{"id":37142,"date":"2025-01-19T22:29:03","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T22:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/apprentice\/where-am-i-how-i-decided-legal-apprenticeship-was-the-right-path-for-me-like-lincoln\/"},"modified":"2025-01-19T22:29:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T22:29:03","slug":"where-am-i-how-i-decided-legal-apprenticeship-was-the-right-path-for-me-like-lincoln","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=37142","title":{"rendered":"Where am I? How I decided Legal Apprenticeship was the right path for me. \u2013 Like Lincoln"},"content":{"rendered":"


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I woke up particularly early this morning, and I was surprisingly reflective (given how very\u00a0early it was). \u201cIt\u2019s sunny,\u201d I thought. \u201cI\u2019m back in the East Bay,\u201d I thought. \u201cI\u2019m doing exactly what I want to do,\u201d I thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

But\u00a0to be honest, working full time for a nonprofit law center and reading the law outside of law school was not what I was planning to do with my life. A\u00a0year ago, I was on track for graduate school. Like a lot of young college grads, I was following \u201cThe Plan,\u201d which is to spend\u00a04-10 more years in yet another school program, rack up debt, and wait for a degree before I could do<\/em>\u00a0the things I wanted to do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why was I so set on graduate school? I was following The Plan, certainly, but I had three other good reasons. Reason #1: I love to learn. Reason #2: Watching my dad teach and seeing the impact he has on his students\u2019 lives proved how powerful teaching could be. Reason #3: Teaching my own\u00a0student-led course when I was a student at UC Berkeley made me realize that I also love to teach.<\/p>\n

But over the course of the last year, I realized that going to graduate school is not the only way to continue learning, and being a professor is not the only way to make a positive impact, or even the only way to teach. When presented with the opportunity to become a lawyer without going to law school, I decided to take it. Here\u2019s how it happened:<\/span><\/p>\n

I completed my\u00a0UC Berkeley undergrad program in 2011, and near the end of that year, began doing volunteer urban agriculture research for the Sustainable Economies Law Center. It was a way to continue learning about sustainable food systems and sustainable city planning and strengthen my research skills for the Masters\/PhD program ahead. Working with almost a dozen other researchers, I coordinated the creation of UrbanAgLaw.org \u2014 SELC\u2019s online legal resource library for urban farming. At the time, SELC was just Janelle Orsi and Christina Oatfield, and\u00a0I loved SELC, and SELC loved me, so I was hired as the third staff member. \u201cAwesome!\u201d I thought, \u201cI can continue working with the coolest organization and co-workers on earth while I also save up for grad school.\u201d \u2026Little did I know\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

On July 25, 2012, The\u00a0Plan was turned on its head. The three of us\u00a0were sitting in\u00a0a staff meeting, and I took the opportunity to mention that I wanted to take a little time off work to finish applying to schools. I\u2019ll always remember Janelle\u2019s response to this. She said, \u201cWell, how about instead of going to grad school, you keep working at SELC and do a legal apprenticeship with me?<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember what I said, but I probably laughed and we moved on with the meeting. But something about what she said stuck, namely the notion of NOT going back to school, ever. That night I spent hours\u00a0writing down\u00a0the pros and cons of grad school versus legal apprenticeship. I went through everything<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 from what would best position me to change the world, down to where I want to live for the next four years. I will share (most) of this list in my next post because I think it will help (derail) talented and driven individuals who are also following The Plan.<\/p>\n

The next morning I sat down with Janelle to ask her a few questions. The one that made my decision was this on: \u201cJanelle, you studied at UC Berkeley\u2019s Boalt Law School \u2014 one of the best in the world. If you knew about the legal apprenticeship option back then, would you still have gone to Boalt or would you have apprenticed?\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she would have apprenticed.<\/p>\n

I said I was in.<\/p>\n

And here I am: exactly where I want to be.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke up particularly early this morning, and I was surprisingly reflective (given how very\u00a0early it was). \u201cIt\u2019s sunny,\u201d I thought. \u201cI\u2019m back in the East Bay,\u201d I thought. \u201cI\u2019m doing exactly what I want to do,\u201d I thought. But\u00a0to be honest, working full time for a nonprofit law center and reading the law outside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12039],"tags":[13200,18750,6036,14394,14043],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-37142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apprentice","tag-apprenticeship","tag-decided","tag-legal","tag-lincoln","tag-path"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere am I? 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