Public Service / Legal Aid
Her desire to provide legal counsel helping others remained consistent through several zigs and zags along her career journey.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
CS’ father was the youngest of 6 children born in Russia, who escaped the Nazis and eventually traveled to the USA, where he felt compelled by family pressure to join his brothers’ groceries business. Eventually he owned an insurance brokerage business.
CS’ mother worked for her uncle’s accounting business. The uncle generously supported several family members’ education expenses but declined to finance education for CS’ mother, declaring “It would be a waste to send a girl to Wharton.” However, demonstrating persistence, CS’ mother found a way to college through her employment by a large electronics corporation, which underwrote her college expenses while she worked as an electronics technician during WW2. Later she worked within the insurance agency of CS’ father, eventually serving as its office manager.
After initially being declined a college opportunity by her uncle, CS’ mother told both of her daughters: “You will go to college and your father and I will help pay for it!”
EARLY THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER
In addition to her own thoughts about an adult career, CS received different suggestions from her mother and from her teachers.
CS’ first adult career goal was to become a teacher, work for three years to achieve tenure, then take time off to raise a family and return to teaching. Her mother suggested that CS attend medical school to become a doctor. Still pondering her future, CS next decided to become a psychiatrist. Teachers noted that CS was less proficient in math and science than in writing and languages, so they suggested focusing on liberal arts in college.
Editor’s note: “Liberal Arts” education refers to studies involving broad, general knowledge, in contrast to courses aimed primarily toward a vocation (e.g., electrician, plumber) or a profession (e.g., doctor, engineer, lawyer) or technical skills (e.g. electronics creation / repair).
COLLEGE DECISIONS – WHICH ONE AND WHAT TO STUDY?
Many members of CS’ extended family had attended the same urban, public university so CS assumed she was also headed to enroll there but a sixth-grade teacher within her public elementary school apparently noticed CS’ higher academic proficiency than most of her classmates and therefore suggested that CS, like the teacher herself, aim to attend an Ivy League school. This recommendation expanded CS’ mindset to consider more than the family education path.
Although accepted at the local Ivy League university, its urban campus seemed merely an extension of the education environment in which CS had already been enrolled: high school pre-college classes at the same urban university campus. Instead, CS opted to enroll at a similarly academic challenging college – one of the “Seven Sisters” in a nearby suburban locale. Her classmates would all be female, a different academic experience, which was apparently unsettling to some of her female friends, who tried unsuccessfully to dissuade CS from attending that prestigious college due solely to its all-female undergraduates. But CS persisted. Due to her superior HS grades and family’s finances, the college provided significant financial aid.
CS’ chosen college required all its liberal arts students to be proficient in both math and English but as a forecast of her eventual career path, CS studied the details of the curriculum requirements and found a “loophole” to avoid her personal traumatic relationship with math: enroll in a second language. She also took extensive courses in philosophy, toward a career in teaching (reflecting CS’ first career goal) after obtaining a Doctorate (PhD) in English.
WORLD EVENTS MAY AFFECT A CAREER PATH
While college graduation and moving on from its tranquil suburban campus approached, the outside world was in upheaval over an unpopular foreign war involving drafted US troops fighting – and many dying – in Southeast Asia, specifically Viet Nam. Resistance to the military draft (by lottery among mandatory registered 18-year-old males) politically divided many adults and especially college students of draft eligible age. CS’ sympathies were aligned with those opposed to this war. Perhaps CS could use a law school degree to somehow get involved in the anti-war movement?
CONFLICTING CAREER ADVICE FROM COLLEGE MENTORS
Medical schools as recommended by CS’ mother were not an option for CS since admission and subsequent physician practice would require significant math proficiency. Enrolling in law school could eventually provide an attorney’s license to represent draft resisters. But CS remained conflicted among her current career choices: teaching or the law? Some of her professors were strongly opposed to any of their students opting to get involved with the legal profession, which the professors viewed as essentially anti-intellectual. But fortunately, the (female) college President, formerly a lawyer and later a politician, had broad views of various career potentials and was willing to personally counsel with seniors regarding their career considerations. During a one-on-one session with the college President, CS explained the basis for her dilemma in choosing between careers in academia or the law. After listening to CS, the President advised that CS would likely succeed in either career option but the jobs market for PhDs was much more limited than for lawyers; plus, a legal career would provide much more flexibility for what to do with your legal training.
ALWAYS WISE TO SEEK A MENTOR’S OPINION
During CS’ first year in law school, the US government yielded to its citizens’ political pressure by eliminating the military draft. CS had opted to pursue a legal career for the specific purpose of representing draft resisters so now what to do? None of her law school classes (contracts, crimes, estates, property, torts and litigation procedure) dealt with current political issues so without the possibility of achieving her initial attorney representation goal, CS was bored and thinking strongly about dropping out of law school but wisely sought a meeting with the Dean of the law school, who listened to her complaints including an unbalanced representation of only 25 females within the class of 250 plus extensive rape crime examples during criminal law classes, which seemed to be an example of insensitivity to the female students. The Dean appreciated her concerns and agreed that improvements would be implemented for both of her concerns. He advised CS that she may find ways to use her legal training to assist others with serious social issues and thus persuaded CS to at least finish her first year at the law school before making a final decision about withdrawing to pursue a different career path.
REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE SUPPLEMENTS ACADEMIC COURSES
While persuaded to complete the (to her) boring and irrelevant first year courses, CS got involved in the school’s Women’s Law Caucus, whose activities included visiting women incarcerated within the (then) only state prison for women. The prison warden accused the group of law student visitors of just being another group of “do-gooders” who were “all talk and no action” despite the obvious need of the prisoners for legal assistance. Accepting the challenge, the female law students created a project devoted to providing legal advice to the female inmates, since law students, not yet graduated and passed the state’s Bar Exam, had no law license, which is required to represent anyone in court.
While working with the Women’s Law Caucus, CS found herself spending more time at the women’s’ prison than at her law school, but she did eventually graduate, despite a declining GPA (grade point average) due to her frequent absence from classes. The Caucus arranged for a licensed attorney to file litigation aimed to improve conditions at the prison. While that eventually successful litigation was pending, the Caucus was asked by the adult female inmates to get involved with younger female inmates at other state jails.
The Caucus members’ successes in improving female prisoner treatment were noticed by the state Parole Board, which revised its rules to permit law students to represent prisoners during their parole hearings despite not yet having graduated and passed the state’s Bar Exam.
EXPERIENCE WITHIN A CAREER PATH LEADS TO A DIFFERENT FOCUS
For CS, the group’s success translated to a new career focus for her, just as the Dean had predicted it might. CS now aimed to become a public interest lawyer, specifically as a Public Defender (an agency of lawyers paid by the local municipality where they work, to defend juveniles and adults charged with crimes, who cannot afford to hire private attorneys).
FAILURE WITH INITIAL JOB PROSPECTS NEVER DOOMS A CAREER
During law school, CS had become professionally friendly with a Judge and assumed from their conversations that the Judge would hire CS as a law clerk upon graduation. However, that job was never offered for the announced reason (an unsuccessful applicant rarely knows the actual reason) that the Judge felt compelled to hire a different candidate due to outside political pressure. By then it was too late to obtain a judicial clerkship with another Judge so CS applied to a large, urban Public Defenders’ office but was not hired for the reason CS assumed was due to her less than stellar law school GPA.
CAREER DIRECTION UNCLEAR? CONSIDER TAKING A BORING JOB WITHIN A GENERAL CAREER PATH WHILE LOOKING FOR A MORE INTERESTING, SPECIFIC CAREER POSSIBILITY
Nearing graduation, the law school Dean happend to notice CS in the law school library. (Editor’s note: third year law students are more often found working part-time with their future law firm employers than in the library, which is mainly populated by first year law students cramming for exams). The Dean asked CS about her plans post-graduation. Hearing that she had none and appreciative that she had followed his advice to remain in law school despite her first-year disillusionment, the Dean offered her a job as an Assistant Dean, which CS promptly accepted.
Serving as an Assistant Dean of the law school, the first half of the year was interesting while traveling to colleges to recruit future law students. However, the second half of the year was occupied by (to her) boring administrative duties. CS was ready to move out of academia.
NETWORKING PROVES VALUABLE
Getting to know other members of one women’s professional group led to meeting other professionals with similar interests in helping underprivileged females, specifically with domestic abuse issues. Through that second professional circle, CS was introduced to a third professional group: attorneys providing broad legal issues representation – both civil and criminal – to clients who could not afford private attorneys for such significant life matters as tenant evictions, divorces, child custody and support. Upon learning of an opening within the staff of Legal Assistance attorneys, CS made it known that she preferred to represent clients charged with crimes but would consider working on civil matters briefly at the outset, which ultimately lasted for the next five years while she devoted herself to representing indigent clients involved with family law issues including landlord / tenant disputes, divorce, child custody and child abuse.
PUBLIC SECTOR EXPERIENCE CAN LEAD TO A PRIVATE SECTOR CAREER
Epilogue to Public Sector Lawyer – See Career Story “Law – Family Lawyer” which provides the story of CS’ transition to representing family law clients as a private attorney while concurrently donating some of her professional services to assist abused women.
