Career planning and setting professional goals are a key part of defining your legacy in the law.
Former NJSBA President Jeralyn L. Lawrence led a panel at the Annual Meeting and Convention that discussed the importance of finding purpose as an attorney and how that realization guided their career paths.
Lawrence moderated the panel with Maritza Rodriguez and Linda Mainenti Walsh. Speakers included state Supreme Court Justice Lee A. Solomon, Supreme Court Clerk Heather Joy Baker, Jey Rajaraman of the American Bar Association, Robert A. Bianchi, Jeffrey W. Mazzola, Cheyne R. Scott and Nicole Tierney.
To start the discussion, Lawrence asked attendees mull over two questions when they leave the seminar:
If you had all the money in the world, what would you do for the next three years?
If you retired today, what would your retirement speech say?
Justice Solomon, one of the few public servants to have worked in all three branches of state government, said his varied career before elevating to the Supreme Court included more failure than success. He never had a solid vision for his career, but determined that he would learn from every experience, both good and bad.
“When you learn more from failure than you do from success, you can look at life as improvement not perfection,” Justice Solomon said. “Life directs you, you don’t direct life.”
He added: “If you want to be successful in life, deal with people, not computers. In every job I had, some where I had to manage hundreds of people, I believed in management by walking around.”
Like Solomon, Baker said she never envisioned a career with the Supreme Court after graduating from law school. A clerkship with retired Supreme Court Justice Jaynee LaVecchia changed her life and opened the door for new possibilities in the law, she said.
“Not only did the clerkship teach me how craft an argument, how to approach things the way a judge would, the experience framed my understanding of what you can do with a law degree,” Baker said. “I didn’t understand the variety of paths and roles that are available. I saw what the Judiciary and public service could be.”