Pursuing a Career in Litigation

by Melanie McCormick, GGU 1L

Editor’s Note: Thank you to 1L Melanie McCormick for sharing her impressions of last week’s panel on Pursuing a Career In Litigation. If you missed the program, you can watch a video recording here. A special thank you to the ABA Section on Litigation for sponsoring the event. You can learn more about the Litigation Section here.

When you hear the word “Attorney,” it conjures for me an impassioned trial advocate emphatically arguing the guilt or innocence of their client, like that scene in A Few Good Men, where Lt. Dan Kaffee attacks Jack Nicholson’s Col. Jessup, “I want the truth!” The reality is that many attorneys do not practice in a courtroom (and many try to avoid it). Those that do, the real life litigators, do not resemble the crazed, you-can’t-handle-the-truth types. As was made very apparent at last week’s panel on “Pursuing a Career in Litigation,” real litigators are poised, calm, and clear. Their arguments are planned and organized. The panelists helped clarify a few things about the nature and philosophy of the world of litigation, and the path I, and other future litigators, need to go to reach it.