A Hard Day’s Night
It was a Thursday. The New Friday. The penultimate day of the working week. Not just any working week, either: my first working week earning a paycheck as a trainee lawyer. This was it – where all roads led. All the absurdly-late law library nights with book and pen in the heart of a traditional Red-Brick, Russell Group institution. The reward for such dedication was to be a career of even later nights behind a screen, waiting for something to happen. Those twilight hours would blur their way into early mornings, just as the lines were blurred between work and life.
But that came later. This first week was the honeymoon period. A soft launch before the rough ride. It was a time for celebration and to reap the rewards of years of academic toil and social sacrifice. Just one day until that Friday feeling…
It was autumn, but a cold one. The combination of unseasonal weather and a desire to look the part I was playing required a wool overcoat. I lived in the city, only a ten-minute walk from the office. This gave me enough time for a final check of the email inbox to top up a sense of self-importance that couldn’t quite be filled by the resentful looks that I mistook for awe from passersby who’d only ever seen a courtroom from the other side.
My work phone lit my face: one unread email, to the whole Corporate department, from a partner:
“Hi all,
It seems that someone has taken my coat from the cloakroom. I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding and, whoever you are, you need not ‘Reply All,’ but please do let me know if you have it and make sure that you safely return it tomorrow morning.
Thank you”
I walked into my apartment where my girlfriend was getting ready for bed. It would soon be rare to see her on the safe side of midnight. I told her of my day at the office and the funny email I’d just received, reading it out in a mocking impression of the partner in question. I distinctly remember saying, “Who’d be stupid enough to take someone else’s coat?” as I was rudely interrupted by the appearance of said partner’s wallet landing heavily on my bed as I emptied “my pockets” like some sort of evidentiary exhibit in a burglary case.
Revolver
This was merely one of many baptisms by fire that my legal career had in store. But I recount it because it was my realization that the job I had begun bore very little connection to my legal education. Sure, I could write a thought-provoking, debate-contributing thesis, full of brilliant reasoning and endless ethical arguments while also compliantly-referenced within an inch of its life. Sure, I could produce reams and reams of color-coded revision notes with a matching stack of flashcards tall enough for a makeshift dinner table. Sure, I could regurgitate legislature, academic criticism, and textbook quotes to fill the blank pages of a three-hour exam–
But when it came to understanding the strange etiquette of an office environment – the employee hierarchy; how much small-talk was appropriate in the restrooms; how to distinguish between an “open door policy” and a door that had been slammed in anger; how much procrastination to build into each day to ensure there’d be at least two hours’ work remaining at contracted home time so I could stay late; putting 1,000 numbered pages into lever-arch files while a pin-striped millionaire barked Millennial-hating orders; or to which political faction of the “team” to align myself to maximise career prospects – I was out of my depth.
In this gladiatorial arena, it seemed one needed to arm oneself. And, it seemed, the only weapon with which my enviable university education had sent me into battle was a robotically-high tolerance for alcohol.
“If you have a law degree you’ll be able to do anything,” they said. “It’ll open a lot of doors for you.”
Will I? Did it? It opened plenty of doors to rooms I didn’t want to stay in, that’s for sure. It’s now eight years hence and I’m three months into my new career as a writer. Other than a couple of forward-looking organizations that have provided me with an outlet to build my portfolio on a voluntary basis, it’s been nothing but tumbleweeds.
No employers are interested in my A*s or my Bachelor’s Degree (with Hons), my MSc in Business, my commercial awareness, research skills, forensic attention to detail, managerial and budgeting experience, written and verbal communication, ability to put people at ease, or my unique sense of perspective. What they want is “at least 3 years of employed experience as a writer.” If I can’t get experience until I’ve had a job and I can’t get a job until I’ve had experience, then the doors opened by my fancy degree are revolving ones, at best.
If I could make legal submissions to the UK job market as it waxes lyrical about “transferable skills,” I’d say that for my seven years in the legal industry I was a writer.
Every day (and they were many and long), I crafted detailed audience-focused advice notes for sophisticated and unsophisticated clients. I drafted witness statements to High Court specifications. I instructed barristers of the Queen’s (and King’s) Counsel. I wrote articles to promote my firm’s expertise in the market, optimized for SEO clicks before anyone knew what SEO even meant. And, at least once a day, I was fine-tuning my passive-aggression via email whilst defending some historical decision somebody had made but nobody could remember.
Help!
Sometimes, in my life’s quest to find The Doors of Perception, I think that the only doors I’ve opened are The Doors Of Misconception and, sometimes, I wish I hadn’t – for those who live in blind ignorance of their own warped sense of reality are often more content.
I jest, of course. As my wife keeps telling me, it’s still early days for my writing and I’m sure my experience will pay dividends soon. Something will turn up. For all the disappointing actuality in the face of expectation and for all the surprise that nothing is quite as I imagined it would be, if my life has taught me anything thus far (as you might guess from my subheadings), it’s that The Beatles weren’t wrong about much. And if The Beatles have taught me anything, it’s that “there’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”
I’m prepared to trust the process, as exhausting as it may be – at least until my savings run out.
