Tues­day night, Career Ser­vices hosted “What Kind of Law Will You Prac­tice?” a panel fea­tur­ing seven Prince­ton alumni with legal degrees. Around thirty under­grad­u­ates attended, and the alumni shared their expe­ri­ences in law school and beyond.

The major­ity of the event was given over to the alumni to describe their career tra­jec­to­ries and offer advice. Among the panel, there were sev­eral uncon­ven­tional paths to law school, includ­ing Chris Colvin ’88, who was an MAE major at Prince­ton and Jason Eaddy ’98, who worked in com­puter sci­ence before obtain­ing a law degree through night school.  “It took my par­ents a good five, six years to under­stand what I do for a liv­ing,” Eaddy said, who now con­sults with lawyers on technology-related cases.

The panel also included two alumni who work in crim­i­nal law. Fac­ing a ques­tion from the audi­ence about the pos­si­bil­ity of becom­ing jaded as a pub­lic defender, Arthur Hop­kirk ’81 and Isabel McGinty *82 offered words of encour­age­ment. Both agreed that work­ing as a pub­lic defender was a very tough field. “There’s no let-up…in crim­i­nal law, it is people’s lives,” McGinty said. Hop­kirk said it can be dif­fi­cult to find ful­fill­ment in pub­lic defense if you want to win cases, since even the best lose 80 – 90% of their cases. Instead, “you have to really take inter­nal sat­is­fac­tion,” Hop­kirk said.

Two pan­elists who talked about the real­ity of debt incurred over law school were Christina Ked­die ’03 and Ani Mason ’00. Ked­die was drawn to law school as “the extended Rob­bie George expe­ri­ence.” She now works as a labor and employ­ment lawyer, say­ing that non­profit work may not pay enough to effec­tively man­age the debt. In con­trast, Mason was able to obtain schol­ar­ships because she was inter­ested in human rights.

Mason also said net­work­ing through the Alumni Careers Net­work was instru­men­tal in build­ing her career. At any point in her career, she was try­ing to develop rela­tion­ships with peo­ple in the field. Colvin, who founded two net­work­ing com­pa­nies, sup­ported this view. “Net­work now, and net­work for your entire careers,” Colvin said.

Though the panel dis­trib­uted a lot of infor­ma­tion on the dif­fi­cul­ties of law school and a legal career, Zachary Gold­stein ’05 was opti­mistic for the atten­dees’ future: “You go to Prince­ton. It’s up to you.”

For those look­ing for more infor­ma­tion about law school, Lyon Zab­sky is Career Ser­vices’ pre-law advi­sor. She was present at the event and can answer more detailed ques­tions about law school applications.