I've come to a couple of realizations over the past week or so, as I've been dealing with the bar result, et al. The biggest one is that I surrender too much esteem much too easily, much too often. For example, I keep waiting to be anointed a lawyer by the jurisdiction where I'm living and working. And obviously that's going to take a while. But as everyone and their brother has been reminding me, and as I have the copies of my certificates of good standing in my pocket attesting to, I am a lawyer. Already. And it's time to comport myself as one, even here.
This means that I am going to detach my bar exam efforts from my career development efforts. Well, to a small extent they'll remain connected, just because the studying will need to take a certain priority for the next few weeks. But I'd kept trying to get all the ducks in a row, to get the license and then look for a job. And I'm not going to worry about doing that anymore. I'm licensed in two jurisdictions, including the second hardest in the country, and that should be able to speak for me. Other people move to California and get jobs on the strength of their past licenses and then take the bar, and so should I be able to as well.
Relatedly, I've been needlessly dismissive of my career thus far, and it's time to stop trying to excuse it and instead start promoting what I've done. Simply because there wasn't a ton of fanfare in being hired for the job I've been doing and the fact that I don't formally have the title of "associate" does not dismiss that it is, in fact, a substantive legal job, where I'm doing associate-type work. I've been there since November, which so far gives me at least 6+ months of experience in what I'd describe as litigation boot camp.
It's a small firm, and as a result there are not levels of staffing strata to dole things out to - the lawyers themselves do nearly everything. Which makes it a great learning experience as I can see how entire cases work, and even though litigation tends to take eons to progress, I've been there long enough to start to see entire stages of their lifecycle. It also means that the work I do can actually make a difference, and I get to be right up close to the cases. My understanding is that in some larger firm environments, an associate might be given a specific task, with no idea of the context for it. Whereas I get to read the case files and know, even when I'm doing enormous document reviews, what I'm looking for and why. And (even though I like document review - ssh! don't tell!) I get to do other things, like work on discovery and even some drafting.
It's sometimes rough. It's all new to me, particularly since I'd had very little firm experience before this. (While having had a previous career as a webmaster might in the long run be a good thing, in the short run it would have been more helpful to me right now if I'd actually been a paralegal instead...) Every day feels like I'm climbing an enormous learning curve. But, from what I'm starting to gather, every first year associate feels that way. And I'm starting to have more and more good days where I do feel like I know what's going on... Also the lawyers I've been working with have been extremely generous about teaching me things. The associate I work most closely with goes out of her way to show me things connected to the practice, even when they don't necessarily bear on a task I need to complete. (She also hounds me to read Rutter guides as well...) The principal of the firm more often tasks me for legal research, and then discusses the legal merits of cases with me, clearly valuing my opinion.
It's been a nice situation, and as I reflect on it I feel really lucky. There is the question though of "what next?" since I don't think I can stay as a post-JD law clerk forever... Discussions have been floated about staying there more permanently, and I need to think about, if it were possible, if I'd want that. From a practice standpoint it's a great environment for learning a ton, and in some important ways staying here would be a good career and lifestyle choice. But I have to decide whether it would be the right one for me. For instance, while there are the occasional tech law/IP things that come up, the practice is mostly built around debt collection (which I don't particularly enjoy, except that it's interesting to see how remedies play out), and real estate/construction defect cases. Those are actually surprisingly interesting and good vehicles for learning about litigation practice. Plus they are fairly tangible cases, with tangible injuries that are easier to assess and value than more ephemeral rights might be. But, while one of my goals is to build up a body of litigation skills, I also wish to build up a body of expertise in technology law, and that may be hard to do here.
Either way, I need to focus more on what I want from my career, and then go for it. I'll probably shuffle along with the status quo up through the bar, but then it'll be time to start making some plans and executing on them, whatever and wherever I decide them to be.