JESSE COWIE Vol 11, Issue 11 I’m just about in my final weeks of the JD, and I’ve found myself developing an unhealthy habit – stalking people on LinkedIn. It began innocently enough: ‘Wonder what some other people in my cohort are up to outside of the course’, but it quickly spiralled into a panicked scrolling through the profiles of just about everyone I knew in the course. My conclusion? My god…..people are doing really, really well! And then the bitter afterthought. Why aren’t I doing as well? My feelings of inadequacy have always been present throughout my studies in the JD. I failed a subject in the first year, and got pretty average grades for the rest. There was some other stuff going on in my life at the time, and I felt more concerned with just keeping my head above water than trying to go above and beyond. And yet I realised that people around me were embarking on their first steps in the legal profession: unpaid internships, working at community legal centres, shadowing an associate they happened to know. I mostly responded to this with a sort of vague curiosity, and some unjustly deserved snark. It definitely sounded interesting, but I was always more of a detached student, and reassured myself with the knowledge that I was studying law at Melbourne. My future success was assured, in some form or another. Good on other people for being more driven, but I was happy enough being a low-altitude flyer.
Then came my next steady realisation: the job market was far more grim than I had understood it to be in my happy ignorance. Maybe I wasn’t going to be able to slide into a graduate job in a government department, or complete my PLT and happily begin work at a smaller law firm. Is this why everyone was doing those internships? Why didn’t anybody let me in on the big secret? It’s quite a confronting moment when you realise you’re not necessarily preordained for success. If anybody had asked me point-blank whether I felt I was, I would have of course laughed and played down my own achievements: ‘I’m at Melbourne, but I’m not a genius or anything, mate, really I’m happy to just keep on keeping on’. And yet there was something inside me that felt differently. A certain quiet confidence, that I was going to be just fine. Somewhere along the way I had internalised my acceptance into Melbourne and people’s kind flattery, and come to believe that, of course, I was a young man who was going places. And then it hits you. It hits you when you put in 20 graduate applications, for government jobs, consultancies, large corporations, and find yourself rejected in the first round from nearly all of them. It hits you when you start reading threads on Whirlpool and articles online about how tough it is being a law graduate. It hits you when you look at your CV and you realise that you just don’t measure up: a lone internship, a lone extra-curricular placement. And it hits you when you realise that life isn’t going to take you back. To quote Cormac McCarthy, ‘You are now at the crossing. And you want to choose, but there is no choosing there. There's only accepting. The choosing was done a long time ago.’ And so, where does that bring me? Limping across the finish line of the JD, battered, bruised and disillusioned. I never thought that a degree from the most prestigious law school in the country would feel so worthless, and yet here I am. There isn’t any great truth to discover from this experience. No pithy quote about failures making you stronger. If I could impart any wisdom it would only be these two parting thoughts. To the first years happening to be reading: Get out there now. Hit the pavement. Internships, CLC’s, placements, competitions. Not next semester. Not next year. Now. We live in an incredibly competitive, stress-filled cutthroat environment, but merely acknowledging that isn’t enough. You need to accept that you live in this world, that you are not special, and that it will not change for you. You need to adapt, or you will not survive. Secondly, you should probably stop looking for the ‘point of it all’. As I said, there is no great lesson in my experience here. You could say that the point is there is no point. If you can accept that the world isn’t waiting on you, that the universe doesn’t owe you a thing, then hopefully you can begin to strive for something better. Jesse Cowie is a fourth-year JD student More articles like this The rest of this issue
Tim
16/5/2017 07:50:05 pm
I enjoy reflective pieces like this and am glad you shared it, and hope it positively influences some earlier year students who read it.
Former intern
16/5/2017 08:33:35 pm
Fuck off, Tim — until the situation is as such that there exist paid internships of the same quality as unpaid internships this article has great wisdom.
Tim
16/5/2017 08:45:14 pm
People get the conditions they accept. Unpaid internships exist because people are willing to settle for them.
Sarah
16/5/2017 09:15:26 pm
I think you missed the point of what was a really heartfelt and important piece about Jesse's experience of law school. He doesn't 'encourage' people to complete unpaid internships. Instead, he notes that people around him were completing them. He encourages students to apply for 'internships'. Nowhere does he say that they are unpaid. The exploitative conditions law students are subjected to in the process of trying to get a foot in the door are an entirely different topic.
Tim
16/5/2017 09:21:06 pm
Earlier in the article; "unpaid internships, working at community legal centres..." then later calls back to it: "Hit the pavement. Internships, CLC’s, placements, competitions."
Lol
17/5/2017 02:15:02 am
It's just supply and demand. Nobody is saying unpaid iinternships are a good thing, stop pushing your pet project. Doing an unpaid internship is a rational move if it gets you a step closer to a paid job where the alternative is nothing. Your advice is like telling a person dying of thirst to wait until the cleaner water arrives. Or worse, to not drink because everyone else wants a drink too. If you don't do the internship someone else will. Then they'll get your job.
Tim
17/5/2017 08:44:02 am
You've asked me to "stop pushing" this point, yet continued the debate - I left a comment which was largely positive to the article but expressed discomfort at one small aspect; it could have been left there but the natural defensiveness of law students in our clearly insecure work environment seems to have kicked in the fight-or-flight mechanism.
Scott Colvin
16/5/2017 08:29:29 pm
Fuck the law, you should become a writer.
Former JD student who should stop reading De minimis
16/5/2017 10:45:42 pm
Damn straight. I remember you from the year below me and you were interesting and different from majority of people who were happy (or just willing) to accept the pre ordained path we are put on at MLS. Maybe don't listen to your own advice though of 'accepting' ... I don't agree that the choosing part is over. If you never felt particularly inspired at law school then use your law degree to do something else that actually does make you want to go above and beyond. We are in such a small privileged minority to have this educational background so its our responsibility not to merely accept and exist.
Me too
16/5/2017 09:41:03 pm
Jessie, you're not alone.
Agreed
17/5/2017 12:16:08 am
I relate to this article more than any other I've read while at law school. I'm scared too. I also don't have much extracurricular involvement. I've come close to failing two subjects. My grades are in the fat part of the bell curve. Right now, I don't want to be a graduate lawyer, and I don't think that opinion would change if the job market were less hellish. Then what were the last five and a half years good for? Were they just an escape? I don't feel prepared for any job market, much less the canine pit of graduate applications.
Not 25
21/5/2017 10:17:24 pm
It's been a while since I was 25 (thankfully), but I can tell you with some experience that you absolutely can redefine yourself. Not only that you can, but that you will. Good Lord if I was the same person I was when I was 25...how utterly depressing it would be to not have grown at all.
I feel you
17/5/2017 08:33:02 am
Totally feel this article. I was a lucky one who managed to play off someone who I knew to get a foot (or probably more like a big toe) in the door. But I think for a lot of my degree
Great Article
17/5/2017 10:15:10 am
Really enjoyed this and identified with a lot of what you wrote. Good on you, keep writing.
Anon
19/5/2017 09:05:33 pm
LOL "turns out other people weren't just drinking on Wednesday afternoons instead of lectures" Comments are closed.
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