Carrie B. Speer: Advice for new lawyers? Choose passion over pressure

You have completed your law school journey. You fought the fears, wrote the papers, sacrificed the sleep, second guessed your life choices, and clawed your exhausted way through the bar exam to claim your hard-earned license to practice law.

Now what?

Perhaps you went into law school already knowing what you wanted to accomplish with your life. Perhaps you only had a vague idea of what type of law to practice. Perhaps you only went to law school because it was expected of you.

In any event, by this point you have hopefully learned that there are countless career options for an attorney. How to choose one that you won’t regret?

There are three core motivations that drive the career path of most attorneys: Money, prestige and passion.

Who doesn’t like to have money? Especially with student loans hanging over your head and the steadily increasing cost of living. Add family on top of that, and money becomes a powerful motivator. Many of my classmates went into law school planning to practice in public interest, only to feel so trapped by financial pressures when they graduated that they felt they had no choice but to go into more lucrative fields of law.

Prestige is also appealing. Not everybody likes to live in a spotlight, but everyone wants to be liked, and how can you be liked if you are not known? Sure, there are more jokes about lawyers than about any other profession, but we tend to take them in the spirit of Captain Jack Sparrow: “Ah, but you have heard of me.”

Then you have passion. That messy, emotional, crazy kind of drive that doesn’t know how to lose. The passion-choosers are often intense and never seem to be finished with their work. Why choose so much effort when you could easily work for higher pay and more prestige?

Here’s the problem: When you choose for pressure, pressure will control you. In any job you choose, financial pressures will still exist. No matter how much money you make, there will always be something popping up demanding more. No matter how well known you are, there will always be an additional level of prestige you can reach for. While you are focused on that, people are still being hurt every single day, their needs being brushed over by attorneys who could help but are too tunnel visioned on their own desires. In any job you choose, every decision you make will have consequences, and those consequences have names and faces. I dare you to find the consequences of your decisions.

Sure, it is easy to focus on the black and white paperwork, separating yourself from the people being directly affected, but that doesn’t change what is actually happening as a result of your decisions. You have the power to make positive contributions, to meet needs and to stop bullies from destroying lives.

Everyone has a different toolbox with unique strengths they can use to address needs in this world. You don’t have to meet the same needs that I’m meeting, because there are unfortunately plenty to choose from.

Find one that resonates with you, that you are equipped to work on and pursue it with all that you have. Then at the end of the day, when you are asked what the best part of your job is, it doesn’t have to be just the paycheck. You can be proud that each day of work you put in has a direct positive impact on someone’s entire life.

If you don’t know yet where your passion lies, I’d encourage you to start your search in prosecution. It isn’t for everyone, but it is where I found my passion. As a deputy prosecutor, I get to stand up to bullies every single day, sending the message to my community that the law exists to protect the vulnerable.

I have the honor of standing as a shield for the woman who is being abused and controlled by the man she loves most in the world; the man she cannot stand up to by herself because he has shattered her will and destroyed her self-worth.

For the man who is being attacked by the mother of his children, but he’s ashamed to let anyone know, thinking that because he is a man he has to endure abuse silently to avoid seeming weak.

For the girl who wants to end her life at age 12 because her father’s sexual abuse has convinced her that her only value in this world is as an object.

For the boy who watches his mother get beaten, and who grows up believing that is what love means.

There is no paycheck or headline in the world that could convince me to abandon the people that I serve from this position.

If you want to work solely for money, prosecution isn’t for you, because no victims are going to be paying you money to care about their case or to speak up on their behalf.

If you want to pursue prestige and power, prosecution isn’t for you, because a prosecutor focused on power becomes a bully himself instead of a defender of the truth.

A prosecutor is the last line of defense that stands between an entire community of victims and bullies, and I am honored every day to be a part of that shield.

I may not be able to change the whole world, but I can change the world for each victim that I serve, by showing them that they are worth fighting for no matter what they have been told.

That is a message I am proud to bring to my family every day, and it lasts far longer than any paycheck or fame I could achieve otherwise.

I do not regret a single thing about my career choice, and I cannot imagine working any other job than the one I have right now. Can you?•

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Carrie B. Speer is a deputy prosecutor in Greene County. Opinions expressed are those of the author.