Welcome to the Legal Learning Podcast. I’m your host Jolene. And with the Legal Learning Center, I help pre law students and law students with their legal journey. Today is episode 21. And I want to take a little time to spend some one-on-one time with you. Properly introduce myself the Legal Learning Center and share with you some of the trends that I’ve seen over the last 20 guests. So first again, my name is Jolene Blackbourn. I am a California attorney and I have been practicing for almost 20 years. I spent the majority of my career in estate planning and workers’ compensation. I have been advising pre law students and law students since I was a law student myself. When I was in law school, I ran my law fraternity, Phi Alpha Delta, and I took it from being one of the smallest organizations on campus to one of the largest.
Through my members I started to see patterns in some of the problems that they were having. They would come to me with some of their issues and no matter what the issue was, I just saw some similarities and overlap. And so I started advising others and I was advising them on really big topics. Things like, should I leave law school or which school should I pick? And I continued advising students throughout my legal career.
In 2019 I took that full time with the Legal Learning Center and I still on the side do practice law a little bit in estate planning. So now I offer one-on-one counseling through the legal learning center again, to help address issues like which school should I pick? How can I afford law school? Should I leave law school, things of that nature.
As far as courses that the Legal Learning Center offers as of April, 2021, so soon after the date of this podcast, our most popular course Financially Free Aspiring Attorneys will be on temporary hiatus. And we’ll relaunch on June 1st, 2021 to offer students what they’ve been asking most for.
So already Financially Free Aspiring Attorneys offers hundreds of thousands of dollars in money saving tips to law students to help them save time, money, and stress on their legal journey. But now it will also offer law school applicants the accountability buddy that they’ve always been asking for with a customized schedule to fit their needs, as well as someone to review their personal statement and all new bonus materials from industry experts. So stay tuned for more information on that.
Today, as my special gift to you for being a listener of the Legal Learning Podcast I want it to give you three tips for saving money on your legal journey that is available at www.legallearningcenter.com/money.
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Now let’s go ahead and get into this episode. We’ve got 20 guests that came on the show and of those 20 guests about a dozen or so were attorneys. Now, if you look at those attorneys, about half of them are no longer practicing law. And so when you look at that, why is that? I didn’t ask all of them that a few of them I did, but some of them, we just breezed right past that issue.
But if half the attorneys that have been on the show are no longer practicing. Is that something that as a pre law student, you should be looking into, why are people leaving the practice of law? Why are they not happy? How can you avoid that problem? Because obviously no one spends all that time, money and effort just till leave. They obviously meant to become an attorney and practice probably the rest of their lives.
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But a lot of them left within 5 to 10 years. Some of them even less than that. Now a lot of times it’s because they had a lot of misconceptions about what being a lawyer is actually like. And so one of my suggestions for avoiding that problem is to take some gap years and actually explore life. See if you can’t discover what opportunities out there interests you besides law. Now, why am I saying besides law? Because let’s say you find something else that you like, but you decide that you want to incorporate the law into that. So let’s say you like helping nonprofits, and then you decide you wanted to be a nonprofit attorney. Well, now you already have work experience. You have a better chance of getting a nonprofit attorney job, but also you really will understand what goes into that job a lot better than someone else, even though you’re not practicing in a firm or necessarily practicing with a nonprofit attorney, you know the nonprofit world.
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Similarly, if you are working in any other industry where you actually get to understand maybe what it’s like to work in human resources, and then you go into employment law or workers’ compensation, there’s a lot of ways besides working for a law firm to get that experience and make sure you have a field that you like and make sure it’s right for you.
Another way to make sure it’s right for you is to conduct informational interviews. Now that’s something we covered with Dave Strousberg in one of our episodes. I think it was episode 14. Dave talked about how to interview people so that you can really figure out what they do, what they like, what they don’t like and see if it’s really right for you, working in a firm doesn’t necessarily help you when you’re a non-attorney, they don’t give you attorney like tasks.
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So it can be very hard to know if that’s the right field for you. So again, informational interviews and working in a sideline type of business is a little bit better to understanding an industry. So that’s one thing to watch out for that the guests seem to have a trend for.
Nowanother thing that I noticed with the attorneys who are still practicing, almost all of them, had some type of major side project that they were working on. They helped others. They did major, major things. Why is that? I’ve noticed over the years, that secretaries and so forth, don’t do that, attorneys do that. Is it because they’re not fully satisfied as an attorney? Is it just because they are the type of person that has to be so busy? They can’t ever just go home and rest? I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for you, but that’s something to be aware of.
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And if you are doing informational interviews with attorneys who happen to have side projects, maybe ask them, it’s something that’s really good to know because when you’re working long hours, it’s good to enjoy life, have some recreation time. Having a major side project is almost like a second job, even if you’re really enjoying it. So you just want to be careful of how you plan out your life and execute your life so that you are finding that relaxed time. Another way to make sure that you stay in the practice of law once you’re in there is to keep your debt load down. So when you go to law school, you want to incur as little debt as possible. And while in general, we all agree with that. Here’s how it impacts your career. One. It might be hard to hold out for your dream area of law or your dream job if you are drowning in debt. A lot of times, attorneys work for a bonus every month because they have so many bills, they need that money, or they work the long hours, the high billable job in general, because they need that money. And again, it’s not from overspending. It’s just that their lifestyle with these loans is so astronomical that once you have a basic car payment, basic rent and the student loan, you need to work all these hours. You have to work at a high billable firm or work for the bonus time or both. So if you don’t want to work a million hours a week, if you don’t want to try and earn that bonus every month, keep that debt load down so that you can take a job that requires less billing.
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Of the 13 attorneys we had on 8 of them recommend it gap years. And many of them took gap years. And there’s a lot of reasons why gap years are so important and really should be looked into. Even if you think you don’t want to do them, if you’re worried about losing your motivation, because you take gap years, I just want to point out that your goal in life should not be to be an attorney. Your goal should be to be happy. And so if you take gap years and you decide you don’t want to go to law school, that you’re happy with your job, that you found a new path, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s a good thing. So don’t be afraid to lose direction, to lose motivation because there’s really no such thing. You’re just finding your happiness. And if you find your happiness, that’s good.
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All right. So gap years, other benefits. One is that you can save up for law school. You can pay cash for a year or more of law school. And if you need more help knowing how to do that episode one, Meagan, she covers that she was only making something like $35,000 a year and managed to save about a thousand dollars a month. That’s really good. I did the same thing. When I took my gap years, I saved about a thousand dollars a month. So it’s possible. You can do it. You just need to be focused on that plan. Now let’s just say that you save that money and you decide to not go to law school. Well, now you have money for a down payment on a house or a trip around the world. It’s a win-win, there’s no problem here. You’re either paying cash for law school, or you’re doing something awesome with that money, but saving up while you can, when you’re fresh from college is a great plan. The other thing that gap years can do for you is it can really relax your brain, give you a break so that you’re rejuvenated. When you go into law school, everyone’s worn out and tired after their 1L year. And so to go in fresh is fantastic.
Another pattern I saw amongst the guests, and this was amongst the financial planners we had on the show, we had about four of them. They all said that it’s never a bad time to get financial help. So don’t be afraid just because you’re drowning in debt to get that help. Now, the financial planners all had different perspectives. One was an ex attorney. One had been through bankruptcy. One was more of a money mindset person that had paid cash for college. And another one worked with people in bankruptcy. So go back and listen to those episodes.
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If you need any type of guidance or trying to find someone to work with, or just make a plan for the future, making a plan can really help you succeed and can help you avoid some of the pitfalls, especially things like loan forgiveness. If you’re going to work in nonprofit area, government, things like that, there are million ways to mess that up. So you need to make sure you have someone helping you from day one to get that plan right.
Another piece of advice I heard from a lot of different guests was that law school may be difficult; the LSAT and the bar exam as well, but doable, every single person had come from a different angle. Some had gone straight through to law school. Some had taken many, many gap years and some were parents, but they all said it is doable. Just do what you need to do. Get it done.
Several of them also talked about being organized and managing their time. Now we did talk to Lindsay from Worldwise Tutoring about executive functioning skills and how to stay organized. So go back and listen to that episode. If you need a little help with that, that’s something that you want to try to get into place before you start law school. You don’t want to wait till the last second and figure out that you’re not ready for law school. That was episode 18.
Now another trend that I also saw was that people change their minds. I think a lot of us who want to go to law school are very driven and very linear. And so we feel like we can’t change the path that we told everyone we’re going to take. So if we say, I’m not going to take gap years, and then we decide, we want to, we feel like it’s almost a failure to do.
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We feel like everyone’s watching us. If we want to drop out of a program, well, we’re not quitters. So we’re just going to keep bulldozing ahead. Even if we’re miserable. Don’t do that. Meagan left after her first year of law school, that is so hard to do. Your friends from law school, your family, your outside friends, they all know you’re in law school. And now you’re just not. It’s a really big step to take. Even Kelly, in episode 20, she left a three plus three program. So she’s not really changing very much. She’s going from being a college student that’s supposed to go to law school next year to taking one more year of college and then going to law school, at least that’s her plan for right now. So it’s not that drastic of a change, but it feels very dramatic.
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It feels like you’re quitting. It feels like maybe you’re failing and you always wonder, does everyone else think I couldn’t hack it? Does everyone else think that I’m just not good enough? Maybe they kicked me out. Don’t worry about that stuff. I know it’s hard to not worry about that stuff, but don’t worry about it. Do what makes you happy. Kelly wanted to enjoy college. You should enjoy college. It’s important that you do so. That’s what it’s really there for is exploration, fun, networking, meeting, new people, having new experiences. But how can you have those new experiences if all you’re doing 24/7 is studying. So keep that in mind. It’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to change plans. Dan, from episode three, I believe that was, he said that after his first week of law school, he didn’t feel right. He didn’t feel like he belonged there, but he never quit anything.
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So he kept going. And then what happened? He only spent three years as an attorney. He just was never happy. It’s so much worse to leave the legal field after only a few years then to just leave law school. After a few weeks, a few months, don’t worry about well, I’ve already completed a semester. Just leave if it’s not right, it’s not right. You got to do what’s right for you.
Okay, that’s it for this episode, the show notes will be available at legallearningcenter.com/Jolene. Next week, we’ll be speaking with Umeesha D’Alwis, founder of Lawyer Up, find out how lawyer up can help you and how you Misha’s ideas can help. You has always please share like subscribe, leave a review so that this show is more visible than others and can help those who need it. Thanks.
