When I graduated Hofstra Law School in the early 1990’s, America was in a recession just as it is today. I didn’t have a job. I hadn’t been recruited during first-year big firm interviews. I didn’t have a relative that owned a practice and the public sector jobs were snatched-up by my bilingual classmates. I had no relevant experience to offer. I hadn’t been a paralegal or a police officer or an accountant in a past life. I had never been anything. I’d come to Hofstra straight from college. There was no Monster.com. There was no Internet, period. I sent a mass mailing of boilerplate cover letters and resumes to every law firm and corporation I could find. I received zero response.
With prospects rapidly dwindling and with no steady income, I waved goodbye to seven years of glorious independence and moved home. My parents had long-since sold the house I grew up in so I took up residence on the couch in my dad’s one-bedroom apartment. My dad had remarried and the combination of tight-quarters, a frustrated 25-year-old and a stepmother who had never raised a child (or an adult for that matter) quickly proved a volatile mix.
The cold mailings continued, as did their futility. Mild depression and a sense of helplessness set in. What could I do other than wait for the mailman or for the telephone to ring? After several months, my stepmother had experienced enough of my sloth and self-pity. She abandoned her normally patient demeanor, stared me straight in the eyes and hissed, “Go out and get a job.”
So I threw on my best suit, packed my portfolio with resumes and drove to a stretch of Main Street where many of the houses had been converted into small law offices. In one of the first buildings I entered, a lawyer was leaning over his secretary’s shoulder discussing some paperwork. “Can I help you?” he asked. I took a deep breath, straightened my posture and replied, “I’m a newly-admitted attorney with no experience and I’m looking for any kind of legal work, full time, part time or temporary.”
Although the attorney didn’t have work for me, his response breathed new life into my job search. “No lawyer has ever just walked through my door and asked for a job,” he said. “With that kind of chutzpah, I have no doubt you’ll find work very quickly and that you’ll develop into a great lawyer.” He was certainly right on the first account. Thirty-or-so law doorbells later, I landed a job and embarked on my legal career.
On September 11, 2001, I was preparing a client for a deposition when my building shook on its foundation. I looked outside the window into the Canyon of Heroes to see paper raining down as if Mayor Giuliani had ordered an unexpected ticker-tape parade. Minutes later the second plane hit and my building was evacuated. While my co-workers fled uptown and to Brooklyn, my apartment was a block away, on the opposite side of the World Trade Center. With nowhere to go, I stood by and waited for the fires to be put out. Like the rest of the world, I too underestimated the melting point of steel. Before I knew it, I was cloaked in darkness, breathing pulverized concrete. With the help of strangers, I made it to safety. Fortunately, I was no worse for the wear.
By evening, I arrived at my dad’s place where I learned from CNN that my apartment and workplace had been given a new name, “Ground Zero.” I would be living at home. Again. With eight years of maturity under my belt and the help of a roomy new house, my step-mom and I got along swimmingly. I thoroughly enjoyed my four months with my family.
Spending quality time with my family and the trauma of Nine-Eleven altered my perspective dramatically. My six-figure salary, once a pipe dream, might as well have been seven because I just wasn’t happy. I decided to start my own firm. I had start-up money, I had the skill and I had the support of friends and family. But I had no cases. I started my law firm without as much as a single file.
It was okay. I knew where to get them.
As I had done nearly a decade earlier, I threw on my best suit and pounded the pavement. I walked from the top to bottom of every accessible skyscraper in downtown Manhattan, stopping in every law office to ask if they had cases that had become too insignificant or troublesome to be worthwhile. In only a few months, I had 50 files. They were mostly other lawyers’ junk but I earned enough legal fees from them to keep me up and running until I brought in bigger and better cases.
So, for those of you who are unemployed or who own a struggling business, don’t just sit by idly hoping for opportunity to knock. Heed the words of my stepmother and also the lyrics of one of my favorite bands:
“If you want it, you can have it, but you've got to learn to reach out there and grab it.”
-Weezer