Archive for April, 2009

Hi there. I’m Soleil. Well, not really. I’ve chosen to go the anonymous blogger route and I picked the alias Soleil because one very kind (and possibly cataract-afflicted) friend once told me I resembled Soleil Moon Frye (my born-in-the-mid-80s compatriots will best remember her as Punky Brewster).

The law school application process is finally over – thank God – and I’ll be starting at Columbia Law School this fall. I’m pretty happy with my choice to attend CLS, if for no other reason than it doesn’t require me to pack all my crap into an Enterprise van and lug it across the country. A future post will discuss the entirety of my law school application hell journey, but the short version is that I traveled to Nashville and to Chicago to visit schools and ended up at the one 20 blocks from my apartment.

I live in Manhattan and work for a boutique investment bank. I’m sure you know what fantastic shape the world of finance is in so I won’t bore you with the details. By the time I matriculate this fall, I’ll have been out of undergrad (Wellesley) for a little over three years. Before my current job, I worked at an independent market research and consulting firm in Massachusetts. Nothing about my post-college work history suggests any interest in law, but law school has been the plan for about as long as I can remember.

In college I followed the typical pre-law path: majored in history, active with Pre-Law Society, and served on the General Judiciary. But working in a law firm as a paralegal was never an option for me. As my mom put it: “Working for lawyers is the most miserable thing you could possibly do if you’re not one.” She can say this because she is a lawyer. People often ask if I want to be a lawyer because my mom is, and it’s a tough question to answer. I can’t say in all honesty that this is the path I’d have chosen for myself if she weren’t a lawyer, because it was through her that I’ve gotten so much exposure to the law. My uncle and two cousins are also lawyers; three of the four lawyer family members are criminal prosecutors, and one works for a firm. I guess you could say it’s somewhat of a family tradition. No one was all that surprised when I announced my intentions to apply to law school – although several well-meaning relatives did their best to talk me out of it.

I’ve heard the horror stories about what 1L stress does to people, but I’m determined not to let it get to me. With that in mind, I’ve come up with the following resolutions:

• I will be open-minded about all my classes – even torts.
• I will make time for non-law school friends.
• I will continue to enjoy what New York has to offer.
• I will exercise and get fresh air regularly.
• I will remember that it’s just law school.

No problem.

So here goes nothing.