So are you still going to be a lawyer?
When we tell people our plans, here are the top 3 questions we get, in order.
Have you ever been there?
Are you taking your dogs with you?
Are you still going to be a lawyer?
The answers:
This is not an easy post for me to write. Partly because, although this seems crazy since we are about to completely uproot our lives and move to Hawaii, but I don’t do that well with change. It’s true, just ask Chris. And I REALLY don’t do well with the unknown.
A little background for those that don’t know. I come from a family of lawyers. Both of my parents are lawyers, my brother is a lawyer and 2 of my cousins are lawyers. There’s a lot of us. Only my sister escaped the curse. Growing up, it was always pretty much a given that I would go to law school. That is, after I got through that rebellious phase of “I’m going to medical school.” My grades in anatomy, chemistry, and biology quickly convinced me that was a bad idea. I majored in Political Science in college with a minor in Women’s Studies and then Chris and I moved to Washington, DC for a year. While there, I took the LSAT and applied to law school. When I got accepted at UNC, it was a no-brainer.
Chris and me at law school graduation, May 2008.
I went to law school pretty much knowing that I wanted to be in criminal defense. I watched my Dad do appellate criminal defense work and wanted to follow in his footsteps. I interned at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation my first summer and at the Wake County Public Defender’s Office my second summer. When Wake County’s chief Public Defender at the time called and offered me a job (the night before my final law school exam - I can’t even tell you how difficult it was to study after that call!), I was ecstatic. Besides the salary (which was and still is not ideal), it was exactly what I wanted. And I’ve been there ever since - for almost 12 years.
Celebrating graduation with my 2 favorite lawyers and my biggest supporters.
Many people just assume I’m going to be a public defender in Hawaii. There are 2 main reasons why I’m not sure that is what I’m going to do. First, if I want to practice law in Hawaii, I’ll have to take the Hawaii Bar Exam. That is a huge hurdle. I’m going to be diplomatic and say that the NC Bar Exam was not an easy experience for me. Not just because my entire family was in Italy with Ruth Bader Ginsburg staying on the central canal in Venice while I was in Durham studying 16 hours a day. I mean, that was certainly part of it, and something I am still fairly bitter about, but it’s not the whole reason.
The real issue is that it’s hard to describe the mental toll the Bar exam took on me. One day, in particular, stands out to me. I came home from a particularly brutal study session where I had completely bombed a practice test. I had been crying the whole way home. Chris, without looking up from whatever he was doing, said “Hey babe, how did it go today?” I stood there for a minute, tears streaming down my cheeks, then let out a strangled sob, ran into our bedroom, threw myself on the bed, and began hysterically sobbing. He walked in and let me cry and tried to talk to me. During that discussion, I got him to promise a lot of things, including: we would never move, we would never leave North Carolina, and we would never go somewhere that would require me to take the Bar exam again. My reasoning was that since I couldn’t pass the NC exam, there was no way I would be able to pass any other exam. Chris kept trying to point out that I hadn’t actually taken the NC bar yet, and thus hadn’t failed it, so there was a bit of a flaw in my logic, but that did not deter me. Those were just details. At that point, I wasn’t being entirely rational.
Long story long, what all this boils down to is this: I would have to take the Bar exam again and I don’t wanna.
Mom and me in front of the US Supreme Court after she presented me to Chief Justice Roberts to be sworn in as a member in March 2019.
The other question I am trying to figure out is whether I am burned out of my current job. I’ve been a public defender for almost 12 years and I love a lot about what I do. For so many years, it has given me a sense of purpose and identity that I haven’t gotten from other areas of my life. But recently, I’ve started to question whether work is where I want my identity to come from. My work is extremely high pressure and high stress, and I’m not sure that’s what I want for the future. Not that I am afraid of working hard, but my job isn’t really one of those where you can turn off the work thoughts when you go home. I used to say I could, but looking back I’ve actually never been able to do that very well. When I’m in a big trial or case, I actually turn to Chris (sometimes wake him up if he’s already fallen asleep) when I can’t sleep and ask him to tell me about his job. Because THAT stuff puts me right to sleep. I know, I’m an awesome wife.
So I’m finding that when I think of Hawaii, I envision a lower pressure, lower stress job. Something that still brings meaning and purpose into my life, but that doesn’t try to consume the rest of my life like my current line of work tries to do.
Mom and me with Justice Ginsburg in DC in 2017. And as Chris just taught me, “Weird flex, but okay.”
And sure, I could go into a different area of law, but I don’t want to take the Hawaii bar exam unless I’m SURE that I want to practice law. I am not trying to go through the expense (it’s SO expensive to study for and take the bar) and misery of taking another Bar exam and then end up not practicing. On the other hand, knowing myself, I also kind of feel like if I don’t just get there and take the Bar and get it done, then I’ll never do it. If I wait and “decide later” to take it, I’ll always come up with an excuse not to do it.
Can you tell I just vomited all of my thoughts onto this page? This stuff has been swirling in my head for months, so it’s probably good for me to write it down. But DAMMIT I DON’T LIKE THIS UNCERTAINTY. So I would love to determine what my source of income is going to be once we get to Hawaii (Chris enthusiastically joins me in this desire), but right now I just keep going around in circles.
I was really hoping I would get to the end of this and that typing it all out would make things clearer, but no such luck. For now, the answer to question #3 remains, “No idea.”