Part 1 of the Leaving the Law series

00:05 S1: Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Legal Learning Podcast. I’m your host, Jolene, with the Legal Learning Center. I help pre-law students and law students with their legal journey. This podcast was created to provide important information directly to students, our first three episodes will focus on people who left the practice of law fairly quickly, we will uncover why they chose law as their career and what led them to leave law despite spending so much time, money and effort on the pursuit of it, we will have a new theme every three weeks.  Today’s guest left law school after her first year. Stay tuned to find out what influenced her to go to law school and why she left. After our chat, I’ll give you my top takeaways, but first, a quick word from our sponsor, Financially Free Aspiring Attorneys is a course with over $300,000 in money-saving tips.  If you want to go to law school, but don’t want to pay for it. This course is right for you, visit legallearningcenter.com/financially-free for more information. Alright, let’s get into our interview.

01:15 S2: So my name is Megan, I live in Atlanta, and I am currently an intern, which means I’m practicing therapy and in grad school for… To become a mental health therapist.

01:26 S1: Okay, and you went to law school right?

01:29 S2: Yep, and it was just kind of on my radar ’cause I took a lot of just classes in different fields, so that I didn’t have to kind of corner myself into one thing.

01:38 S1: So did you take any time off before going to law school?

01:41 S2: I did, so I immediately wanted to go into grad school for therapy or social work, and everybody in my inner circle said You need some real life experience, you can’t… You can, but you shouldn’t just go straight into grad school without totally knowing that’s what you wanna do. Grad school is expensive. Blah, blah, blah. They were right. So I went… And again, I wasn’t totally sure if I wanted to do this law school thing, so I got a job at a law firm as a paralegal, doing social security disability. So I figured it would merge the two fairly well, and I could work with people who are disadvantaged and I could kind of get my hands in the legal field, and I took off three years. Yeah.

02:21 S1: Okay, so three years. Okay, yeah, that’s great that a lot of people don’t focus quite so… Well, that’s really impressive.

02:28 S2: I really wanted to figure out my life plan, I thought I needed to know it right then, so I just thought, this will be a good way to see both sides of that.

02:37 S1: It doesn’t sound like it, but did you have any pressure from your family or did you feel any pressure from your family to go to law school?

02:43 S2: Not at all, my family. So I have an older brother and we’re both first generation college students, and so the fact that we went to college and graduated like my family was just cheering as one, no matter what we did.

02:53 S1: To working in that law firm, did that help you decide to go to law school.

02:58 S2: Funny enough, yes. We’ll get to the rest of that later. But I was preparing cases all day, every day for three years for these attorneys, and by about two, two and a half years in, I was like, I could do what these guys are doing, like I could just have somebody else prepare the work for me and then I could take it to court, and I realized as a paralegal, you can only go up so high, and so I started for the land, I figured I would have their blessing, which I did, and… So I started studying for the LSAT and yeah, that’s how I decided was… And the other thing was, ’cause I know I said I was gonna do social work or something, after being on the phone on the clients all day, my real fit, this is just… Honestly, this is not like a positive side of me, but I was like, I cannot listen to people complain all day, this is not a job for me, but I do think I can do what the attorneys are doing, so…

03:48 S1: Yeah, there is, depending on the area of law. Less exposure to those clients… Yeah, yes, and you can always be on the company side or the insurance side, which tends to not have the complaining as much.

04:03 S2: It was one of those things where I was just like, If I can’t handle it in a lawful, where like, This is not all I’m doing every day, is listening to people, then I probably can’t handle it in a very interpersonal career field.

04:13 S1: Did you go to law school then? After the three years.

04:16 S2: Yeah, I did. So that was in 2017, so I studied for the LSAT, took it, got in. I really was just looking for a school that I could afford and that was local because I was already settled in where I was living, and I just didn’t wanna relocate and I was in Atlanta, so I didn’t have bad choices, and so… Yeah, I started in August of 2017.

04:36 S1: How did the first few weeks go…

04:38 S2: For a few weeks were just a roller-coaster of surprises for me, I didn’t really talk to anybody about what the first few days would be like or anything, including the lawyers that were in my firm, everybody just said like, Oh, law school is hard, but you can do it was kind of the general feedback, and I didn’t personally know any attorneys, so you can imagine my surprise when on the first day of class, it was Torts… And I will never forget it. And our professor starts with a case, obviously it’s like every other first person’s day of law school, and she called on somebody… Thank God it wasn’t me. And I was like, Oh, so what was it? Starts asking all of the questions about the case, and I’m like, I had read the case, like it was undergrad, I thought… It was like, Okay, cool, I read a story. And so my first… That was my first day and I was shocked and I kicked my butt into gear, and the first few weeks were just like that, you know, they like to weed people out as everybody knows, and my professors were really intense, it was every horror story I had heard about law school, I count myself lucky because I was not cold called on for probably the first two months, which was good for me, I had to build a little confidence and a little understanding of what I was doing.

05:45 S2: But it was definitely a culture shock for me.

05:48 S1: Yeah, I think it is for a lot of people. Now, you only finished one year of law school, right? Right, okay, so when did you start to feel like it wasn’t right for you?

05:58 S2: Probably towards the end of my first semester, I remember the time that I realized like, Oh, I’m actually having a different experience from my colleagues, it was… And everybody jokes about like, Oh, I hate law school, I hate blah, blah, blah, but we’re all secretly proud to be there, and I remember in my group of friends, ’cause if you don’t make a group of friends there, you’re just gonna… You will die. And so my little core group, everybody was like, You know, man, we all think about hating Law School, but I think you might actually hate it, and I was like, I think I do, and I was just having this kind of internal crisis… So my husband now, but at the time fiance, he was deployed and was… And this is the only reason I stuck it out for a whole year, it was because I was like… I think I’m just miserable. I think that’s all it is, and I can give this thing a shot. And everybody says the first year is the hardest, and so I kind of decided to just pick up and keep moving in the spring.

06:50 S1: So others identified it in you as well.

06:53 S2: Yeah, which was surprising to me, just because everybody’s complaining about a law school and they were like, You actually don’t seem to enjoy any part of this, which was true, and I wasn’t just walking around complaining all the time, I was just like… I felt like I was having a different experience than my peers…

07:08 S1: That’s interesting ’cause it is true that a lot of people feel that way, I don’t know that I belong here or I don’t wanna be here, but they stick it out because they just don’t know how other people are feeling or… Yeah, if it’s just them or how other people are going to perceive them, so it’s interesting that other people actually identified it in you… Yeah, well, as you can imagine, quite a lot of time together, so… Right. How did you come to the conclusion that you should actually leave…

07:41 S2: Wasn’t until I was taking summer classes really, and everybody had said the first year was the hardest, and I was like, Okay, I can make it through this first year, and I can say it personally, I think anybody can do anything for a year, so I stuck it out and started my summer classes and I barely even remember what I took at this point, but I got to the first day of class for one class and I had a really hard professor. And I knew that going in, and I went and sat down and I was like, I can’t take this this anymore, like this is way too intense for me, so I dropped that class, but I held on to my other one, it was some kind of professional development class, the other one was, and probably, I don’t know, maybe three weeks into the summer semester of this class, the professor was talking about what life will be like as a lawyer and our civic responsibilities and whatever things that I… Already knew, but just hearing them out loud, I was sitting in class and I just started looking up like, Do I have to take the GRE if I switch grad school programs? And there was a guy sitting next to me and he was like, What are you doing? He was like, You can’t just drop out of law school, and I was like, Dude…

This is not cutting it for me. Ended up being a good thing, I was sitting next to that guy in particular ’cause his girlfriend had become a lawyer and was starting her grad program and therapy school the same day that we talked, so we ended up having a nice long conversation, but I went to my professor during the class break and I was like, Listen, I might have to drop this… I don’t know if this is for me. And she was like, Oh, you mean I drop my class? Or do you mean like, drop Law School? And I was like, I kinda mean dropped law school, I was totally nervous. It’s the middle of class, and she was like, You need to do what’s best for you. She goes, I did four out of five years of a PhD program, and I dropped out to go to law school because I was just absolutely miserable. And I was like, Alright, well, that’s all the affirmation I needed, but we were halfway through class to get this, I didn’t know what to do and I was like, I just told you I wanna drop out, so I just stayed through the end of the class ’cause I don’t know what else to do.

I went to the dean the next day and withdrew and stuff.

S1: So you didn’t even talk to any of the law school counselors or anything like that?

09:44 S2: No, I kind of bypassed all… It had been percolating for a little bit, and I’m one of those people where I will sit on a decision forever, and I had been thinking about this for several months now, and then one day I just like, nope, this is what I gotta do, and I just do it.

10:02 S1: And it sounds like you already discussed it with your friends a little bit and with the little neighbor there and whatever, it’s amazing how many people shift gears and yet no one talks about it. So then we feel like we’re the only one. It makes it even bigger and scarier.  Now, did you have any trouble explaining this to your family…

10:24 S2: Also another surprise, I didn’t really… I think it was harder for me when I was talking to them about quitting my job to become a student again, because my family is… We are definitely all like penny punters, and they were like, Well, I don’t know how you’re gonna survive that and whatever was smart, smart planning. But I think my family recognized the like, I don’t know, the little light that was in me dimmed way down, and I just wasn’t… I didn’t feel fulfilled and I wasn’t happy doing it, and again, my family didn’t put pressure on me to do that, I put all the pressure on me.

10:59 S1: And did you have to walk away with a bunch of debt?

11:02 S2: I didn’t, so that was the other thing that made it easy to walk away, and when I was talking to a couple of friends about it at the time, they were like, Well, you have to consider… You’ve already invested X, Y, and Z, and you’re gonna have to pay that that back, and I was like, Well, the plus side for me is like I kinda just have to wash my hands of it as a total loss. I had saved up a lot when I was working. I had lived in little basement apartments that were half the cost of rent in Atlanta, so that I could do that, I didn’t know what I was saving for at the time until I went to go to law school, and I had just honestly saved a lot of money and I was living on a shoe-string budget as in school, if I wanted wine, it was a box wine that I would make last like a week or two or whatever, so… Yeah, and I think that’s what helped me, gave me the ability to feel free to go ahead and just cut my losses and drop out when I did.

11:52 S1: Just to give students a perspective on this, so you took three years off and you manage to save or somewhere around $50,000 is that about right.

12:00 S2: Well, so I chose a very cost-effective school, my school’s tuition per semester was about $10,000, which every time I click that pay tuition button, I was like, Oh my gosh, so yeah, I say close to probably $35,000, I would say. So yeah, $10,000 per semenster. And then I guess, like I said, my living expenses weren’t so bad, and I knew that I could make it through the first year and part of the second year without taking out loans that I would have to for the rest of it, and I figured by then, that will be a manageable amount of debt pay off, but… Yes, but for the first part, I just saved and… Yeah, you just have to budget and really restrain yourself, so…

12:42 S1: Yeah, okay, so if you took three years off and save somewhere around $35,000, so that’s about $10,000 a year that you were able to save while you were working, so… Yeah, that’s great. I’m only trying to give students an idea of what is possible as far as saving, ’cause I saved half of my paycheck too when I took my gap years, so I lived at home, and so I was able to do that, but everyone’s numbers are different, so I like to hear numbers as well… Yeah, as round about numbers, but yeah, it just gives people an idea of what’s possible…

13:13 S2: Yeah, and I think that is totally possible, I lived at home for one of those three years too, which helped a lot, but I wasn’t making a ton of money either my salary capped out by the time I left, and this was after a couple of promotions I capped out at $43,000 a year, which is not a lot. But that $10,000 a year, that’s less than a 1000 bucks a month that you have to save, which is just not about that… Yeah.

13:36 S1: Like you said, makes it a step easier knowing you’re not gonna have to pay it back for the next five, 10, 20 years, you can just walk away and say, Okay, I lost that, but you know what, it’s something that you mentally can check off… Now I tried, I didn’t like it.

13:52 S2: Yeah, I think I would have always wondered if I hadn’t gone and it felt like an investment in me still, so I don’t feel like me… At the time I felt like I was throwing it away, but at this point, it’s like that… It’s just part of my life, it’s part of my experience and I put a huge investment in it, and that’s okay.

14:06 S1: Now, I know 1L students feel like they can just walk out and be lawyers, they’ve learned so much in that first year, so I think they know just about everything. Do you feel like you’ve been able to use the information you’ve learned from your first year in… What you’ve been doing now.

14:22 S2: I mostly use it to win an argument with my husband, but the main thing it was helpful with now was when I transitioned from law school to mental health was ethics, and making sure that you’re above board and recognizing that when I’m taking notes for clients, they’re legal documents and our kind of running joke is, write notes that your client might read or that might be a read… aloud in a deposition. So there were just things that I was like… A lot of people in my field don’t consider that, it’s not that I feel like I was hyper in general, I don’t use it a ton day-to-day, it’s helpful general knowledge to have as I navigate the world and buying a house. So mortgages, contracts, all of that is very helpful and sorry to go on, but even with the election coming up and the various things that have happened this year, having some amount of knowledge of like Civ Pro has been super helpful on a personal level.

15:15 S1: Yeah, I always… I don’t know if enjoys is the right word, discussing more the legal side of some of these things that we are going through where it might be a horrible thing where we… Our gut reaction is, that’s wrong, the judge came out wrong on that or whatever, but the more you kind of understand the basics and the behind the scenes of how things work, it’s like, No, this actually had to happen this way because of how our system is run, it… Yeah, that’s… I think one thing law school is good for is helping us be a little calmer on maybe negative court decisions or something like…

15:51 S2: Yeah, and it helps you to view it from different perspectives, I think you don’t just read… If anybody were to sit down and read a court decision, which I totally have not done since I… Well, at grad school or law school rather, if I were to… You have different perspectives to view it from, and it’s not just gonna be this black and white thing.

16:08 S1: Yeah. What did you do? Right after you left law school.

16:13 S2: I took a break, I just didn’t do anything, I didn’t even pick up a part-time job, I applied to the grad school I’m in now, and I basically begged them, please just take my LSAT score. And the fact that I finished a year of law school as my GRE, and they did, and so I dropped out in June, and I knew I was starting my second program in August, and I seriously just like… I read books, I planted a garden, and I just took a mental break for two months, I’ve never done that in my life before or since, and it was perfect. It was exactly what I needed.

16:47 S1: I’m actually surprised that if you hated law school so much, you signed up for summer school.

16:51 S2: Well, it was more of an effort to try to get ahead on some things, ’cause I had also the program I went to, I left this part out, but the program I went to offered a couple of dual programs, which I know a lot of schools are doing on now, and so I was also on the track to get my MBA, and so the summer classes were mostly so that I would not be totally overwhelmed come fall when I’m starting an MBA course or two and doing all core classes, so… Yeah.

17:15 S1: Got it. Yes, ’cause I know at the end of my first year, I didn’t even want a legal internship, I wanted nothing to do with anything. Just let me relax. So it’s totally understandable. Alright, so if you had some advice for pre-law students that are looking into the legal field, looking into law school, what would it be…

17:38 S2: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I would say is, you don’t know what you don’t know. So for me, all I knew going into that was like what I’ve seen on TV, the work environment I was in, which keep in mind was only one office, so I don’t know how other law offices are run at that point as I was leaving to start law school, so I would say really just not only go on Google and research what do different types of lawyers do or whatever, but to honestly just call up some attorneys… Most people are gonna be willing to talk to you even if it feels super intimidating, and just ask them like, what do you do? Do you like what you do? And what’s a typical day? ’cause if you’re going into big law, you’re gonna have people that are like, I sleep on my couch sometimes and I’m here for three straight days, and then you can talk to somebody that is personal injury and it’s gonna be way more chill. And they’re all gonna have their own opinions on it. If they’re doing a type of law and they’ve been in it for 10 years, you can guess it probably like what they’re doing, but it might not match up with your personality, so I would just say, Talk to people…

I mean, you can only Google so much, but hearing other people’s real life experience will help you get a feel for a what type of law you might wanna do and be… If you even want to be in the law field.

18:48 S1: Yeah, I absolutely agree. Any work experience you can get, I think that time off is great, and then on top of that, any informational interviews you can do with as many people as possible in as many fields, I’m still learning about new fields like food… law, never heard of that before. You know… It’s almost not even an area of law, it’s so different, and it’s just like, Wow, that is 100% different from my work experience, but… Yeah, there’s so many different things out there, and I think people get discouraged by certain things or encouraged by certain things and they don’t realize that, okay, on… It might be totally different when you get there, like you said, your personality might be different, or that person may have been skewed if they’re super happy with their job and then you come in and you’re not liking it… It’s not gonna be the same. Yeah, yeah, the more information you can collect for more people, I think the better now, if somebody is considering dropping out, do you have any recommendations on just what to do to kind of really work through that process?

19:51 S2: I think a couple of things. Honestly, the first thing I would say, and this is gonna sound not like advice at all, it would be just trust your gut, you know you better than anybody else will, so other people can only give you so much advice and so many suggestions or different ways to think about it, but I would just sit down, take a good hard look at your values in life, does law school match up with those values and what you’re gonna do after match up with them? How much debt are you gonna be in? Realistically, how long is it gonna take you to pay that off? And is that worth it to you? And law school is a really big investment, and is this something that you can see yourself doing for several years in the future, even though I know our generation doesn’t stick with careers as long as previous generations, but in order to even just pay off loans and stuff you’re probably gonna be in this career for at least 10 years, so take a long, hard look at yourself and see it, if you’re happy and if this lines up with your values is what I would say.

20:39 S2: Perfect. Alright.

20:41 S1: Now, if people want to reach out to you to ask you questions, is there a way they can do that?

20:45 S2: Yeah, they can shoot me an email. My email is my name. It’s Meagan, it’s M-E-A-G-A-N Turner T-U-R-N-E-R-16 at gmail dot com.

20:56 S1: Thanks so much, Meagan. Alright, thanks. Before we get into my top takeaways, a quick word from our sponsor Juno. If you need to take out student loans, check in with Juno first, Juno could often offer students o- 2% less in interest rates over Stafford or direct loans. And not only with no cost to the student, but with cash back as well, visit joinjuno.com/P/legallegallearningcenter.com for more information. Alright, my top takeaways from Meagan’s chat: one, she saved about $10,000 a year despite not making very much so that she could be cash for her first year of law school. This is something I recommend everyone look into, take some time off and save up, so you aren’t drowning in debt when you graduate. She also mentioned that all of her friends that they hated law school, but they felt like she really hated it, and when she spoke to her professor, that professor had left a PhD program to go to law school. So sometimes we feel like we’re the only ones that want to leave, but honestly, people shift gears a lot more than you would realize, so listen to your feelings, get advice, don’t be afraid to shift gears if you really feel like you’re not in the right place, and then if you take those two tips together, number three is it was easier for her to walk away because she wasn’t going to be followed with years of debt, she paid cash, she was going to have to forget that money, and that’s hard enough, but she knew she wouldn’t have a monthly reminder that she had spent a year in law school for the next 10 years, she could literally wipe that whole experience away, that feeling is so much better than a constant reminder of that mistake you made, so again, consider saving up so that no matter what you do in law school, whether you stay in law school, you leave law school, you’re in a better position, no matter what… 23:07 S1: That’s it for this episode. All the tips and links will be in the show notes, a full transcript will be available as well, and be sure to check in next week for our interview with Denise, Denise left the practice of law after eight years, find out what led her to that decision and see what she’s doing today, if you’ve learned something today, please be sure to leave a review, like subscribe, comment, share, so that this show is more visible to others and others can receive any help they need. Thanks.

For parts 2 and 3 of the Leaving the Law series visit: http://legallearningcenter.com/denise and http://legallearningcenter.com/dan