A Lawyer’s Case Study: Jenn Arnold, University of Michigan Law School – College Bound Mentor Podcast #13
Welcome to the College Bound Mentor podcast! Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all.
This is Episode #13 and you’ll hear what to consider when looking at law schools with Jenn Arnold. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!
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College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #13: A Lawyer’s Case Study: Jenn Arnold, University of Michigan Law School
Considering going to law school or pursuing a career in law or public policy? This is the episode for you. We welcome on special guest Jenn Arnold, a “Double Wolverine” from the University of Michigan Law School and undergrad who now works in the Legislative Counsel for a member of the House of Representatives. Hear what to consider when looking at law schools, how to take care of your mental health in law school, the keys to success in law school and in your law career, he biggest myths and truths about law school, and why you should write down the main reason you went to law school in the first place. This episode covers everything from law school to becoming a lawyer. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- What should you consider as a future lawyer when applying to college?
- How do you make law school enjoyable?
- What do you do as a Hill Staffer?
- How do you decide on a law school?
- What surprised Jenn about law school?
- How do you get your first job out of law school?
- What are some myths & truths about law school?
- How do you pay for law school?
Connect with Jenn on LinkedIn, and subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com.
Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.
Show Notes
- A Lawyer’s Case Study: Jenn Arnold, University of Michigan Law School
- [0:19] Welcome to College Bound Mentor
- [0:28] Lisa Bleich
- [0:30] Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com
- [0:38] Connect with Jenn on LinkedIn
- [2:13] What should you consider as a future lawyer when applying to college?
- [4:24] How does your major inform your career?
- [6:28] How do you make law school enjoyable?
- [9:49] What’s the hardest part of law school?
- [11:08] What do you do as a Hill Staffer?
- [12:58] What did Jenn do before law school?
[14:23] How did that experience inform her law school education? - [15:18] How do you decide on a law school?
- [18:17] What surprised Jenn about law school?
- [19:51] What was easier than expected about law school?
- [21:15] How do you pay for law school?
- [23:15] How do you get your first job out of law school?
- [27:58] What are some myths about law school?
- [29:29] What are some truths about law school?
- [29:55] What final thoughts does Jenn have?
- [30:22] Connect with Jenn on LinkedIn
- [30:24] Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com
- Theme Song: “Happy Optimistic Americana” by BDKSonic
What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?
Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.
Transcript
Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Jenn Arnold 0:02
So many people tell you, don’t go to law school. We don’t need more lawyers. I say, if you think this is the right path for you, go.
Lisa Bleich 0:19
Hey CBMers, welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. I’m your host, Lisa. And on today’s episode, we’re going to chat with one of our former clients and friends, Jennifer Arnold, about her path towards becoming a lawyer. Jenn Arnold is a double Wolverine who graduated from the University of Michigan Ford BA program in 2016 and Michigan Law School in 2021 she knew that she wanted to work on policy after her very first high school mock Model UN conference, a decision that only solidified each public service internship. She now works as the legislative console for a member of the House of Representatives. So welcome, Jenn. It’s so great to have you on our podcast.
Jenn Arnold 0:58
Hey, Lisa, thanks for having me on. I’m so excited to be here, and I’m so excited you’ve been doing this podcast.
Lisa Bleich 1:05
I know you’re one of our biggest fans, which I really appreciate. So just for some context, I have known you your entire life, even before you were born, right? And I have seen you grow into this badass lawyer that you are today. And I would say our professional relationship began when I helped you with your college applications, and then again, when I helped you with your law school applications, I actually went back. I mean, I remembered your essay, but I went back before this, and I reread your essay. I don’t know if the last time you read your essay for college, but you talked about, you know, how you were at girl state and you were passing a bill around marriage equality and why it was so important to you, and now you actually pass bill for in real life, which is so cool to me. So when we started this podcast, I know you were really one of the first listeners, and I appreciate that. And we were talking, and I thought it would be really great to have you on, because we work with a lot of aspiring lawyers, and you had an amazing journey into into your career. So I wanted to hear about your your career and your journey. So think back, you know, to high school. What was important to you, like when you were thinking about colleges, when you were thinking about majors, as
Jenn Arnold 2:17
you alluded to, I am at least a decade out of high school now. Thank you so much for helping me with my college journey and then my law school journey. When I was looking at colleges, I remember, as you said in my bio, I knew I wanted to do public policy for like, the longest time, and so I was looking at schools with public policy programs. And I was, I think you pushed me more towards or you encouraged me more to go towards public policy rather than poli sci, because in your understanding of it, and what ultimately was true was that it was, it was a little bit more application focused. And indeed, it’s exactly the stuff I am doing now. It’s thinking through, who are the stakeholders, what are the different policies and the pros and cons of that? So that was the first thing I was looking for. I also I applied to a variety of different sizes of schools, but ultimately what was important was having a large enough school to have options in case public policy wasn’t the right thing, or to supplement that. So I had a business minor too, which I’ve been able to use, not in the business world so much, but in my role understanding the business community, which is so important, you know, as a stakeholder for for policy. And then the final thing was looking for a place where I felt community and felt home, felt at home, and that was the University of Michigan. I sort of fought going there because I had grown up there, and I was a third generation Wolverine, my grandparents, my parents, had gone there. And I was like, I’ve always wanted to go here, but I’m going to do something different now, right? And then, with every every tour of someplace else. I was like, No, Michigan was the right place, and they had a football program. So it
Lisa Bleich 4:07
was great. It was all good. It was all good. And I remember, I still remember, those conversations where you kept trying to like another school, but you kept getting pulled back to Michigan no matter what you did. So you mentioned that you were a public policy major, and then you minored in business. So tell us a little bit more specifically, like, how did your major inform your legal career?
Jenn Arnold 4:26
So in another you know, tale of Jenn’s trying not to do something that she’s ultimately called to do. Everyone had so many people who did public policy poli sci were going to do their law degrees, and I was just like, I’m going to be different, and I can be different. No one in my family was a lawyer, and so it wasn’t something I’d been as exposed to. And I was like, I can make a great career doing something else via another path, and I could have I. But ultimately, it did inform ultimately I chose to pursue law because I saw that all the public policy internships that I was doing, they were really augmented by having some sort of graduate degree, and that a lot of the people who were doing what I wanted to be doing had some sort of graduate degree, and I decided to pursue law instead of a master’s in public policy or Master’s in Public Administration, because at least my undergrad professors said that you’ve sort of gotten what you need to out of this undergrad experience. It’s not necessarily going to be that new. And so I wanted something different. And then the law career, I decided, ultimately, because it gave me the option to do a variety of things afterwards, rather than just policy or just public administration. And
Lisa Bleich 5:56
that’s actually a really interesting point, because when you go to a school like Ford, which is known for its public policy, similar, if you go to Ross, which is known for business, or you go to a really strong undergraduate business program, you do learn a lot of the same things that you might learn in a graduate degree. So did you find that when you got to law school that the what you were learning was interesting? I mean, because I remember when you started law school, you didn’t love it. It wasn’t like, you did not like it, like, I don’t think you liked it. What, till maybe your third year, correct? Yeah. So what? What changed like, why didn’t you love it? And then what ultimately got you to like it?
Jenn Arnold 6:34
Honestly, the thing that got me to like it was the covid 19 pandemic, and getting to do it online, okay, which is not going to be the same for everybody. Yeah, we
Lisa Bleich 6:43
don’t want to wish that on people, right? We don’t want that to happen again. No, absolutely
Jenn Arnold 6:48
not. And that, of course, made it worse for many other people. But the reason that that made it good for me, and the reason it was hard for me before was I went in knowing I didn’t want to be a, quote, real lawyer, at least, to start with, I wanted to, I am a real lawyer. I have passed the bar, I am licensed to practice. But I knew I wanted to do policy. And so I was chasing a I wasn’t chasing the same gold stars as everyone else. And so when people were doing journal, which is for those of you who aren’t don’t know law school, like the the academic Law School journals are edited and chosen basically, and run by law student organizations. So I didn’t want to do journal I, you know, wasn’t excelling in all my classes. We will definitely say that I held down the curve. And this is the first time that I did not understand what was going on, but I didn’t know that I didn’t understand until the one exam at the end of the semester, and then I, you know, not have a great grade. And it wasn’t frustrating that I didn’t have a great grade. It was frustrating that I didn’t know that I didn’t understand until then, because I really thought I did all of that to say when we went online, it was an opportunity for me to type up my notes. And I know that their common practice is, you know, everybody who writes their notes, which is what I always done, right, retain information better. But here now I was able to reorganize my notes, or go through them more consistently and more easily. And that was the semester that. And then, because of that, I was able to, you know what, rewatch lectures or speed them up so that I paid attention more. And so that was and then I wasn’t surrounded by all of these really wonderful people, but all of these wonderful people who were doing who were chasing different gold stars and maybe feel FOMO and and so I was able to just focus on me and my interest in the law and interest in these subjects, without sort of the competition that while I was at a very, very friendly school was like, still too much competition in my brain for
Lisa Bleich 8:57
for what I what you wanted to do, right, right? Because you weren’t looking to get into one of the top law firms or to do that right? And so that’s if you are that’s a very different path in terms of the experiences that you do, the extracurricular activities, and the grades that you need to have when you’re coming out of law school. So it’s interesting that you said that you thought that you understood it, but you didn’t actually realize it until you took the test. So what is it about law school, just in terms of a, I don’t know if it’s a mindset or in terms of the way that you have to approach the education. That wasn’t something that you grasped right away.
Jenn Arnold 9:31
Yeah, that’s a good question. I felt like I got the big picture, and I think I did. I heard that, you know, we were talking about in class the jacket. I even heard that it was, it was the blue jacket. And I was like, great. I can write about the blue jacket on the exam. I got that, yeah, what everyone was actually talking about was the stitching and the buttons. And I just didn’t recognize that those were important words. I just, I just went, Oh, the blue jacket. Okay, great. It. It zips up, you know, sort of thing. And so I I wasn’t as, like, detail oriented, honestly, as I thought I was, or at least in the ways that that were useful for law school, which is paying attention to the language differences to argue your case,
Lisa Bleich 10:16
right? That makes sense, right? Because in law, everything is a legalese. And so there could be a different way that you, that you stipulate something, and if it’s written one way, then it can mean something very different than if it’s written another way. And so you weren’t recognizing the nuances in the language. And then I would imagine, does that come into play in your career as well? It does,
Jenn Arnold 10:36
and thankfully, I can pick up on some of the nuances that I know are important that you know the Secretary shall versus the secretary should you know are? I still don’t always pick up on the nuances, and that’s the great thing about being a House staffer for a member, is that there’s a lots of other experts to rely Yeah. So when
Lisa Bleich 10:58
you think about the law in terms of what you’re doing right now, what are, what is your secret sauce? Like, what are the things that you bring that maybe somebody that’s really pick a you and, like, notices the details is great at that. But what is it that you bring that maybe they don’t have? Yeah,
Jenn Arnold 11:11
so, so part of being a Hill Staffer is the importance of, like, networking and not just knowing people, but knowing who to turn to. Because, particularly on the House side, you cover, you know 18 different topics, and so you’re not going to know everything. I am good, and I’m learning to even be better at going, Oh, who can I reach out to? Who is the expert there? That’s probably number one. Number two, as a lawyer, I do bring more knowledge of the law and how you know if we’re overturning or we’re working on abortion related policy, like, how does that actually impact LGBTQ rights? Because it’s all related to the right to privacy. And so I can, I can be careful, or I’m aware of that sort of sliding scale there. The other thing I bring as a lawyer is many times I write, or heavily write my bills the first round, versus people who aren’t might lean on the great resource we have, which is the Legislative Council office, where you just sort of bring them an idea or an outline, and then they write it all and Go back and forth with you and such. And so I bring some of the writing, they bring more of the writing, they bring more of the nuance, but I’m able to bring the the outside expertise, and I’m able to bring the idea, got it so
Lisa Bleich 12:33
it sounds like it’s more like that big picture that you wasn’t maybe so helpful in law school is now helpful when you’re actually in your career that sort of way, just, yeah, right, right. So it just, you just had to get there. You weren’t there. Yeah, you needed to just get through it to get where you’re at. What did you do between law school and college? Because you said that you were resisting going to law school, you know, and then you decided that you were going to forge your own path. And so what did you do between the that time? Yeah, yeah. I
Jenn Arnold 13:00
had worked on or I worked for the GW University, George Washington University, School of Medicine as an assistant in the Dean’s office. And I had done that because when I came out of undergrad, I knew I wanted to be in DC. I wasn’t super keen on starting off as a staff assistant on the hill, because at that point in time, you would be paid 25 to $35,000 a year. And yeah, exactly that is since raised, and it is a more livable wage now. But in order to get up to DC and do something that wasn’t that, I applied for a temp job at GW and was placed in the School of Medicine, which was great because I’d also, I’d focused a lot on international affairs in my undergrad, and is now what I’m back to. But I was really interested in in doing public health related things. And this was the first I had no experience in public health, and this was the first sort of health related thing that came across my desk. So it was just a temp job. It was supposed to be temporary as any temp job, but I then ended up staying, which maybe wasn’t my best decision, but got me to where I am now and so, so yeah, how
Lisa Bleich 14:17
much do you think that experience informed your law
Jenn Arnold 14:21
school application a lot? Yeah, maybe not the substance of it so much, I’ll do a little, because I had done the most exciting thing when I was at GW was when I was helping the Deans on like, some school strategy, ie policy. And so I was going, oh, there’s still a policy through line, right? And, or the exciting the most the other most exciting thing was working with the legal department to sort of comb through contracts and. And I was like, oh, okay, if this isn’t like, deathly boring to me, then maybe I can do
Lisa Bleich 14:57
law school. I kind of like. Yes, yeah, that’s interesting. So when you applied to law school, you actually had a lot of really great options, because, of course, you wrote such an amazing application, right?
Jenn Arnold 15:08
Thank you Lisa and thank you all for your help. Yes,
Lisa Bleich 15:12
and, but again, you you had this conflict about where to choose. So tell us a little bit about what were your choices and how did you make your final decision? Yeah, so
Jenn Arnold 15:21
I ended up having, like you said, some great options. I had applied mostly to T 14 schools and got into a handful. So at that time, University of Michigan, Northwestern and Duke, I think, are the ones that I remember. And then a couple of additional ones of interest to me, which were Boston University, GW, George Washington University and Vanderbilt. And I did, I think, admitted students stay at like most of them. And really did see a difference in the teaching and and so that was why I ended up going limiting it to the T 14 that was also helped along. George Washington University was an easy one for me to drop, because I knew that I wanted to come back to DC in order to do policy work. And so I wanted, I was like, Oh, well, I might move around in the future, this is kind of my last known opportunity to be somewhere else. And so many people who want to do policy stay in DC, you know, Georgetown American GW, George Mason. But I was like, No, I’m pretty confident in my ability to come back. I want to be somewhere else and explore something else for the time being, among the top schools that I was lucky enough to get in. I didn’t have to think about the financing as much. I had gotten a really good scholarship from University of Michigan that I was able to use to negotiate either the same amount or the same percentage at other schools. And then I chose Michigan because I wanted it felt the best. I wanted a place where it was integrated with the undergrad campus, so that I wasn’t just law all the time. You know? I wanted to remember that there were other things and other people doing really interesting things around me.
Lisa Bleich 17:15
Did you interact with other people, like when you were at law school? Were you able to interact with other graduate students or other students and other disciplines
Jenn Arnold 17:22
less than I would have liked. Law school did take up a lot of time, yeah, but, but it was really good to like be interacting with my undergrad friends who still lived in the area and their grad school friends, just at like, different parties and stuff and again. Just be remind, like, mindful that, oh, there are people who are not just studying criminal law and Elder Law, like 24/7
Lisa Bleich 17:45
so right? There are other things in the world that are going on in terms of what you can do. Yeah,
Jenn Arnold 17:49
yeah. Brings me back to here now, and like, again, being sort of a generalist. And what I love so much about my job is I’m not just doing one type of thing all the time. I have to know a little bit about science and tech or agriculture or foreign affairs or whatever else, so it’s been helpful. Yeah,
Lisa Bleich 18:08
well, that kind of brings me on that question, like, what’s something that you were super stressed out about and you spent hours worrying about that ended up really not being keys to your success? Like something that was really not it had no bearing on your success, but at the time, it seemed like the end of the
Jenn Arnold 18:25
world. All of my stress was warranted. Lisa, I do remember that law school was the source, and has been the source for a couple of other people, of like, the start of autoimmune disorders. Thankfully, that was not it for me, but I did 1l year break out like my eyes broke out in hives for like a week as I needed to finish this paper for my legal writing class. You’re not making
Lisa Bleich 18:55
a very good case for law
Jenn Arnold 19:00
school. I will be very honest about how hard law school is, but I totally advocate for if you think it is the right thing for you to, like, go and do because, yeah, it will open the doors to get you to the place you want to be. You just got to remember that when you when you’re in there, that’s right,
Lisa Bleich 19:15
it’ll pass. It’s only two years, so you gotta get but it sounds like 1l and two over, probably, well, 1l is probably the worst, right? Yeah,
Jenn Arnold 19:21
yeah. And I think, I think so much of that is because not only are you in a new space, but you’re learning how, like a new school system works. Law school is fun for many people. It was not for me, but I still advocate for it to get to where you may want to be, yeah.
Lisa Bleich 19:37
On the flip side of that, what’s something that you didn’t really think twice about, but something that ended up being one of the keys to your success
Jenn Arnold 19:46
in law school, I don’t know, because I think I was pretty deliberate in sort in trying everything so that i knew i. So I knew where I wanted to end up while still having exposure to everything, and that has helped me be the generalist that I need to be now.
Lisa Bleich 20:08
So it sounds like just taking advantage of everything, not really getting so focused on one specific thing. And that’s always what I think you’ve always liked, is knowing a little bit about a lot of things and then being able to bring forget the right people. So maybe that’s one of the things that you maybe take for granted, is what you talked about a little bit earlier was your ability to reach out to the right people and knowing whom to call, but not necessarily having to have that specificity or that expertise yourself, but knowing who the experts are and bringing them together.
Jenn Arnold 20:36
Yeah, right, yeah. And speaking of knowing the right people, it was very helpful to have everyone you could, like, run your story past or cry to, and like, help sort of coalesce what is my vision for my future, and like, right, right, make it happen. So, yeah,
Lisa Bleich 20:52
so that’s your secret sauce. You just maybe didn’t realize it, or maybe you’re realizing it now. So, um, I learned from your experience that when you go and work for the government or work in public policy, that there are loan forgiveness that is accompanied with your financials, financing your law degree, and you had nice scholarships, and so would you have done something differently? Because I don’t think, I don’t think we knew that going in, I don’t think that you knew that going in, in terms of the financing piece of it. So what would you recommend for students who are perhaps thinking that they might want to go into public policy on how they finance their education, and how much do you get back each year?
Jenn Arnold 21:31
Are you talking about the lrap programs, the loan assistance, loan
Lisa Bleich 21:36
that, and also, when you’re working that you get, they’ll pay part of your loans back. Yeah. Okay, great. So
Jenn Arnold 21:41
yeah, the L rep program, which I can’t think of what it stands for, but assistance program I knew about going into law school, and because the every school advertises that, and I didn’t pay, I didn’t quite understand the nuances of everything, but I knew that Michigan had a great one, and so I was like, great. I can, I can do that in case I don’t go on the hill, or don’t have the public loan forgiveness program through the government coming onto the hill. And I don’t know that this is true across the other branches of government, but it’s definitely if you’re in Congress, I learned as I was applying for jobs that they have a program where they pay a little over eight they can pay up to a little over $800 per month student towards your student loans, and that’s tax deductible up to a certain amount, and then they’re tax free up to a certain amount, and then afterwards, it’s taxed. But I found that out, like six months before applying, and it definitely did help me negotiate better when I was coming up here make the post graduation a little easier in terms of not having to worry about student loans. And thankfully, they were all paid off this this year. Fantastic. Well, I
Lisa Bleich 22:56
think that’s wonderful. That’s great. So it took you what, five years, no, you graduated 21 so three years 21
Jenn Arnold 23:02
Yeah, that’s not that at all. Yeah, that’s
Lisa Bleich 23:04
awesome. Yeah, that’s great. All right, so tell us about your career now. Like, how did you get your first job? What are you doing now? Just tell us about it.
Jenn Arnold 23:12
So my first job was actually the GW one, which I will plug only because I literally walked into the GW temp office and, like, gave my resume and had my interview right then and there. So for all great is that I know all you parents telling your kids, do it. Sometimes it does work for my actual career, which is which is now being legislative council for a member of the US House of Representatives. These were just cold applications I had looked on the Hill list serves, there’s a listserv for both the House side and the Senate side. And I was just sort of trolling, looking for positions the legislative assistant title is where I felt it was appropriate for me to come in and looking for things that I was interested in covering, or had a background in covering and it was just a cold application. I got really lucky with this office. And actually the member that I work for was also a Michigan law graduate, but I didn’t find that out until I was interviewed, until I was preparing for my interview for the job. It’s fantastic now I just absolutely love it.
Lisa Bleich 24:21
So tell me what you so tell like, on a day to day, you said you’re working with a lot of different issues. A lot of you have to know up to 18 different topics. So like, what’s it? What’s a typical week look like?
Jenn Arnold 24:32
So there is no really typical week in Congress. I feel like it’s always infatuation. If we had to choose a typical week I cover certain like parts of his portfolio, so and on the House side, especially, it’s much smaller teams. And so as a person on the legislative team, you cover a lot of topics. And so if there are votes on the House floor about agriculture, defense, veterans, foreign affairs, I have to figure out where he might stand on the. Bills and give him a recommendation and the reasoning behind that. We also have hearings every week, and because I cover him, he sits on the foreign affairs committee, and I cover his foreign affairs portfolio. So every week, there might be a hearing on Afghanistan or or we’re on the Western Hemisphere subcommittee. So you know, Mexico or Venezuela, or whatever global thing is happening, and I have to prepare him to know what’s going on in that region of the world, because he might not be paying attention to sure there’s a lot he has to juggle. And so make sure he’s informed on that and then, and then prepare the written remarks and questions that he’s going to ask of whatever witnesses come in and and that is partially knowing what to ask and knowing the topic, and partially knowing the people. So for Afghanistan we we have a large Afghan population in Arizona and a lot of refugees who came over after we withdrew from Afghanistan, and so, and many who served alongside US soldiers and so we’ve highlighted their story a lot because we’re we want to pass a certain bill, the Afghan Adjustment Act, that would allow them to be here as permanent citizen and permanent residents, excuse me, so that they there’s no threat of them being deported back to Afghanistan, where the Taliban are, of course, just cutting women out of sort of every part of society right now. So it’s, it’s knowing those people. It’s, it was actually getting him on the Afghan Adjustment Act, which we could only do if we got on with a Republican. So I had to negotiate with a Republican and try to convince them that this was a great bill, you know, sort of thing. So, so it’s preparing for hearings, it’s preparing them for votes, and then either getting us on new bills or or writing our own bills to try to move forward a space that he cares about.
Lisa Bleich 26:53
Yeah, that sounds amazing, and it’s like such great work that you’re doing. And it’s so amazing to think that, like, you know, when you were in high school, you were were doing this at the girl state and Model UN and Youth in Government does it almost sometimes, like you pinch yourself, and you’re like, Oh, my God, I can’t believe that
Jenn Arnold 27:10
I’m actually doing this. It does, like my partner’s heard all of my ups and downs, you know, and different frustrations and and especially we’re in the minority right now. So when, when the other part of the party, in the majority is trying to, like, stick it to Democrats, you know, or whatever, and and so I can come home very frustrated, but it is such a joy, and the capital is such a beautiful building to work by. And like, I know I’m making a difference. And, yeah,
Lisa Bleich 27:41
it’s everything. It’s everything you wanted. I mean, you like, it’s so amazing to see you grow into this amazing young woman. Or I’ve already been there. We always like to play this game with our guests, which is, like, myths. You know, Myths and Truths. So what would you say are some myths that you’d like to bust about either law school or the legal career
Jenn Arnold 28:01
first myth I’ll bust sort of to negate myself earlier, some of the things I was saying, like so many people tell you, don’t go to law school. We don’t need more lawyers. I say, if you think this is the right path for you, go. I am not a practicing lawyer, but I find it very helpful to have the letters after my name as a woman in the workplace. I find it very helpful to just know that I could intelligently, hopefully, go off and do a variety of different things to help people, either in policy, education, you know, business or, you know, in any sort of public service. That’s the first myth. Second myth is, if you you’ll hear that a lot of people do journal, which I spoke about earlier, and that was one thing that just made me want to cry. And and there are other opportunities. What I was told, and what seemed to be true was, you know, if you don’t do journal, then make sure you’re involved in other activities too. And so I led our Alternative spring I was one of the leaders of our Alternative Spring broke break programs, which also was great because it allowed me to go have more hands on experience during law school, because so many times you’re like getting didactic learning and in the classroom and feeling removed from why you came there. And so I was the head of a couple of clubs, and that was sort of the alternative there that still showed leadership to future employers without having to do journal any truths, the fact that it’s hard, the fact that it like and, and my advice there is, write down why you went to law school and like, yes. Like, hold that very dear, because it will be hard, but I think it’s worth it. Yeah,
Lisa Bleich 29:45
awesome, yeah. Well, thank you so much for being a guest on our show. Is there any any last words of advice that you want to give before we do the do the out show?
Jenn Arnold 29:54
I think last word of advice is find as many things in it that make you happy, whether. Be people or or the activities that you can do to have that practical application, the alternative spring breaks that go into homeless shelters and helping people sign up for their federal benefits, because we as lawyers know how to navigate that more easily. Find that externship, find whatever else to reroute you on why you were there and how you want to help people that’s
Lisa Bleich 30:23
awesome. Well, thank you cbmers for tuning in and Jenn, thank you for being a guest and a fan. To catch more episodes of college about mentor. Make sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast to learn more. Visit CollegeBoundMentor.com Until next time, you got this!