I’m a sixth-year associate at Sher Edling, representing governmental clients in environmental cases against corporate polluters. Prior to that I worked at Cohen Milstein, bringing class action suits against companies that sold defective products and deceived customers.
So I’ll say it like they do in AA: My name is Paul, and I’m a litigator.
It’s strange when I think about it. I had never had much interest in litigation, and the tropes didn’t seem to fit me. I have never described myself as someone who “likes to argue.” I don’t much care for Law and Order or Judge Judy. As a child, I never staged a mock trial with my stuffed animals, and I would roll my eyes when my dad turned on My Cousin Vinny. In fact, I only became interested in law school in the first place when I learned, during a summer internship in college, that lawyers did things other than litigate. And so I applied to law school, determined to use my training to do some good in the world (public policy of some stripe, I figured), but decidedly not to litigate.
My disinterest in litigation is evident from my transcript. I never took evidence, federal courts, advanced civil procedure, bankruptcy, or trial or appellate advocacy. I happily avoided moot court. The only clinic in which I participated was the legislative clinic, where I worked in a Senator’s office. I never interviewed with a Big Law firm (though that didn’t stop me from going to their meet and greet events, with free food and booze). My two summers were spent at non-litigating government agencies.
So I applied to law school…decidedly not to litigate
In my 3L year I applied for clerkships, partly because the work seemed interesting, partly because I wanted to buy time before landing on a more permanent job, and partly, I must confess, because that’s what everyone else seemed to be doing. I wound up in a wonderful clerkship with Judge Anne E. Thompson in the District of New jersey.
As a clerk I read many briefs and saw many lawyers present at hearings and trial, and I was struck by the wide range in quality that I saw. I saw how good advocacy—and bad advocacy—affected who went to prison, who received compensation, and who was held accountable. It would be too strong to say that I was “hooked” on litigation as a career, but I gave it real consideration for the first time.
As my clerkship was ending I started applying for jobs. These jobs were all advancing important work as I saw it, but they ran the gamut: government agencies, non-profits, political jobs, traditional lawyer roles as well as those that didn’t require a JD. A few were in litigation, and for some reason I got the most bites on those applications.
I had applied for a job in plaintiff-side antitrust litigation at Cohen Milstein. At the end of my full-day interview there, one of the partners told me that the firm also had a position open in the consumer protection practice group. We quickly arranged a meeting that day for me to speak to a partner there. He told me about the class action suits he was litigating against companies like Facebook and General Motors. It seemed like exciting and important work. I took the consumer protection job.
I credit Cohen Milstein with teaching me much of what I know about the law and legal practice. I wrote my first briefs there, took my first depositions there, and had my first oral arguments there. I learned a ton about consumer protection law, class action practice, and litigation in general. And working under five different partners, I saw the virtues of different working styles and different approaches.
After three years at Cohen Milstein, I happened to hear that Sher Edling was hiring. The firm represents state and local governments and local water districts in suits against polluting corporations. Their cases include those against DuPont and 3M, who manufactured PFAS, a family of “forever chemicals” found virtually everywhere (including the blood of humans and animals on every continent except Antarctica). The firm also sues fossil fuel companies that undertook a decades-long campaign of deception about what they knew about climate change.
I was a plaintiff-side litigator, a line of work I never would have imagined when I graduated law school five years ago
In a way, my move to Sher Edling was unsurprising and logical. I have had a long-running interest in environmental causes, going back to college and running through the Environmental Law Project in law school, so in that sense bringing lawsuits against the likes of Exxon Mobil and Monsanto feels like a return home. But I had come from the world of consumer protection, which had some but not much overlap with the environmental legal world. And more fundamentally, taking a job at Sher Edling meant that I couldn’t dismiss my time in litigation as a one-off stint. There was no escaping it now: I was a plaintiff-side litigator, a line of work I never would have imagined when I graduated law school five years ago.
As my clerkship was winding down and I was thinking about jobs, I reached out to dozens of people doing work that I found interesting. I talked to many of them on the phone about their careers. I was struck that very few of these people intended, in any meaningful sense, to get where they were. Many had started in different lines of work. They were in their present role because they happened to come across it, or because they needed a change, or because (I kid you not) the state government agency where they worked was deemed unconstitutional.
I continue to be encouraged by those conversations. They’re a reminder for me that it’s very difficult, perhaps impossible, to make long-term plans. The best one can do is to take the next step, and make that step the best one you can. Despite the fortuitous nature of their paths, the people I talked to seemed happy, in roles that fulfilled them even though they never particularly sought them out. I too, have found joy in my career by pursuing, one step at a time, the things that I found interesting and important. It’s led me somewhere I could not have imagined, but looking back I wouldn’t have done it any differently.