What Do You Want to Do?

A Guest Post from Kirk Nahra

Today’s Standout Summer Associate message comes from Kirk J. Nahra. Kirk is a Partner at WilmerHale where he is the co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity and Privacy Practices. You can learn more about Kirk’s fascinating career story on Episode 75 of the How I Lawyer Podcast. Kirk wrote an earlier issue of Standout Summer Associate on Beyond Litigation and Transactional Work that I also strongly recommend.

What do you want to do? Every law student (and even future law student) will get asked that question. Here’s how I think about the answer and why it matters.

First you always need an answer to this question. Personally I don't really care what your answer is—not that I’m not interested but that it doesn’t matter to me or impact my view of you. The only bad answer from my perspective is “that’s a good question—I’ve never once thought about it.”

Next, you need to understand that you don’t need to have a specific or precise answer. Saying “I've liked everything about law school so far” or “I’m interested in lots of things” is not only a totally fine answer but also should be the truth for most students.

In fact, if you say with conviction “I want to be an antitrust lawyer, or a patent lawyer or even a privacy lawyer” I’m really going to push you on why. If you were an accountant for six years before law school and want to be a tax lawyer, I get that. If your friend’s parent was an antitrust lawyer and “that seems interesting,” sorry, but that’s a terrible reason to pick a career. Don’t feel you have to make a choice if you don’t have a good reason to make one.

We are not hiring law students or even most junior lawyers for their expertise. We want your brains and your personality. Eventually we want your expertise. But that’s not when you start law school or when you are interviewing for jobs during your first or second year of school.

So think about your answer. If some subject or field sounds interesting, that’s great. Say that. But don’t commit your career to that. It’s hard to try everything—and you might be the worlds’ best employment lawyer but will never find out—but it is not useful to tie yourself to some area without any real knowledge.

I speak from experience on this. I had no idea what I wanted to do while I was in law school. I spent most of the first few years of my career doing something I had no real interest in doing—because that's where the work was. I followed some opportunities to get out of that area. I was a lawyer for a dozen years—a partner in a big DC firm—before I ever started doing the privacy law work that has eventually become my career.

I’m not saying that’s how your career will turn out or that it should be your approach—but what you think now, whatever it’s based on, likely won’t be your eventual career. Recognize that there’s lot of time to figure things out—careers are long no matter when you start law school (ok, less true for my friend’s doctor dad who went to law school in his sixties). But you have lots of time to learn and develop and figure out what’s best for you in the long run—you don’t need to cut that effort short right at the beginning.