On Sadness and Discontent

While many people like to complain about Facebook or people's Facebook-related activities (this blog especially), I think one of the great things about it is the ability to catch some unfiltered glimpses of your friends grappling with the less pleasant aspects of life and realizing that we all are suffering in our own way.

    

The more I think about it, and the more I hear from friends and others who are suffering, I think sadness and discontent is less an acute affliction and more a permanent feature of the human existence. Pyramids, cities, machines, and computers, for example, were not built because man was satisfied with the status quo, rather it is man’s intellect and unfailing capacity to grow dissatisfied with his current condition regardless of past success that fuels his continual yearning for progress and discovery. 

On a Darwinian level, it has proven to be a tremendously powerful strategy for the prosperity of the species. On a personal level, however, you can’t help but wonder if our ancestors had just decided that a simple life of nomadic hunting and gathering was good enough, maybe our lives would be, if more brutal and brief, happier.

Legal Careers are Random and Unfair (Life is Pandemonium)

I've been listening to the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in preparation for a show and recently read this Above the Law post about a stay-at-home mom now mulling over some very tempting law school scholarship offers. Naturally, it made me think about the independent variables that have played into my own legal career and the Spelling Bee song Life is Pandemonium (which, incredibly and appropriately enough, I just spelled correctly without the aid of spellcheck).

In the song, the spelling bee contestants anguish over the "easy" words that their opponents are being asked and quickly come to the realization that, with all the random factors that play into competition, "[t]he best spellers don't necessarily win."

Such is building a legal career. In the Above the Law post, the law student to be (sometimes called a 0L, a reference to law students' convention of referring to which year in law school they are in, i.e., 1L, 2L, or 3L) asks the editors which of three generous scholarship offers to strongly regarded schools (Arizona State University, Washington University in St. Louis, and University of Texas at Austin) she should take, two being full-ride scholarships.

Like most 0Ls, her ignorance is palpable. She doesn't want to work in "Biglaw" and wants an academic position (without ever having taken so much as a Con Law class), but, realizing at least that is a tough row to hoe especially in this time of shrinking enrollment, she would be willing to accept a more "realistic" goal of working with the ACLU.

Why is this an ignorant statement? There are 203 ABA accredited law schools in the U.S. and the vast majority of law professors come from just two of them: Yale and Harvard. Yes, you might think we lawyers are a liberal and egalitarian bunch, but when it comes to who is going to educate the never-ending brood of baby lawyers, we prefer blue bloods. The only school that this 0L lists that is even statistically relevant to the discussion of legal academia is the University of Texas, which only rates a meager 0.25 per capita rate.

Her "backup" plan of working for the ACLU is no less starry-eyed. The ACLU is a big-time civil liberties organization and is a prestige magnet in its own right. But perhaps more importantly, an Above the Law article from the same day reported that the ACLU dumped 7% of its workforce due to budget constraints. Now, until it gets its finances figured out, you can bet that it will only hire out of necessity, making their hiring process even more selective.

Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent.  But the whole discussion makes me think about my 0L experience. No less ignorant than the author of the question above, I applied to as many schools as I could. Unfortunately, what I didn't know is that I was applying at the height of what would later be called the law school bubble. Applications were at an all-time high, 40% higher than the year before (and up 60% at my target T14 school). I got rejected by the elite schools, accepted by some border-line elites, but -- most critically -- I was waitlisted at my target school. I held out as long as I could, supplemented my application, but the numbers were just too tight. I finally received notice that I would not be selected from the waitlist.

Looking back, I wonder if I should have played it differently. Would I have gotten in if I had applied earlier (presumably when they had more spots to fill)? Should I have taken a year off and tried again? Undeterred, I went to my local regional school, did very well, and here I am.  

But hearing stories like the mom-turned-law-student still pull me back. If I were applying today, in today's less competitive market, I have little doubt I would have been accepted outright to my target school. Maybe I would have even been accepted to one of those aforementioned law professor factories (maybe not).

If so, how different would my career look? Would I have attracted offers from bigger law firms? From government agencies? From federal appellate judges? Would I be putting in a few years answering the biggest legal questions of our time as I'm groomed for a life in the ivory tower mulling those questions' place in history and legal theory?

There's nothing to come of all this backwards gazing. But I have little doubt that supermom and many like her, with qualifications no greater and quite probably lesser than mine, will have far greater leverage in this time of shrinking enrollment than I did and be granted far better opportunities. But that's always the case, I suppose. In all stages in life, theater and law alike, you will watch as people with less ability than you rise to heights you won't soon, or may never, attain.

All you can do is concentrate on the words you're given.