Spinning the Globe

When I was a kid I used to love to play "spin the globe," always imagining that I would someday go to the places where my finger landed — Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Palau, Uruguay. The more exotic sounding, the better. I'd alternate between putting my finger along the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn before I closed my eyes and spun, not wanting to land in the Northwest Territories, Siberia, or Antarctica. Iowa was cold enough. The game was so central to my sense of adventure that when I left for college, I asked my mom for a new globe to take with me to my dorm room.

When I moved halfway across the country to Virginia I left my globe at home, but it turns out I could use it, this time for real. It has almost come to this — within weeks I will decide which Bar exam to take, and in so doing, will pick the state in which I will live and (hopefully) work for the foreseeable future. Like many of my law student compatriots across the country, I will likely graduate without employment:

Although numbers are not available yet, many members of the class of 2010 and 2011 may graduate without a job, and those who are lucky enough to find employment likely will collectively have lower salaries than their predecessors. In short, the job market is more challenging than it has been in many years, as well-paying jobs are in short supply.

ABA Commission on the Impact of the Economic Crises on the Profession and Legal Needs, "The Value Proposition of Attending Law School," http://www.abanet.org/legaled/prelaw/The%20Value%20Proposition%20of%20Attending%20Law%20School.doc.

Having chosen a career, public defense, that theoretically allows me to go anywhere in the country, I am bound only by a few practical considerations: one, how much more I am willing to go into debt; two, whether I want to do death penalty work; and three, whether my desire for close proximity to family overrides my interest in capital punishment.

First, the debt part: law students graduate prepared to study for the Bar exam, but not prepared to take it. Shortly after graduation — either the following week or literally the next day — we begin taking Bar review courses, usually at a cost of about $2,500. These courses are the ultimate teach-to-the-testers, giving us the form and the substance we need to please the lawyers who'll soon be grading our Bar exams. During this two month Bar review time, from mid-May to late July, none of us will be working. Then, after we take our respective Bar exams the last week of July, comes another break while the state Bar associations grade the exams. During this time we are neither law students nor lawyers — just graduates, hoping for a license. Depending on where you take the Bar, this state of flux can last from about six weeks (North Carolina), till about Labor Day, to nearly three months (California), almost until Thanksgiving.

For those of us who don't have jobs and have a hard time finding them because we're not licensed to practice, this can be an extremely costly wait. To offset those costs, I can choose a state where I know lots of people and can live on the cheap, such as Virginia or in the Midwest. The alternative is California, where it would be incredibly difficult to live cheaply, and I would incur thousands more in debt while waiting for gainful employment.

Second is the death penalty, which makes me passionate about practicing law. For that, I can stay in Virginia or go to California, or to Illinois, or to any number of places in the South, like North Carolina, Texas, or Alabama. (There is also one bonus to staying in Virginia: because I came to law school here, this is where I have the most law-related connections. I am not guaranteed a job, by any stretch, but I have as good or better a chance at finding one here than anywhere else.) I cannot go to places like Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Iowa, however, and expect to do death penalty work. These states don't have capital punishment.

But they are fine places to live, which brings me to the last consideration: proximity to family and, by extension, quality of life. Virginia, California, and the Midwest all have their pros and cons, but the Midwest has that unique distinction of also being home to my family (not to mention a lot of important friends, though I can say the same now about having many close friends in Virginia). Illinois, then, would seem to be the only place that has both the death penalty and proximity to family. It also has Chicago, an extraordinary city and the home of my beloved Cubs and Bears. The only problem is that I have precious few legal connections in Chicago. But I could still go, volunteer, and hope that I land on my feet.

Well, there is my globe-spinning thinking laid bare. Sweet home, Chicago?