Twenty-five years ago, I left my job at a Wall Street law firm to work for The American Lawyer. At the time I was making what seemed like a lot of money as a fourth-year associate at Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts. When I heard the salary being offered by The American Lawyer , my eyes widened in disbelief. Still, I took the job, and moved from the Upper West Side of Manhattan into a rent-controlled third-floor walk-up sublet on the edge of Brooklyn Heights, for which I paid about $350 a month.
I was one of those people who went to law school for the wrong reasons. I didn’t have a burning desire to be a lawyer, and I didn’t think much about what kind of lawyer I wanted to be. I just thought law school would be kind of cool. It sure looked cool in The Paper Chase . As it turned out, I pretty much hated law school. I didn’t enjoy reading an endless stream of old cases, many of my professors were mean, and, by the way, they were all men. Practicing law was a bit better, although the firm had just two female partners when I joined. I liked a lot of the people I worked with, but I just didn’t think this was the right career for me.
