When I meet people professionally for the first time, I’m often asked one of two questions: 1) How did you get started in VC? And 2) How did you make the jump from being a lawyer into a non-legal role? I sometimes wish I could tell people that it was all part of a grand master plan and I just executed on that plan, but that’s not how it played out at all. In fact, I had no idea I’d end up looking for alternative careers with a law degree. Let’s dive into the journey.
My Legal Career
I’ve wanted to be a lawyer since I was 10 years old. There are two reasons I wanted to be a lawyer: 1) I was good at arguing and I thought that’s what lawyers do, and 2) I saw lawyers as change agents, people that could use the law as a tool to help other people and I wanted to help other people. One big thing to know about me: Once I decide to do something, I’m going to pursue it to the fullest and good luck changing my mind. This is both a strength and a weakness. Strength because I was laser-focused on becoming a lawyer and I did everything I needed to do to eventually get accepted into Stanford Law School off the waitlist. Weakness because I was so closed off to other paths that I was boxed into what I thought my career was going to look like. This ultimately led to a challenging identity crisis during law school.
My first quarter of law school, I went in thinking I was going to be a public interest litigator and fight the good fight. Well, I quickly realized that I absolutely hated legal research, oral arguments and everything that litigation attorneys do daily. I couldn’t stand reading cases. This quickly led to an “oh fuck, what am I going to do with my life?” There was no way I was dropping out of Stanford because I had worked my entire life to get there. Then I found out about the practice of transactional law. I had always liked business and I really liked the idea of counseling clients on their business matters, so I decided that I was going to be a transactional attorney.
As I started on this path, I realized a couple of things: 1) there’s so many different types of transactional attorneys, so what do I really want to do? And 2) while Stanford could teach me how to think like a lawyer, law schools generally don’t do a great job of getting you ready for practice or teaching you enough about the field of transactional law. The first piece is somewhat understandable because the legal profession is fundamentally an apprenticeship profession, but law schools really need to do a much better job of teaching their students about transactional law.
Mindset Shift
Given these realizations, I decided that I was going to start working during my first year of law school. This was a controversial decision as its typically taboo to work during your first year of law school, but it was the right decision for me. I was fortunate to land a internship in KKR’s legal and compliance department and I ended up working at KKR every quarter throughout the rest of my law school tenure. By my second and third years I was working full time in San Francisco and commuting to Stanford for evening classes. All while being actively involved in a ton of different organizations at the law school.
One important mindset shift occurred because of my identity crisis in law school: I realized I had to be open to whatever happened in my career and be open to several different paths, including alternative careers with a law degree. Once I found what I loved to do, I would then pursue that path with the same vigor that I pursued a legal career. This mindset shift turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.
Now that you have the background, stay tuned for part 2 where I’ll dive into my unique (and weird) career journey.
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