You’re different. You disdain the crass blandishments of biglaw. You have a soul. Let the giant firms seduce your naïve classmates with their shameless wheedling. You’re made of sterner stuff.
Your ultimate goal? Something better. A place where you might actually do good. Few lawyers receive that opportunity. Many, exposed to goodness, would burst into flames.
That’s why you’re taking the high road, escaping the pervasive cynicism and greed. You’ve got your sights set on a not-for-profit institution, dedicated to the promise of a better tomorrow.
Will it work? Can a lawyer escape pervasive cynicism and greed?
Seems unlikely.
Let’s talk about the the not-for-profit track – its ups, downs and in-betweens.
Right off the bat, we have to discuss salary. I know – you want to escape all that – the obsession with filthy lucre. But there’s a stark reality you must grasp before reporting for duty at a not-for-profit: You will earn bupkis.
Maybe that’s okay with you – like Hebrew National, you answer to a higher authority. On the other hand, if – like most young lawyers – you’re sitting on a zillion dollars in bankruptcy-proof loans, an extended period of earning zilch could prove…inconvenient.
This aforesaid stark reality also explains one of the dirty little secrets of the not-for-profit world: It’s a magnet for rich kids. If Mom and Dad have already paid off the $200k you blew on an undergraduate degree and law school, then bought you the cutest little one-bedroom in Chelsea and a brand new Prius…well, the logical next step is to save the world. It’ll be fun!
Not-for-profits are bursting at the seams with eager-beaver trust-afarians – and it doesn’t stop there. Sometimes Mom and Dad (and their friends) sit on the board. Sometimes the charismatic founder and Executive Director is a grinning, twenty-something former college lacrosse star, just back from Burning Man. You can’t hold it against him if he wants to donate a snippet of grandaddy’s styrofoam factory fortune to making the world a better place. But his white-boy dread locks and penchant for calling you “bro” in the hallway make you wince.
I’m merely acknowledging a reality. It can grate a bit, in the not-for-profit world, if you’re not in possession of a trust fund. It can feel disempowering when the Director of the One Love Institute for International Human Rights flies business class to a conference in Burkina Faso on theories of poverty and doesn’t appear to grasp that her plane ticket could feed a village there for a year. It doesn’t help when, upon her return, as she’s hopping a flight to her family’s cottage on Martha’s Vineyard, she gushes about how she adores Coney Island – a topic you awkwardly brought up because that’s where you go to the beach, via subway.
The situation might not rise to the level of “class warfare,” but working with rich kids can grow annoying – and make almost anything other than working for rich kids start to seem not so bad.
Yes, your friends in biglaw are tormented by sadistic partners and slave night and day to do the bidding of plutocrats. Yes, they despise their lives.
On the other hand, associates in biglaw can afford to take cabs, have dry cleaning done, eat out in grown-up restaurants, and buy grown-up clothes. You can’t.
Typically, your great hope for financial salvation – if you’re at a not-for-profit and not-rich – is qualifying for a loan repayment program. The mission – if you decide to accept it – is to stay continuously un-gainfully employed and cope with life as a pauper for about a decade. If you make it, your loans disappear and you achieve every young lawyer’s ultimate dream – zero net worth.
Sounds good. But there’s a leap of faith implied in this set-up.
First, not-for-profit jobs are hard to snag. It doesn’t seem like they should be. These outfits pay next to nothing, and beggars can’t be choosers. They should be drooling at the prospect of hiring someone like you – and a few years ago, they might have been. Even with the rich kids, openings existed for talented young people bringing a wealth (of commitment) to the job. But the dynamics changed after the crash of ’08. Now half the profession is out of work, and it no longer requires much wheedling for biglaw to seduce its victims – they’re lining up for mistreatment like mendicants with bowls out. Yes, your peers – and you – are the beggars who can’t be choosing. Even a $45k not-for-profit job looks good, juxtaposed against living on the street.
Second, even if you can find a not-for-profit job, you have to manage to keep it, and not-for-profits rarely provide steady, reliable employment. As I understand it, you need at least three years at a not-for-profit to qualify for loan repayment. That can be tough to pull off. Over and above the issue of nasty office politics (i.e., it’s easy to get fired), there’s another factor: Not-for-profits are typically funded by grants, which run for a stated period. If the grant runs out, or the project is finished, or there’s “mission drift,” or they decide to head in a different direction, or the weather turns rainy – you can wind up out of a job.
At that point, you join the miserable hordes of the lawyer-underemployed, which is all fine and good – misery loves company and, like everyone else, you can try to dig up some doc review work or give up on law and tend bar…except for that other factor: Your hopes for loan repayment are on the line.
To put matters baldly, if you bet all your chips on a not-for-profit (and loan repayment), you may find yourself up a creek in sore need of paddling apparatus.
At this point it’s worth addressing an even profounder question. If you can actually pull off the feat of situating yourself in a not-for-profit and live with the attendant financial risks, what will you actually be doing there?
That’s easy. Protecting the rights of the little people – the prisoners and the disabled and the schoolchildren from poor neighborhoods, the international victims of international human rights whatchamacallit – those people. In other words, you will be doing big things. Big, change-the-world things. That’s the best part of working in not-for-profit. Instead of writing a brief defending evil, polluting, discriminating, harassing mega-corporations, you write a brief for the good guys. That means a lot.
Unfortunately, it also raises a potential pitfall of the not-for-profit world – stupid ideas. Even when you mean well, and are working for the good guys, when you’re trying to accomplish big things and change the future of humanity, it’s possible to go off the rails. Every so often – and if you’ve worked in not-for-profit-land you know what I’m talking about – you get saddled with a truly misguided project. Once it’s funded – once someone’s written the thousand page grant proposal and (against the odds) won the grant – the whole thing is frozen in concrete. Even if it kinda doesn’t really make any sense.
That’s when you find yourself opening the outreach center in the neighborhood that doesn’t really need an outreach center – or searching for plaintiffs to defend the rights of people who have more serious rights to worry about defending, or don’t need to go to court to defend them since they’d be better off protesting or meeting with the appropriate people and working out a deal (lawyers don’t work out deals – they sue people.)
You have to do what it says in the grant. You can’t go to your boss and say this isn’t working, it doesn’t make sense. You have to shut up and do it. She probably knows it doesn’t make sense, just like you – but grants are what makes the wheels go round. Maybe she’s not a trust fund baby either and that grant for a misguided project is paying her rent.
Another not-so-inspiring situation arrives when the ideas aren’t stupid, but the clients are corrupt and awful. When you’re a public defender working with street criminals you can’t expect to like each and every client. But there’s something about working for peanuts and putting in long hours to lend your voice to a struggle – then finding out the person you’re struggling for is annoying or stupid or in it for the money and exploiting you. It can be a turn-off, and it happens. Not all the time – but it can be useful to admit, it happens.
All of this stuff contributes to a key attribute of not-for-profits. For want of a better word, I’ll term it bitchiness. Not-for-profits have a reputation for being…bitchy. I don’t mean that in a sexist sense – the men at not-for-profits are bitchy too.
Why are not-for-profits often such damned unpleasant places to work? It might be because everyone there is hungry for attention. After all – if you work at a not-for-profit, you possess some not-inconsiderable claim to sainthood. You’re ignoring the temptations of biglaw, with its fatcat salaries and fancy offices and black cars home at night. You’re working hard for almost nothing – sacrificing all because you care about the little people. If the world were a just place, someone should hand you a plaque. At least they could feature you in the donor newsletter. But they didn’t. And that pisses you off. Because that other guy at your level, who hasn’t been there as long, got in the newsletter. Which is why you hate him.
It can get to you, working for the good of the planet with no one paying attention. Your Executive Director is a community hero – the focus of a stream of accolades. But you’ve seen her in action, and everyone knows she’s a useless, spoiled princess…
Welcome to not-for-profit bitchery. It resides in a league all its own.
And don’t think the usual office bullshit – sexual harassment, competitiveness, interdepartmental chill – doesn’t exist at not-for-profits. It only grows more intense, and snippier, in these claustrophobic confines. There are times when everyone there seems to have gone martyr at once, and you wish you could go “for-profit,” double all their salaries and tell them to knock it off with the whining.
Not-for-profit administration is typically a nightmare. That’s because no one wants to be the admin at a not-for-profit. They want to save the world – not manage the budget and benefits and vacation schedules and ordering office supplies and making sure the mail server is working. If you want to do that stuff for a living, you’re probably already doing it at a for-profit company and earning more.
To heighten the delights, not-for-profits compete with one another like sons of bitches, and they’re all fighting for the same dollars. If someone manages to do something major – win a case or get some piece of legislation passed, then everyone else swoops in to gobble up the credit, like sharks feasting on a bait ball.
Then there are the donors – the real bosses. I remember my summer at the Gay and Lesbian Rights Project at the ACLU, circa 1995. Word had it Barbara Streisand’s assistant phoned in each week for a lengthy personal update from the Executive Director. Babs was paying the bills, so Babs got a personal update. At least Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue laid low after cutting their checks.
Raising money is the raison d’etre for not-for-profits. Without the money, there is no institution – the cart is placed firmly in front of the horse. Everything – everything – becomes about appearances. If you do something impressive, you have to convert it into marketing materials and flood the airwaves with it to raise cash. If something doesn’t pan out – a project turns out to be useless or misguided – well, you still have to make it look impressive and heroic and world-changing. You have no choice. It’s that – or everyone’s out of a job.
Yes, there are committed people out there doing good, and enjoying fulfilling careers working at not-for-profits.
But the not-for-profit world isn’t an all-purpose answer to the problem of unhappy lawyers. It presents challenges of its own. You might find yourself gazing wistfully at the other, for-profit side of the fence, where the grass begins to assume a verdant hue.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.
If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning
I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy
(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.)
The People's Therapist 
I guess I’m lucky that, as a libertarian, my moral opposition to using violence to confiscate taxes aligns nicely with rapacious corporations who will pay handsomely to reduce their tax bills. So being a high-paid tax lawyer means I get to be morally fulfilled and better paid. Though clients don’t give a damn about non-violence and self-governance, in the tax law world they largely pay you to get the most financial benefit they can at the expense of the treasury.
And the government uses much of its excess dollars lobbing bombs at poor people abroad, or militarizing drug cops to arrest poor people domestically, or getting bureaucrats to write regulations that benefit powerful corporate donors. Or watch asshat federal prosecutors arrest doctors for “perjury” for repeatedly filing forms with typos, or whatever new trick the US attorneys come up with to raise their win rate. So every marginal dollar that I can suck away from the treasury is a good thing.
I’d rather see some jerk use the tax savings to buy a red sports car to impress his third wife than see the U.S. government spend the taxes to kill people or arrest people.
Right on.
As a non-profit lawyer, this smells mostly made up to me. The author is extrapolating from one bad year at some non-profit with an annoying boss. The only true parts is that there are fewer non-profit jobs and a lawyer certainly might make $45k to start at one. But there are no more rich kids in non-profit than in firms. And easy to get fired? Not at all. At Legal Aid, Legal Services, Urban Justice Center, etc, the lawyers (like the paralegals and receptionists) are unionized. The pay is low, the experience is great, the work is fulfilling, and the health care, vacation and retirement benefits are stellar.
Agreed. I work at legal aid, and most of Will’s post rings false to me. Barbara Streisand generally leaves me alone, etc. It’s true that a lot of staff attorneys grew up upper middle class, but that doesn’t make them unbearable ditzes. My loans are repaid by my school, which doesn’t have a 3-year rule like Will complains about. The whole hating-your-client thing can happen in any industry–for example, therapists don’t choose their patients. It’s worth it for all the clients I do enjoy helping. And while some grants come and go, there are also a few reliable ones that keep the lights on–and always a new one to go after.
Maybe the ACLU gay rights internship program is a pit of glamour-obsessed vipers. But I work at a very run of the mill public interest law office, and it’s great.
I’ve come across several rich kids working in non-profits who, despite their fancypants schools, are completely inept.
I wish my mommy and daddy could buy me my life.
lol – many of their utterly inept friends are at biglaw firms too!
In the oligarchical system, you either babysit the poor or you service the rich. Choose your poison.
Good post. And don’t forget the lack of mentorship since more senior attorneys are either batshti crazy or long gone, as you likely replaced them due to senility. And then some non-profits look at the $45k salary they are paying you and disappointed that you don’t swoop in with all the answers like a television lawyer in a $5,000 suit. Google isn’t much of a substitute for Westlaw, nor an experienced mentor.
Is this a joke? What is your basis for these assertions? Your one summer as an intern at a non-profit? A good argument has an assertion (and you have plenty), evidence, and then analysis.
As a good two-shoes legal services attorney, I agree that it is not a perfect world. Funding crises are always on the horizon and it can make an office tense. However, even though my ED can be a huge pain in the ass, I know he’s looking out for us by hunting down funds so no one has to fear loss of jobs. And he is not a 20-something trust-afarian and in fact, none of us are where I work. Some attorneys started right out of law school, others of us left private practice to be a part of an important project.
I do not think any of us really think we are saints saving the world. However, we are helping a client save his car from repossession, a tenant from losing her home, or a parent gain custody of their child. None of these clients could ever afford a private attorney to gain access to the legal system. The work we do is certainly not glamorous but it is important. You are simply belittling the work that many attorneys are proud to do.
No, this isn’t a joke. Yes, I spent the summer at the ACLU, and have friends who worked there for years and interacted with other not-for-profits and have told me their stories. I’m also a social worker, and over the years I’ve worked at a foster care agency, a settlement house, a hospital, and an LBGT community center. For a couple of years, my former partner worked at a well-known AIDS/HIV support services institution and dealt closely with several others. My clients over the years – lawyers and non-lawyers – have worked at – and had experiences with – loads of not-for-profits and told me their stories. As a therapist working with gay men with HIV, I’ve interacted closely with not-for-profit institutions around treatment, testing, advocacy and other support services. I can’t list any names – confidentiality – but no, this isn’t a joke, and I have plenty of experience in the not-for-profit world.
I’m glad you’re doing important work – I don’t intend to belittle that work – but I do want to be realistic about the not-so-terrific aspects to working in not-for-profit.
Realistic ≠ caricature. What you do, from biglaw to clerkships to non-profits, is caricature. And you’re terrible at it.
A caricature is intended to ridicule by pointing out truths through exaggeration. And I am an excellent caricaturist. You can tell, because I strike a nerve. But thanks for the feedback.
Non-Profit Girl,
I don’t think Will is belittling the work done at these organizations. Though I can see why you are indignant at the tone and the assertions. Many (if not most) non-for-profits mean well, and many, like yours, actually do things that actually matters.
Will tends to make huge leaps in logic, but his central point is usually right on: the non-for-profit world (and obviously, not all) is not immune from the pettiness of the for-profit world. And there is certainly plenty of non-meaningful work at non-for-profit organizations. I mean, if you are going to do non-meaningful work, you might as well get paid well for it.
This is great, Will. You’ve shat all over biglaw for a while now, so I’m glad you’re branching out shit on nonprofits for a while.
For the record, although I work in Biglaw, I’ve started, worked at, served on the boards of, written grants for, and awarded grants to, a number of nonprofits over the years, and your characterization of them is caricature at best and a fraud at worst. My partner works at a nonprofit and not a single one of her coworkers that I’ve met fits your “rich kid” stereotype. Sometimes a grant requires you to do work you don’t like — imagine that, a job where sometimes you don’t like what you have to do! To hark back to one of your old posts — did you know that opening a bluegrass bar requires some work that you might think is pointless, stupid, or unnecessary? Even your “golden ticket to happiness” jobs have their dull moments.
We get it. Some times, some parts of some jobs suck. It’s called life. Your problem is that you had a terrible experience as a lawyer for whatever reason, and you assume the problem is lawyers.
I’ll give you this, though, I always read your columns, so maybe you’re doing something right.
Next do state government!! A weekly reality check on our biglaw escape fantasies and a reminder that the grass is merely a different shade of green.
What’s with the unnecesary dig at Burning Man, btw?
I just don’t know, Will. I mean, yes, a lot of what you describe here does pretty accurately reflect my work experience with several nonprofit agencies. But I can also tell you that a few years ago, when a delivery van ran me over in a crosswalk and nearly killed me, in the 20 minutes or so I thought I was going to die I was reviewing my life pretty fast. And the things I was most proud of, the things that most made me feel like even if I was about to die at 32 that maybe that was okay, were things I had accomplished at work. At the very dysfunctional, poorly paid, unbelievably mismanaged organizations you accurately describe here. I was proud of the two serial killers of elderly women and homeless people I had put in prison forever. I was proud of the women whom I helped to find new Social Security #s for, so they could go underground and get their one best shot at escaping their battering stalkers forever. And I was REALLY proud of the class action lawsuit that required the DC police to provide sign language interpreters for deaf citizens taken into custody after hours — yeah, there’s a law, but until my group came along no one had ever been able to enforce it.
I guess what I’m trying to say: you describe all of the drawbacks here pretty accurately. But there’s something really special, almost holy, about public interest law at its best. The work I’ve done as a county prosecutor and as a non-profit lawyer for people with disabilities and battered women is incredibly meaningful to me. The only other experiences I’ve had that matched it were marriage and parenthood. The things that are bad about public interest law are true, pervasisve and very, very visibly apparent. But the things that make it transcendent are none of the above, unfortunately. One of my colleagues described it as analogous to golf. 90% of the time, you wonder why you punish yourself like this. The other 10% of the time, it is so worth it that you wonder why you don’t spend all day every day playing golf. Yes, exactly.
[…] more reality from Meyerhofer: […]
I tend to agree with the non-profit folks who’ve pointed out that this doesn’t ring true in any major sense. I worked in direct legal service and then in poverty reform for 10 years. The main cautionary note I’d want to share with those considering leaving private practice for the public interest realm is the very real possibility for burn out. The legal profession isn’t particularly good at valuing work-life balance. While non-profit work is very satisfying, it can also be heart breaking, undervalued (someone asked me when I was going to be a “real” lawyer), and frustrating (client’s needs are rarely just legal issues and you end up feeling like you haven’t really done anything to significantly help that person).