Describing your writing as poor is neither prudent nor true. The draft we have isn't poorly written at all. It needs a hard edit. Every word in every sentence not pulling its weight should be removed. Every clause in every sentence not pushing forward the idea the sentence is supposed to communicate must go. You can and should get 200 words back at a minimum from that exercise. You need the space.

The draft can be improved more substantively than in its execution. There is no logical coherence to the idea that you aren't making your own decisions if you are considering needs beside your own. Whenever we are leading anything (a class, a firm, a case, a family) we are certainly considering others' needs. No legal practice can exist without putting the client's needs before the lawyer's after all. That the definition of minimal professional responsibility, Making strategy is always about defining objectives, assessing resources, collecting necessary resources not yet to hand, and achieving as many of the objectives as possible given the actual resources available. So the point isn't whether your objectives include objectives for your family, your community, your society: they self-evidently will. Nor whether objectives will have to be traded off against one another. That's also certain. The point is to be the strategist, not the instrument in someone else's hands.

I am serving here in the role of straw man. What I haven't said and don't think is presented as my thinking, presumably because that's easier to dismiss than my actual point. I have not said one should earn less from one's practice than, given all the relevant considerations, one needs. That would be defective strategy indeed, but I'm not stupid. Your practice must be planned and executed so as to meet all your needs: material, intellectual, moral, social and political. When I teach Planning Your Practice, which perhaps we will work in together, the point is to plan such practices, not ones that fall short in any dimension. If your material need is for the take-home equivalent of what will be left after taxes from a large firm salary of $250k (which is likely to be somewhere between $175k and $200k), then that's what your practice must be planned to provide. There are many ways to make that living. Whether the best way is to work 3000 hours a year on cases you don't choose for clients you can't change whose goals aren't yours and from which the social effect may in your judgment be harmful,, at a rough billing equivalent of $60-70/hour (about three times NYC living wage) is a different question, one that you avoid by sufficiently mischaracterizing my argument that the real issue disappears entirely.

Let's try a draft in which you state what your practice needs are, following the scheme we use in Planning Your Practice:

• Where you want it to be;
• What you want to work on;
• With Whom you want to practice;
• How Much you need; and
• Why you feel that practice achieves your intellectual, moral, political and social as well as material goals.

Those are the actual choices you need the education, the skills, the freedom and the determination to make. As you continuously reassess your answers to those questions as you go through law school, you will get better at answering them and worse at ignoring them. That's what a good legal education does to help make you a great lawyer. Not asking those questions because you are diverted by the psychoactive effect of money does not actually lead to a good life for you, or for those whose lives you are trying to make better. Law school—I have said and do think—is an imagination test. Almost everybody fails. The most common mode of failure is not showing up for the exam. I'm trying to help you show up. Let's see what we can do now, from where we are. I look forward to reading the next draft.

A (Poorly-Written) Reflection on Choosing a Practice

-- By FernandoGarcia - 24 Feb 2024

Choosing a practice—while superficially may appear to be an individual choice—does not preclude external considerations. At the end of the day, I must decide what I want to do with my life; my education; my career. In principle, the choice is an easy one: pick yourself; do what is best for you alone and pay no regard to anything else. Of course, it can never be that easy—at least not for me. Thinking only of myself feels selfish. I did not get here by myself, why should I be the exclusive benefactor?

In class, Eben repeatedly encourages us to break free from what law school “teaches” us. He points out that there is more to life than earning a quarter-million-dollar salary. While that may be true, nevertheless, that amount is, for many of us, impossible to ignore—it is more money than many of us have ever made, more than many of our families have ever made. Here lies the first hurdle I must overcome on the path to choosing myself and finding my practice. Having been raised in scarcity, turning down a salary that high feels ungrateful, almost immoral. Sucha salary brings with it a sense of financial security previously unbeknownst to me. A substantial motivation behind my educational journey was upward financial mobility. In a sense, a high salary—securing my financial future—is what this has all been about. Turning the high-paying job down is essentially throwing (financial) caution to the wind, and I have too much to lose to take that risk.

There are also cultural considerations which I feel are impossible to ignore. I am the oldest son in my family; I was raised to always be of service to my younger siblings and my parents. After having lived placing others’ well-being above mine, thinking only of myself feels unnatural. This is obviously a significant obstacle when choosing your practice is inherently selfish. Moreover, as an immigrant, I believe I can never make a truly self-interested choice—especially not one as consequential as this one. My parents gave up their lives in our homeland to emigrate to the United States because they believed they could secure a better future for their children. A substantial component of the future which my parents dreamed of involves financial stability for their children. Taking the high-paying job would see their goal unequivocally accomplished. Conversely, turning that amount of money down would put that all at risk. I cannot, in good conscience, throw away their sacrifice.

Similar to the future my parents envisioned for their children, I want to secure the best possible future for my family. The corporate salary, though not guaranteed, is much more likely to secure better opportunities for my children than a significantly lower one. The power of money in our society is impossible to ignore. Money grants access to better schools, better counselors and advisors, better networks, better jobs, better opportunities. Without even mentioning access to a healthier lifestyle or the countless other societal benefits money can bring, the consequence of financial security is undeniable. Surrendering my practice for a high salary seems like a fair trade to me.

Allowing myself the liberty to assume I could make that selfish choice, I would not know where or how to start building my practice. I came to law school with a broad, idealistic desire to effect change in the American carceral and immigration systems. I suppose that would be a good place to start building a practice. However, Eben’s discussion of how criminal defense attorneys earn their money has since turned me away from the profession. I imagine representing immigrants during removal proceedings is similar. Helping people during the most difficult time in their lives sounds like an ideal way to leverage my legal education, but taking their houses to collect payment feels immoral; that is not the kind of practice I want to build.

Deciding on my future can never be a truly personal decision. The myriad of external considerations weighs too heavily to ignore. Even assuming I could make a truly isolated, personal decision, the gap between the safety of the big-law salary and the uncertainty and significantly lower salary that almost undoubtedly comes from choosing my practice is too large to bet my future on.

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