The Calling

No, this entry is not about a current rock group. It is a reaction to an article in the legal newspaper, The Daily Journal, about choosing the law, and whether it is a calling, as in vocation, rather than a career or a job. The distinctions are pretty obvious I guess. If it's just a job, it's about getting the paycheck and doing what you have to do. A career, well, it's something you think you are really good at and feel you have a chance at excelling and moving up the tortious ladder. If it's a calling, well, it is rather a mission, a quest, if you will, to make the world and the relationships among society's denizens more palatable. The author correctly noted that these three categories may overlap in one's life. And one observation made me laugh heartily, when the author noted that the lawyer profile includes a low level of spirituality. Thus, began a few moments of consideration of where I fell in the job vs. career vs. calling categorization. And to tell you the truth (a preface which some psychologists say means you are probably lying), I haven't got a clue which is prominent, if any.

I was 14 when I made the initial decision that being an attorney was my path. No one in my family was a lawyer. I was shy. But I was verbal, and the one thing about being a girl of Mount Saint Ursula was that the nuns, even before the woman's movement, encouraged us to be whatever we wanted to be through education. I guess I was thinking "career" though I would not have articulated that to myself in quite that way. In college, some four or five years later, I ran into the college radio station and THAT was for me, except for the fact that it would not likely mean any money, for a long time, if ever. I loved the studio, the microphone, talking to others without having to face them, if I really examine it. So I went to work after college for WXLO, 99X, it was called, in New York. A friend from college was music director, and I became his assistant. It was kind of him. But the work, if I could call it that, was mind numbing, the same 40 songs on the list week after week. There are just so many times you can hear "Magic Man" even if you love Heart. Six months later law School beckoned, with its promise of a safer career and maybe a regular salary. I responded lethargically pressed by parental anxiety about a future as a bag lady if I did not do something with more concrete future. So, I applied to just two places. And got into one.

I did not like law school. I endured it. It was the late 70s and the teachers all thought they were Professor Kingsfield in the Paper Chase. My school had a conservative grading policy so that I was in the top third of the class, but my average was a C+. No one wanted to hear about how they graded when I interviewed. I ended up in a tiny law firm with a screamer for a boss. We were now in job territory. Strictly a job. A very low paying job with no benefits.

I also wanted to be TV writer. With my then partner, Len Speaks, I had visited William Morris many times to see our agent, Andy. Saw Jack Lemmon in the elevator. Andy did not have the goods to be an agent. And our visits were purely academic exercises. Andy just wanted to show traffic in and out of his office. I heard he left that business. It wasn't his calling I guess. Me? I decided to move to California intoxicated, as my then boss pronounced, by palm trees and oranges. It was more the weather and the ridiculous idea of fame and fortune as a comedy writer. I'd pave the way, and Len would follow when we sold a script. Law was now a means to an end. I think I was still in job mode. And I wasn't writing any scripts. Setting up a household and making ends meet became pretty time consuming.

There is little reciprocity state to state, so my NY license was of no value in California. I had to take the Bar here. Which meant I had to have a job, so I could get an apartment, to pay for the fee for the Bar exam, so I found another small firm to be a secretary/law clerk while I studied and proved myself yet again to be worthy to be among the legal eagles of the sunshine state. The practice I found myself in, in California, like New York, was not what the hallowed halls of academe led one to believe in order to keep them in library books and new wings. I was an amusing anachronism to my skirt chasing, gambling boss who took any case in which money was paid up front. I got my license in California. (That's me at the Masonic Temple on Wilshire Boulevard where I was sworn in in 1983). He offered his guidance, "You're going to have to learn to stretch your ethics." Ah. This was even worse than the internship across from the Bronx County Courthouse a few years before, where my mentor had me place a bet at OTB. At this point, we are barely at "job", but it was paying the bills. And I was still hoping for that career as a writer. Of course, I was too tired to write when I got home from work after a day keeping the boss from losing the files and forgetting the clients. I learned a lot about what I would never do. I would never have a private practice.

With that realization and the long and winding road working for others, including one famous person, in his waning legal days, who called me the "paralegal" and had to be propped up, except when a camera was pointed in his direction, an ad brought me to my current role a a kind of prosecutor. In the 80s, career would have been too strong a word given what they were paying and the civil servant cache. But it was more than a job. And given my emotional and philosophical disposition, it was closer to a calling than I had expected would ever be my fate.

And, always it has remained, close to a calling, but never quite there, with intermittent frustration, rage, and disillusion at just how horrible people can be, I have stayed in this place for 23 years and counting. I am one of the lucky ones.

Still a lawyer.