Hey Cullen, I’m a bit confused about why you should assume that you would do traditional lawyering for so long. The fact it’s the modal path could just mean most law-schoolers want to be lawyers—which seems probably true. So maybe if you want to do policy, you can jump in straight away.
Fair points. My impression is that it’s actually just hard to get into those lines of work without substantial experience. US law school is also just structured to make getting traditional law jobs much easier than policy jobs. I also think it’s often prudent to model oneself as the median person in the reference class, even if there’s good reason to think that one is not. Finally, empirically, most EAs that I knew in law school did in fact end up working as traditional lawyers.
Idk about Australia but in America politics is patronage-based and you’re not getting a political job without connections. You might get lucky and have those connections right out of school, through professors, work on a campaign, etc., or you might not. And if your boss leaves office you’re probably out of a job. So a lot depends on how long it takes you to get connections that have a job opening you want. Also, if you’re not in DC, your state capital, or some other policy hub (i.e. major cities where federal agencies have regional offices), your only route into policy may be running for office yourself, which requires being established in your community.
There is the civil service in theory but even that is political, just in a different way. You won’t get a civil service job without experience, and getting experience requires connections. But it’s less about having helped your Congressman get elected and more about knowing the DA’s cousin so you can get a job as an Assistant DA and then go to work as a fed in 5 years once you have the experience.
Hey Cullen, I’m a bit confused about why you should assume that you would do traditional lawyering for so long. The fact it’s the modal path could just mean most law-schoolers want to be lawyers—which seems probably true. So maybe if you want to do policy, you can jump in straight away.
Fair points. My impression is that it’s actually just hard to get into those lines of work without substantial experience. US law school is also just structured to make getting traditional law jobs much easier than policy jobs. I also think it’s often prudent to model oneself as the median person in the reference class, even if there’s good reason to think that one is not. Finally, empirically, most EAs that I knew in law school did in fact end up working as traditional lawyers.
Thanks for the clarification!
Idk about Australia but in America politics is patronage-based and you’re not getting a political job without connections. You might get lucky and have those connections right out of school, through professors, work on a campaign, etc., or you might not. And if your boss leaves office you’re probably out of a job. So a lot depends on how long it takes you to get connections that have a job opening you want. Also, if you’re not in DC, your state capital, or some other policy hub (i.e. major cities where federal agencies have regional offices), your only route into policy may be running for office yourself, which requires being established in your community.
There is the civil service in theory but even that is political, just in a different way. You won’t get a civil service job without experience, and getting experience requires connections. But it’s less about having helped your Congressman get elected and more about knowing the DA’s cousin so you can get a job as an Assistant DA and then go to work as a fed in 5 years once you have the experience.