Hi, I'm Annika.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Bar Review, a space where we talk honestly about life and the legal profession. I'm Carrie, and I'm Anika. Welcome to the conversation. Just a quick note before we get started, we are not your lawyers, and this is not legal advice. - And to the extent either of us are employed by the time this airs, this is where we share our personal opinions and not the opinions of anyone else, especially those kind enough to employ us. - And one more time for the people in the back? - We are not your lawyers. This is not legal advice. Thank you for listening. - Hi. - Hi, I'm Anika. - Anika, why did you decide to go to law school? - I made the decision to go to law school in high school. I went to high school in New Mexico, and there's this program called the Model International Criminal Court. It is run by an organization based in Germany and Poland, and they bring students from some delegated countries to a farmhouse in Chishoba, Poland, that was the last stronghold of the Nazi resistance in Poland in that area. And so they've now bought it. It's an education and teaching center. So they brought students from New Mexico as the US representatives, Israel, Poland, and Germany to this farmhouse, and we reenacted the a Nuremberg Tribunal case, something from the Yugoslavia Tribunal and something from Rwanda. So everyone was partitioned into three groups, and then we were further partitioned into prosecution defense and judges. And so I was a judge on the Nuremberg Tribunal, and it was myself from the US, someone from Poland, someone from Germany, and someone from Israel, so there's some from every country on the judging panel, and it was Nuremberg. So fascinating, all of us have grandparents in the war. All of it was deeply personal, and there was this moment where we met with our instructor, I guess, who was helping guide the judges through, and it was before we heard any evidence, and we went around the room and said, what we thought the outcome should be, and myself and the students from Israel, predictably, were like, obviously, their guilty, their Nazis. And the students from Poland and Germany were much more like, well, they're probably guilty, but there's got to be more to the story. Then we go through this week, and I have vivid memories of sitting in this attic of this farmhouse, the judges we're all deliberating, we're following the real rules that were present today since the Rome conventions. I think it's been a minute, so those govern the ICC today. So it was a little bit different 'cause we were applying these ICC rules to the Nuremberg Tribunal, which was the first of its kinds, so those rules didn't exist. So we were applying all these things, and we had completely flipped. Myself and the student from Israel, were just not convinced that the prosecution had actually met their burden. If fully believe this guy's Nazi, he definitely was responsible for the deaths, tens of thousands of people in his factories, the SS, you know, patrolled it, but we didn't think the prosecution had met the burden, and so we didn't think under the actual letter of the law that we could convict him. For shadowing here, I'm a defense-minded person. So this really set the stage for what was gonna happen. I left that with just this really profound interest in the storytelling, and that we all knew he was guilty, but just the way the defense and the prosecution had told their respective stories, influenced how we saw the outcome, and we did eventually find them guilty, and fascinatingly, the punishment we met it out exactly matched what was done in the real Nuremberg Tribunal, they kept it a secret from us, 'cause they didn't Roseless, which I just think is also incredibly interesting. So I came back from that, and it's having a conversation with my dad, and he's like, well, maybe he should be a lawyer, and I was like, ah, maybe it should be a lawyer. And so that was a goal from the second I graduated high school. - Is it something that you continued to pursue in college? - Generally speaking, I mean, it was a part of the pre-law, there was a pre-law fraternity, that wasn't a real fraternity, but it was what they called it. And it was a political science major, but it was also a French major. One of the reasons I chose French is when it's gorgeous, and two, it is the language of the law internationally, and so-- - And to qualify that in the sense of if you were going to work at the United Nations, you need to be able to speak both English and French. - Yes. You can also speak Spanish, but I think Arabic is the other working language, but French is one of the most powerful languages in that sense. So I studied French, and then by the end of college, you know, I applied to law school, but I was also really toying with the idea of getting a PhD in French. I had done a senior thesis where I analyzed a literary work in French and wrote this paper on it, and I loved doing that, and I had some really close French professors in college that saw a lot of potential there, and I really encouraged me to look into that idea. I came really close, but ultimately, you know, I'm sending here today as a lawyer, so I did go to law school. - What was that application process like for you to the extent you can remember it? - I don't remember much of it, to be honest. I know I applied to a smattering of schools across all the rankings. - So you looked at the rankings? - Yeah, I definitely looked at the rankings. I'm confident I had a spreadsheet, where you know, I put all the pertinent information at that time I was really focused in international and human rights law, still on that track of, I wanna defend people at the ICC one day, so I was focused on that element, but I was also really focused on limiting my debt burden. So the biggest thing to me was going somewhere where I could get a scholarship and could get as high of a scholarship as possible, and I was willing to sacrifice on ranking to some extent if that meant that I got to limit how much debt I had here in law school with, 'cause I didn't think that I was gonna have the capacity to pay off $200,000 of law school debt that just was not going to be a thing. - And had debt left over from college? - Yeah, and I had some debt from college. I was lucky to have a full-riding college, but I did have some debt from living expenses and things like that, and so I ended up, where I went to law school, I had a full tuition scholarship, and so when I had to cover, was living expenses, which still resulted in quite a bit of debt, but nothing compared to the standard law school graduate. It was what I thought was manageable, and I worked throughout most of law school, so. - And you pretty close to paying it off? - No. (laughs) - Did you study for the LSAT with a company or did you study on your own? - I took a prep course. I had done one from the ACT and SITs, and found it really helpful, and so I did do a full course, but I was working full-time while I was studying for the LSAT, so it was like, I worked two jobs. I went to work all day, and then I came back, and I was living in Chicago at the time, and I would work at my little desk in this Airbnb I had rented for, you know, like, four or five more hours, and take full tests on the weekends, and things like that. It was a difficult experience for sure. - How long did you study for the LSAT before you took the LSAT, and did you take it more than once? - I only took it once. I knew that going into, and I was like, I don't think I can handle emotionally taking this more than once, so this is gonna be the shot, and whatever happens happens. I think I studied for the full summer. I honestly can't even remember when they administered the test anymore, but it was a set program, so it must have been something like 10 weeks, or something like that. - If you can remember about how many law schools did you apply to, I feel like I have something like eight, eight law schools, something like that, maybe a few more, and then you made a decision to go to law school. - Yeah, what was your first full year of law school like, the notorious one-out? - I really struggled with the topics of one-out. It felt so ethereal in a very bad sense. Nothing was tangible to what I thought I would be doing as a lawyer, like a lot of people, I went to law school because I want to help people. And then I was reading these contract cases about Baron Cowles and hay piles that spontaneously combust and language written in 1450. And I was just like, this is not, how does this have anything to do with going the court and representing someone? On the back end, I can understand that process a little better of trying to get us to think like lawyers. I think going to law school definitely shifted the way I think about problems in the world and creating that thinking process, but as it was happening in one-out, that was just bad. I also really struggled with the social dynamics in some respects of law school. I preemptively started therapy before law school because I had read so many horror stories about how it just becomes so all-consuming and people are really anxious. And so I had done therapy in college, but I just decided when I relocated for law school, that I was like, I'm just gonna get this set up. I also put up boundaries pretty hard. And so my boundaries were, I would go to the law schools early as I needed in the morning, but I was gonna leave by dinner time and I was gonna take one weekend day off every week. So usually I took Saturdays fully off and then it's been Sunday prepping for my week and up until the pandemic, 'cause I went to law school in the pandemic. I kept all my books in a locker on campus 'cause our law school had lockers for us. And so I truly, like, it was very separated from the rest of my life. And that actually really worked well for me, but what was difficult is that, other people in law school thought that was insane. Like, it was crazy to them that I was taking a day off. I have a whole conspiracy theory about how law school just like develops you into the perfect grant associate for a law firm to like keep turning hours out of you and motivate you with invisible sticker stars. So I just struggled and there was just just really hard week and we had a bunch of things do all at the same time. In our sections we had midterms the second part of one-out. I can't even remember all the details. I think we had two that week and then we also had a legal writing program. And we also did something called law and practice where we started in our, I think it was just in our spring semester we started doing like more tangible skills. Like we took a deposition with an actor as the client and we had a negotiation and did much more tangible things. So I think we had something do with that and then we had a big legal writing project do. And so I showed up to this class it was legal writing and we had a ton of reading to do that week. The legal writing at my law school was a pass fail course. And it was something like hundreds and hundreds of pages on top of everything else that's going on. And so everyone was really stressed and everyone kind of made the judgment call. This is a pass fail class. So if something needs to drop out of my schedule because I do need to sleep before I take an exam, it's going to be this reading. And so I just have this very vivid memory of sitting in this lecture hall. And my section was there we were all kind of generally in the same boat. We all kind of knew that no one was really ready and we're just kind of hoping we can just kind of like skate through this class. Shouldn't have been that intensive of class. And the professor was doing the Scrac method and randomly calling on people asking about incredibly detailed points out of cases that are buried within these 300 pages of reading. And the first person that he calls doesn't know, he just keeps going down the line and they're saying everyone that they didn't have the reading. And we're all kind of like in the reading trying to find the answer so one of us can save the class. I did go to a law school that was known for being friendly and collegial. Like we did have a good environment in that sense. And then it just devolved to it became very clear to the professor that none of us really knew had done the reading. Didn't know these details. And he went on this lecture tirade. Maybe it wasn't actually that severe. But at the time it felt like he was really going at us for not being prepared and took it to this level of your professionals. You have responsibilities to clients. You have deadlines. You can't just not be prepared. Like really went to that level. And it was just horrible. It just made me feel horrible. I was like, I don't think I can do this. I can't do this lifestyle. I can't do everything that happened. And actually my favorite part of that is we turned in an assignment that we can legal writing. And to this day, I have never gotten feedback from that professor. So he just never graded that writing assignment. Which is my favorite thing because what happened to his deadlines? Because what happened over spring break when he should have been reading and grading? The pandemic hit. And so it was on the end of our spring break week because I was visiting a friend of Washington DC. And it became very clear that the pandemic was real. And the hill got shut down. There was suddenly, you know, we went from going out to bars the day before it. Now we don't know if we will be able to get on our flights because they might be closing the airports. So I never went back to campus my first year after spring break. And actually not even I think my second year fall. >> Yeah, so what was your living situation then? What was it like to have to finish that very notoriously intense year with the pandemic? >> It got easier and really hard in different ways. And so one thing that the law school did was they couldn't figure out I think how to take exams. In that secure, very scary law school way, remotely. They couldn't figure out how to do that fast enough and reliably enough. And so we actually just got passed through all of our spring courses. Some professors did still administer exams, but it was for your own gratification of passing a law school exam, I suppose. But we just didn't have grades. So that removed all of that academic stress. >> What's the deal? But it got harder mostly from the living situation. So I lived in a law fraternity house. We just called the law house. It was the cheapest living in the city. I paid something like between $300 and $400 a month, all in. Utilities, Wi-Fi, all of the things. There were 12 bedrooms in the house, two bathrooms, one kitchen. I'll let you all do the math. >> And how many people did you live with? >> That time it was 11. I think we had one room that was empty. So it was 11 of us all in law school. >> All in the same year? >> No, so the three of us, two of us, and one of us. Although most people were one else and two of us. Three of us usually probably moved out, which is what I did. Kind of got over living in the law fraternity house. It was great in the sense that I had built in mentors. So there are people that had gone to this law school. New these professors had outlines. There was also just random textbooks just in the house from past students. So it had a lot of collective knowledge that was really helpful. But living with just law students, and now we can't even leave the house. Was an insane pressure cooker situation. And the one thing I think it was nice because we had our own little COVID bubble. We still threw parties in our basement. We had a keg in the attic at one point. We still had a social life that I think a lot of. My friends that didn't have were kind of jealous of, because they were really isolated during those early days of the pandemic. But the living, eating, breathing law school with people who are all in the same stressful situation. Was not my dream scenario. And then you didn't drop out. I didn't. And you graduated. I did do that. Why? By the time I hit second year, I was starting to take more classes that actually interested me. So I had to take criminal procedure. I had to take evidence. I was taking more tangible courses where I started to see, okay, this is actually going to be useful. I'm actually thinking in the way that I want to think now. And I did moot court. I didn't do a journal. I did the National Moot Court team. I made that choice pretty intentionally. I had no visions of being a clerk. And most people, when I asked for advice, they told me, if you want to be a judicial clerk, you need to be on a journal. And I knew from, really, from one L that I wanted to be a litigator and I wanted to be in a courtroom. I wanted to immediately get in and get my hands dirty. So I made the choice to do National Moot Court. I felt that would just be a more tangible experience that felt more relevant to my career, which was a great choice. I don't regret that choice at all. So I started doing these things and I was doing oral argument. I also got a job between one L and two L summer at the Public Defenders. So I then got to be working on real cases, doing real things. And so I think really what happened is a law school from the got context. And I felt like I was actually getting towards a career and I was like, I think, make me do this. You found the things that spiked your temperature. Yeah. Which you didn't necessarily find in your one L year. No. Do you think if it had been the same one L year, but there had been moot court or there had been real clients, it might have felt differently? I don't know. To be honest. I think the social transition, I think going from being like this really outstanding student in college to then everyone that's in this law school was the outstanding student in college. That's kind of hard. It was hard to fail so to speak. I definitely didn't fail. But my grades in law school were not my grades in college. And that was really hard to stomach that I wasn't excelling in this environment in the way I had been. Probably were excelling, but you weren't the top student and that was an adjustment. Yeah. And I even went in not wanting to be the top student. I was making these intentional choices to have these boundaries and have a life and go on dates and do other things. And even though I knew I was making that intentional choice, it was hard to face that music in a sense. And so I think that first year would have been hard no matter what. Yeah. That sounds right. You got a job out of law school from a clerkship that you got in law school. Yeah. So I started working at the firm that I eventually went full-time with. I started working as a law clerk with them in like late spring of my two-year. That was great. It convinced me that I did want to be a lawyer and that I convinced them to bring me on full-time after I graduated. And how many trials have you done in the past two years? In the past two years I've done six. Four of those I was like a part of the trial team. Two of them I actually was on my feet in the courtroom sitting in council table doing things in the firm. Do you love being a lawyer? I do now. And I don't think I would have told you that even a year ago. It's definitely been a journey to getting to the point where I love being a lawyer and want to make this my career. That shifted mindset probably only happened within the last three months. And that's because I did finally have a fall where I had two trials back to back where I finally was on my feet. And I got up to argue motions in lemonade, which was the very first morning of this first trial that I was second chair in. It was the very first time I'd ever argued that. But and I'm super nervous. And I stood up, started the argument and I just got calm. And I was like, okay, I think I want to do this forever. And it's a little bit of a drug. It's a little bit of dictating. And then to that second trial found that same brush and then sat with that over the holidays and things slowed down and really thought to myself that I really liked that. And I really want to keep doing that. So now I do see my job as something that I love doing if they want to keep doing. Thanks for joining the conversation. You can find Bar Review wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe and share. Wanna keep the conversation going? Follow us on social at Bar Review LLC. Onnick will see you there and she'll tell me all about it. Got a question you want us to tackle in a future episode? Send it our way. We try to read every email. And just a reminder, we are not your lawyer. This is not legal advice and these opinions are just our own. Cheers.