By Susan Spies Roth
Northwestern University School of Law
Though I am rarely at a loss for words, when it came time to write my Climbing the Ladder column this month, I had nothing.
No ideas whatsoever. But … I had a deadline. So, I did what any resourceful young lawyer would do: I assembled a focus group. Unfortunately, being that I was on a family vacation at the time, my pool of potential focus groupers was limited to my husband, my parents, my sister and my sister's husband. Of the six of us, only two (myself and my brother-in-law) were actually lawyers, which was a subpar sample set. Or was it?
I posed the following question to my volunteers: What is the one key to success at a law firm? The answers I received were, in a word, depressing.
My sister, a psychology Ph.D. candidate and a "lawyer wife," offered the following gem: "You need a willingness to put yourself last." Then my mom piped up: "It's not about how hard you work, but about how hard others think you're working."
Sister again: "You need a healthy dose of superficiality, since the only perks comin' your way are fiscal in nature."
My husband: "The biggest shock to me was the realization that, when you finally do make partner, you're just trading in your baby treadmill for a bigger one."
Finally, my lawyer brother-in-law: "A really low sense of self-worth. That's what keeps you going." Huh. Not any better.
But then my sister came to the rescue, offering an answer I could finally use: "You need to have passion." The corners of my mouth turned into a smile and I thought, "Eureka! I've got it! Passion!" But, my sister wasn't done talking: "A passion for masochism."
The conversation continued in this vein for a while. How long, exactly, I don't know, because I snatched up my iPhone (like any good journalist, I was taking notes in my notes app) and stormed from the table, tears streaming down my face, barely able to stifle the sobs precariously trapped in my throat. OK, well, that's not entirely true. I wasn't crying. But I was confronted with a harsh reality that I had been naive to ignore: People hate lawyers. Hate them. Think we're all a bunch of superficial, money-grubbing, low self-esteem having, treadmill-running, sadomasochists.
I mean, hey, if my own family was willing to say these things to me — as fodder for my column, no less — then I don't even want to know what an actual neutral focus group would have shared.
So then I started thinking: Why be a lawyer if everyone loathes us? Since I've transitioned from large law firm life to academia, I'm often confronted with students wondering whether their law degree will be worthwhile in the face of staggeringly high government loans.
I fervently believe that a legal career can be among the most rewarding careers out there — but apparently I've failed in convincing even my own family that lawyers can be pretty awesome.
But we can. I'll borrow from President Barack Obama and offer a rallying cry for all of us: "Yes, we can!"
Soon after our breakfast bunch disbanded, I realized that my sister really did have the answer all along: Passion.
To succeed as a lawyer in a law firm, you need to have passion; passion for the profession of law.
The second we all entered law school, we began our journey as members of the legal profession, learning how to find the holding of a case, how to synthesize a rule and how to predict how that rule is going to function under a novel set of facts. This process of legal-analytical reasoning forms the foundation for success on a law school exam and lies at the heart of one's success as an attorney.
You have to zealously advocate on behalf of your client, marshaling the skill set you acquired as a law student.
But just going through the motions isn't enough. You have to make it fun, which will allow you to enjoy it. And the enjoyment of that process — arguing why the law as applied to the facts of your client's situation are in her favor, anticipating likely counter-arguments, negotiating a deal that countenances future challenges your client may face — that is what defines a good lawyer, which in turn will guarantee your success at a law firm.
Later in the day, my brother-in-law came to me with what he hoped would be a more helpful piece of advice for my column: "Find your passion in the law." He was right.
Decide what you love to do (litigate, write, draft contracts, strategize, research) and love doing it.
That verve will show. It's contagious. Others will gravitate toward you, giving you a healthy stream of work and a continuous supply of new challenges.
And with that, I now offer a challenge to all of you: Find your passion in the law and then do what you can to pursue that passion. Work with the lawyers at your firm who do what seems interesting to you, hone your skill set and learn from the masters.
We can show the world we're not so bad. We can stifle the sales of the evil-lawyer joke books. We can love what we do and clinch our success.
We can do it. Yes, we can!