Take Your Time to Find Your Legal Calling

I arrived at law school with a plan: I’d obtain my law degree and then, using my (admittedly limited) experience studying housing policy, find a job related to low-income housing.

Maybe I’d help build it? I quickly realized that path would require me to study real estate law or finance—or both—and that just didn’t feel like a good fit.

What about bringing housing discrimination cases? That felt righteous! That would require me to become a litigator—even a trial lawyer, yikes! How could I possibly become a trial lawyer when just dreaming of public speaking caused me to wake up, heart racing, and in a cold sweat?

Thoughts of uncertainty and self-doubt competed for attention as a 1L—and as a 2L and 3L, for that matter. I had no clue what direction my career would take.

I wish I’d known to be patient; I had time both to be inspired and push myself to grow.

A Future I’d Have Never Predicted

To my astonishment, 30 years later, I’m recognized nationally as a trial lawyer. I regularly find myself in courtrooms across the country, litigating complex civil disputes and defending individuals and companies in criminal cases.

Sometimes, I represent powerful corporations or well-heeled individuals. In other cases, I represent the underdog, including indigent criminal defendants or victims of corporate or government malfeasance.

I always try to listen and understand my clients to figure out how best to tell their stories to judges and juries. Ideally, my client’s story carries the day. When that doesn’t happen, I still do everything I can to ensure my client feels heard, even when the system is stacked against them.

I’ve succeeded often. I’ve also come up short. As a public defender and, later, as a long-time member of the Criminal Justice Act Panel, I learned to redefine success and better cope with (often unjust) bad outcomes.

Success Didn’t Come Naturally

I’ve often asked myself (quoting David Byrne), “Well, how did I get here?” The answer lies mainly in inspiration; the rest in recognizing, slowly, that you don’t have to be a natural to have success as a trial lawyer.

Professor Barbara Babcock, the first woman Stanford Law faculty member and first director of Public Defender Services in Washington, DC, provided inspiration. She was the warmest, most entertaining storyteller I’ve seen. She taught civil procedure and, in her folksy manner, would digress from teaching what due process entailed to explain the origin of idioms like “the game’s not worth the candle,” “don’t let the cat out of the bag,” or, relatedly, “never buy a pig in a poke.”

She’d recount, with pride, cases in which she was the only person standing between her client and everyone else in the criminal justice system. She told stories simply, without pretense, but with passion.

Take a Breath and Do What’s Hard

And Professor Babcock repeated herself. She’d say often, “Repetition is the sole of pedagogy.” To this day I’ve never forgotten that due process means “notice and the opportunity to be heard.” In her class of 60 law students, a dozen spent time as public defenders during their careers. I was one of them.

The first time I took to my feet in a courtroom, I wanted to run and hide. Practicing my first opening argument, I struggled to slow a pounding heartbeat, had to stop repeatedly to wipe a sweaty brow, and frequently pushed my glasses back up in front of my eyes.

I was no natural, but I channeled Professor Babcock: I slowed down; I spoke in simple language. And I repeated core messages to ensure my client’s story was truly heard. Repetition is the sole of pedagogy.

I’ve improved over time, but I’m still learning, including from other trial lawyers; I steal regularly from the great trial lawyers at my boutique firm. I’m incredibly grateful to have found a calling in the law that not only suits me well, but that also allows me to do some good.

Be patient, and you’ll be inspired to find yours in good time.