A week ago, as a result of the corrupting influence suggestion of my friend, I flew up to Seattle for the most feminine vacation I have ever taken. She's getting married next year, so the pretense of the trip was to go dress shopping - for a bridal gown for her and a bridesmaid dress for me. People who know me well may think my voluntary wearing of a dress is a sign of the apocalypse, and they may well be right. But when my friend asked me if I wanted to be a bridesmaid, it wasn't exactly an offer I could refuse. Fortunately she's giving her bridesmaids wide latitude to choose something not hideous, and maybe even wearable on subsequent occasions - should I, of course, ever voluntarily wear a dress on a subsequent occasion. (Meanwhile, other feminine touches from this trip included visiting the jewelry store to get her ring adjusted and hanging out with another friend to do some scrapbooking. Yes, my inner-woman was quite active on this trip...)
I figured I'd be going up to Seattle at some point, although I thought it might be closer to the bar when I had no plans to be working. But since I'm not working now, and since there was a good deal on the airfare, I went. This is the last trip I have planned though between now and the end of the year. While I still have lots of time, I would prefer to have lots of money. I'm working on trying to trade one for the other... I really wasn't expecting to be this idle right now, and it's taking a toll financially and emotionally. The earlier part of the week after my return was a particularly low point of existential malaise.
But the later part got much better. A solo practitioner I know threw some work my way. It's basically law clerk work, but it paid and, even better, it got me doing Real Legal Work, with real people and real cases. It's not exactly my first exposure to real clients (for instance last summer I did some work with intake), but it was largely my first real experience with actual litigation practice. I don't regret this about my law school experience, as I think it was a perfectly good expenditure of the opportunity, but for me law school was much more focused on the academic and theoretical than the practical. The moot courts and trial advocacy class were practical, of course, but they involved fictitious cases in fictitious jurisdictions. Whereas the work I got to do this week involved real cases in real places. The work I did really mattered, and that's something new.
The good news: I liked it! The bad news: I have sooooo much to learn... Which is normal; it's a myth that people graduate law school having any idea how to be a lawyer. The point is to be able to at least think like a lawyer, to be able to spot issues of law and procedure, because without that no amount of practical knowledge will be able to help the client. Anyway, there was nothing I worked on that wasn't at least somewhat familiar to me.
So I hope I can continue to get some hours helping this lawyer out, and there was another practitioner I spoke to last week that I might be able to get some work from as well. I'll still look for an associate position, because I'm going to need one eventually anyway and it would be nice to have some stability, but if I can manage to string together enough of this other work I'll learn a ton and hopefully be able to support myself for a while.
In the meantime, I still wait for my bar results. And last night I brought home my pile of new BarBri books...