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Getting to the Bar a Little Late in Life

By Annelena Lobb 

When Jeff Loop was in college, he never thought he'd become a lawyer. After graduation, he took a job in Atlanta in the retail business. He spent about nine years working in fashion.

But Mr. Loop, now 42, had once majored in international relations, loved history, and wanted a job that satisfied that side of his intellect. In 1997, at a cocktail party, he met a woman who had graduated from law school at 61 and practiced in a small town in Ohio, he says. "I figured law would let me earn a living and satisfy my longing to study history -- history through cases," he says. He graduated in 2001 at age 36 from law school at Seton Hall University. After about three years at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York, he joined Dorsey & Whitney, and is now a sixth-year associate.

Going to law school later in life is a gamble. For one thing, it's a hugely expensive undertaking, especially at a time when many already have mortgages or kids. Tuition alone at many private law schools runs over $30,000 per year. That's a lot to pay (or take on as debt) at a point in one's life when another career "do-over" would be difficult, if not impossible. In other words, if you're heading to law school at age 35, you'd better hope that practicing law is something you'd like, and that you'd get a job after graduation.

Statistics on second-career lawyers are hard to come by. The average age of a law student at graduation is 28, according to the Association for Legal Career Professionals, and law is a three-year program. Jason Wu Trujillo, the admissions director at the University of Virginia School of Law, says the number of second-career law students grows slightly every year. At the University of Michigan, about 17% of law students have prior careers, a number that rises by about a percentage point a year, says Sarah Zearfoss, assistant director of admissions.

Generally speaking, changing careers mid-stride has become widely accepted, says Gail Blanke, the author of "Between Trapezes," a self-help book about life transitions. Forty-three percent of job seekers last year were looking to change industries, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Some professionals may be more inclined to attend law school if a first (or second) career turns out to be intellectually or socially unsatisfying. Others pursue the law for more practical reasons -- the potential for a bigger salary and a well-defined career track.

There are upsides to tackling law school later in life. Older law students say they have a deeper appreciation for their coursework than do some twenty-somethings. "Some of the younger students had never stopped studying," says Suzanne Colt, a lawyer for the City of New York, who started at Cardozo Law School at the age of 35. As a consequence of her years in the workforce, she felt energized, rather than burdened, by academic life. "The work was tedious for them, and exciting for me."

Jane Boisseau, a partner at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae in New York, says her past experience as a teacher gave her maturity she needed to accept mistakes gracefully and handle an enormous amount of work as a new associate. Experiencing the vagaries of her previous career also prompted her to zero in on a specialty area -- the insurance industry -- and develop a niche doing regulatory work. Ms. Boisseau now co-chairs the firm's insurance group.

But there are risks to choosing law later on. Pressure to excel in school, and later to be a star at work, can be intense, given that the person has declared at least one other career a dead end. Ms. Boisseau says she left her job to focus completely on law school in order to do as well as possible there. "I was older, and a woman, and in most professions, that's already two strikes against you," says Ms. Boisseau.

Furthermore, attending law school in the company of recent college graduates isn't for the fainthearted. Law school doesn't leave much time for a partner, family or sleep, particularly if a student holds a day job. Ms. Boisseau says she pulled her first all-nighters in law school. Ms. Colt had to take care of two school-aged children at the same time.

Ms. Colt says that being an older student made her feel a little self-conscious at first, but that she eventually enjoyed getting to make younger friends. Says Mr. Loop: "I was surrounded by young, energetic types," he says. "At one point, my nickname was Gramps."

The journey doesn't necessarily get easier after graduation. "I had been a medium-sized fish in my old industry and became a cog," says Mr. Loop of his first legal job. "One of the ironies of being an 'older young' lawyer is that your experience is sort of disregarded -- you're treated as a 25-year-old."

Older associates generally aren't compensated for their past experience, either, says Shell Zambardi, manager of lawyer recruitment at Dorsey & Whitney.

One exception to that rule involves patent lawyers, who are increasingly culled from the ranks of laboratory scientists and electrical engineers, and often find high-level science degrees and experience a great help in their law practices. Kathleen Williams, a partner at Edwards, Angell, Palmer & Dodge in Boston and holder of a Ph.D. in molecular biology and biochemistry, says she once intended to work as a scientist and professor, but she got bored with bench work, and took a job in a patent-law firm. She decided to attend law school at night, graduated at 33, and now practices intellectual property law.

"I think [the patent-law] path is very common for people in the biology and biotech fields who find they don't have the basic personality requirements for the lab -- you have to have a lot of patience, you have to love to work alone," Ms. Williams says. "If you want to rub shoulders with other people, you're going to have to find something else."

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