One Year

It was a year ago this week that I downloaded the free LSAT from the LSAC website. My journey to law school started when I realized that I could do well on the LSAT. A good LSAT score could get me into a good law school, which, coupled with my experience, should allow me to make the transition from the laboratory to a leadership position in a pharmaceutical company. I really had no desire to go to law school before I started looking into the LSAT, but as I've thought more about the opportunities that a JD could provide, law school has begun to feel like the right thing for me to do. I just can't do it full-time. The opportunity costs, in tuition, lost wages, and missing out on three years of significant leadership experience in a pharmaceutical company, are just too high.

With this decision made, I will not be submitting an essay to U of R for the Marshall scholarship. Even that scholarship is not enough to get me to leave my job. I thought about applying for it as a way to improve my shot at some kind of part-time arrangement with them, but I thought better of it. I'm going to get in touch with the law school and put everything out there. If they come back willing to work with me on some kind of part-time deal, that's great. If not, I start studying for the patent bar and keep my eyes open for jobs in cities near law schools with part-time programs. Maybe Mason would let me switch to part-time if I could find a job up there in the next few months.

Regardless of my plans for the fall, my experiment continues on. Rejections are starting to go out so we'll see how other applicants with numbers like mine fair over the next few weeks. I started this blog to help other PhD's apply to law school. That mission will continue.

Uncertain

Having concluded my three part attempt to convince myself that my PhD will be more than three letters on my resume in my post-research life, I was hoping to have something new to write about on the admissions front this evening. People who occupy my region of the LSN graphs have been getting accepted at Minnesota and WashU at a pretty good clip in the last few days. I make a conscious effort to avoid reading anything into the order of admissions decisions, but knowing that I could hear something soon makes my heart speed up just a little bit every time I check my email (which if frequent) or get a call on my cell phone (which is rare). All of this uncertainty is trying my nerves.

I'm still not certain making the move to law school is the 100% right move for me. You would think that I am fully on board with the idea of leaving my job and attending law school, I have gone to the trouble of taking the LSAT and writing a personal statement (the difficulties of which I have chronicled in this blog) after all, but I am still conflicted on the wisdom of this decision. I know I can succeed in law school and as a lawyer, but it is the best move for me right now?

I've discussed my motivation for law school, but my thinking has continued to evolve in the months since I wrote that post. Now that I have been accepted by the two schools that I wanted the most, Richmond and W&M, I have been working through the reality of attending law school. My last few posts hint at my fears. The job market for lawyers is really in the toilet. There seems to be a consensus that IP lawyers are more marketable than the average lawyer, but that is not enough to allay all of my fears. Good grades will help me get a job, but there is no guarantee that I will be at the top of my class. While I think I would be a very good law student (and lawyer, of course), who knows what will happen once I'm actually in school.

The next few weeks should be telling. Acceptances, stuff at work, things should be coming to a crescendo quickly.

Diversity Statement?

I originally intended to write a diversity statement. I'm 33, married, two kids, advanced degree in a technical subject, career experience with some meaningful responsibility, publications in high impact journals. I am definitely not the traditional law school applicant. When it came time to write the statement, I realized that most of what makes me unique is easy to see in other parts of my application. Why make the admissions committee read another essay that is basically a restatement of my resume? The only thing that was not addressed in elsewhere in my file was my family information. I think that's relevant to law school admissions. I just added a personal section to my resume and mentioned that I'm married and have 2 kids (I would never include it in my professional resume). The phrasing of requests for diversity statements gives me the impression that they want things that cannot be directly addressed in the application form. All of my diversity is right there for them to see.

I'm on the fence about a paragraph or two expressing my interest in UVa and Vanderbilt (my reach schools). There is not a request for insight into why I am applying to UVa or Vandy, but the conventional wisdom seems to be to include one anyway, assuming you can say something that will add to the application. I would not send something that was general and vague just to say that I had sent the essay. I would want there to be a solid connection between something the school offers and some element of my legal interests or something related to my background. Wash U has a center focused on using empirical techniques to study legal questions. That connects directly to my research experience. I added a statement to that affect where they ask for why I am interested in Wash U in the application. I might write a Why UVa essay, but there is a good chance that I will not. When I'm not sure about my application strategy, I refer to my Law School Admissions reference. The tone of her optional essay chapter sounds like you should give the school what they want and leave it at that. I might look at it again to help me make my decision.

So diversity statement, definitely no. Maybe (but probably not) on the Why X essays.

Getting Personal

As I mentioned in a post following my visit to U of R, I've been working on getting my resume into shape. My employer provided a resume workshop last week. One of our recruiters came in and gave us specific advice about how we should present ourselves to potential employers. Most resume tips are not geared toward scientists, so it was nice to have somebody come in and give us some good insight on how a resume is reviewed. He had some good tips and even offered to take a look at our resume once we had incorporated a few of the ideas that were offered in the workshop. I took him up on his offer, and he gave me a few tips that I thought were pretty minor but actually made a big impact when I incorporated them.

That's all well and good for employment, but what about law school. I am debating whether or not to include a personal section. It would be pretty small, it would basically just mention that I've been married for 10 years and have two kids. I don't have time to hike, run marathons, or pursue a passion for French cooking. I like NASCAR (it killed me to watch the Nationwide race from Richmond on TV tonight rather than actually seeing it live. I know people knock NASCAR, but the races are a very intense experience. You can see how much the cars are sliding around through the corners, it is very loud, and you can smell the gas and burning rubber. I highly recommend going if you're ever given the chance. And spend the money on renting the Sprint Vision or whatever they call those things. Listening to drivers and crew chiefs talk about the car brings a whole new dimension to the race. You can't listen to Bill Belichek tell Tom Brady which play to run (not that the jargon would make any sense anyway), but you can hear Kasey Kahne (my favorite driver) tell Kenny Francis (his crew chief) how much his car sucks.) but how lame would a statement about being a NASCAR fan look on a resume? I have given serious thought to mentioning that I won an NFL pick-em pool last year, but I don't want to give the impression that I'm a degenerate gambler. (It's just an office thing, no big deal.)

I used to workout, but I gave that up to study for the LSAT and write personal statements (and blog posts). I only travel for work (nothing sucks more than riding an elevator with people headed to the beach all day when you're heading to a pharmaceutical plant on the southern coast of Puerto Rico for 12 hours or so). I don't know any other languages (although if I keep getting sent to Puerto Rico that might change), and I have a yard service so it's not like I garden or anything like that. I'm always reading a book (I'm reading Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence right now), but I think being an avid reader is a pretty generic statement on a resume. I think the family thing is thin, but it is something substantial. I don't really have any other hobbies because I have kids, so the fact that I am a parent explains why I don't have any other activities. I'm leaning towards putting it on because I want the adcoms to know that I am married with two kids and there is no other place in my application to mention this simple fact. I'll put it on and see how I feel about it in a couple of weeks.

This personal thing is a little strange for me. I'm so used to being very professional in looking for jobs that including information like this is almost uncomfortable. I feel like I'm getting too personal on a document that is about my professional experiences and achievements. I will approach law school like a job I have had a hard time taking down that wall. I dealt with it in my personal statement too. I think I have managed to handle it in a way that lets them get to know me, but it's still a very awkward situation for me.

My Motivation

I've made 25 or so posts on this blog and I have managed to avoid directly stating why I am taking the time to apply to law school. I finally finished a draft of my personal statement that I am happy with, so I don't mind taking the time to lay out my rationale for adding three more years of schooling to the 8.5 years of post-secondary education that I have already acquired.

Last year I started reading books listed on the Personal MBA recommended reading list. (This is different than the list that I was using. Looking through it as I copied the link, I think I need to go back after I've finished this post and take a closer look at some of those books.) I could see that I needed something other than my research degree to really make a difference in the pharmaceutical industry. While all the senior managers in my building have Ph.D.'s, we answer to a corporate office up in New Jersey. That's where the real decisions are made. All of our activities are geared to meeting a deadline or providing a product that has been selected by a marketer or project planner in that corporate office. This would be fine, if they included us in the planning phases of these projects.

We get projects that are dead before we even do an experiment because there is some technical issue that we can never overcome. Inviting us to a meeting where these things are discussed would save the company millions in wasted resources. They choose to keep us out of the loop and when a project goes bust, who do you think gets the blame? The blame game is very popular in big corporations. Everybody is too caught up in their own agenda to just focus on getting the job done. If a mistake was made, identify what went wrong and move on. Nothing good comes from worrying about who to blame when a project goes south. Sometimes there is nobody to blame. We're trying to do something that has never been done before. There is always a risk when you're trying to make something innovative. If an idea doesn't work, oh well. Figure out what you learned in the process and see what you can do with that. Experiments might not always go the way you want in research, but unexpected results usually open doors to whole new ideas. A lab that is organized to take advantage of those new insights will be successful. That's my vision of a successful pharmaceutical lab anyway. I want to get up to the corporate office so I can speak for the laboratory. Somebody who has never worked in a lab has a hard time understanding what goes on there, but that knowledge is essential in an industry that relies on the lab to produce innovative new products. The mystery of what I have done in the lab will prevent me from reaching an executive position as a research scientist, but I think a law degree would overcome the bias against PhD's that seems to permeate corporate culture.

A productive research lab delivers tremendous value to a company, especially if given the freedom to pursue new product ideas. We do not have the freedom and I think it really hurts the company's performance. It doesn't have to be an open ended project, but one of two experiments to see if an approach to a new product is feasible could reap big rewards. The corporate office likes to make a point that every one has good ideas, but then they put up this burdensome system to make sure everything filters through them. Just put a few grand in the budget to fund some independent projects. I think they would like what they found.

So why law and not an MBA? That's a subject for a different post.

Heavier than my GPA?

I will be using two big soft factors to sell myself to law schools. The first is clear from this blog. I am relying heavily on my PhD in chemistry (physical chemistry if you want to specific. Ultrafast laser spectroscopy is you want to get really specific) to cancel out my undergraduate GPA. I did my graduate work at VCU, which isn't the most famous university, but I have five papers in very well regarded journals. I even managed to get a paper into the Journal of the American Chemical Society. JACS publishes very high impact papers. (I asked my adviser to tout the impact factor of the journals in his letter of recommendation, it didn't feel right to do it myself.) I also have a publication from my undergraduate research. I have done some research in connection to my projects at work (work experience discussed below). I'm giving a poster at a big pharmaceutical conference in November, and I'm working on a paper with one of the senior scientists in my building. I am hoping that it is developed enough for me to at least include it as an in progress entry in my resume.

My other big factor is my career. I worked in industry before I went to grad school. I went back to the same company when I finished my PhD. I've done well in my job. I have a meeting with my manager tomorrow. I have to update her on some projects that I've been working on, but after I've filled her in on all the progress I've made, I am going to talk to her about writing a letter for me. I really have no idea how she will react. We're in a bit of a transitional phase right now so I'm hoping she will have that in mind when I talk to her about this law school plan. I am going to approach it in a very careful manner and provide plenty of rationale. We'll see how it goes.

I have a few other interesting facts about myself. I'm married (10 years next month) and I have two kids. My job and family keep me pretty busy so I don't have any other activities. I have a good reason why I am pursuing this crazy plan too.