Life Beyond the Briefs
At Life Beyond the Briefs we help lawyers like you become less busy, make more money, and spend more time doing what they want instead of what they have to. Brian brings you guests from all walks of life are living a life of their own design and are ready to share actionable tips for how you can begin to live your own dream life.
Life Beyond the Briefs
Would You Turn Down $200K to Take a $35K Job? | Patrick Hagen
Most lawyers chase prestige. Patrick Hagen chased freedom—and found it in a $35K clerkship, a debt-free JD, and a few well-timed LinkedIn posts.
Patrick is a business litigator, a father of four, and the kind of lawyer who built his brand not through networking dinners or late-night emails—but by hitting publish on LinkedIn at 5AM.
In this episode, he joins Brian to share how walking away from a $75K salary to attend law school debt-free gave him the freedom to clerk for peanuts, build autonomy in Big Law, and design a career that fits around his family—not the other way around.
They get into:
- Why most lawyers are missing a massive opportunity on LinkedIn
- The hidden power of legal writing as a personal brand
- How law students should think about opportunity cost and clerkships
- What work-life balance actually looks like inside a 1,000-lawyer firm
This conversation is proof that you can play the game—but you don’t have to lose yourself in the process.
Connect with Patrick on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/hagenlaw/
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Brian Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia. He is passionate about living a life of his own design and looking for answers to solutions outside of the legal field. This podcast is his effort to share that passion with others.
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Sometimes you could spend an hour on a LinkedIn post and you've made it so polished that it kind of loses some of its just raw appeal. And when I look back at some of the posts that have the most engagements the ones where I wrote it took me like two minutes to write it's just something that's just a thought or reflection, that was just very real. And those are the ones I think that get a lot of reaction, because people on LinkedIn aren't looking for something that's like this polished product that kind of seems like it was made by ChachiBT or that it was stolen from somewhere else. They just want to get to know the person.
Speaker 2:Hey friends, welcome back to Life Beyond the Briefs, the podcast where we explore what's really possible when lawyers stop living for the billable hour and start designing a life on their own terms. What if I told you, a big law litigator built his brand not by billing more hours, but by posting on LinkedIn at 5am? Today's guest is Patrick Hagan, a business litigator, father of four and the kind of lawyer who walked away from a 75k salary in the comfort of a steady job to go to law school on a scholarship and take a 35k clerkship. He's proof. Go to law school on a scholarship and take a 35k clerkship. He's proof that you don't need an Ivy League, jd or 12 hour days to make partner, just authenticity, autonomy and a damn good LinkedIn post. We're talking about escaping the golden handcuffs, building your personal brand and designing a legal career that actually fits your life. Let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2:Today's guest Patrick Hagan. Patrick is a senior associate at Nelson Mullins down in Florida. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you probably also follow him, because I think he's got exactly twice as many followers as I do. Patrick is a business litigator and we're going to talk about how to survive in big law as a father of four who's got a young family at home. Patrick, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, brian. So the first time that you and I talked was like two years ago, and I asked you what you did and you said I'm a business litigator and I said I don't know what the hell that means.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the specific words I used was commercial litigator.
Speaker 2:Commercial. That's even worse.
Speaker 1:I definitely don't know what that means, and then that led me to create a LinkedIn post breaking down okay, let's get rid of the legal jargon. What is a commercial litigator? It's someone who defends businesses and lawsuits. Every now and then we'll file a lawsuit as well, but typically businesses are more on the defense side.
Speaker 2:Are you primarily retained directly by businesses or is it through like an insurance E&O kind of coverage, or is it a mix?
Speaker 1:Primarily the business itself. So we'll represent different manufacturers or businesses that have large commercial projects, and when I say commercial I mean something large scale like a manufacturing plant. Or if we're representing a manufacturer, it could be any car you see driving down the street representing one of those companies.
Speaker 2:And so you know, this is one of these things where, like, you get out of law school and they tell you to pick a niche and you say that your idea of niche is litigation or transactional Right Right, there's litigation. It's like, oh, I'm in the civil litigation niche. There's this whole world of stuff that I don't even know anything about, and I guess I would consider myself broadly a civil litigator, but I don't know anything about what you do, and so I'm kind of envisioning that if you're primarily defending lawsuits, you're like jumping in all hands on deck. We have 21 or 60 days to file an answer, depending on kind of where you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what does it look like from, I guess from the client's perspective from okay, we got slapped with a lawsuit, I got to go out and hire somebody. Do you have a sense for how your clients even select your firm versus anybody else?
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of it goes back to longstanding relationships, so these are a lot of institutional clients that we've had for years and years. If we're bringing on a new client, hopefully my goal is that maybe someone saw me on LinkedIn and they keep seeing my face over and over and over again and although, like you talked about, I'm not necessarily selling anything, you know you're not going to find me doing hourly coaching on LinkedIn or any type of product like that, but just putting myself out there to be a source of authority within legal writing and someone that they can recognize when they ultimately get sued.
Speaker 2:Have you been able to track anybody back to your LinkedIn?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the sources have been primarily from other attorneys in other states, so I've generated some clients from that. So, again, building relationships with attorneys on LinkedIn has been huge. When I first started at my first law firm, I was going to bar association events, I was going to in of courts and I was doing all these things that lawyers do, which is good and well, but once I had more kids, I started realizing my wife is not happy when I'm not home by six o'clock and I'm going to these evening dinners multiple times a week, which were great, but I was missing time with my kids, and so that's what really got me into LinkedIn how old are your kids? Now I have kids ranging from seven years old to 10 months old, so all about two years apart.
Speaker 2:Or you really cram them in there. Wait till you get knee deep in multiple sports practices a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's been something we've been trying to avoid. We're okay with soccer because we know the time commitment is not like baseball. Nobody's going to be traveling. Hey, if my son gets great at soccer and he wants to be a traveling soccer pro, that's fine. But as for now, we're trying to go easy on the sports.
Speaker 2:I got an email today from my 10-year-old's baseball league with an opportunity Opportunity. If you want to play more baseball you can sign up for like this guest player roster, and then if there's a team that has kids that are sick and they can only field eight, you can be the ninth. I'm like man. We're already at two practices and two games a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, baseball seems to be the most time-consuming sport of all. When I talk to friends who have their kids in baseball, they're traveling every single weekend and that's all they do. So with four we try to find something that multiple kids can do, so hopefully one day we can get them all on the same team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it'll be a relay race or something, right, all right, so tell us how you're using LinkedIn to generate interest, clients, business, wherever. You want to start with that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, let me take it from how I first got into LinkedIn. I looked back at my feed, which is really a collection of history that I can look back and see what was I doing three years ago, and I think the first post I ever wrote was some nerdy legal writing topic about pleaded versus pled, which is the past tense of the word pled, and I wrote basically okay, why aren't we using plain English here? Like, why don't we just say pled instead of pleaded? It sounds like something the Brits would say. And I got reposted by Ross Gooberman, who's he owns the company Brief Catch, and also got reposted by a friend who's now an ALJ. And just that traction with like 35 likes and I think 40 something comments made me be like oh wow, this is fun. I want more of this immediate reaction. And then that grew into if I want to be someone that other businesses are looking at as someone they can hire, everyone says you have to have a niche. So what can my niche be? As someone who just came out of two years of clerking, my experience was in legal writing, so that's what I started posting on and started building on that and it kind of just snowballed from zero followers to trying all these different topics into now, 1000 plus followers and 16.5 million impressions a year ago.
Speaker 1:So I think that when people are seeing me on their feed a lot of the times in litigation, when I talk to my friends who own businesses, I say hopefully you'll never need me because you're likely gotten sued at that point. And so it's an area of law where most of the time your friends aren't thinking of you. Business is good because I'm not on the contract side where we're doing deals for them. I'm on the things have gone sour side and so that's why I just try to be on the first person they think of when something goes wrong. And speaking of sporting events, I talked to a friend who owns a business the other day. He said LinkedIn keeps emailing me suggesting that I do more posts like you, and he's not a lawyer, he's a business owner. So I'm not paying premium for LinkedIn, I'm not doing any type of marketing, but for some reason I'm getting sent to these other business owners emails inbox.
Speaker 2:So not only are they email, they're saying email. They're saying you should be posting more often, like Patrick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and they will use me as an example and my friend's like. I don't have time to do what you're doing, so let's talk about.
Speaker 2:How do you have time? What's your process for ideation to? I'm sure, as a legal writing enthusiast, as you brand yourself, you're not like posting the first draft of anything ever. So what's your process?
Speaker 1:for, like, I have an idea for a post, to turning it into a post, to scheduling it, if you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of my posts are scheduled because that helps me try to get it right in front of everyone's eyes right when they wake up in the morning, because I think most people are on LinkedIn, typically click the app right when they wake up or when they right when they get to work, which is kind of funny.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, I'll have some random thought based on a brief I've read or a case I'm reading, or just something that happens in my daily life, and then I'll send a text to myself. You know, maybe not the most sophisticated way of doing it, but I text Patrick and say, hey, this is a LinkedIn idea, and then when I get some time, I start writing a post on it. The way I find time as a practicing lawyer is I'll go to a workout group that starts at 525 am to 615 am in the morning, so I think you work out pretty regularly as well, and so that's a chunk of time where no one else is up. I get into the office at 7 am and I can spend an hour, if I need to, writing a LinkedIn post or multiple posts, and then scheduling those out for the week ahead, when I'm not losing out on billable hours.
Speaker 2:Eight method Cause I I run um marathon training right now, but that's when all my great ideas were. That's when all my ideas come to me.
Speaker 2:Um, and so lately I I've just started leaving voice notes in buffer. I use buffer to schedule everything, but I can at least like while I'm running I can just record the first, the hook or the first part of the idea, and then I can come back and write it later. But it sounds like you are. Are you doing it in Buffer, or are you doing it straight in LinkedIn or something else?
Speaker 1:Yeah, just typically just straight into LinkedIn, just revising. Sometimes you could spend an hour on a LinkedIn post and you've made it so polished that it kind of loses some of its just raw appeal. And when I look back at some of the posts that have the most engagements the ones where I wrote it took me like two minutes to write it's just something that just a thought or reflection, that was just very real. And those are the ones I think that get a lot of reaction, because people on LinkedIn aren't looking for something that's like this polished product that kind of seems like it was made by ChatGPT or that it was stolen from somewhere else. They just want to get to know the person. Plus, they want some type of advice or controversy that they can weigh in on. Like those are the ones that seem to do well.
Speaker 2:Are you teaching this to other lawyers at your firm or is there interest from?
Speaker 1:others.
Speaker 2:It's about how do you develop a personal brand?
Speaker 1:I've given several talks at FSU. So I'm here in Tallahassee and so I've spoken on panels about how you can leverage LinkedIn, even just starting off as a law student, and then I've also given that same speech to some of the associates here for some training programs we have because, as you know, so few lawyers are actually posting on LinkedIn. It might seem like a lot when you're going through a feed, but when you think about how many lawyers there are, it's very few. I think this it's like 1%, is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, probably less. That's the stat I've heard. And you know, the thing that's always shocking to me is the person who who is lurking right, follows you, never comments or likes anything, but then comes up to you at a bar event and tells you how much they can detail how much they like the post that you wrote last Tuesday. Exactly. That's always kind of. The podcast is kind of the same way. Well, it'd be nice if you raise your hand and let me know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those people out there, even if they're not engaging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, those people out there, even if they're not engaging, yeah, in the LinkedIn world. We call them LinkedIn lurkers, lurkers.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They're always at conferences, which is kind of fun because you get to meet these partners or business people that you've never interacted with. Cause I I turn off who viewed my profile because this sounds like way too many people are viewing it, but yeah, it's just not something I track.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about kind of day in the life as a big law associate. So I think that's the fitness group that you mentioned to me. It's like a men's fitness group. It's a letter and a number or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll plug it. It's called F3, f as in Frank, and it's the three core principles. There's four principles one, two, three, four, rain or shine. It's peer-led and ends in a circle of trust. So, essentially, summing that down, it's a men's workout group.
Speaker 1:We meet outside in public parks or places that we're allowed to go, where we're not trespassing, and it's always outdoors, and the only thing we really use is maybe a cinder block for weight or a sandbag, and so in that way it's a very much like a calisthenics workout, unless we do something that's just ridiculous. Like last week, one of the guys came up with a workout where he wanted it to essentially reenact carrying the Ark of the Covenant, where he put like two by fours on our shoulders and put, just like it felt, like 200 pounds of weight on top of this, and that two guys had to carry it for like a mile. So my shoulders are still feeling that that sounds very similar to go rock. Yeah, yeah, it's in a lot of the guys. The deeper they get into the F3 world, they get into go rock, and so you got your rocking groups and we have all types of workouts and it's nationwide as well. So if anyone's interested, yeah, feel free to reach out.
Speaker 2:That's funny. There's always somebody crazier Like you'd be out there pushing a stroller and then somebody run by you towing a tire or carrying the Ark of the Covenant. That's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think when I first reached out to you on LinkedIn, it was me asking you about the MRF, because we also do that as well, and I saw that you were into that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you do that at sunrise, and then what? What time are you getting into the office?
Speaker 1:Yeah, a few days a week I'll get into the office at seven. I go use my planet fitness membership and when I badge in they say have a good workout. I'm like I'm just here for the shower.
Speaker 2:Is it like downstairs from you guys?
Speaker 1:No, just down the street though, but yeah. And then I start my day at seven. On the days I do the workout and if I have something pressing at work I'll jump right into work. If there's nothing pressing, I'll think okay, what kind of LinkedIn posts can I create and schedule for the week ahead?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then, when does the workday end?
Speaker 1:for you Typically try to get home by dinner. So, yeah, my wife's happy when I'm home at about six o'clock and so I just schedule in some travel time. And yeah, that's something I really enjoy about this firm is we have a thousand attorneys at Nelson Mullins, but it feels more like a mid-sized law firm in the sense that we have individual offices throughout the US instead of just like one giant office with a thousand attorneys in New York City. So in that sense we have a more understanding for work-life balance.
Speaker 2:And you were telling me before we jumped on. You're currently working for a partner who's kind of at the same stage of life as you and appreciates like you're not going to be answering emails at night or jumping on phone calls unless there's a true emergency.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and when you join a large law firm that's a huge part of it is you're not going to get one type of partner that you work for unless you only work for one person. And when I say this, I mean when you join a big law firm, you could initially start off working for five, 10 partners and then, as time goes on, maybe you gravitate to working for one partner or their company or their clients, and each person is so different. Just like when someone asked me, hey, should I go be a judicial law clerk? I say who's the judge? Because someone might have really demanding expectations, just like in the law practice. So it's really important to work with someone who has similar expectations as you as to okay, what time is signing off? What time can I do? I need to always have my phone on me at all times, being ready to answer an email.
Speaker 2:Are those things that are like overtly stated, or are they just annoyed that it took you 35 minutes to respond to something?
Speaker 1:It could be it could be both, depending on how direct someone is.
Speaker 2:Well, no, I mean upfront. Are they like hey, if you're working with me, what I expect is that your email is always open on your browser and that your phone is always on your hip, or is that something that you just kind of learn by experience?
Speaker 1:I think a lot of associates learn it by experience, but something I've always tried to do, whether it's starting a relationship with a new client or a new partner, is find out expectations up front and getting into as much detail as possible, because a lot of times partners and clients are so busy that they won't be expressing everything that they're upset about or what their expectations are for you. When you take 20 minutes to respond to an email instead of five, and so if I know up front what does a client want, what does a partner want, it's going to be a much more happy working relationship.
Speaker 2:How much control, as an associate at a firm like yours, do you have over selecting what's good for you, meaning if you were currently working for a partner who did expect you to answer on nights and weekends, do you have the autonomy to kind of pick up and move to somebody who doesn't?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you gain greater autonomy the longer you've been an attorney, especially at this firm, and that's because when you first start off let's say, someone came straight out of law school I don't think they have this great of autonomy to be like, listen, partner, I'm not going to work for you, yeah. Yeah. But I'm technically my seventh year of practice and I know that because I had my oldest son right as we were graduating law school and so you know I look at him. I'm like, oh wow, my law, my legal career, can now like read a book. This is crazy, but yeah. So the longer I've been in practice, the more autonomy I have, and I think that's in part because we're on a collections goal system. Here. You're ultimately as one of our managing partners explained to me you're ultimately in charge of your store. Like you have to manage yourself as, like you're a solo practitioner running your own law firm, like you're ultimately the one who is in charge of how much money you collect and meeting your goal.
Speaker 2:And I imagine that's fairly unique to your firm. Do you have a sense across the rest of Big Law like exactly how unique that?
Speaker 1:ethos. Yeah, I don't get the sense that some of my friends in New York Big Law have as much autonomy to decide who they work for and what types of cases they bring on, and that's mainly because they're getting billed out at a thousand something dollars per hour as like a second or third year associate, and they just need to do the work and get the hours that they need. So there's usually not much saying no to taking on different types of work or working with different partners, and it's an area that you have to be especially sensitive to, even in a firm like mine, because you don't want to burn bridges no-transcript. So it's just making concessions where you can and trying to navigate that.
Speaker 2:So speaking of autonomy, one of the things that I know about you is you got out of law school without any debt, yeah Right. So we've talked a couple of times about the freedom that that gives you to make decisions like work at a big firm, work at a small firm clerk. But talk a little bit about your decision-making process as you went to Regent and kind of what other options you had at the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I was working for an insurance company who will not be named because you're a personal injury attorney. No, no, I'm just kidding. So I was working for Geico right out of college.
Speaker 2:Were you in Virginia Beach or were you somewhere else?
Speaker 1:I was in Lakeland, florida, okay, but I went to law school in Virginia Beach, which also-.
Speaker 2:They have a big-.
Speaker 1:Which also has an office there.
Speaker 2:Injury hub is down in Virginia Beach.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So they'd send me up to Virginia Beach a few times for different trainings. So I was familiar with the area before. But I think having some type of career before you jump into law school puts things into perspective because you realize the opportunity cost right. So if I was leaving a job at Geico making $75,000 a year, I look at that okay, I'm going to go to a law school for three years making probably no money and depending on if I go to a school that's without a scholarship, how many thousands of dollars am I going into debt in the negative. So that really helped frame things.
Speaker 1:And once I got into schools and we kind of narrowed it down to Florida and the Southeast, I got into some schools that were in like the top 20, but there was no scholarship. It was going to be an out-of-state school or it was something like going to Florida State Law School on no scholarship. And so after we decided you know we need to go and I say we because my wife was a big decision maker in the process as well, that also probably helped we decided let's go with a school that's full scholarship. We narrowed it down to two schools one in Virginia Beach, regent Law School and then one in Miami FIU. And once we narrowed it down to those two, I looked at my wife and said look, I'm the one who's moving us out of Lakeland, florida, to some random place. I'm going to let you pick where you want to live. And so we visited both law schools and really had a sense of peace about visiting Regent, and that's what she ended up choosing.
Speaker 2:The first time that I ever heard opportunity cost expressed was in the middle of contracts contracts class I was. I had already, you know, pot committed. But the point that you just made about it's it's not just the law student debt, right. It's not the uh, I don't know 150 000, call it right, it's also the 220 000 that you didn't make it your 75 000 job because you were in law school, yeah, but now you're 370 behind. Oh, with math, um, that you've got to make up over the next I don't know 35 years of your career and the ability to not like stack on just as much debt and the living expenses and all that it's way more expensive to go to school now than it was when I graduated.
Speaker 2:I graduated graduated in 2008. At the time, virginia was still subsidizing higher education for Virginia residents. William and Mary right, william and Mary was. My tuition was like 13 a year. Wow, that's great. It's like 39 now, but, yeah, virginia was still subsidizing post-grad education. So that was. And then I worked right, I worked part-time for an SEO company writing content, which taught me a little bit about marketing, and it taught me, you know about, about budgeting and cash flow money coming, because I, unlike you, I did not have a job professional job in between college and law school. I think that would have been really hard. I went to school with a couple of people who had been police officers or had worked in a corporation and I think that having income that was coming in on a regular basis and then not having that anymore was really challenging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we went from some my salary plus my wife's teaching salary just to being on a public school teacher's salary during law school, which, when I made that post about go to law school debt free if you can, I got some backlash, which, of course, you always do when you take an opinion on LinkedIn. Yeah, people are like not everyone's as privileged to Just be nice. Yeah, to get a scholarship, or not everyone has a spouse who can bring in money. I'm like we were on a shoestring budget, living in like a one bedroom apartment on a teacher's salary. So, with that said, though, if there's an option and if there's that chance to go debt-free, I think it's, hands down, the right choice Ultimately. Yeah, I had to grind a lot more for jobs after leaving law school. I think it was worth it, and I ended up in the same city as FSU, which I considered my top choice. That was non-scholarship.
Speaker 2:But you landed a clerkship. Was that right out of law school?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I was at the time in law school. I was interning for a judge at the Virginia Court of Appeals and one of his clerks knew a clerk in Tallahassee and I said, yeah, I want to get back to Florida, and so South Georgia was as close as I could get no, that's what we call Tallahassee here. And so, because I graduated law school debt-free, I was able to clerk for this judge in what was technically a judicial assistant position for $35,000 at a law school where most of my peers couldn't take on a position making so little.
Speaker 2:Was that a state court? That doesn't sound like federal $35,000.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a state intermediate appellate court in Florida and then that led to my federal clerkship because one of the judges that was in the same court was nominated to the federal bench and when he got nominated this wasn't the judge I was working for. I approached him and said hey, you know, can we get lunch sometime and talk about your future needs for law clerks? And this is after submitting like a hundred applications on Oscar, which is the portal for for clerking, and only hearing back from like three judges. And he's like, yeah, and we got lunch. Really got to know each other. Well, he said, yeah, come back and talk to me once I get confirmed. And that's how.
Speaker 2:I got that that is such and so, and then that led to the Nelson Mullins job or to your original firm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, then that led to a Florida firm position where I was at for drop-off at Michigan State.
Speaker 2:That did not exist at William Mary or it wasn't as steep, and I imagine it was probably fairly similar at Regent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Regent was unique in the sense that a lot of students that could have went to top law schools were choosing it because it was faith-based, and so I think a lot of my friends who were in the top 10% could have went to any law school, but they wanted a faith-based law school that gave them opportunities to write SCOTUS, amicus briefs and different things like that. Yeah, I was, I think, sixth in my class, and at the time law school admissions were so low probably why I got some scholarship opportunities that we graduated with 67 students, so super small class Just.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to quickly to look up. I think Regent like crushed everybody in Virginia State Bar passage percentage.
Speaker 1:That's been a big focus lately of theirs, which I think Virginia Bar exam and Florida Bar exam are very comparable in that they're pretty rigorous.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, Virginia is just expansive. Are you a Virginia bar or only Florida?
Speaker 1:Just Florida barred, and the main reason is because I didn't want to wear a suit to take the bar exam.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody wants to wear a suit, right? So if you're used to Zoom rooms and work from home, the Virginia bar exam is conducted down in Roanoke, which is like the furthest away portion of the state that you could get to in the civic center, and you have to wear a suit and tie and you have to also wear shoes that don't make any noise, which most people default to tennis shoes, right, right. And then when you're down there, there are no like restaurants or anywhere you can get lunch. In between there's a McDonalddonald's, but everybody runs across the street. So I had like a cooler that was in my car, but I didn't think ahead to pack enough ice so I walked out to like a warm ham and cheese sandwich on the first day. Luckily I didn't get sick, and then we chose to stay an extra night in roanoke. For some reason I didn't want to drive four hours back home right after the bar exam and it turns out there's like nothing to do.
Speaker 1:You just gave me a good LinkedIn post idea, for I want to hear everyone's bar exam horror stories. Since it's not currently bar exam season, it's not going to be as triggering for people.
Speaker 2:Friends her this this will take you back Right. So when I took the bar, you had the option to do it on a computer or to do it in a blue book. Yeah, same. And there was a software system that took over your computer so that you couldn't access, you know, internet or, I'm sure, now chat, gpt. So probably it's no different than taking the bar right now. But the problem was the software system that took over your computer didn't show you the battery indicator, so she didn't know that her computer was unplugged and it died like four hours into the first day. Oh, that is terrible. And so she switches over to the blue book and furiously writing. So there's a horror story. It's not my horror story, but it's somebody's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was fortunate not to have a bar exam horror story and that was because the main thing I did to try to stay sane was not talk to anybody, because there would be these people like frantically walking the halls trying to study like last minute, like they're going to cram something in, and then, after you get out of a certain portion, people will be talking about what you put on this and that and I don't want to hear about their answers, like I'm just going to wait until I get the results and unfortunately, I passed on the first time.
Speaker 2:I took the Maryland attorney's bar exam a couple of years ago and after five years of practice it's open book online from wherever. And they give you the outline Wow, right, and it's unlimited amount of time to take this exam, so you literally can like read the question, you know, find the term, paste it into your Adobe and go and find the answer somewhere. Wow, what is just? Let people wave it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's? What's the point? Yeah, and I know there's no reciprocity between, like, florida and Virginia.
Speaker 2:So well, florida doesn't want anybody retiring as a lawyer down there right.
Speaker 1:That's right. We already have too many lawyers, so we're trying to keep it closed.
Speaker 2:All right. What advice would you give to lawyers who are coming out of law school now? Right, I mean, it looks like maybe coming into another recession, I got to imagine your firm's hiring cycles are getting tighter and tighter. You probably have some clients who are whose credit is getting a little bit tight like bad times ahead for new lawyers probably. What advice would you give somebody who's coming out in 2025?
Speaker 1:Yeah, my advice is probably the same it's been with or without a recession is that if you want to be someone who's considered a litigator, the best thing you can do is go work at the state attorney's office or public defender or something in that role where you're going to get real litigation experience. Because when you jump into big law, a lot of it is this discovery, answering complaints, a lot of stuff that all leads up to trial. But then, because of the amount of risk involved, it usually settles before trial. So I've had some trials, but they're pretty rare, and so some of the best trial attorneys we have they came from the state attorney's office or they came from experience working for the state where there were plenty of jobs that they could jump right in and be an effective litigator.
Speaker 1:And then, second on that point is, the most valuable time to jump into big law is when you have two to five years of experience. Yeah, Most of the time bigger law firms unless you did a summer associate position with them, they're really not interested in you until you have a. Yeah, and that's kind of what happened to me as I went to a small Florida firm. Maybe we had 200 attorneys, not that small, but I had a recruiter reach out to me and I finally answered a call when I was just kind of getting a little bit disgruntled about my situation. For that recruiter, probably right place, right time. And I was also at the right time where I'd clerked for two years and I'd worked at a law firm for two years and that was a time when I think law firms think you're most valuable is like two to four year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So we're in the market now for somebody who's won the seven years and you know the one year isn't all that valuable, right, because you don't know a lot, but we definitely don't want somebody who's zero years. Yeah, I hadn't thought about the career path into big law from small or midsize or even public defender I would imagine. You know my sense is that you do a whole lot more research and writing than I do, like I read medical records and I tell stories and I argue with the justice. But I imagine that would be kind of a sea change of what your day looks like coming in as an associate working at a at a bigger law firm. But your point about litigators versus trial lawyers like I think that gets lost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the law school process, like there are very few trials and if you want that courtroom experience you really have to go somewhere. That, like most pedigreed law students, lawyers would tell you is like shit law right. Public defender, prosecutor, insurance defense, plaintiff's work. I mean I got a ton of experience early in my career because the jurisdictional limit in Virginia was like 15,000 when I started and it went up to 25. You could go in and try a case with no risk whatsoever, and you can always appeal to the circuit court and go get yourself a jury trial if you really want one. But there's so many lawyers if you go into law school I don't think you appreciate this who just have never even set foot inside a courtroom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and clerking gives you exposure to it, in the sense that we're not my appellate clerkship so much, but even at the appellate level I'm reading hundreds of pages of transcripts of what these trial lawyers did poorly and learning not to do that. But yeah, at the at the district court level, like that's where I got to see some some great legal arguments and again what to do, what not to do. But until you actually jump in and prep for a trial yourself, you don't know everything that's involved. To get something up to speed and in a polished shape to either put before a judge or a jury.
Speaker 2:Appreciate you hanging out today. If people want to find out more about you and get all your legal writing tips, LinkedIn is the best place to find you. Is there anywhere else you want to direct people?
Speaker 1:That's the best place. Find me on LinkedIn If you send a connection request, include a message, because I get a lot of random requests from people selling things.
Speaker 2:You know what a legal nurse consultant does.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah, but I appreciate you having me on and, wow, time flew by Awesome, thank you, thanks, brian.
