Expectation vs.
Reality
in the Practice of
Law
Sometimes the best lessons in life are the ones you were not
expecting.
I
n the early
1990s, Kurt
Cobain was
still sniffing
teen
spirit,
Bill Clinton
was running
for President,
the
Braves
were making
m i r a c l e
runs to the World Series (after decades
of futility), and I was a junior at Brown
University in Providence, RI. During that
same time period, my father was working
as a litigator at a big firm here in Atlanta
and serving as the President of the Atlanta
Bar Association – the same position in
which I now have the privilege to serve.
For most of my childhood and throughout
high school, I had assumed that my natural
career path was to follow in my father’s
footsteps. First, get a liberal arts degree,
next go to law school, then get a job at a
big firm in Atlanta, and finally live ever
after (happily or otherwise). My father
and I had similar academic interests, so
his path seemed reasonable to follow.
4
December/January 2020
RYAN K. WALSH
Jones Day
[email protected]
But then a funny thing happened during
my junior year of college (which may have
been the best year of my life, but that’s not
relevant to this story). I began to think
about my father’s life
as a lawyer. There
is no doubt in my
mind that he worked
hard. Really, really
hard. There had to
be an easier way for a
liberal arts major with
no practical skills to
make a living, right?
real world, it occurred to me that the market
for liberal arts majors with no practical skills
may not be as robust as I had hoped. At that
point, I decided to go back to law school,
properly motivated
to gain employment
that would, first
and foremost, allow
me to move out of
my parents’ house.
There are obviously
When I left the
University
of
Georgia School of
Law three years
later, I had a number
of
preconceived
notions of what
the practice of law
would be like. Some
of those turned
out to be true, but
many have proven
false. For instance,
as noted above, I
entered the legal
profession with the
understanding that
being a lawyer is hard,
time-consuming work. In my experience,
that preconceived notion was dead on true.
many different ways
to practice law, and
That year, I took the
LSAT but eventually
decided to postpone
law school. Instead,
upon graduation, I
pursued a career in
political journalism
in
Washington,
DC. After interning
for one political
magazine
and
writing for another, I
eventually decided to
move back to Atlanta
and shift over to sports journalism. About a
year later, after working for three years in the
there is no “one size
fits all” reality for
lawyers.