The Atlanta Lawyer December/January 2020 | Page 10

Expectations vs
Reality
A collection of reflections from
new and seasoned lawyers.
Dear Young Lawyer
By Heather Wright
Twenty years ago, I was sitting for the Georgia
Bar Exam, trying to get my career off to a
successful start. I had successfully navigated
three years of law school, and I hoped to have
an upward trajectory in my career, finding
both personal and financial success in the
private practice of law. Today marks the 15th
anniversary of my own law firm, and I realize
how different the journey has been from the
expectations I had in law school. They say you
do not know what you do not know, and I
found it is especially true of law school.
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December/January 2020
You see, law school doesn’t really teach you
how to be a lawyer. Yes, you learn certain
skills, but for the most part, the goal of law
school is to teach you to think like a lawyer.
If you do it right, you can justify becoming
a pit-bull that shreds monumental piles of
facts and precedents, but that is not all there
is to being a lawyer. In fact, that is not even
the half of it.
Law school does not teach you how to
actually go about the day-to-day business
of being a lawyer. So, you don’t know how
to prepare yourself for the practice. You will
hear people make lame jokes about, “That
is why they call it a practice [Rim Shot],”
but that is unhelpful cocktail conversation.
The truth is, being a practicing attorney is
very difficult – and a high calling – yet, law
schools do not truly prepare you for those
realities.
If you are like me, you want to make money
and succeed (whatever that means to you),
and you probably want to pay back your
student loans and have a personal life. So,
you study hard and look for that evasive
first job that pays a good salary. You may
think people that have their own firms are
nuts – like I did – or you may have hit the
law school lottery and landed that “Big
Firm” job. But whether it is public service or
private practice, you are not prepared for all
of the challenges. I know I was not.