How to go from JD Advantage to attorney? Forum

[jdpreferred4]

Graduated in May and accepted a “JD advantage” job, didn’t take the bar. I changed my mind about not wanting to be an attorney. I want to at least give it a chance before I decide I never want to practice. I plan to take the bar in February (while working—yikes).

How difficult will it be to make this transition? How difficult will it be to convince legal employees I want to be a lawyer? Should I pretend like I never had this JD advantage job on my resume? My worry would be that it looked like I did nothing for a big chunk of a year. Any advice is welcome

[QContinuum]

How difficult will it be to make this transition? How difficult will it be to convince legal employees I want to be a lawyer?

I understand the desire to avoid providing potentially identifying data, but I think you've anonymized things a bit too much for any of us to be able to help. "JD Advantage" is a huge, yawning category - it potentially covers every single non-lawyer, non-retail job out there.

So the answer to your post right now is: It's impossible to say. If you're spending a year at McKinsey, or even a year at a Big4, that's very different from spending a year doing, I dunno, marketing for an apparel company.

[jdpreferred4]

How difficult will it be to make this transition? How difficult will it be to convince legal employees I want to be a lawyer?

I understand the desire to avoid providing potentially identifying data, but I think you've anonymized things a bit too much for any of us to be able to help. "JD Advantage" is a huge, yawning category - it potentially covers every single non-lawyer, non-retail job out there.

So the answer to your post right now is: It's impossible to say. If you're spending a year at McKinsey, or even a year at a Big4, that's very different from spending a year doing, I dunno, marketing for an apparel company.

I'm in the trust/estate admin area... so it isn't something very impressive to add to my resume like time at a Big4, but I think my job really does legitimately fall under the JD Advantage umbrella without being too far-fetched like marketing. I agree with you that I didn't provide enough info. I guess what I'm wondering is if I should take the February bar, leave my current job off my resume to avoid suspicion from legal employers and go from there? I've debated whether to quit my job to just focus on studying but I'm afraid of how long I could be unemployed doing that.

Let me know what other information I could provide that might help. (I hate that I feel like I screwed myself by making the decision I made... *face palm*)