On Making Career Decisions
I often get asked how I ended up in technology after being a lawyer. I’ve had to answer this question a lot, because when I was a lawyer, I’d get asked all the time how I ended up there after doing math and computer science in college.
People often expect a well thought out narrative which touches on the formative years and how that leads into interests and passions today. If it’s an interview situation, sure, I can describe how a childhood interest in logic / language / systems took me from something abstract like math into something more real-world like law. But I figured here, I’d give the real story on how I make decisions, and it’s not unlike how my initials-sake W does it.
Law school is three years with two summers. The first summer (1L summer) isn’t super important and most people do something public-interest related. The second summer (2L summer) is vital–most people take a summer job that will lead into a full-time offer and the job you take after law school.
I thought that I might be interested in working for the government after law school, so I had a decision to make–law firm, or government? The US Department of Justice has an honors program for newly minted lawyers that’s supposed to be pretty laid back (compared to killing yourself at a law firm) and that leads into some good opportunities down the road because admission is extremely competitive and you build up your network (and hopefully your skills) a bit.
Of course, a good way to get into DOJ honors is to get into their 2L summer program, which is called DOJ SLIP, aka Summer Law Intern Program. It’s also very competitive with some 2,500 applications from top law students for 70-90 slots, but I put in an application, did some interviews, and lo and behold, I got in. I was a DOJ SLIP intern in Antitrust and I spent the last six weeks of my summer in 2007 in Washington DC.
My stint at the DOJ started with a get together with then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who answered an earnest question from a public interest law student on how to build a career in government by telling her to start out at a law firm. I had to laugh at Gonzales’s answer and the notion of asking Alberto Gonzales for career advice.
My first week at the DOJ consisted mostly of me sitting in on phone interviews and doing a little research and writing on the side. It was a hot and humid DC summer, by the way. In my first phone interview which was probably two hours long, I kept nodding off and eventually went into full-on sleep. My mentor saw me, and after the meeting she took me aside and told me, you can do anything–stand up, go to the bathroom, whatever–but you can’t fall asleep. I took her advice to heart, obviously–don’t fall asleep at work, it’s a basic principle of showing up at work.
Still, I couldn’t stop myself from falling asleep. One lunchtime, we got together with our brown bags to watch a documentary on the milestone lysine cartel investigation and successful prosecution. I held out for as long as I could, but they turned out the lights so I fell asleep. Another time, a lawyer was bringing some new paralegals around the office and they knocked on my open door. Roused out of my sleep, I spun around in my chair, sprung to my feet and shook their hands in an excessively outgoing and cordial manner to compensate for not knowing who those people were or what time it was. Later, I ran into one of the new paralegals in the hall, and he asked me, “Were you asleep?”
Given that I was not able to stay awake, I decided that I would not work for the government upon graduation.