Public Defender Transition to Tech/Start Up Practice? Forum

[fratstar1]

Hi All,

I'm a public defender thinking of transitioning to a different career mostly because of burnout but also for salary reasons. I love the job but the caseloads, COVID practice with indigent populations, and potential family plans have made me consider a transition. I've been in practice coming on 5 years. Plenty of accolades and lots of success at my job. Graduated top half at t-30 strong regional (GW, BC, BU etc). Opening up a solo shop for criminal defense doesn't appeal to me.

I have a couple of ideas. It seems common in my jurisdiction to try and get another lawyer job in the local or federal government. My feeling is that another public sector job might lead to similar issues.

For these reasons, I'm considering either trying to find a white-collar litigation group at a private firm or trying to expand practice. I've been interested in the start-up landscape for a while and would love to work as a lawyer assisting a start-up corporation. I have some corporate experience pre-law school but obviously no practical legal experience. I was looking into LLM programs that might give me some training a couple stood out:

Cornells LLM in Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship. They seem to gear it to people who have little experience in tech. It also seems to offer pretty good employment outcomes 30% in-house, 30-40 % in law firms/legal tech; 25% in policy gov jobs.

https://tech.cornell.edu/career-managem ... -programs/

Someone tell me this is stupid.

[nixy]

I mean do you want to take on $93k in debt for an LLM?

[fratstar1]

I mean do you want to take on $93k in debt for an LLM?

Sure yes. That would be a lot of money. Although maybe the outcome would be a salary more than 60k for the rest of my life.

[nixy]

I guess my main concern would be what those numbers actually mean - like what law firms, what companies? Can you ask the program to put you in contact with alums to find out more? I’d be curious to know what kind of backgrounds the alums have (did they do the LLM right out of law school or was it later in their career, did any of them make such a drastic job pivot or did they already have this kind of stuff in their background, did any have jobs lined up already, what did Cornell actually do to help them get the job vs drawing on pre-existing networks?). Because I’m not trying to discourage you, but that’s a heck of a career pivot and I’m never sure how much most LLMs (besides tax) actually create additional job opportunities versus giving someone a year to network and apply like crazy. (Which in itself can be helpful, I suppose?)