What a long, strange trip it’s been

I plan to retire at the end of this calendar year, and this will be my last column as an of counsel at the California Appellate Law Group. Rather than expounding on a particular recent case or a notable point of law, I decided to use this opportunity to share some lessons I have learned over the course of my haphazard 42-year legal career.

I started out more or less normally: judicial clerkships at the 9th Circuit and a federal district court, then a stint as a litigation associate at a medium-sized law firm. I was very fortunate to land at a firm where the partners and senior associates who supervised my work were highly skilled trial and appellate lawyers, generous with their time and skilled at mentoring junior litigators. My firm also encouraged associates to become involved in bar association activities, and I formed more connections that way. I learned a great deal, but I also discovered that I actually hated practicing law at the trial level. Seeking a better work-life balance, I opted for a "part-time" position (i.e., roughly 40 hours a week instead of 50 or 60), even though that meant I would never be eligible for partnership. My affection for my colleagues kept me at the firm for several more years, but my status became increasingly anomalous, so I started to look for alternatives.

Legal research, analysis and writing had long been my strong points, so I applied for a number of judicial research attorney positions and ended up at the fledgling California State Bar Court as the supervising attorney for the Review Department. Once again, I was fortunate to have congenial colleagues who were happy to share their expertise. I gained familiarity with professional responsibility law and the attorney discipline system, and learned a number of new skills: drafting procedural rules, staffing a committee, and headnoting published opinions. Eventually, however, I realized that there was an aspect of the job with which I was profoundly uncomfortable: I am just not cut out to be a manager in a large, bureaucratic organization with a unionized workforce. So, when an external review of the attorney discipline system concluded that the State Bar Court was overfunded, and layoffs appeared inevitable, I volunteered to be one of the victims.

After a year of sporadic freelance research and writing work, I stumbled upon a position as a product developer with a legal software startup. Programming legal expert systems was a great fit for my analytical skills and my longstanding interest in computers. Once again, I was fortunate to work with an exceptionally bright and congenial group of colleagues. In the course of developing and updating a program to generate marital settlement agreements, I also learned a great deal about family law.

That job ended with another layoff, as tech startup jobs often do. Shortly thereafter, I found a research attorney position at the San Francisco County Superior Court, and soon moved across the street to the 1st District Court of Appeal, where I spent the next dozen years drafting opinions for one of the justices. Eventually, I was in a financial position to return to working part-time, as I have always preferred when I had the option.

Upon retiring from the court, I opened a solo appellate consulting practice, which soon led to my current of counsel relationship with the California Appellate Law Group. Once again, I had the good fortune to join a group of outstanding lawyers, doing satisfying work that draws on my core skills. My five years at CALG have added a yummy dessert to my eclectic smorgasbord of a career. But I'm full now, and ready to focus on the other aspects of life in my remaining years.

As may be obvious from this narrative, I never had a coherent career plan, only a set of skills, strengths and preferences. Nevertheless, I managed to cobble together a rewarding and reasonably successful life in the legal world. As I look back on how I accomplished that, some common principles emerge that I think are worth sharing.

The quality of the people you work with is at least as important as the nature of the work. At every step along the way, I learned an enormous amount from the people I worked with. They were highly skilled, generous with their time and expertise, and endlessly supportive. Even when I was unhappy or bored with the kind of work I was doing, I still derived satisfaction from my relationships with my colleagues. Every legal job has its drawbacks, but the right people can help make the hardest parts bearable. So, when you're considering a job offer, think as much about the people you'll be working with as you do about the job itself.

Build your network, maintain your connections with past mentors, and never burn your bridges. Except for my first clerkship right out of law school, every single opportunity that came my way stemmed from the personal connections I had made at an earlier job. One of my law school teaching assistants hired me at the State Bar Court. The wife of one of my first law firm's partners ran the software company I worked for. When I was freelancing, work came to me through my past bar association connections. My former law firm mentors from the 1980s still had my back when I started applying for judicial research attorney positions in the 2000s. And so on. So, when you leave a job, don't leave behind the friends you made there. Have lunch every once in a while. It will pay off!

Don't be afraid to try something new. Look for opportunities to apply your existing skills and strengths in a new way. Coming out of law school, I certainly did not anticipate becoming a software developer twenty years down the road. Nor did I expect to develop expertise in legal ethics or family law. But I knew what I was good at: legal research, issue analysis and clear, precise writing. Those skills proved to be highly transferable. So, figure out what your core skills are, and take any job where you can use them, even if it's in a new field or industry.

Keep your options open by arranging your finances so that you can weather a break between positions. In the modern world, few people stay married to the same law firm for life as they did in the old days. Chances are that you will need to change jobs during your career, probably several times -- sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not. And the older you get, the greater the chance that it will take a while to find your next position. So, don't go out and spend that associate bonus or fat contingent fee on a fancy car. Keep building up your savings instead -- not just for retirement, but also to give you the flexibility to wait for the right next job to open up.

My career path has been unique, but I hope this brief account of it will give hope to other lawyers out there who are uncomfortable in the mold of traditional law practice. You too can find creative ways to use your legal skills to support a comfortable standard of living without requiring you to sacrifice your values or your work-life balance. Go for it! 