What in the world is a lawyer doing learning to code? Shouldn’t I be off writing briefs and preparing for court somewhere surrounded by a wall of hardbound statutes and one of those little lady justice statutes? Yeah, I’m wondering the same thing at the moment. Not because I regret the CS program, but because I feel like I’m a stranger in a strange land. No, not in a “Martian dude starts a free love cult” kind of way. More in the sense that, if you told 2019 Kristina that she would quit her job to learn how computers do things and stuff, she would laugh at you in Bluebook citation (bonus points for getting the reference).
Imagine, it’s my first day of class. I’m still naive enough to think that I can work an 80+ hour litigation job and start OSU’s program in the evenings…or at least weekends…or really whenever I find a hour or two away from work. It’s still pre-pandemic era and the work-from-home trend hasn’t hit our collective lives just yet. I’ve gathered all my notes, CS 161’s syllabus, and I’m excited to be a student again! After all these years! My fond memories of late night studying, writing papers, spilling coffee on my faded band-teeshirts, and collecting pizza boxes on the floor. It will be like old times! And I know how to turn a Word document into a PDF so I’m sure I’m ahead of the curve. (Narrater voice: “she had no idea how behind the curve she was). I log in this “Canvas” thingy, and I see Tim Alcon’s friendly face guiding me through running my first “python” program.
Um…I’m sorry…what? What is this PyCharm you speak of, and why am I spending precious non-work hours trying to get my computer to do something as rudimentary as print “hello world”? What do you mean I have to “debug?” Hang on, now I need to understand what a “variable” is? Can’t I just tell my computer what I want it to do and be done with it? “Alexa, make my computer work please…”
There’s a reason why the legal field is stuck in the stone age and most equity partners require their paralegals to hand them paper printouts of pleadings, later storing them in bankers-boxes, slowing building a monstrosity of dusty old client-archives like the library in The Pagemaster. (Told you I’m old). Lawyers, broadly speaking, are not tech savvy. We most likely grew up loving to read and write, and wanted a career that would make us lots of money that didn’t involve math or the sight of blood and needles. Needless to say, my “it’s like riding a bike” attitude towards my returning-student status deflated faster than something, something sports 2014. There’s a joke in there, go find it.
Does this sound familiar? Did you transition from a completely different field and had no idea what you got yourself into? If so, you’re my people. Nevertheless, I can look back and see how far I’ve come in terms of understanding code, accomplishing complex tasks and projects, and establishing a solid base of knowledge in how computers run, walk, talk, and how they like their tea. If you have an Acorn computer, it prefers Earl Grey with a bit of lemon and sugar. You’re welcome.
Even though my coding knowledge has grown by leaps and bounds, I will still encounter situations where I feel absolutely overwhelmed and contemplate whether I belong amongst such amazingly smart and talented colleagues. Just today, my capstone project group spent 3 1/2 hours peer programming where I literally watched in awe of my teammate casually vomiting fully functioning, drop-dead gorgeous code into his editor during screen share, all while providing us a smooth, coherent voiceover akin to YouTube coding tutorials. How am I worthy of the same OSU degree as is this exemplary human specimen? I don’t belong in this world of software engineering and the ever-evolving tech industry. I am a tourist.
So, there you have it. A lawyer’s journey into the tech world feels like someone took my perfectly organized trial binder, pulled me from the courtroom podium, locked me in an escape room filled with strange symbols, and the only clues to break free are written in an alien language that breaks with a single error. The confidence I once held is replaced with hours of anxiously grinding, the not-so-occasional ugly crying, and typing in frustrated circles until the code gods toss me an instance of luck. But there is something to be said about falling from grace. When we venture outside of our bubble of prior experience, we realize just how little we actually know and how incompetent we are. It’s not the “years in the making” comfort zone that we create, from working in the same field, that shows us who we are and what we can overcome. It’s at ground zero where we timidly feel around for a life preserver, making the deliberate choice to overcome; that is what defines us. And this program has been one of my defining moments.
