W. David Ball

What follows is how I think about career choices. It's based on somewhat more general considerations than just subject area, and I think it opens up different ways of thinking about career choices and, perhaps, generates new opportunities. It also helps you pick what kind of law you want to practice within a given subject area. That is, even if you know what kind of law you want to practice (say, privacy law), you still have to figure out what kind of practice you want to have (in-house, clients, etc.)

Over the years, students have found this framework helpful. Perhaps you will, too.

The three questions I think are important to answer are what do you like to do, what are you good at, and what do you want out of life. Here's a bit more about that.

The "What do you like to do" really has to do with day-to-day work. Do you like meeting with clients or not? Do you like having a bunch of little things to work on or a few big ones? Do you like working in a team or by yourself? Do you like research and writing or not? Do you like negotiating or not? Do you like public speaking or not? These are all activities that you spend most of your time doing, and I think that researching and writing about privacy law has more in common with researching and writing about criminal law than it does with public speaking about privacy law. So do your due diligence and ask people what a typical workday looks like. Everyone's going to have some fantastic day where they did wonderful things, but you want to know what people spend most of their time doing.

The second question is "What are you good at?" I want to make clear that I'm a big believer in the plasticity of human brains. If you're not good at something, you can always improve at it, and I think you should consider what skills you'll be acquiring during law school, during a summer job, throughout the course of your career, etc., more than what domain of the law you are acquiring them in. So it is more important, say, to do a deposition, or write a motion, than it is to do that in the area of the law you're interested in. Having said that, there are going to be things you're good at that you don't like doing. You might be good at writing motions but not like it. Or you might like something ("I'm really fascinated by juvenile justice") but not have the chops for it. Basically, this is where you figure out what things you want to earn your living doing and what things can be hobbies. You can be interested in something but not pursue it as a job--or at least you should know that you won't be able to do everything you love at every job.

And obviously, if there are things you don't like and aren't good at (for me, that means kissing up to people--I'm bad at it and hate it), you need to figure your way around it. For me, that means pitching my policy ideas to people who are more patient and gentler so that they can spread them more widely.

Finally, there's the "what you want out of life" question. This could be anything from "I want to live in the Bay Area" to "I want to have time to go surfing every morning" to "I want to effect change" to "I want to have time to raise children." If there's something that's important to you, consider it. That will eliminate certain jobs, and it will also help you decide what kinds of opportunities might get you what you really want ("I get to live in the Bay Area, which is more important to me than working on patents").

So, putting all of these together, once you figure this out, you can have productive discussions with people about your career--but, of course, it requires a lot of introspection on your part ahead of time. And even within a given realm, you have other questions. If you want to do policy work, for example, you still need to figure out what kind of policy job you want. Do you want to write reports? Do you want to lobby officials? Do you want to be a permanent staffer to a congressional committee? Do you want to do impact litigation? Do you want a job (like at the ACLU) where you can do a little of everything? And even once you get to that level, you still need to think about office culture, opportunities for advancement, whether the skills you learn will be portable to another arena, etc.

This is just a general framework. If you've read this, then, by all means, come and talk to me about what you're thinking. Career counseling and problem solving is part of my job, and it's a part of my job I like!

How I suggest you think about policy questions

W. David Ball

In law school (and beyond) you will often be asked to come up with policies to address problems. Rather than jumping straight to the policy, I think you’re better off beginning further upstream, being clear about what, exactly, the problem is and why you think it arises. So, whenever I get a policy question in real life, I ask these four questions:

What is the problem?

What is the theory of the problem?

What policy addresses the problem via the theory?

How will I know if it’s working (metrics)?

I’ll talk about each of these a bit more in turn.

For the problem, I mean something specific. It can’t be something like “drugs” or even “opioids.” It has to be something more akin to “Americans are becoming increasingly addicted to opioids.” But notice how this framing of the problem is different from “Americans are dying from opioid overdoses.” Notice how each of these is, in turn, different from saying “Americans are increasingly addicted to opioid-based painkillers” or “Americans are increasingly addicted to heroin” or what have you. The last two point out particular vectors of addiction, whereas the first two lump them together but isolate different results of use (addiction and dying). When you state the problem with specificity, you go a long way towards figuring out what theories and policies are on the table. Focusing on the problem also requires you to make the case for why the problem is important. This might mean detailing the significance of the harm: the number of people who are addicted, the number of people who die, the harms to family members from death and/or addiction, the economic losses due to medical treatment and lost work, etc. It also might mean teasing out the mechanisms through which the problem arises. Is a single-event overdose the real problem? What about ancillary harms of needles (HIV, hepatitis infection)? Are overdoses intentional or accidental?  You might also consider whether there is a tractable part of the problem you want to address and use that as an entry point to diminish the harm.

For the theory of the problem, I mean why it is happening. For opioids, our theory could be that Americans are prescribed too many opioid-based painkillers by their doctors. For overdoses, it could be that, in an unregulated market, people don’t know the strength of the drugs they’re taking and they end up overdosing accidentally. It could be that the price of heroin is so cheap (and prescription drugs so expensive) that people can buy more heroin. These theories are best if they have empirical support, but note that many of these theories are, in turn, dependent on other theories. Do people choose drugs based on price? Then the price of heroin matters. If price is relatively unimportant to drug consumption, then the price of heroin doesn’t matter as much. But we should be able to tell whether it’s true whether (and how much) price drives drug usage—either the level of usage or whether it happens at all.

If our theory is, instead, “too many prescriptions,” we should have theories about why doctors are prescribing too many opioids and what, exactly, “too many” means. (Too many patients per doctor? Too many pills per patient? How can we determine what too many is—do we have a sense of what the right amount is?)  But the hidden theory here is the one that posits that prescriptions lead to addiction. So is it true that most people who have opioid prescriptions become addicted to opioids? If not, and if it’s just a subset, then we should know what factors lead to addiction beyond merely having a prescription.

Once you have these two questions answered, the policy choices follow—but note that there are a lot of ways of addressing individual theories and problems. I think it’s best just to note a few examples.

Let’s say the problem is opioid addiction and the first theory is that foreign heroin is cheap (with the implication that heroin is a good substitute for opioids and price drives usage). Our policy might then be to eradicate foreign poppy fields and work on international drug interdiction. Note that if we’re wrong about the provenance of the heroin (i.e., that it’s domestic, not foreign), then the policy will fail—but only because our theory was wrong. We might also consider whether, if this succeeds, and the supply of foreign heroin diminishes, then people might either continue to use prescription opioids or shift to something like fentanyl, which is much harder to interdict.

Consider the same problem (opioid addiction) and a theory that people get addicted because doctors prescribe too many painkillers (and people get addicted accidentally, or they divert their legal prescriptions to the black market). We might then have policies like increased monitoring of individual doctors, to make sure they aren’t writing a lot of prescriptions, or we could have individual patient limits (only a 2 week supply per patient), or something similar.

Imagine that the problem is not addiction, per se, but overdose deaths. This will show you how the framing of the problem alters the individual theories and, therefore, the policies. Our theory might be that, with lack of standardization of heroin (as opposed to standardized opioid pharmaceuticals), people accidentally overdose. Our policy could be something like free drug testing kits (to test for potency of heroin or for adulteration with fentanyl or carfentanyl), to make sure that people know how much they’re taking, but it could also be decriminalization and regulation of heroin so that it comes in standard, trustworthy doses. (Heroin, by the way, was a trade name used by Bayer when it was legally marketed as a pharmaceutical in the late 1800s/early 1900s, so this is perhaps not as outlandish as it might sound.).  

Taking the same problem (overdose deaths) but a different theory—that deaths arise from lack of medical supervision—we might propose as a policy safe injection facilities. Or, if our theory is that those around overdose victims are reluctant to call 911 because they might expose themselves to criminal liability, we might propose “good Samaritan” indemnification for those who dial 911 in the event of an overdose.

But merely stating these policies isn’t enough—even before we get to the measurement part of things—because there will be knock-on effects from them. Could a “good Samaritan” law extend too far and give dealers immunity? Or, as I mentioned above, could heroin interdiction result in more fentanyl being imported? Could decriminalization lead to more use of heroin, and thus ultimately lead to more heroin overdose deaths—or, at the very least, to greater addiction?

For the final question, I think it’s good practice to state metrics for your policy—even though this isn’t something that often happens in the world. I think it’s important to have some measure of accountability with policies to make sure they work. If we enact a new policy and it does nothing, perhaps we should do something else. So, in the example of the problem of addiction, we might want to be clearer on what addiction means, or what level of usage is problematic, and how we will measure that (surveys, etc.). Note that what we can measure is often not the ultimate variable we want to change—that is, we could measure the tons of heroin seized under an interdiction/eradication policy, but, if our theory is price, we would be more interested in seeing what that has done to the street price of heroin, or even to the ultimate problem, which is what seizing tons of heroin has done to levels of addiction. (If the levels of addiction haven’t moved, then the issue could be not that the policy was ineffective, but that circumstances changed.) Levels of overdose deaths are a little clearer—we would want to see what overdose deaths were like, though we might also want to control for deaths per user (or to consider whether our measurements of heroin usage and deaths attributable to heroin are as accurate as they can be).

So, that’s it. Figure out the problem, figure out the theory for why the problem happens, address the problem with a policy that acts on the theory, and measure the results.

Now go out and change the world!

W. David Ball

Here is an email I sent to a student about how to use LinkedIn. I hope some of you find it helpful.

---Dear X--

I just added you on LinkedIn--but you should've added me and all of your SCU professors a long time ago! We have lifetime jobs--the only reason we are on LinkedIn is to help you get jobs. So I think the best thing you can do now is to add liberally (not strangers, though) and then start to look through people's networks to find someone who does what you are interested in doing (or, barring that, what you are willing to do).

I've found that LinkedIn works best in a couple of ways: if you have an interview somewhere, find someone who knows your interviewers and get them to make a call _before_ the interview so they can talk you up. That way, the interview is all about confirming how awesome they already believe you to be.

Another way it works is to get out there with a limited "ask"--so find someone you'd like to talk to and offer to take them out for coffee. Say "My name is ____, I just graduated, I'm awaiting bar results, but I am very interested in X area of the law and our mutual friend Y suggested I get in touch with you." As long as you check with Y first, or have Y make the introduction, you're all set. (But if you're going to ask someone to make an introduction, write the email for them--you want to make it as easy/frictionless as possible.) When you meet with them, have a card with your contact information on it, do your research on them, treat it like an interview even though they're not hiring. Then, if it goes well, you can just say "keep me in mind if you hear of anything opening up" and then add them to your network.

I'd guess a final way is just to look for other alumni of SCU law and your undergraduate institution.

So look through my network and see if there's anyone interesting to you. I also send along all the jobs I learn about to OCM.