The first thing you need to know is that your legal career won’t be linear. The second thing you need to know is that that’s a good thing.
It wasn’t long ago that I was like you. (Actually, it was long ago – 23 years – though it doesn’t feel like it.) So I get it. We’re all HLS folks. We’re full-blast, type-A, hyper-competitive, mega-achievers. You’ve probably got it all mapped out in your head: prestigious clerkship, elite law firm for a bit, maybe stay and make partner, maybe head off into finance or politics or public service. Hopefully cram in a family somewhere along the line.
It won’t play out that way, most likely. (Again: this is good.) I’ll use myself as an example. During my 1L summer, I applied for Law Review. I didn’t expect to make it, but I thought I had a puncher’s chance. Turned out, my instinct was right. The school’s most prestigious publication politely declined me. Instead, I poured myself into clinicals – primarily, Harvard Defenders. That unexpected experience absolutely lit me up. I knew it from my first case (involving a fistfight between roommates in Dorchester that started when my client ate the other guy’s leftovers out of the fridge): this was what I wanted to do.
At some point, I planned to clerk for a federal judge, but I didn’t get the right offer in the right city at the right time. Nonetheless, I started my career in fairly conventional HLS manner, at an elite, Vault-approved, top-whatever-number law firm in Washington DC. I thought I’d hate it – the stodgy partners, the billables, the corporate clients, the crazy hours. I was wrong. I had a great experience. I met warm, wonderful, people who became lifelong friends. I got to travel all over the country. They let me spend hundreds of hours working on pro bono matters, including a death penalty defense. Sure, any law firm gig necessarily entails some drudgery; I handled my share of Fourth Amended Supplemental Interrogatory Responses (pro tip: everyone denies everything) and moldy-basement document reviews. But, all in all, it was an unexpectedly satisfying way to start my career.
Still, after three years at the firm, I decided to make a run at the job I knew I wanted: Assistant United States Attorney for the Department of Justice. I applied first to my hometown U.S. Attorney’s Office, in Philly. Candidly, I thought I’d be a shoo-in: local kid, HLS, when do I start? Turned out: never. They, like Law Review years before, politely declined. And so did a couple other U.S. Attorneys. Finally, with a blend of chutzpah, bravado, and nothing-left-to-lose, I applied to the most prestigious and selective U.S. Attorney’s Office in the country, the Southern District of New York.
I haven’t told this story publicly, but I will for you. (You have my permission, in advance, to laugh at me.) On the day of my final interview at the SDNY, an administrator called me and said they hadn’t yet received one of my required recommendation letters, from a partner at my law firm. They told me to just get a hard copy from the recommender and bring it up with me. So I called up the partner and asked him to email the letter to me. He did, and I printed it out just as I walked out the door of my apartment to catch a train into New York for my final interview.
None of it was planned, all of it happened
Now, nobody ever said this explicitly, but I kinda knew I wasn’t supposed to see the letter. But there it was, right in my hand. I had to take a peek. (Really: you wouldn’t?) As I sat on the train, I read the first line, which went something like this: “While Elie isn’t necessarily among the most intellectual of associates, he is outstanding at dealing with people and he’s great on his feet.” So, basically: he’s dumb but you’ll like him. I didn’t know what to do. Throw the letter out and pretend I never got it? Instead I figured, well, nothing I can do now. So I handed the letter to the administrator and hoped for the best.
Turned out, the U.S. Attorney at the time hadn’t gone to some elite law school, and he didn’t give a crap about intellectualism. He was much more concerned with whether the applicant was a decent person and a hard worker who could deal with real people. The letter, it turned out, couldn’t have been more perfectly tailored to the guy making the big decision. I got the gig.
I spent the next fourteen years as a prosecutor – eight and a half with the SDNY, then five and change leading the criminal division of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. I did things I’d never have imagined: tried mafia bosses for murder and racketeering; argued cases in the federal court of appeals; built a case that resulted in the rescue of over seventy human trafficking victims; had gangsters’ families spit venom at me and call me names in the press (though “Hotshot Honig” was really more of a compliment, if you ask me); helped reform our criminal justice system in New Jersey. None of it was planned. It all happened.
And then, five years ago, I was ready to move on from the prosecutor’s office and found myself at another moment of uncertainty. The traditional path would’ve been to go back to a big law firm and make a boatload of money. Instead, I took a job teaching at Rutgers, my undergrad alma mater. And, just days into that job, I did my first tv spot for CNN.
It’s maddeningly circuitous, and the signage is lousy
I had zero intention to go into media. It just happened that this was the summer of 2018, at the apex of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation, and the cable channels needed former prosecutors who could explain what it all meant. I liked it, I was good at it – though I needed plenty of work – and they kept bringing me back. A few months later, I signed with CNN. Now, I’m on air every day, and it’s the core of what I do. I even get to use those dormant trial skills when I break down complicated facts and law into digestible, relatable segments; I used to have the luxury of a couple hours to explain it all to a jury, and now I have maybe four to five minutes to do the same thing on air.
Even now, nothing moves along a straight line. I tried for a few years to write a book, but no publisher was interested. Then one summer day in 2020, out of nowhere, an editor for Harper Collins contacted me through a one-sentence Twitter direct message. Two days later, we had a deal. Eight months later, we had a book. A year and a half after that, we had another.
People sometimes ask me how to follow my career path into the world of television and legal journalism. My answer is that, while this is a great career, it’s also not exactly a “path” – or, if it is, it’s maddeningly circuitous and the signage is lousy.
So I can’t guide you down whatever route you’ll go someday. You’ll figure that out as you go. I can tell you this: it won’t go as expected, and you’ll be grateful for that.