The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I realize that I've written a post before entitled, "The Great Change completed," because, in memorializing my first admittance to a bar, it was technically true: I had indeed become a lawyer. But for me the process of really becoming a lawyer continued on beyond that, through another year of examinations and unlicensed jobs.

But all that has finally changed, as last month I finally got sworn into the jurisdiction where I live, and last Monday I showed up for my first day of my first job that has ever required a license. Now the Great Change really is complete.

I've always regarded becoming a lawyer as something transcendental, like you start out a mere mortal and then get spat out at the other end as something else. Now that I'm at the other end, I think that's right. In a very tangible way it really does involve a transcendental state change: having a law license gives you a kind of potency you cannot possibly have without it. And the process of becoming a lawyer itself is very changing. I feel like a house that's been under extensive renovation all these years, having been taken all the way down to the studs before finally being rebuilt into something better.

Life goes on, of course, and I suspect that, like anyone, I will continue to change, as a person and as a lawyer, but this great change has been completed, and it's time to close the book on this chapter of my life.