A decision has been made: after graduation, I will pursue a PhD in philosophy. Now, let's see if I can explain... because I really do have a lot of explaining to do. Like, why I didn't just do this in the first place, why I'm doing it now, and why I'm doing it at all... d^_^b

Well. Here goes. Have patience; the law school stuff comes near the end.

Selecting a career, as most of you are all too keenly aware, is not an easy thing. Now, whether one majors in engineering or journalism or psychology or graphic design, there is (whether one takes advantage or not) generally an industry hiring process built to cater to people with the skills one has ostensibly secured through one's higher education. Not so when you study something that lacks intrinsic marketability--English, history, and philosophy (to name only a few) are notorious for this. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is hop on the academic treadmill, teaching others who will themselves teach, ad infinitum, perpetuating a certain biologically encoded redundancy to our card catalogs and internets and other too-flammable repositories of human knowledge. Other times one goes into "business," using one's degree as proof that one can finish what one begins.

When I finished my undergraduate education, I had no job. I promptly did what all good liberal arts majors do and moved my growing family into my parents' converted garage. I fortunately had some practical experience in an unrelated field, so I was not unemployed for very long, but the plan was always graduate school. In what? Well, that was a more difficult question.

I really wanted to be a professor, but graduate school scared me. A PhD in philosophy should take 4-6 years... but a lot of people agree that 7-9 is a more realistic figure. I'm not the world's finest linguist--to my eternal frustration--and a PhD usually requires demonstration of some foreign fluency. The market for PhDs is good but competetive, so you probably won't go hungry but you spend a couple years moving around and praying for tenure track. Ultimately none of this would have deterred me, except that I take my parental responsibilities pretty seriously and the thought of even five more years of school followed by financial uncertainty was simply too much. I can starve myself if that's what it takes; starving my children was simply not an option.

One day I was reading something in the news that really boiled my blood and I realized that, if I wanted to really have a voice in the matter, I would need a law degree. In all my graduate school musings, I had never contemplated a law degree; indeed, law is the one thing I steadfastly refused to study. I didn't know how long law school would take, how much it would cost... but when I found out it was only three years of study and ended with a highly marketable degree, my decision was made. I briefly contemplated joint JD/PhD programs, but that sort of defeated the purpose...

Serendipitously, my philosophy background had prepared me well for the task, though law school itself often falls short of its lofty ideals. The "case method" (the approach used in 90% of my classes) is a little too practical to really teach theory effectively, but a little too theoretical to really teach the practice of law. But while my peers tend to bemoan the latter shortcoming, I have found myself persistently carping on the former (the supreme equity of Langdellian law school is, I suppose, that no one gets what they're really after).

At any rate, there is a great deal of "conventional wisdom" swirling through the legal community regarding jobs. Rigid hierarchical values and an unhealthy obsession with pedigree have resulted in a pseudo-meritocracy wherein the abilities one ought to have are more important than the abilities one actually possesses. Thus several recipes for one's career path:

Valedictorian + Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review = Federal Clerkship, Professor

Top 10% + Journal Experience = Clerkship, BigLaw Career, State Judiciary

Top 30% + Moot Court = BigLaw Career, Overpriced Litigator, Partner With More Money Than God

Everyone Else = Ambulance Chasers

That this list is elitist (and, often, just plain wrong) doesn't generally inform BigLaw hiring practices or judicial clerkship selection. The prevailing wisdom is that one should secure one's second summer internship about 9 to 12 months in advance; generally, one will leave with an offer of employment a full year before graduation, deferrable (with a bonus!) in case of a prestigious clerkship. While many lawyers change their area of emphasis once or twice in their careers, for at least the first several years out of law school the area of law you practice in is heavily influenced by these early, crucial decisions.

But though my decision to attend law school was at least partially a decision to broaden my employment options, I found myself largely ignored by the markets where I most wanted to work. This was at least in part to my unfortunate first semester, but also because I am interested in soft IP--because I can't take the patent bar, a lot of IP firms do not consider me much of an asset.

So after a few more of those ubiquitous disappointing setbacks, I had to step away and reevaluate my options. Fortunately, by this time, my wife's book deal had beaten judgment day back a bit. She has a stable, contractually enforceable income for the next five years at least.

I'm still a little daunted by the idea of five more years of school, but the opportunity is simply too good to pass up. I want a PhD. I want to teach philosophy. My writing skills have been tested to the utmost--last semester I wrote over 100 pages worth of papers--so "publish or perish" isn't too big a concern. I still plan to take the bar wherever we go for graduate school, but suddenly I don't need to worry about the traditional legal hiring chute.

With this in mind, I have accepted a brief summer clerkship with the Utah Supreme Court--about as academic as it gets in the legal profession without actually being at the law school. Instead of working for a law firm and trying to build a career, I will be building up my resumé for grad school applications.

As an added bonus, instead of spending the next five years bouncing between clerkships or law firms trying to find my "niche," we can settle down (summer fellowships excepted) and know where we'll be for more than three years at a stretch. I will almost certainly teach while working on my PhD, so I'll be living the dream even as I pursue it. It won't be as lucrative as practicing law, but that was never the point (except to the extent that I was worried about providing for my family). We won't know where we're going for almost a year, but we will definitely be applying to a variety of schools, including University of Arizona, Stanford, and NYU, to name only a few.

So, in all of this, a lesson: choose your spouse wisely. d^_^b Since the earliest days of our marriage, it has been my wife's desire that I do what makes me happy. Some sacrifices have been made, concessions to the demands of stark reality, but on the whole we decide what we want to do and then we do it. This is possible because with two of us working toward the same goal, the difficult tasks are half as burdensome.

And for those more interested in the "legal industry" ramifications of this discussion: the law is increasingly a place for skilled technicians rather than the wise and the idealistic. This is great for the economy but bad for the soul of the nation, on which the economy ultimately depends. I am removing myself to academia because I am able and so inclined; others will do likewise as they, too, find themselves established and independent. Lawyers are the closest thing the United States has to a "ruling class." Maybe we should be seriously considering how the makeup of that class is changing due to industry demands, and decide whether it's the kind of change we really want.