely, I don’t care. Really, I’ll just be happy to have a regular income that I can use to enjoy life after the J.D.

How long has it been since I graduated, exactly?

8 days, 22 hours, 36 minutes, 26 seconds. Exactly. This is how much time has passed since I graduated from law school. And you know, the feeling of finally being done with school is incredible. And by incredible, I mean that this is the first time in about 23 years that I can finally relax, because I don’t have some impending deadline hanging over my head.  There is nothing to be learned from a textbook or professor, and there is nothing that I absolutely have to do.

Except pass the bar exam and get a job.

Reflecting on the past three years, I realize that a lot has changed. I started out as a DJ/undergraduate student who became interested in copyright to a law student. I focused heavily on intellectual property in law school, and I can tick off the four factors of fair use without thinking about it (hint: they have nothing to do with the literal definition of fair). At the same time, I took consciousness expanding classes in areas like critical race theory, and social movements, which will definitely help me bring a broader persecutive to everything I do. Law school wasn’t necessarily a bad experience, and I’m sure I’ll explain more about how it could change as time passes. But I grew as a person, and learned a lot about myself and the world around me. And now, I only have to use all of this new knowledge to carve out a life of my own post-school.

Which brings me to the why of this blog. I’m writing this because, for the first time in my life, I’m finally on my own. I can’t fall back on the well-worn disclaimer, “I’m a student!” I am finally, finally free to chart a course for my life and follow it through. Not that going to school wasn’t a part of my voyage, it was. But it was more like going to class to learn how to read a map rather than being on the seas reading a map in the middle of a storm. And writing this blog will help me to keep clear on what I’m doing and why, but maybe, I will write about some event and you will say, “Ah ha! Now I have an idea of how to handle that situation.” Or, “Ahhh…I will be sure to avoid making that mistake.” You may plan to attend law school (good luck with your cycle), or currently attend law school. If so, I hope I can shed at least some light on what it is like out on the high seas.

So, this will be all about my progression from quasi-professional to professional. Experiences both excellent and less than stellar are sure to happen, and I’ll share them as they occur. Maybe I’ll end up working nights so I can study for the bar exam during the day. Maybe I’ll say screw it all and go back to performing as a DJ. Maybe I’ll say to hell with it and move to a non-extradition country where I can grow a cash crop and live on the beach. And maybe I’ll end up working at a law firm here in Seattle. Who knows?! Still, there is no doubt in my mind that this journey will be interesting and exciting.

Last, please feel free to leave feedback. Comments are always appreciated, whether it is calling out typos/misstatements/gaps in logic, or if there is something specific that you’d like me to address.