By: Jason Allen Jason: Can you give a general overview of your career arc since law school?
Robert Solomon: In law school, I decided I wanted to be a litigator. I was a communications major in undergrad, and I was drawn to the idea of being in the courtroom and arguing appeals. In law school you don’t major, but you have the opportunity to take courses that feed into your interests are during your second and third year, and so that’s what I did. I did the legal clinic, I took trial advocacy courses, and I took appellate advocacy. My first job out of law school was as assistant attorney general of Ohio, which was really cool and challenging. I got both feet wet right away, which is the benefit of working for the government, because while you get great money at big law firms, it will be a long time before you’re the man or woman in the courtroom. You’re going to be carrying someone’s suitcases for a long time. I loved [working in the attorney general’s office], it was a really great experience. I loved the writing and being in the courtroom. One of the big misconceptions about litigators is the people don’t understand that litigators write a lot. Many of your cases will be disposed in written form, and you’ll never actually see the courtroom. It’s only a small percentage of your cases that you’ll actually go to court for. So, you don’t only need great oral skills but also writing skills. At the attorney general’s office, I worked in three different areas. The first was in federal litigation. I primarily worked on habeas corpus cases. Those are cases in which people are in prison and they’re trying to get out, claiming their constitutional rights were violated. My job was mostly to explain the ways in which they were not violated, and that was mostly appellate work. Also in federal litigation, we did federal employment cases based upon federal statutes for employment discrimination. The second area I worked in the attorney general’s office was in worker’s compensation. The reason I moved to that division was because federal cases take a long time to work through the system, and as a new, young lawyer, I wanted to see more work to get experience. By statute, the state of Ohio requires that workers compensation cases are supposed to be resolved within six months. That meant I was able to have my workload increase a lot and get a lot more jury trial experience in. The third position within the AG’s office was the children’s protection division. I went to that division because I was promoted to management, becoming assistant chief, and eventually Acting Chief. I did administrative law cases, foster care and child care. I was prosecuting, revoking licenses for people who weren’t meeting their requirements. I left the attorney general’s office to become a magistrate, where I heard small claims cases, evictions, minor traffic offenses, wage garnishments, and different things like that. While I was doing that, I was teaching business law at the undergraduate level at Columbus State Community College. That sparked my interest in legal education. I got the opportunity to teach trial advocacy at Ohio State’s law school, so I left the court completely to do that. Over Over the years, I became the Dean for Admission at the law school. Eventually, another opportunity came to join the United States Attorneys Office at the US Department of Justice. I was at the law school for almost five years, and I sort of missed practicing law full time, even though I always keep my license current and I still do some practice. I really loved working in the Justice Department, but after some time I returned to the law school. The person who had replaced my me in my old position at the law school left, and I had the opportunity to create an Office of Diversity and Inclusion in the law school as well as continue in my former role of Dean for Admission. So I came back to the law school as Chief Diversity Officer and Dean for Admission and Financial Aid, and I continued to teach. I started teaching evidence law when I came back. I did that until I got the opportunity just a little over two years ago to work here at the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. The work I did as the law school’s Chief Diversity Officer sort of laid the foundation for the work I do now at the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and so that’s what I do now. J: That is really amazing. I didn’t know about your time with the DOJ. What was the specific work that you did there? RS: It was similar to what I did for the state attorney general but instead at the federal level. I was a civil litigator, working in civil defense. The worked on federal tort claims, which could be anywhere from a slip and fall in the US Post Office, to a medical malpractice in the Veteran’s Hospital. I did employment discrimination cases under Title VII, Medicaid and Medicare subrogation cases, and condemnation cases, which we call imminent domain at the state level. J: So, you said you are still doing a bit of practice now. What kind of work are you keeping up with? RS: It’s all pro bono stuff. To the extent I’ll have time, I’ll help someone out. It could be as simple as writing some legal counsel for someone when they have a problem. It’s really just helping out when I can. J: It’s remarkable how broad-based your career arc has been. How do you feel like law school helped to prepare you for such a versatile set of jobs? RS: I definitely think a legal education is a very broad-based and comprehensive education. You’ll learn the foundations of the law, but more than anything I think a legal education teaches you how to think critically, analytically and how to solve problems. Whatever your job is, you’ll be confronted with problems, and you’ll have to figure out what is the most efficient, intelligent, appropriate way to solve the problems. Law school teaches you how to do that, and I think that’s why the education is so transferable. Very specifically, it teaches you how to practice law, but I also think that the foundation of learning how to think and learning problem solving in a clear and concise way are skills that translate to just about anything that you might want to do. In law school, you learn how to be a great writer and communicator, and I think those skills apply to just about everything I have done. A legal education prepares you for the specific, but it prepares you for the general as well with transferable skills that can be applied to almost anything, with the exception of things that are so specialized, of course. Studying the law isn’t going to help you practice medicine, or being an electrician or engineer, but it could certainly help you lead a hospital, or be the CEO of an engineering firm. J: What helped you to decide where to go to law school, and what kind of things would you advise prospective law school students to think about and prioritize when trying to decide where to apply and attend law school? RS: Well, I definitely think that my personal process isn’t one I would advise anyone to take. And that’s not because I didn’t make a good choice. I think I made an excellent choice. You all have such better access to information than I did when I went to school. Back during that time, there was no internet, so when I wanted to go to law, I had to look it up in a bound book and send a card off to the school asking for them to send me their books and information. We couldn’t go online and do virtual tours and everything, so I didn’t really know that much when I was looking at going to law school. I am from Ohio, so naturally I wanted to go to the flagship law school in my state. I actually almost went to Temple law school because there was a mix up and I got my admission from there first, but eventually things started coming in from Ohio State. In terms of deciding where to go, there are a lot of things a person should think about. I think there is an over-reliance on US News rankings. There is useful information there, I don’t dispute that, but I think it’s a bad idea to select a school based upon rankings alone. You have to think about what you’re interested in studying and what you might get out of a particular institution. Sometimes, a school might say they have a special program in something, but that doesn’t mean they’ll actually give you exactly what you need and you’ll have to delve a little deeper into things and consider what the curriculum offerings are. Another law school might have very similar curriculum offerings, but they just don’t call it a “special program”. So it can take some work to really compare law schools and see what is and isn’t there. I also think fit is really important. Are faculty members accessible? Do that talk to students and work with students? Talk to current students who are there. What is there environment like? Is it cooperative, is it competitive? What are the alumni like? Are they invested in the institution? Is it a diverse population? Do underrepresented students flourish in the environment? What is the school’s placement rate? Where are [graduates] going to work and what kind of things are they going to do? You have to consider all of these things to decide whether a place is where you want to be. And it doesn’t have to be in the state where you want to practice. You just need to figure out if it’s a place where you want to be for three years. J: I think that’s really valuable advice. What is your perspective on what really went well for you as a law student and what didn’t go so well? RS: The first thing I would note is that I don’t think I really appreciated how important the first year is to setting the tone for what your opportunities will be later on. It’s tough because that’s kind of the learning curve year and you’re trying to get everything figured out, but in terms of employers, a lot of emphasis can be put on your first year. This especially applies to people who want to work for a big law firm. Big firms come to law schools to interview students, and they evaluate the students based off how they did their first year. If you didn’t do well your first year, the law firms may not be interested in you. They’ll make offers for you to come and work as a summer associate during the summer after your second year. If you do well as a summer associate, they’ll offer you employment for after you graduate. So, for a lot of students, there can be a lot riding on how you perform in your first year of law school. That doesn’t necessarily apply for every career path. For government jobs, they might put more consideration into the breadth of your law school career. That is probably true for smaller law firms and for corporations as well. So, I don’t think I really appreciated all that during my time as a law student, but I think things definitely worked out for me in the long run. You do have to work very hard and be very disciplined right out of the box, and sometimes when you come right out of undergrad, you might feel a little burnt out, but you have to gear up and get ready [for law school]. Another important thing for law students to do is to take advantage of what is there at the school. There will be widely renowned people, published people, people who are thought leaders in our nation and the world who will come to speak and who you should go listen to and learn from. That will give you an education inside and outside the classroom. Law school can be so consuming that you might not want to. You might say, “I’ve got homework. I’ll be on call tomorrow in class, I’ve got 115 pages to read, and so I’m not going to be able to go to this lecture or this speaker.” I say that’s a mistake. It may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see some of these type of people speak, and there’s so much you can learn from it. Figure out how to get your work done, but also take advantage of the opportunities outside the classroom. The last bit of advice I have is about study groups. I was never much of a study group person. I was much more comfortable studying on my own during my first year, but I do think that in law school study groups are very valuable because you get someone to bounce your theories off of. You get to see other ideas that you might be missing. You might have a blind spot and you don’t know it. In law school, you don’t have a bunch of quizzes. You have one test, and that’s your whole grade. So it can be hard to know how you’re really doing. Study groups kind of allow you to hear other perspectives. If someone is like me and not very into study groups, go ahead and study on your own and then meet with a study group. Then you can arrive at things on your own and then bounce it off a study group. J: How accessible are professors in law school? In undergrad, I find that professors are fairly accessible. If you really want to talk to them after class or reach them during office hours, you typically can. Is it like that in law school? RS: Yes, definitely, and in some ways it’s even better, because in law school there are no TA’s. There are no intermediaries, and so things are more direct to your professor. You will get to talk more directly with the person who will be writing your exams and grading them. I have this one analogy that I use to express the challenging nature of law school. I ask people, “what do you feel like the day before a final exam in terms of how prepared you are?” You know all the facts, the details and you’re ready to go. Well, everyday in law school is like the day before an exam in undergrad. That’s the level of preparedness that you need to have going into class everyday in law school. And so that’s why I say [law school] is on another level of preparedness. In undergrad, typically the first day you come and you haven’t read the material, the professor is just kind of introducing him or herself and kind of telling everyone what the class is all about and all of that sort of thing. That’s not law school. The first day in law school, you should expect the professor to walk into class and say, “ Mr. Allen, please tell me about Marbury v Madison. What was the holding? What was this case about?” This is day one, minute one, it begins. Straight to business. There is no kind of warming up. You will know your reading assignments before the first day of class, and you will be expected to have read it to full preparedness to be able to discuss it and answer questions about it. J: What are the resources like in law school? In undergrad, you have access to tutoring and counseling, and there are many options for extracurriculars. How are available are those sort of things in law school? RS: In terms of academic support, it may depend on the law school. Some law schools have very formal programs in place, while a lot of law schools don’t. Generally, if you have questions, you go to ask the professor. Some schools might have systems set up with upperclassmen who can help people with questions. Typically, though, there aren’t really tutoring programs. The presumption is, if you are admitted, you are already operating on a higher level and you are expected to jump in and be able to handle it. If you are at a law school that is on a large university like this one, all the other supportive resources will be available to you just as if you were in undergrad. Whether it’s counseling services or recreational facilities, everything that is available to you as an undergrad will be available to you as a graduate student. If it’s a free-standing law school that is not affiliated with a larger university, I’m not sure how that all works out. The one thing to note is that with most law schools, as it is with Ohio State’s, the school is one building. The library is there, your classes are there, your locker is there, the financial aid office and registrar are there, so it’s pretty easy to get everything you need in that one place. In terms of extracurriculars, you have an entire array of those available. There’s a student bar association, which is the student government. There are affinity groups, like a Black Law Students Association or Latinx Law Students Association or a Middle Eastern Law Students Association. Then you have groups that form around interest, like Sports Entertainment Law Society or a Business Law Society and things like that. J: Were you involved in any organizations? RS: Yes. I was the Vice President of the Black Law Students Association my second year and President in my third year. I was a student bar association senator for two of my three years in law school. I was on the moot court governing board as well. J: Earlier, you mentioned how people can feel burned out heading into law school after having completed their undergrad education. Some people take time off between law school and undergrad, whether it’s to work or travel or do whatever else. Is that something you would advocate for? And if so, how can someone most valuably spend time off between undergrad and law school? RS: I would say that law school is not like business school, where taking time off can be part of a strategy to be an attractive applicant. So, I always tell people, “if you are going to take time off, do it because it’s something that you want to do. Don’t do it because you think it will make you a more appealing law school applicant.” Usually, about 55 to 60 percent of the incoming classes at law schools are coming straight out of undergrad. But if it’s something someone wants to do because you feel burnt out, or you want to travel, or you need to save money and work, then you should do that, but I am just saying that it is not necessarily going to make you a more attractive applicant. It could though, depending on what you want to do. Some people might want to do a master’s degree before they go to law school, or work as a paralegal or legislative intern or something like that, and it ends up being another point of interest that makes you a more appealing applicant. I just don’t want students to think that you have to do this to go to law school, because still the majority of students heading into law school did not take time off. J: What has compelled you throughout the years to make career changes? RS: I think I have kind of settled in now, but initially I was looking for growth opportunities. When I started out as an assistant attorney general, my work was federal litigation. I was doing more appellate than trial work, and I wanted to get more trial work. I was in the habeas unit, but even though I had a full caseload, I would volunteer to second chair to do the work of people who were doing federal trials. That opened the door for me to participate in another aspect of work. I then moved to a division that solely did trial work. Then I eventually moved to another position because it gave me the opportunity to be in a management role. When I left the attorney general’s office, it was for exploration. I wanted to work in the court and be in the quasi-judicial seat of the magistrate. When I moved on to teaching at the law school, it was to explore my interest in legal education. I knew that I could always go back to practicing law full time, so I didn’t feel like it was a big risk to make these moves. I ended up finding that I really love working in the higher education environment. When I went to work for the US attorney’s office, I was going through what I call my “professional identity crisis”. I questioned that, while working for the university, if I was really a lawyer anymore. I felt like I was good at it and that I loved being a lawyer. So, again, making that move was all about career exploration. When I went to the Justice Department, I felt like I was still good at that sort of work, and so I think I just needed to get that out of my system. When I went to the law school the first time, the notion of turning away from practice after it had been my focus for so long made me feel unsure. After I came from the US attorney’s office to the law school, I felt that if I never ended up practicing law full time again, I wouldn’t have any regrets. I kind of reaffirmed that I was really good at it, and now I am doing the kind of work that, if I was independently wealthy, I would still do. I have been fortunate that, in my move from the law school to the university’s ODI, I’ve been able to continue doing the same kind of work. I really do love working in this environment. I help to develop policy that impacts students in a positive way. J: In your time as a professor, did you have students that especially stick out to you? What sort of things did you most appreciate seeing in your students? RS: There are countless students who showed incredible potential and ability, and it really encouraged me that I played a role in helping them to do the sort of work they went on to do. There is a person who is the vice president and general counsel for a corporation right now. I remember her as a first year law student. She actually came to work for me as her first job out of law school. She didn’t take the bar right away, but when she eventually did she became a prosecutor for the city and then she became a law clerk, and it’s just been great to watch her career really blossom. There are a lot more that are like her, just doing incredible things. There is a student who was on the Frederick Douglass moot court team I was the coach and general advisor for who is now general counsel for a large corporation in Chicago. Another one who is a major partner at a large national firm. Some of them have gone back to help other students I’ve taught. I’ll send for them, and one former student will give another some sort of opportunity. The networking process continues when you meet more great people. Now, being in the ODI for as long as I have, the last group of students who I admitted to law school are third years now. Once they graduate, there will be no students in the school who I’ve had contact with. Where it has changed for me is the extent that I am able to contact undergraduate students. It’s on a different end now. Now I am not having contact in the law school, but instead before it. In some ways I think I am able to be more helpful, because when I was the decision maker I had to be more objective and I couldn’t give one student more advantage than the other, but when I’m not the decision maker, I can advocate for you, I can read essays, and do all sorts of things to help you. I’m able to assist students on the front end rather than on the back end. J: In that decision making role, what were the biggest things you were looking for in applications? RS: For me, personally, I was looking for well-rounded students. It goes without saying that you want academic strength demonstrated, but I really wanted well-rounded students and leaders, people who are engaged in the world around them. You can have someone who graduated with a 4.0, but they didn’t do anything but go to class. I suppose that the person can handle things academically, but lawyers really do need to be engaged people. You need more than that. You need a sharp mind, but you also need to be able to engage and connect with people. J: What do you feel like the connections you have made throughout your career have offered you? RS: For me, the best part about it is that it has allowed me to connect others to one another. To me, that is incredibly invaluable. J: Is there anything that we haven’t been able to touch on that you might be able to offer to undergraduate students like me who are leaning towards law school? RS: The most important thing is to get a legal education. Some people say I want to get into Harvard or Stanford and strictly pigeonhole themselves far too much in terms of identifying a law school. There are 200 ABA-accredited law schools out there. There are some great law schools that are not in the top 30 in the nation. I think it is always important to apply broadly. I think you should have a reach school, and then your “mid range” schools, and then your safety school. I think there are some great law schools that people kind of overlook sometimes. Don’t pigeonhole yourself in terms of where you want to go. I always emphasize fit. So, you might get into University of Chicago, and they’re higher ranked than Ohio State, but Ohio State might be a better fit for you. You might still want to go to Chicago, but make sure you’re not choosing Chicago solely because it is higher ranked. Do your due diligence. Consider the faculty, the curriculum offerings, the placement rate, where graduates go to work, the alumni support, and all of those sort of things are important in selecting a law school.
1 Comment
12/20/2017 06:24:05 am
Great work and it is interesting blog. You are providing expert legal advice related family matter. Thanks for sharing the informative info....
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