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I received a pretty good clerkship in a pretty good District. After I complete my clerkship, I am thinking about traveling abroad to China to spend a year studying Chinese and maybe getting a LLM or some worthless degree in the meantime (maybe even 2 yrs). My soulmate is Chinese (but lives and studies in the USA). I am thinking about it, but I am worried about the impact it'll have on my legal career. Would large firms look at this favorably? I would try to become fluent in Chinese. My soulmate would be able to get a very high paying position in a large city in China, so money during that time wouldn't be a big deal. I am just worried that it'll F-up my legal career. If not for the track I'm on I'd definitely do it (law school-->clerkship-->law firm). Does anyone have an idea of how bad this would be for me?

Gaps in your resume never look good. You'll basically be cold applying to law firms during your time in China; I don't even know how you're going to do interviews until you get back to the US, which means probably being out of the job market even longer than your time abroad. Considering that every class starts around the same time, it'll probably be too late for you to join the class immediately starting when you return. No firm is going to let you defer well over a year after your clerkship so you can travel the world. They don't care if you speak Chinese or not.

If your resume is alright, then it might be fine. But you'll basically be mass mailing places, and the success rate for that isn't that great or predictable. And I'd kinda question your commitment to working at the firm with such an unusual resume gap.

OsamaJerry wrote:I received a pretty good clerkship in a pretty good District. After I complete my clerkship, I am thinking about traveling abroad to China to spend a year studying Chinese and maybe getting a LLM or some worthless degree in the meantime (maybe even 2 yrs). My soulmate is Chinese (but lives and studies in the USA). I am thinking about it, but I am worried about the impact it'll have on my legal career. Would large firms look at this favorably? I would try to become fluent in Chinese. My soulmate would be able to get a very high paying position in a large city in China, so money during that time wouldn't be a big deal. I am just worried that it'll F-up my legal career. If not for the track I'm on I'd definitely do it (law school-->clerkship-->law firm). Does anyone have an idea of how bad this would be for me?

I totally get the wanderlust. I totally do, especially when coupled with something emotionally important to you.

That said, this really really is not a good idea if you want to be a lawyer at a legit firm.

Thanks people. So if I do this I should do it with the expectation that returning to the US to be an attorney (especially at a legit firm) might not be a possibility.

Interview with a biglaw firm that has a Beijing or Shanghai office (assuming your SO can find a decent job in these two cities). Ask to be transferred there for 1 or 2 years and make it very clear that you want to be transferred back afterwards. Enjoy the NY pay plus 60k-90k COLA (plus low cost of living & shitty air quality). The downsides I see are, first, you might not be able to go into your dream practice area, unless you want to do capital markets, M&A, PE, funds, or FCPA. There might be a few openings for IP/tax/arbitration folks. Two, you might be too busy to take any serious Mandarin classes. But you are gonna pick up some basics quickly while living and working there.

Anon above. Just want to add that if you are from good schools with good grades, transferring back is not that hard. You might be cut a class year if you are changing practice areas.

Career wise, it's not necessarily a good move by all standards of objective conventional wisdom. But there's something to be said for "following your heart" and pursuing something that you think will make you happy. Life is short, and tenure in the legal profession can often be short, and one day you might regret not taking an opportunity like this (moving to China) that was available to you when you were younger. If you're interested in law upon coming back from China, I think as long as you show employers that you're not "turning your back" on the legal profession by somehow becoming a better lawyer while you're abroad (through a masters, job, volunteering, etc), then it can limit the career "damage" while allowing you to have this awesome experience. But be prepared to explain this. I was in a similar situation to you (not exactly the same but similar) and most lawyers/other professionals I spoke with were just envious. Contrary to the beliefs of most lawyers/law students, being in the legal profession does not have to be a miserable, set-in-stone path.

I mean if you get an LLM, you will be treated like an LLM graduate (maybe you do OCI? idk how it works). If you're unemployed, you're gonna be treated like any other lawyer who is unemployed and looking for a job.

I'd just take a month or two between your clerkship and start date at the firm and spend it in China in an immersive language program or something. I can't imagine 1 month in China + job making $190K < 1 year in China + unemployed at the end. Unless your plan is to follow your soulmate to China permanently, in which case I'd be learning Chinese *now* and trying to get a position at a BigLaw firm in HK

It would be legit if you did it through the Schwarzmann Scholars program.

plus low cost of living & shitty air quality

As a native I disagree with the first part.

If you are talking about Mandarin Chinese (Cantonese or Taiwanese isn't very useful in professional settings), it can be a boost if you are really proficient, as in doing business and holding conversations with clients/Chinese business partners in Mandarin. In some practice areas Mandarin language skills can be more useful than others. Knowing the language could potentially increase the odds of getting employed, but your language skill has to be at the advanced level. Many, many people have learned some Mandarin, but only a few go beyond the intermediate level. Also, going beyond the intermediate level takes a long time. Unless you have already learned some Mandarin, one or two years isn't nearly enough.

If you take this opportunity, you need to be confident that you are indeed capable of mastering the language. Objectively, it's a very, very tough language to learn for a native Indo-European language speaker. Nothing is similar with the latin alphabet you're accustomed to. The phonology is complicated, given that it's a tonal language. A friend who took Mandarin in high school says the learning process feels like he's walking through a maze on the side of a steep mountain while blindfolded, with trolls coming to sabotage his progress periodically. I've read a comment somewhere that learning Japanese is smile cry, learning German is cry smile, learning Mandarin is cry cry.

That said, the experience varies. It could be easy for you if you click with the language and the instructor. I've seen many professors and grad students from East Asian Studies having a larger vocabulary than most Mandarin natives; I've met someone who told me that aside from German, Mandarin was the easiest language she had studied. After all, there's little grammar, no gender, no gendered pronouns and no complicated system of tenses. The experience also depends on the language instructor. The learning process will be much harder if you learn it in the wrong way. I recommend going with a non-native instructor. Mandarin native speakers can be very helpful to practice with, but they usually have a hard time defamiliarizing their mother language to themselves, and they don't really know what the learning process is like to study from scratch.