Dear 2L: Facing Uncertainty & Difficult Career Questions

Dear 2L, Your time in law school is fraught with many big, life decisions. For some of you, these decisions will come at an age where, for the very first time, you’re making “adult” choices all on your own, too.

What kind of law will you practice?
At what kind of employer will you work?
And in what city will you live?

It’s you alone, not your parents, who’ll bear the consequences of these choices, too.

I found these choices daunting. They swallowed me, torturing the back of my mind at all times throughout 2L. My hope is that you will not let your decision-making overcome you the way mine did me.

Ultimately, I was helped by reframing my “life” questions into “2 year” questions. Deciding how and where I’d practice law for the next 2 years—or even 1 year—was a lot easier than trying to decide those things “for life.”

You might try it?

* * *
As for me, the hard choice was between Boston and NYC.
I ultimately chose NYC.

But I ended up living almost my entire post-law-school life around Philadelphia.
I even had an office based in Newark, NJ for a while.
And now I am not even practicing any type of law.

I bet if you asked most lawyers how they got to where they are today, you’ll hear about a long, circuitous path that bears less connection to their initial law-school choices than to other, future factors.

So please try not to think of your questions as “life” questions.

I promise: Most things will NOT be “for life.”

***
📬 Lawyers:

What helped you make your decisions about where and how you’d practice law?

How might your life have evolved after those decisions, making them largely irrelevant?

Fondly,

💌 Amanda