Legal Career Storytelling

Kyle McEntee:

Welcome to episode number 100. I started this show back in 2015 while I was the Executive Director of Law School Transparency, a consumer advocacy nonprofit that I co-founded in 2009 while I was in law school. Me and the show came over to LSAC, the Law School Admission Council, in 2022.

I gotta say, I am proud of the show. Like, really proud. I think back to where I was before law school and to the conversations I have today with prelaw and law students, and I know we're making something important. Exposure to what lawyers do fulfills a huge need for a lot of people all at once.

Back in college, I had basically no career direction, in part because I didn't have a lot of exposure to different career paths. Law seemed appealing to me, and my parents were supportive because they thought it would give me ownership over my career. We moved around a lot when I was a kid, sometimes because my dad took new opportunities and sometimes because we had to. So, law seemed challenging and interesting and stable. But it turned out that I really didn't know what I was getting into, and it also turns out that my story was the norm. We hear this over and over again from the lawyers we have on this show.

Now, it's not that I became a lawyer and ended up unhappy because I went down the wrong path, although that story is not uncommon. No, I just literally didn't know what my options were. So, I started this show to change that for others.

During law school, those three or four or five-person lawyer panels really drove me crazy. There was rarely any depth, and they weren't worth the hour, even with pizza. I realized after some time what was missing from these panels and even what was missing from the typical informational interview.

You’ve probably experienced the pressure of talking to someone you admire or maybe fear a little or want to impress. But the person on the other side also feels some pressure, even if it's different. Often, they'll feel a subtle pressure to frame their career path in a way that appears purposeful and successful, rather than accidental or messy. They may also be inclined to provide advice because that's what you do for the next generation. Or they may be inclined to make broad, sweeping declarations because it's neater than reality.

Given that, and as a side note, you may notice that advice on this show is extremely rare. We usually cut it, instead opting for the show-not-tell approach. I'd rather lessons for you listeners to be revealed, rather than prescribed.

Because of the effort we put in through research and planning, and because the hosts are lawyers, we can really go beyond the surface level. The guests are talking to their peers, and the whole conversation is done through an educational lens where we're thinking about the audience. There's also always a producer in the interview who is advocating for you, the listener. As a result, I think we produce something that genuinely advances how people understand what lawyers do.

Katya Valasek:

I cannot believe we're here at our 100th episode, and I'm so excited to get to experience the other side of the microphone for a change. And we'll be guided through a conversation by Collin Takita, who is Director of Learning Operations here at LSAC. We work with him on the Law Hub webinars, which he hosts.

So this, for us, is a fun crossover. He's gotten to know us both over the past few years. He's thoughtful, he's probing, and frankly, we really like him. Collin, thanks for being here.

Collin Takita:

Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you guys on the I Am The Law podcast. I mean, 100 episodes, it's amazing. It's 100 unique stories, 100 unique looks at the legal profession, the real legal profession, not just the stuff you see on TV, which I know we talk about a lot. So congratulations to both of you and to our producer behind the scenes, Bo. It's really fantastic.

What I especially love about this crossover, in our live events on Law Hub, we get to unpack questions like, what is law school? Why law school? How law school? And here, we get to do some of that too. But we also get to dive into questions like, what happens after law school? And I really like that piece of this puzzle. So in his intro, Kyle talked about his motivation for law school. What about you, Katya? What set you down the lawyering path?

Katya Valasek:

Well, I am a cautionary tale who landed on her feet. But when I talk with people considering law school, it is a do as I say, not as I did situation. I had, in the back of my mind, some interests that aligned with going to law school and thinking about practicing law.

I was interested in child advocacy. I'd had some experiences in college where I babysat and nannied for a number of families who had children on the autism spectrum. And watching them struggle within the school districts to get appropriate opportunities for their children was really heartbreaking.

After I graduated, with child advocacy in mind, I was working at a law firm in their lobbying practice group. I occasionally got to go to hearings, but mostly I was sitting behind a desk scheduling appointments for other people. And that became really frustrating for me, especially because occasionally I would ask to do something or be involved in something, and I would be told we'd rather someone with a law degree do that, which was fair.

Underlying all of these factors was a long-distance boyfriend from college who was living out of state. And so when I was told for the third, fourth, fifth time, we'd rather have someone with a law degree do this, I thought, fine, I'll go to law school. So I, quite frankly, jumped into the process with very little thought.

I don't know that I would ever advocate that someone follow the path I did to make the decision to go to law school, but I certainly learned a lot from it, and it certainly fuels what I do day to day now.

Collin Takita:

Your current jobs do not require you to have a law license, although each of you do have a license. Katya, you're licensed in New Jersey, and Kyle, you're licensed in North Carolina. Could either of you have gotten any of the jobs you've held without your JD?

Katya Valasek:

Before I started here at LSAC, I had two big jobs since I graduated in 2008. I was a legal recruiter, and I worked in law school admissions. Both of those jobs are what are commonly called JD Advantage jobs, and most of the jobs Kyle will talk about too are JD Advantage jobs.

Basically, these are jobs where a JD is helpful, but you don't need that law license in order to do them. I was a legal recruiter for about a year and a half. My experience was that not everybody in the industry had a law degree, and I actually think it was pretty rare for someone like me to be in the field with a law degree but without any practice experience.

Part of that was due to the fact that I had graduated in 2008 during an economic recession, and it was just hard to find a law job anywhere. Now, because of the economic times, I was thrown right into partner recruiting, and what mattered in a lot of those situations was the partner's book of business, and I will be honest, I did not know what that was the first time it was mentioned to me because that is not something anyone talks about in law school. But I was happy to have that job as a legal recruiter, and this was for two main reasons.

The first was that I decided I wanted to go into law school admissions after my experience as a student worker in the admissions office, and so I was looking for something that was related to recruiting. And two, I feel like I didn't get good career advice, not before I went to law school and not during law school. I desperately wanted to turn into the person I wish I had had as a resource when I was thinking about going to law school and when I was trying to figure out what my career path would be after law school.

So I wanted a better understanding of what mattered in legal hiring, and working as a legal recruiter gave me that opportunity. That was not something that was exposed to me in any way, not even when I was a summer associate at a firm. I finally got the chance to move to law school admissions in early 2011, and I was there for just under 10 years.

Did I need a law degree to do that job? No, but the job would have never been on my radar if I didn't go to law school and start working in admissions as a law student. And because of my experience of applying to and going to law school, not only could I talk about the school when I was speaking with someone on the road or in my office, but I could talk about the classes and the student orgs, and I could add a layer of empathy to people's anxieties and concerns because I had been there.

Collin Takita:

Kyle, what about you?

Kyle McEntee:

To be honest, I'm not really sure about the one-year fellowship that I had at a Georgia non-profit after law school. That job definitely at a minimum required a JD because we provided transactional and regulatory legal advice to non-profits, and I was doing legal research and putting together draft contracts and memos with legal opinions.

But I started that fellowship in August and had my North Carolina license by the end of the month, but had I failed the bar, I'm not sure what would have happened. It isn't like I was licensed in Georgia, but I also wasn't signing my name on things or regularly meeting with clients by myself. I'm really not sure even all these years later how to even unpack that.

Now, my job with Law School Transparency is a different story. I started it before I had my JD, so it could not have required it. I worked with the ABA, the American Bar Association, as the regulator of law schools, with law schools, the press, Congress, and a lot of other legal education stakeholders. I just can't imagine I would have had much or any success without being in law school and eventually graduating or passing the bar. People were always trying to understand me throughout the founding of the organization and the work we were doing, but the work really wasn't all that different than other education or consumer policy or advocacy. I just wanted to solve problems that were in front of me.

Collin Takita:

Can you tell us a little bit more about what those problems were?

Kyle McEntee:

So when I was applying to law school, there was not that much employment information out there. My co-founder and I figured out that law schools were providing deceptive employment information, that they were doing so with the blessing of the ABA. We weren't too thrilled about that and decided that was the problem we wanted to solve. So specifically what the schools were doing was saying 95, 98, 99% of our graduates are employed, but they weren't disclosing that that meant literally any job. You could have been a barista at Starbucks, you could have been a server at Waffle House, or you could have been at a white shoe firm in New York City and it all counted the same.

Because people grew up thinking about lawyers being financially successful and stable. People just assumed that that meant 95, 98% are employed in a job where their JD is actually relevant. Schools were also advertising these huge median salaries. So at the time the market rate in New York City was $160,000 and there were some schools that were advertising a median of $160,000, but only 5% of the class responded to their surveys. And so it was an overstatement. One of those statistics that was literally true because it was the median of the data collected, but without disclosing the actual number of data points, it was misleading.

And so this was a big problem. We were under the belief that this was propping up law school enrollment and increasing prices. And we were just like, hey, let's do something about this. And so we did.

Katya Valasek:

I will say as someone who went to law school before Law School Transparency, it is gratifying to see the number of resources that are available to people who are going to law school. In the work I do now, I have really, really great resources that I can refer people to, not only about outcome data, but about other parts of the journey to becoming a lawyer.

Kyle McEntee:

Yeah. And that influence can be, I don't know if I would call it addictive, but something like it. And that was part of the reason I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about transitioning to, or back to practice, depending on how you want to frame my fellowship. Once I got a taste of influencing change at a large scale, I kind of figured out for myself that I didn't really enjoy those one-on-one conversations where I was helping someone from beginning to end through a problem. I really liked the idea of making a small change where you make one small turn of the wheel, and it has this outsized effect. In our case, it was, well, let's make law schools more transparent. Let's change the disclosure norms. Let's also change the disclosure regulations. And that small change puts pressure on schools to manage their enrollments more responsibly, to focus more on outcomes, whether we're talking job outcomes or bar passage outcomes, to put people in a position to succeed.

Collin Takita:

Kyle, you started Law School Transparency in 2009, and you started your public advocacy in 2010. Katya, you were in law school admission around that time, right? So, what was it like when this data first started to become available?

Katya Valasek:

So, it was interesting. I did start in early 2011. So, I was simultaneously trying to learn the ins and outs of the job while we were being approached by prospective law school students who, quite frankly, were distrustful of what it was we were saying and what it was we were sharing.

On the one hand, I was very overwhelmed by some of the aggression that came through in communication from people who were looking at employment numbers, who were looking at bar pass rates, and didn't trust what anyone was telling them, and in some cases, rightfully so. So, that was sort of anxiety-inducing, but at the same time, as someone who felt like I didn't have access to information or advice, and I also was realizing that the numbers I had looked at may have been misleading when I was in their shoes, it was an interesting battle of two different emotions, of feeling very happy that they had an opportunity to get accurate information, or at the very least, they knew to ask those hard questions. But as someone who didn't really fully know everything about my job yet, it was anxiety-inducing at the same time.

Collin Takita:

So, what did you do?

Katya Valasek:

Well, I asked a lot of questions, right? Because of the tension in the emails or in the conversations, I knew I didn't want to misspeak. So, I had a great team of people in the office with me who were much more seasoned and were able to provide me guidance.

And frankly, I was at a school where the required changes in disclosures didn't really impact the way that we were sharing information. So, the vibe around me at the time was like, okay, good, now we're really going to stand out.

It really was a trial by fire, but also really trying to learn those other pieces of the job. How do I plan an event? What goes into it? Who do I need to talk to? How do I connect with alumni and have them come back? How do I use the student volunteers in the best way possible to give the people visiting the best picture of what the school was like? So, it was sort of a wild time, starting a new job is always a little, it makes you feel a little unsteady. But then to also have, because of the work Kyle had done, this added tension, this added distrust from the people I was working with was really wild. So, thank you, Kyle.

Kyle McEntee:

Ha, yeah. So, one thing I do want to point out about what you said, which is not all law schools were way off in their reporting. The issue was in part that some or a lot of schools knew better, but it was also that the standards by which the ABA was releasing information just flattened one's ability to understand what was underlying that information.

And so, if a school had a 95% employment rate, but 90% were getting legal jobs, that 95% rate's not terribly misleading, or at least not misleading in such a way that it's going to cause someone to make a decision that they wouldn't have made otherwise. But there were other schools in the other end of the spectrum that were closer to the 20s and 30% of people actually getting those legal jobs. And we didn't know that at this time, right? All we knew was at the surface level that there was a problem with the standards, but we were able to reveal over time that in fact, while schools were uniformly reporting in this way, the consequences weren't evenly distributed.

Collin Takita:

And I'm sure the average consumer at that time, meaning the people who were applying to law school, didn't realize what you just said, Kyle. What on earth did you do to stir up this frenzy?

Kyle McEntee:

Well, I'll say it wasn't just me. To start, let me actually go back to what inspired this in the first place. And that is when I was applying to law school, I was having a difficult time making my choice. And I went to the admitted students day of Vanderbilt, which is where I ultimately went. They provided this list of where all the graduates went to go work from the class of 2007. And I looked at that list, I looked at the locations, I looked up the firms, I looked up their salaries on NALP. And I figured out that this was a place I could see myself and ultimately was able to make my choice using this information.

So my co-founder and I, his name's Patrick Lynch, he was a year ahead of me at Vanderbilt. And we decided that this list of graduates was going to be an inspiration for us to ask the same information of other law schools. And so we started to investigate what information schools actually had, because if Vanderbilt could produce this list, maybe other schools could do the same thing. And that's when we figured out that there was a problem. And so we initially put together this letter asking schools to publish this information. But when we uncovered the problems, we pivoted.

And we said, all right, we got to take this a little more seriously. That's when we decided to incorporate as a nonprofit. And that's when we decided to write a white paper, but it was ultimately published as a law review article. We took a very methodical approach. We explained exactly what the problem was and provided very clear solutions. And we didn't expect these solutions to be adopted. They were just intended to be a starting point. But we used this and we used the privilege that was afforded to us by attending a school with a great reputation to contact the press, contact law professors, contact the ABA and say, this is what's going on and this is what needs to be addressed and this is how you address it. And the press took us very seriously. And it ended up being that a lot of the work we were able to do was accomplished through developing relationships with first the legal press and then the national press.

Collin Takita:

It doesn't sound like it was easy to accumulate those allies in the press and in the industry. So I'm sure you got quite a bit of pushback from maybe some of the more established presences in that space.

Kyle McEntee:

Yeah, it was ridiculous. I didn't start off with a passion for this. I just saw a problem. I was like, yeah, I want to be a part of fixing that. But when we got pushback on transparency, I was like, this is crazy. And I got angry. Fortunately for me, I didn't put that anger on display in the press because if I had, I wouldn't have been an incredible resource for them. Within a year or two, whether it was the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, or any of the legal trade press, I was usually going to be the first call related to legal education. I was able to do that because I always had an even head about it.

What was underlying it, what was fueling my work was a passion developed because I thought people with power were abusing it and that they were wanting to continue to abuse it. Even after pointing out some very basic flaws in what they were doing, they in this case being the ABA and they being the law schools themselves. So they'd say, oh, this violates our privacy norms if we're more transparent. And that was just false. They would say, this is going to be a lot of work for us, which was also false. They had all the data.

And so it was a matter of finding the right allies, people like Katya, who were in the admission offices, who were in the dean suite, who were on the committees at the ABA. Finding those sympathetic ears and figuring out how can we utilize their motivation and utilize the fears the other people had of looking bad, because ultimately that's what worked. It was shame. And we were able to shame because we had a voice in the press.

And eventually we were able to put that voice to members of Congress, several U.S. senators from both sides of the aisle getting involved, saying to my organization, what should we be doing here? How can we be helpful? And those are the little triggers that cause an avalanche.

Collin Takita:

You talked about leveraging your connections. You talked about maintaining a level head in order to situate yourself as a logical, consistent presence in the space that way you could be reliably tapped to comment on things and so on. Did you ever have to break that character and really get fired up and argue with people?

Kyle McEntee:

I didn't. And the reason I didn't is because it would not have been strategic because there were other people also talking, people who were a lot more colorful than I was, a lot more annoying than I was, and they made me look reasonable by comparison. And so when they talked, people would roll their eyes and then I would talk and they'd be like, okay, that makes sense. And I was fortunate to have those other loud voices who were kind of in the background, but everyone was aware of them.

Collin Takita:

Today, we see a lot of fiery rhetoric thrown around, and especially in an age of social media, a lot of times the loudest voices are the ones that get amplified, the ones that get picked up, the ones that get publicized. Do you think if you tried to do that, take that approach back then, you'd have as much success?

Kyle McEntee:

No, the world was different back then. And it really feels weird saying that. It makes me feel like an old man.

Katya Valasek:

Which you are.

Kyle McEntee:

Thank you. Thank you, Katya. It wouldn't have worked because the motivations were different. And one of the best examples I have of this, it relates actually to the 2016 election. Leading up to it, it was a lot easier for me to get stories placed in the press. So I'd call up a journalist and say, hey, this is what you should be writing about. Let me tell you why and explain it. And they were listening and they wanted to do the right thing and get the good stories out there that could make an impact.

Well, the edit desks were changing what they cared about in late 2015. And it was not just because there was an election. It was because there started to be a shift in the media landscape, even at places like the New York Times. I remember a lot of conversations about like, we just can't write on this anymore. This is not salacious enough. So you're going to have to come back with something more salacious in order to get us to write about this. That wasn't something we were trying to do. We were always going to stay reasonable because we were trying to solve important problems. I'm a believer in the rule of law. I'm a believer in the legal profession's role in preserving that rule of law. I didn't want to be a part of the problem that I was trying to fix. I wanted to be a good example.

Katya Valasek:

And I think that still exists today. I think we shouldn't forget that there are people out there who are doing their jobs, they want to solve problems, and they care more about getting the work done and building the relationships than getting a TikTok about something they said at a press conference. So I do agree with you, Kyle, that things have changed.

But I still think there are people who take the approach you took back then, being level headed, and being consistent in their messaging, because what they are doing is important to them. And they want the goal they're trying to achieve to be more than a soundbite or a clickbaity headline.

Kyle McEntee:

And even when you try to be level-headed, not everyone's going to view you as being level headed. And part of doing advocacy is being comfortable with being that person in the room that when you walk in, the air comes out of it. And that took me a little while to grow into. But if you're going to cause change, you're going to cause some people to be upset, because you're making their lives more difficult. And the people like Katya in the admission offices back then were fewer and far between. That world's changed now.

Now, admission offices and the dean suites are full of people who see transparency as important. And the old guard has lost influence and power, and in some cases, lost their jobs. And legal education is better off for it. The legal profession and our society are better off for it. But it can be uncomfortable. So even when you do your best to always be understated, people are still going to be mad at you. And that's okay.

You have to keep reflecting on why you're doing this. For me, when I was running LST, I made no money. It was a very, very difficult road. And part of the reason I came over to LSAC, beyond the mission, was for that stability. Ironically, it took me a long time to get there, given that that was one of the reasons my parents were so supportive of me pursuing a law degree.

But when you don't have that financial stability, you look towards other forms of stability. And for me, my primary one was knowing that I'm doing the right thing, that I am making my little corner of the world just a little bit better. When I came over to LSAC, people were really confused. They're like, you are going to work with the very schools, because we're a membership organization. The law schools are the members. And this was very confusing to people. And it did reflect an attitudinal shift at LSAC under Kelly Testye's leadership, that we were going to, as an organization, do even more to support students on their learning journey. And frankly, I was a little unsure of it myself, because I knew the people I was coming to work with, and I knew what motivated them. But I wasn't totally sure how I would be received in the admissions community.

And by and large, I was surprised. Sometimes we have trouble, just as humans, updating our assumptions. And it was gratifying to come here and be surrounded by people, both internally and within the admission community, who were genuinely interested in ensuring that students were going in with their eyes wide open, that they were going down a path they understood that made sense for their ambitions. Because that's also what the law schools wanted. And we really are past that time of, let's just find some butts and get them in seats.

Collin Takita:

Katya, Kyle just talked about that transition to LSAC. Can you talk a little bit about your experience?

Katya Valasek:

Nothing I do in my job now creates that same sort of emotion as walking in on the first day of orientation and seeing the building just glowing with excited and nervous and really happy people, both on the staff side, the faculty, the administration, and the current students who were returning for their second and third years, who were excited to meet their new colleagues. And of course, those first years who are just feeling every emotion all at once.

But I had been there for almost 10 years. I had learned a lot about the roles and I decided, oh gosh, probably by about five years in, I didn't want to lead an office, which was the second time in my career that I sort of had to wrestle with the decision to walk away from what I knew everyone around me would perceive as the logical next step. So graduating law school and choosing not to practice was the first time that happened. And then this was happening again.

I think everyone assumed around me that I was in my role for five, six, seven years. But the work that I love was that interacting with the people I was meeting on the road, the people who were coming into my office. And taking that next step removes you somewhat from those interactions because you are now reporting up to the dean and you are meeting with people on main campus and you are going to board a visitor meetings.

And if you remember why I started doing what I did, my why was to be the adult I wish I had had access to. And I don't know what it was. And, you know, we talk a lot with our guests about how they know it was time to make a move. And I don't really know what it was that sort of flipped the switch for me. But I started feeling frustrated being contained to reaching people through the school. I had people in front of me who made choices early on that impact the opportunities they were going to have after graduation.

A lot of times I felt like people were taking what I was saying with a grain of salt because I was representing a school. And I realized I wanted to more easily reach people earlier on in the process of thinking about applying to law school. And so there we were. It was, you know, summer 2020 in the middle of a pandemic. And I decided, once again, in a crazy job economy, I was going to try and look for a job. And at that time, what that meant to me was moving into a prelaw advisor position at a university.

And I just honestly got lucky that the opportunity to come to LSAC became available. And the job that was posted would allow me to continue to work with law schools, which is where all my friends in the profession were. But it would also allow me to connect with the pre-law advising community and to support the prelaw advisors in what they did. And I loved that part of my job. It just was exactly what I thought my next step was going to be. And so then I guess I'd been at my job maybe a year and a half when I got to make a decision about what path my career took.

And it was when Kyle approached me and told me that there was going to be a change made in the structure at LSAC. And that original team I had been a part of that supported both the law schools and the prelaw advising community was going to be separated. And I was in the very fortunate position of both teams wanting me. And honestly, I cried multiple nights trying to think about what was going to be my choice. Because regardless of which choice I made, I was letting go of a community that I was involved with and that I cared about. But really and truly, I don't think anyone is surprised listening that I ended up with Kyle on the prelaw engagement team, because that is the work that sustained me. That is the work that made me decide I didn't want to run an admissions office. So it was the right choice for me. And I'm glad I made it.

Collin Takita:

I think your story, Katya, is a great example of the gradual, incremental nature with which careers can change and develop and evolve. You started out in a specific role and gradually started working your way toward where you are now. And there was a series of decisions you made along the way. In a lot of ways, that runs contrary to the experience that Kyle had in his post-law school career, where he jumped into that one thing, law school transparency, and made one pivot to LSAC, right? But your incremental growth in your career is an interesting story for folks who are thinking about, well, maybe I can't do exactly what I want to do now, but maybe I can get there. And on the flip side of that, I'm doing exactly what I want to do now. Does that mean I have to stick with that? Or is there a possibility that I can evolve in my career?

Katya Valasek:

I have to say, and this is maybe cheeseball, but one of the things you learn in law school is how to identify facts that relate to whatever you are trying to argue on behalf of your clients or whatever argument you're trying to undermine of opposing counsel. And I think that when you learn to think like that, you apply it to your day-to-day. And it's part of the reason why attorneys are accused of sucking the air out of the room, right?

Kyle McEntee:

And it's why everyone hates 1Ls, too.

Katya Valasek:

True. Because, right, you ask them a question and they're going to say, it depends. Or they'll say, yeah, but, or well, actually. There's no denying that particularly your first semester of law school dramatically changes the way you look at things in the world around you. Because I graduated in a time where the job market was trash, especially in Michigan, where I had graduated. I had to really rely on those skills of issue-spotting things in my life, just like I did in a law school exam. What is making me happy? What is making me feel like I have purpose? What is making me fired up? What gets me out of bed day to day? I think it's an unintended consequence of being trained over three years to look at things in the world around me in a different way and to think creatively in some cases. And again, I think my story shows it wasn't obvious to me right away.

But over time, paying attention to what was important to me, what mattered to me, what was a negative experience, what I enjoyed, what did I see other people enjoy that I knew I never wanted to do? That was almost more important to me, to eliminate things that I saw other people doing that I knew wouldn't be something I would enjoy day to day. But law school teaches you to look for specific things and to process what they mean and how they impact.

Now, when you're a lawyer, it's how it impacts the laws that you're using in support of your clients. But in your personal life, it impacts your personal laws, your personal ethos, the personal decisions you're making. So sorry if that's a little too cheeseball, but I think it's true. Kyle, what do you think? I see you smirking.

Kyle McEntee:

I'm smirking because it's so on brand for you to be cheeseball.

Collin Takita:

Would you say that law school rewired your brain or did it just refine your existing mindset?

Kyle McEntee:

For me, it just refined me. I think I was a philosophy major specializing in analytical philosophy, and I was also a software developer. So my brain already worked with facts and organizing information and getting to a particular outcome. And so the parts of my brain that I exercise in philosophy and in coding and in the law and policy work, it was all the same.

Katya Valasek:

So interestingly enough, I was a philosophy minor in undergrad. So I also was doing some of that deep thinking, tackling big issues. And I think I am on the line between refining and rewiring. I think I always sort of had some of those skills in there, but I definitely saw less gray before I went to law school. I was not as good at considering anything beyond what struck me as the right answer. Law school really impacted the way I think about things and especially that first semester where all of a sudden I was saying it depends.

Collin Takita:

Some people might consider that gray area or recognition of that gray area or insistence on that gray area as indecisiveness. And I think a lot of people, myself included, assumed lawyers were incredibly decisive. They knew what was law and what wasn't. They knew what was right and what was wrong. But in working here and talking with you two, the gray area is actually far more prominent.

Katya Valasek:

So the thing about practicing law is it is built on precedent. So you know what has come before. But over the course of your education in law school, you see how it changes over time. So thinking like a lawyer means you understand the past, but you're also able to look to the future and to think about the changes you want to make to that precedent based on the people you have in front of you as clients and based on what injustice you think you see or what unfairness or what wrong application of the law you're encountering.

So I think lawyers are decisive. I think they know what they want the outcome to be when they go in front of a judge or they start to lobby for policy change on behalf of their clients. But I think they're also realistic that precedent changes sometimes in ways you don't expect or it can have outcomes that you didn't foresee. The law in our country is living and breathing for better or worse. Things can be overturned, things can change, and then they can change back.

So it's not that it's indecisiveness. Any good lawyer is going to know the outcome they want. But it is this awareness that you are going to be opposing counsel to someone who has that same decisiveness, that same outcome as a desire, and you are both going to be working with the same laws to argue your perspective. And so the outcome of the change that you can get might be what you want, it might be a version of what you want, or it might be something completely different.

Kyle McEntee:

It's all about storytelling and it doesn't really matter in which role you're in within the legal profession. It's just all about storytelling and I think that's vastly underestimated. It's easy to see someone give their opening statements and see that as a story that the defense attorney or the plaintiff's attorney or the prosecutor are telling. And then it's the continuous telling of that story to the judge and to the jury.

But that's just on the litigation side. Even in the transactional side, so when you're developing a contract, every provision in a contract has a story. It's based on the past, but it's also based on the future and trying to make sure that when the story is told in the future, that it's told according to what your client wants. And then in the advocacy space, in the space that I'm most familiar with, it's also about storytelling. It's trying to understand the audience that you're trying to persuade and then give them the information that actually changes their mind or at least gets them to act differently. Because often you don't really care if they change your mind, it's just can you get them to act differently in the direction that you're trying to push.

Collin Takita:

To wrap up our 100th episode, let's take it back to the premise of the show itself. Showing our audience what comes after law school. As we've heard from both of you today, that doesn't necessarily end with practice. So I'm sure the question on everyone's mind is, do you regret not practicing?

Kyle McEntee:

I really hate this question. Like truly. I got this question so often from journalists and usually they were trying to make me out to be mad I didn't get a job even though that wasn't the case. But it's a fair question. I do acknowledge that. And my answer is no, I don't regret not practicing. And I also don't regret going to law school because I wouldn't have had the career I had without going to law school because I wouldn't have figured out what was wrong without going through that application process. If I were going backwards or if I was starting the process today, I wouldn't go to law school unless I was intending to practice. But it's really also tough to look at your life and have that big of a regret. So even if I wanted to, I don't even know that I could admit to myself that I regretted it. But I am really satisfied with my career and where I am today, what I've accomplished. And that's kind of where I stop the analysis.

Katya Valasek:

So I definitely don't regret not practicing. In fact, I had a moment in my first semester of law school where I realized I didn't think I saw myself practicing in the traditional sense and thought about quitting. The problem was I really loved law school and I was doing very well and my ego sort of won out and I finished out my three years of law school. And I also don't regret going to law school even though I don't practice. And this question was thrown at me from the very second I started my first job. In fact, I had people say to me, so what, you just threw away three years? And the fact of the matter is, no, absolutely not. We've talked already about how law school changed the way I think. It has a way of turning up when I least expect it.

I bought a car in 2013, went through the process, was going in to sign the paperwork and drive it off the lot. I had been at my parents' house the weekend before and my parents' neighbor were saying, oh, this 90 days no financing thing is a scam. You just collect interest on it. So when you go in, tell them you want to have your first payment due in 30 days. And I was like, you know what? That's really smart. I have the money. I also want to pay off this loan as quickly as possible. So why am I going to wait 90 days? So I go in, I meet with the financing person and they slide the contract over to me and I look it over and I ask for that change. I ask for my first payment due in 30 days instead of 90 days. And the gentleman across from me explains to me, “no, no, no, you don't have to pay in 30 days. You don't have to pay for 90 days.” And I say, I understand that, but I would like my first payment due in 30 days. And he looks at me and he says, “well, you understand I'd have to change the contract.” And I've literally never felt more…

Kyle McEntee:

Like a badass?

Katya Valasek:

Exactly that. Then when I slid the paper back to him and said, “isn't that why I'm here? To review the contract.” And even though before I went to law school, I would have known that was why I was there. I don't know that I would have had the confidence to say that. I lucked into a really great combination of a career that lets me do what I love, but also allows me to stay connected to that initial passion that had me thinking about law school 20 years ago. And nobody can ever take my law degree away from me. I did the work. I graduated law school. I passed the bars in both New Jersey and Michigan. I have everything I learned in my education. And this includes confidence in conflict situations and a different way of seeing the world. And if I ever wanted to put that in practice in the traditional sense, I would have to reactivate my license. I would have to take a lot of CLEs, but I would be able to do it. I have that as the outcome of all the work I did while I was in law school.

Kyle McEntee:

I think it's just a really complicated question. We both clearly said no, but our answers were both winding. And I think one takeaway, Katya, from your anecdote, which I love, about the car buying experience, is you're not advocating, “go get your law degree so you can pay $600 less of interest when you're buying a car.” It just shows how it just becomes who you are. And maybe that's a very American thing, where our personal identities get really difficult to separate from our work identities. But I don't know. I don't feel the need to apologize for that. I like what I've become in my career.