What is it like to get a law degree, not become a lawyer?

I went to law school after being denied tenure in an English department in my early forties. Law school was intellectually stimulating and life-changing, but I came out of it as a queer female-born person in my mid-forties with a B average and a law degree from a state school. To make things worse, I graduated and passed the bar just after the crash of 2008. The best job I could get was one clerking in child protection court. By clerking, I mean I carried files back and forth and kept the judge’s date book. At the end of every hearing I would leaf through the book and call out a date for the next hearing. In the afternoons, after court, the clerks all read novels in our offices and waited to punch out at 4:30. I read all of the Game of Thrones novels at work. Read more: What is it like to get a law degree and not become a lawyer? Jaime Hovey, Instructor Writing at Loyola University Chicago (2012-present). Answered September 22, 2018. https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-get-a-law-degree-and-not-become-a-lawyer.

After two and a half years it was more than clear that I would never be hired as a Public Defender or State’s Attorney, that I would have to wait a couple more years to have a chance at the Public Guardian’s office, and that my best chance lay with DCFS—at some point. I couldn’t practice law as a volunteer to get experience because clerks were not allowed to practice law, which has something to do with clerks working for judges and thus needing to maintain objectivity.

I felt that as a middle-aged person, I couldn’t continue to wait around for the legal opportunities that might eventually come to me. About to turn 50, I wondered how old I would be when I finally got a real lawyering job. 55? 60? I felt like my trial period had run out. I had been a teacher before law school, but cost-cutting measures by universities had resulted in the wholesale transfer of professorial work over to part-time adjuncts, so teaching was much more plentiful than when I had been denied tenure. The pay was a lot lower, but in the gig economy, you string together as many jobs as you can to make ends meet. I went back to teaching.

I get many gigs because I have a law degree. I sometimes teach legal writing. I incorporate case law into my gender studies classes and history courses. I get unusual jobs—recently I helped manage a grant for three years at the University of Chicago, and was considered largely because my interviewers were impressed by my law background. Students are impressed that I am a lawyer, and give me respect not often given to other liberal arts teachers. They hunger to know the law, and that makes them more open to learning all sorts of new things.

Understand, I don’t make much money—certainly not enough to justify the crippling debt I incurred in law school. But I feel employable in a way I never did with “just” a Ph. D.. Something about the hard work of law school convinces employers that you are smart and have a work ethic. I often wish I could have been able to practice law, but I use my legal education to keep students informed about current events, landmark decisions, and politics in a way I would never have been able to do without my J.D.

Lots of people I know don’t practice law. They work for corporations, they work as staff, they do consulting, they work at nonprofits or in government, and they teach. Huge numbers of people leave the law to do other kinds of work. I would never recommend that anyone who is not young and optimistic go to law school, because the debt is absolutely crippling, but if that were not the case, I would say that a legal education fits you to perform almost any kind of job really well, and take great pleasure in it. Read more: What is it like to get a law degree and not become a lawyer? Jaime Hovey, Instructor Writing at Loyola University Chicago (2012-present). Answered September 22, 2018. https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-get-a-law-degree-and-not-become-a-lawyer.