Life Lessons Learned

Michelle Obama, campaigning in 2008.

Michelle Obama:

In many ways, we are here for the ride, just sort of seeing what opportunities open themselves up. And the more you experiment the easier it is to do different things. If I had stayed in a law firm and made partner, my life would be completely different. I wouldn’t know the people I know, and I would be more risk-averse.

Barack has helped me loosen up and feel comfortable with taking risks, not doing things the traditional way and sort of testing it out, because that is how he grew up.

The First Lady said this on May 26 . . . 1996.

Truly, I am constantly amazed by this woman, her wisdom and the lessons that she shares in her every interview or even conversation.  She’s just remarkable.

This comment also reminded me of one of the most insightful pieces of writing that I’ve read from Jeremy Blachman, back at our group blog, De Novo, in 2004.  He wrote:

Ever since we started school we’ve been on the express train; we’ve been building our resumes since seventh grade . . . . The hardest thing to realize is that the train won’t stop until we get off. We can keep going: we’re at law school; now try to make law review; get the right summer job; second year on-campus interviewing; third year apply for clerkships; take a job with the most prestigious firm that’ll hire us; get on the partnership track; make partner; retire wealthy; move to the most expensive retirement community in Florida; buy the fanciest headstone. That’s where the train is heading. We can choose that path, if we want to. It’s the path of least resistance.

But we can get off the train. Or at least switch cars. At some point, even for the most risk-averse among us, our resumes are impressive enough. We’ve done as much as we can to ensure we don’t end up starving and homeless . . . , and the game shifts. Once we’re in law school, I think the battle isn’t so much to grab your seat on the train and hold on for dear life, but to figure out what the right stop is.

That, like the First Lady’s comments, is instructive as law students start a new school year and as 2Ls and 3Ls think about interviews, clerkships and the like.  In some ways, now, it reads like a time warp — a window to an era before the economy and, in some ways the legal profession, tanked.  It also is a prestige warp — a window to the view of a Harvard Law School student’s life in those days, only five brief years ago.

But the message, like Michelle Obama’s, hasn’t changed.  And, truly, it applies to any career path.  There’s always going to be an “expected” route and and a more experimental one.

There’s a lot more that we can do, a lot of good that can be done, if we’re willing to experiment.  Sometimes, of course, those experiments fail.  They’re supposed to, at times, or else they wouldn’t be experiments.  But, that experimentation — far more often than the path of least resistance — can lead to some remarkable, exciting outcomes that we’d never reach otherwise.

In the seven years since I began law school, I’ve done more in my legal career than I honestly ever imagined possible.  I’ve written briefs in important cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.  I’ve met — and, at times, argued with — some of the nation’s leading legal scholars.  I’ve negotiated with some of the top litigators in the country in cases involving hundreds of millions of dollars.  I talked about blogs and technology with the Chief Justice of the United States.  I’ve written about some of the most important legal and legislative issues facing the LGBT community — and been recognized for that writing.

Had I taken, or kept on, that traditional train, I doubt very seriously that any of those things would have happened at this point in my career.  Have there been difficulties?  Yes.  Are there times that I doubt myself?  Yes.  But would I give up the opportunities I’ve had to have kept on the “traditional” path that Jeremy describes?  Not a chance.

Thanks, Mrs. Obama, for reminding me of that.

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