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trying to figure out which route to take after graduation and am curious to hear from people working in these areas, particularly if someone has experience in both.

what do you like about it, is it easier to move from one to the other, does doing policy right after law school close off litigation options, etc. Thanks !!!

I think this will depend on specifics, but it seems to me that going from policy to litigation would be harder than the other way around, in that without any litigation experience, you would have to go back to the beginning and work at an entry level, and that might look weird to employers. So if you spent 5 years (random number) litigating housing cases on behalf of tenants in low-income housing (say), you could probably jump to some kind of policy work on low-income housing based on your experience with those cases - like you worked in NYC and saw that issue X was a consistent problem in your clients' lives, so go work on how to improve issue X. You would have a hard time doing low-income housing policy work for 5 years and then trying to litigate those cases, as policy work seems to be to speak in generalities and you would need to know how to help low-income tenant Joe Schmoe sitting in front of you. Statistics about how issue X is playing out over the city won't necessarily help you represent Joe Schmoe on his specific case with his specific facts.

However, the question would be how related your litigation experience would be to the policy work you were doing. I also think it would be hard to go from litigating low-income housing cases for 5 years and then jumping to policy work on, say, immigration reform or legalizing recreational MJ or something else unrelated.

But I also think career paths tend to be kind of convoluted and unpredictable, so it's hard to say for certain.

A. Nony Mouse wrote:
But I also think career paths tend to be kind of convoluted and unpredictable, so it's hard to say for certain.

So you're saying: "it depends" ...

Minnietron wrote:

A. Nony Mouse wrote:
But I also think career paths tend to be kind of convoluted and unpredictable, so it's hard to say for certain.

So you're saying: "it depends" ...

yes. I am a lawyer. It's constitutionally required.





(mostly I'm actually saying that you don't know where the hell you're going to end up 10 years from now so there's only so much it's worth worrying about.)