Those damn(ed) interns...

It took me about a year after I had passed the Bar exam for me to actually be able to practice law. “Character and fitness” and I had gotten into a bit of trouble as a youth. Nothing major and the records had long ago been expunged, but the Florida Bar is nuts and they had made me unseal them (turns out, there were none; paper records and they had been destroyed) even though I told them all of this. Anyhow, this year gap which seemed like unfair torture at the time as all my peers began practicing, ended up being one of the best experiences of my life.

The worst part of the dilemma was I had no way of knowing when character approval would come. I was allowed to follow up by snail mail once every six months, which I did. I would get the same canned non-answer back. What job prospects I had fell apart because of this. What good was I if I couldn’t practice and couldn’t even say when that would end? I had to consider working a non-law job until the Bar got their act together. I finally had a talk with my old man and he said “Look, you need legal experience more than you need an hourly check”, advised me to look for a firm to work at even if for free, live lean, and if we hit rock bottom to circle back around with him. We weren't fresh out of undergrad and my wife worked, so this was doable for some amount of time. We lived in a small townhouse and had no kids. I can recall vividly the day I hopped on my law school's job site, but this time with “internship” flipped on instead of just paying jobs. As timing would have it, a solo practitioner doing civil litigation had posted an ad that morning looking for an unpaid intern. Unpaid. Ugh. Some of my boys were making six-figures already. But it was what it was, I thought of my pops, and the rest is history. We hit it off in the interview and I was in his office the next Monday morning at 8am.

When I say “office”, I mean literally a room. He had space in an executive suite environment (like a Regus). His office was just this one square, but it was a nice square with big glass windows and a pretty view. Classy. The building was gorgeous with a big waterfall in the atrium. Baller. My desk was right across from his - the only things in the room other than a printer and a file cabinet and a shit ton of papers. I sat at that desk everyday from 8am to 5pm or well beyond, reliably like I was at the prized new associate gig at a silk-stocking firm. I really wasn't sure what I was going to do when I showed up. Was this legal assistant or coffee bitch? Candidly, it ended up being a little of both.

I love the guy I worked for and I don't use the word lightly. I've been to big slow-boils with his family; I carry the man's will. He is special. Dude came from nothing. I mean nothing (drug addict parents and no chance in hell of education and greater things), and yet he became self-made through sheer power of will (his 1L year of law school he slept in his car and showered at the gym). Listening to him talk every day, practice law every day, negotiate and hustle cases every day, watching all the business processes and how he pulled all the cranks and levers every day, all of that was invaluable! He never paid me a cent… in paychecks. But that man paid me in professional gold.

I remember the first time I shadowed him to court and within 5 minutes I realized I didn't know anything about how to be there. Where do you sit and walk in, who speaks first and when, when can you and can't you speak, what are all these weird Old English sayings? He was a cool cat that day, of course, and handled it all like riding a legal bike. I just soaked it all in and took mental notes. It's hard to pay for experience that pure; yet, this was our every day. He also taught me the life outside of the ring. Especially as a solo prac, and especially as one that handles personal injury cases (I don't in my own career), there is a lot of understanding how to live like a lawyer. The unspoken rules of the game. My time with him was worth more than any paycheck I could have earned. It took me from someone who had learned to think like a lawyer in school, to actually being one. I draw from those foundational skills to this day.

Why am I sharing all this? Well, I would eventually get my character and fitness approval (“Congrats”-letter just randomly shows up one day, no hearing or reason or anything… bastards!), my license, and would go on to successfully build my own firm. I now employ several people full-time including a second attorney. In the beginning when I was first starting out and had hung my own shingle, I quickly found I needed help. The hamster-wheel work piled up fast! I couldn't afford staff though; heck, I was operating in the red out of the gates. So who did I turn to? That internship page at the law school, of course. I just as vividly remember the day I wrote an ad for my own free internship on the same site. Someone who would come listen to me on the phone every day and shadow me to court. And sure, I'd ask them to do grunt work and take load off my desk too. Won’t lie, it was a cool moment! The ad led to calls and resumes, and this led to a 5-year run of internships at my law practice which were a wonderful experience all around. I went out of my way to teach them how to actually practice law as well as be a lawyer since my own experience had been so invaluable. Paying it forward. I formed awesome relationships with every one I used as a result. I never paid them a dime (alhough one is that second attorney now). You may have noted I used past-tense, that I no longer have interns at my firm. That is correct. And let me tell you why…

I’m too lazy tonight to go pull the actual case, but a few yahoos from New York sued for backpay from an UNPAID internship they had at a film studio. You can tell where this is headed; the liberal judge ruled in their favor, they were awarded a bunch of backpay and penalties, and this sent shockwaves through general counsel offices nationwide. What if our unpaid intern sues for backpay? Yeah, no shit! I think of the number of hours I put in, in the aggregate at 8-5 M-F with plenty of overtime. He couldn’t afford to pay me all of that. He shouldn’t have to, it was quite clear between both parties all along that there wouldn’t be cash trading hands. My compensation was in other ways. Ways I just said above you can’t even buy if you wanted to, ironically. And this lands us on a lesson about life and common sense, which is really why I’ve shared all of this.

Sappy sympathy-driven laws like this are a plague in our nation. They’re symbolic of something else, really. They have a metamorphis-like effect where they tug others’ emotions to the same place and so The Cause snowballs. Case in point: subsequent to this NY ruling, my law school down in Florida announced no more free interns. They wouldn’t help place them and you couldn’t advertise them on the site. The same site I had found my first gig. The same site I had given a half dozen people their first gigs. In every instance, it was understood there wouldn’t be monetary compensation, and we were all fine with that. Not just fine, this was the relationship we sought! I understood that a solo practitioner couldn’t afford to pay an intern every day, but that many solo pracs and small firms could really use the help of an intern/legal assistant every day. This is a symbiotic relationship, and not one you want the state to kill.

“Kill”, because that’s precisely what occurs here. There isn’t this Legal Utopia where these policies are announced and suddenly every unpaid internship is converted into one paying $10/hour the next morning and we all go out for cocktails. No, $10/hour is $400/week, and $2k a month, and over $20k a year. This was never meant to be a paid gig and that sure looks like one to me. This Utopic thinking gets unmoored from reality. Always. The guy who hired me didn’t have $25,000 + payroll tax to have some green newb out of law school come hang out in his office everyday. He was simply willing to allow me to do that if I’d agree to do some stuff for him when he asked… and yes, for free. This was the gig. It was the one I sought that day. Guess what? Those people don’t post those gigs anymore. They’re not even allowed to. Worth noting, this doesn’t cause any issue at all for Big Law, of course. They of coveted summer internship programs with weeks-long tryouts of partner shoe-shining and six-figure tracks to associate positions for the winners.

I actually used paid interns for several years after that, for the record. I paid them $10/hr and, honestly, it pissed me off. Lol Not the money. I screened for good ones and they more than earned me their time at the rate I could tag on their work. It was the principle. These kids were there to be mentored, I shouldn’t have to pay them shit. And the ones I hired and paid $10/hr would have been fine with earning $0. They grasped the professional gold. But understand, even I felt the inverse squeeze of this ridiculous sympathy-first thinking. I hired a true legal assistant for not much more than $10/hr after a while and I’ve never used law school interns again. It doesn’t make sense anymore. The world of slaving away at an internship because you know it’s to your own benefit is over. The nanny state has said that’s not fair and kind. Probably harmful too. The same nanny state that says ice-cream scooping positions should fund people’s lives.

And that was the last point I wanted to make with this intern story of mine. There is a direct parallel here to entry-level jobs. In our rabid progressive (see: Marxist, anti-capitalism, revolutionary) crusade, we are seeing rung-one of the entire job market get obliterated. That is the end-effect of raising minimum wage over and over. “Have you seen how much inflation has gone up? Wages haven’t tracked.”. Ok, and so? The purpose of our government is not to make sure everything is fair for everyone. The purpose of our government is equality under law, not equity under life. Yes, the dollar is worth less and lots of jobs suck. What are you going to do about it? These aren’t Govt Daddy’s problems to solve for everyone. That’s the opposite of the American Dream. When you allow these equity zealots to lace everything with empathy and weaponize it, we end up with counterproductive policy that makes no sense. Unless your goal is literally communism long-term, we don’t want the state to wipe out all jobs positions that are below life-sustaining. I folded pizza boxes and answered phones at Dominos when I was 14. This was a first-time work permit position, not a job meant to fund me for life if I wanted to rest on it. Raises every few months, right? GTFO. Maybe raises… if the business is making a lot and they want to give you one. Most business don’t make a lot, especially the mom and pops.

We don’t want to create policies that portend to provide for all by sacrificing the very framework that allows for entrepreneurship and individual growth. It’s stunning that law schools don’t prepare lawyers more for a courtroom before they graduate. Thank goodness that solo attorney took me under his wing. What he paid me through time and wisdom and experience was worth more than any check would have been. Now the requirements to at least give me $10 has led to these starting opportunities largely not existing at all. Who is winning there? We don’t want to eliminate entry-level positions for the same reason we don’t want to eliminate unpaid internships. If you don’t want these positions, don’t apply for them. This never-ending and ever-expanding capture of everything (which has become prevention of many things) all to “Do what’s right and equitable” has become so destructive. It’s like half our people are walking forward in an intellectual coma chanting “Progress” at anything they’re told to.

Yes, that ruling from NY has boiled my blood for years. It is such a microcosm.