Ep. 191 - Ezra Brown's First Gen Journey

of the way to college podcast. And I never anticipated where this podcast would take me or how it would introduce me to the number of guests that I've met and encountered. And I recognize that for me, this is a real privilege to be able to sit on the side and to share people's stories and to allow people, give people space to share their stories and their journeys. And I think one thing that I would like to reiterate is I think we all have a story. I think we all have a story worth sharing. And I think it's important that we share those stories and that we talk about our journeys and sort of the ups and downs and all of the different maybe challenges, obstacles that we've all experienced as we've navigated this thing we call life. Today I have an exciting guest. I'm eager to hear his story. I've gotten bits and pieces of it. We've had a number of correspondence as we've tried to set this up. This is actually, I think an interview that's probably a year in the making, I think. But Ezra, why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners and viewers out there? Yeah, thank you so much, Jose. My name is Ezra Brown. I'm an attorney in my fourth year of practice. And thank you so much for having me on the show. Happy to share anything that would be of value to your listeners and definitely share some of my story and what it was like becoming an attorney the first in my family, what it was like going to law school, some of the culture shock that I experienced going to University of Texas where there's a lot of high expectations and a lot of pedigrees. And it was an environment that I was really not used to. And then going into practice and going into quote unquote, big law and what that was like. Awesome, awesome. All right, Ezra. So as with all of my guests, I always ask if you had to identify a starting point for educational journey, or would that starting point be for you? Yeah, so I think if I'm going to focus on, you know, becoming an attorney specifically rather than say, you know, a professional or going to undergrad, which I'd be happy to talk about as well. I think there's three particular points that I highlight. And the first one is when I was very young, I like to argue, I like to write, I liked to stand up for, you know, justice and stand up against injustice. And that's always sort of been a part of my personality and people have always, you know, at many attorneys will tell you the cliche of, you know, people and family telling you when you're young, you should be an attorney. And that cemented and I, you know, I always had this idea floating around and that led to when I finally did go to undergrad and I was debating about, you know, what my major should be, what my focus should be. I picked political science, you know, thinking that was a good precursor to law. And at that point, it was such an amorphous idea, but I think that was the first point in which I identified that journey to becoming an attorney. The second point was when I first really started to take concrete steps. And I think that was in about 2015, when I first picked up an LSAT book. And that was when those expectations and those dreams kind of got subverted. And I started to realize some of the real tangible challenges and weaknesses that I had in comparison against other folks who want to go and become an attorney. And I remember at that point, you know, at my first LSAT study book, you know, the LSAT is the law school admissions test for those who might not know. And I picked up just, you know, a random one from, you know, a bookstore and it was the Kaplan study book. And I remember at that time I was living with my grandma and she was giving me some advice about, you know, she didn't really know much about becoming an attorney either, but she was kind of going off what she knew, you know, and she was like, oh, well, we've got this state representative. And he went to Hofstra law school. This is the best law school, I think. And let's go look at Hofstra. And, you know, we got this Kaplan study book, you know, I'll jump now to the third stage to give some context to that, which the third stage was actually very luckily, I think for me, I didn't end up applying and going to law school that year in 2015. It wouldn't be until about, it wouldn't be until four years later that I actually attended law school and I got sidetracked on a lot of other things that I'm grateful for because that slowed me down and made me think about this path and made me realize that, for example, that Kaplan study book was one of the worst study books I could have possibly got. And all of the methodologies in there were completely wrong. And it was a very, you know, Kaplan is a very generalized test prep company. So they didn't have the specific knowledge that, you know, they didn't have the specific strategies that people should actually use for the LSAT and come to look back that this university Hofstra law, you know, nothing, not to knock it out. You know, there's a lot of people who go there and have very successful careers. But when you talk to legal practitioners or people who really know this area, you know, it's an unranked law school. There's a lot of challenges that can come out of it and you're racking up a lot of debt. So what my perception was then, you know, really changed. And I think that at that point that I got really slowed down from the years of 2015 to 2019 when I finally went to law school, that I think was a really, really important point that I was grateful for and actually ended up really grounding me in figuring out the correct strategies and how I can best support myself in applying to law school. Ezra, thank you for identifying those moments now as a host. I appreciate it because you've given me a couple of moments to pick from and to go back and ask for a little, ask us to go a little deeper. But one thing I would like to note is thankfully, Kaplan is not a sponsor of this program. So, but I appreciate that. I appreciate you talking about that. We'll get into that. I want to take a little step, a couple of steps back Ezra. And I just want to ask, you talked about growing up and enjoy it like you would like to argue, right? And you wanted to speak up about justice. And so there was an encouragement to pursue law and go to law school. Now, I want us to go a little further back and I just want to know growing up was college always something that was expected of you and your family? Yeah, so I think it was. And that, I think I owe a lot of that to being raised as a Jew. In Jewish culture, that's often, there are these expectations that you'll go to college or even a lot of Jewish families that I've heard from, you'll be either a doctor or a lawyer. And that's the expectation. I think with my family, my mom has worked every job imaginable from New York City taxi driver to waitress, to police officer, to all kinds of different, really incredible hardworking blue collar jobs. And my dad has been in restoration, construction, renovation his whole life. So despite the fact that they, both my parents are not professionals, I think they still, I think they still because of, I think partially because of that Jewish culture and because of the expectations there, they wanted a better life for us than they may have had or they wanted us to have more opportunities than they may have had. So I was very thankful for that. And so I think that was a big part of it. And I think the Jewish culture also comes into play with these values that come from the religion, such as this idea of Sadaka, which is this idea that we have an obligation to give back to the community. So I was very steeped in that from an early age as well. And I was very much encouraged and ultimately enjoyed doing a lot of volunteer work, volunteering at nursing homes for the elderly and community events and things like that that were part of my obligation to give back. And so I think that was part of that Jewish culture that led to this expectation that we would go and get a formal education. But it was also the hard work of my parents. They wanted us to have education from every step of the way. And they wanted us to have an early childhood education and then a grade school education and into college. So I was very thankful for that. And they really put in a lot of work and a lot of thought into where they would raise us. I was born in New York City, but they moved us, they moved to Western Massachusetts, to a rural town here, where I think they thought that the upbringing would better support becoming educated and becoming successful. You, thank you, Juan. Thank you for sharing that. And I appreciate you talking about sort of the influences not only from your family, but also from your religion and how those have kind of shaped your educational path. You spoke very openly about preparing for law school and getting your hands on that LSAT book. And I think, a lot of the stories that I share are from first generation students who, I think like you shared, right? If you're the first in your family to go to law school, to go to undergrad, to go to college, right? And I think anytime you're the first entering one of these spaces where there is, I think a lot of custom, a lot of the expectations, and in academic speak, they talk about the hidden curriculum, right? It can be incredibly challenging. And I think you spoke a little to that. Tell us a little bit more about that experience. And you talked about the shortcomings of that book. How did you kind of, I think navigate that and then to identifying UT law school, right? There are a lot of law schools around the country. Why UT law? Yeah, and as you mentioned, thankfully, Kaplan, I guess, is not a sponsor of the program and I don't wanna knock the whole company as a whole. And I'm sure they have certain study programs that are helpful, but for law school study programs, the reason I wouldn't recommend Kaplan is because like I said, they have a very broad range of study tools out there. They're a generalized study company. So they help to study for the SATs, for the GREs, for all these different tests, and LSAT is sort of one of the tools in their toolkit. So just to clarify for anybody who's looking to go to law school and looking for a good study guide, my recommendation and what I ultimately settled on would be a study company or somebody who is focused solely on the LSAT, and that's their bread and butter. They don't have these other distractions. So going back to that point, when I picked up that Kaplan book, I read that thing cover to cover. I really learned this tips and tricks and strategies that it offered, which were ultimately not the best strategy. So it did take me, I had to kind of unlearn those things and that's why I think I'm a little bit bitter of against that study book looking in the past. Because it actually, I think, detracted from my success with that test, but going back to that point, thinking about that moment in time, when I got that study book and I went and I toured Hofstra Law School and I talked to some really great professors and I think I met the dean there and everybody was very friendly, very encouraging. They had some great aspects of their program that I remember they had a courthouse right on campus, which seems like a great practical experience. So again, not to knock Hofstra, I think people could go there and get a great education. But I slowed down at that point and I ended up going and actually living in Taiwan for a couple of years and that decision and I think that decision really slowed me down and I'd be happy to talk more about that. It was an incredible experience. I went and taught English over there and there's a huge market for English teachers there and it's a great way to develop some skills, to earn some money, to be exposed to a new culture, to learn a new language, to meet some incredible people and have some life experiences that I have absolutely no regrets. And even more so, like I said, it slowed me down because there's a term that a lot of lawyers and law students use, which is K through JD, you may have heard, which is kindergarten through JD. People who just study right on through and by the time they've graduated law school, they've never had any practical life experience and that can work well for some people and it can work well, especially for people who have support systems in their life. And when I think back to, for example, that first inkling moments where people were telling me, oh, you're a great arguer, you're a great writer, maybe you should be an attorney. If I think about that point in my life and with the people who were close to me versus that point in someone's life who maybe has two attorneys for parents, there's an entire different support network that starts to develop because if attorney, attorney parents recognize that in their child. If I now had a child and I recognized that, I would start to develop those support systems, I would start to train that child immediately in the strategies and tips and tricks and maybe they'd be on the K through JD route and they would be very well prepared for that. But I was not at all and it was, and I didn't even necessarily realize how challenging and the things that I, the knowledge that I lacked. So when I slowed down and I went to Taiwan and I ended up working at a nonprofit after that, during all of that time, I started to engage with resources that could sort of fill that gap for me. And that was so huge. And a lot of those resources were things like, very similar to this podcast. There was a podcast, there was an LSAT podcast that I listened to. There were books that I read about going to law school. There, I ended up meeting some attorneys for the first time that around that time, I had never even spoken to an attorney. So like finding attorneys who were just willing to talk to me and willing to share their story. All of that was huge. And it came, and it made me come to realize that, you know, this vast infrastructure of law schools and applying to law schools and taking the test was very, very important to consider. And with the LSAT, something that's very important about that test is that law schools will mainly focus on your GPA and your LSAT score when considering admittance to those law schools and sometimes more importantly, considering scholarship to those law schools. And that was a huge aspect for me. There's this podcast called the Thinking LSAT podcast. And the guys who host that, they have a lot of really good advice. They're a little abrasive. They can come off a little bit. They're very blunt, I should say, and they're very straightforward. So, you know, just give people a heads up in that regard that they can, they actually, I submitted a personal statement to them to review on their podcast and they chewed me out. They were like, this is the worst personal statement. They're making fun of it and laughing about it. So they're very abrasive and they're very blunt, but it did give, but they were right. I mean, they were right about a lot of things. And one of the things I think that they're most right about is they say, don't pay for law school. They say, that's like their mantra is don't pay for law school. And it's incredible because that made me realize, listening to that podcast, that there was an option to not pay for law school. And to do that, you have to get a good score on this LSAT because if you get that score on the LSAT and you have a decent GPA, then there's a lot of law schools that will give you a very large scholarship because they're interested in increasing their rank. The law schools will, their rank will increase if they get people with these higher credentials because a lot of the rank statistics are based on your LSAT score and your GPA. So in listening to those resources and listening to people, I realized that, if I had thinking back on that point when I picked up that Kaplan book, if I had just kind of got a middle of the road LSAT score and then applied to Hofstra law, I could have had a career, but I may have come out of that with a massive amount more debt than I did and quite possibly not the same credentials, almost certainly not the same credentials as going to UT. So that was all of the thinking that shaped what eventually led me to apply to University of Texas and also apply very broadly. That I learned that the strategy for me was to, and for most people should be to apply very broadly. It can't hurt your chances. And there was tons of other strategies that I learned about waving your admissions fees. If you just ask, a lot of these law schools will actually waive their admissions fees for you in applying and applying broadly and even negotiating scholarships, which I'm happy to talk more about too. Oh man. It's so much, no, this is great. You know, not listening to it, right? Listening to your story. I think let's start with, okay, Ezra, I am a first-time, first-gen law school applicant. All right, and you talked about taking some time, getting some life experience, and then accessing resources. So if I'm a first-time, first-gen law school applicant, how would you advise me? What are the steps that I need to do in order to, you know, I think set off on the right path versus I think, as you've shared, right? You picked up that LSAT book, you learned it cover to cover, and not that it was a waste of time. I think there were lessons to be learned there, right? But if you're giving advice, so somebody else doesn't make that mistake, what advice are you giving them? Yeah, so I think the first step is going to be deciding whether or not this is the right path for you at all. And that's a very important first step, and it doesn't necessarily need to happen. You know, you can revisit that at different times. You know, you can check in with yourself and see if it's the right step, you know, after you take the LSAT, you know, before you apply to law school, once you have your offers. But it's a very important, it's a very important step because there's a lot of lawyers who will tell you, you know, don't go to law school. There's books that are written, I think there's a book written called don't go to law school or something along those lines. There's a lot of people who have that advice. And that's because it's a very expensive and time consuming path. I mean, you're giving up a minimum of three years of your life, likely much more because you've got the application process, you've got job interview process. So those are years of your life that you're not going to be making an official salary. And conversely, you'll actually be paying potentially massive amounts of money. I mean, to go to a lot of these law schools now, the tuition and fees are astronomical, like really unbelievable, sometimes in the $70,000, $80,000 range. So if you're going to law school without any scholarships, you can expect to come out with $300,000 in debt sometimes. And that can just be a massive hindrance on your life. So you want to make sure if you're making that decision, you are really sure about it and that that's the right path. So how do you know that? Well, I think first, become acquainted as much as you can with what a lawyer really does. You know, I think a lot of us have this idea in our head that often gets put there by media about what a lawyer does that it's all about, you know, they watch a lot of suits or whatever TV show it might be. And they think that being a lawyer is always, you know, being in the courtroom or doing these high level negotiations. Or, you know, but there's so much more to being a lawyer. A lot of it is just sitting there and researching or just sitting there and writing or proofreading or doing a lot of nitty gritty stuff. You've got to have a really good attention to detail. You've got to like to write. You've got to like to research. I mean, there are other sort of channels, but there's also a lot of people too who I think, oh, I could go and I could get a law degree and then I could go and become, you know, XYZ. I could, you know, go and become an executive director or a, you know, a politician or something like that or work for the foreign service. And, you know, that can be true, but like if you want to work for the foreign service, the probably the best way to do that is go to the school of foreign service, right? So you do want to be conscious about that. So I think that's the very first step. The second step, you know, is you've got to get over that LSAT hurdle. So I think, you know, finding the right study guide, finding a study guide or a tutor or a test prep company that is focused solely on legal education. So Seven Sage is a pretty good one. Test Masters is a pretty good one. There's some pretty good resources out there. You can certainly look at those. I would just avoid the very generalized ones, like what I mentioned, Kaplan or Princeton Review, you know, these larger test prep companies that don't focus solely on law. And then you've got to take the LSAT. So one of the ways that slowing down helped me a lot, you know, things have changed a little bit since I went to law school, you know, since I was studying. I mean, we're talking now about almost 10 years ago, but when I was going to law school, I don't know if this is the true anymore. They may have changed it. You could take the LSAT any number of times and the law schools would only consider your highest score more or less, because it would benefit them to only consider your highest score, because that's what would get reported for the purposes of their ranking. So I ended up taking the LSAT five times. You know, I ended up with a score that was successful that I was proud of, but it was not easy. It was grueling and, you know, picking up that wrong book at the beginning, I think was challenging and created that initial challenge. And the reason I did that, and the reason I had the wherewithal to do that is because I started to hear from these resources, from these podcasts, from people who had advised me to say that, look, this is actually really important, because it can be very tempting to take the test and say, well, this is the score I got and let's see how I do with admissions. But, and, you know, you think, well, do I really want to study for a whole another three, four months until the next test comes around? And that seems like a lot of time, and it seems like a lot of effort, especially when you're, you know, I was working at the time I was working for a nonprofit in New York City while I was studying. And, but ultimately, yes, the answer is that it absolutely is worth it. If you can bump your score up even five points from, you know, another three or four months of studying, that can make a huge difference because if we're talking about tuition of $70,000, $80,000 a year, you know, a combined, you know, $150,000, $200,000, that you're going to have to take on in debt, that else had score bumping it up 10, you know, five or 10 points or more can reduce that debt astronomically. So like, you know, if you think about the fact that, you know, your, your law school debt could be reduced by $100,000 from four months of studying, at that point in your life, you can ask yourself, would you work four months for $100,000? Would you work hard for four months for $100,000? And I think most people... Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So like when you frame it in that way, it really puts some context. And I'm not making this up about the scholarships. They really, they really are very flexible and very negotiable. And I was mind blown about how flexible they are. I'll give one short anecdote to that regard. When I, after applying very broadly and narrowing down a lot of my choices, I was sort of between University of Texas and UCLA. And University of Texas, you know, gave me an initial offer and I kind of negotiated with them. I said, you know, is there any way you can, you can raise this offer? And that was after also, by the way, they said we are, this is our final offer. And then they came back and said, yeah, okay, we'll raise it a little bit more. So that's my first tip is be just, it can never hurt to ask. Even if they say they're not going, you know, they're not flexible, just try and put your best foot forward and give your best argument. So then, so the Texas raised their offer a little bit on the scholarship. And then UCLA came in with a scholarship that was far under that. And so I said, okay, well, probably not going to UCLA just because of the debt and because LA is a more expensive city. So I wrote, but I wrote the Dean and I put together my best possible argument, my best possible negotiation that I could. And I said, look, I think your school is, you know, tremendous, you know, I think it's a tremendous opportunity. You know, here are my circumstances, X, Y, Z. Here is what I'm able to afford. And here is what UT is offering me. And to be honest, at this point in time, if that's the end of it, then I would go to Texas because I just can't afford that. And I swear to you, the Dean wrote back to this long email that I sent that is this carefully crafted thing. He wrote back in four minutes. It was four minutes time. And it was a, let's see, four word email with no punctuation. And it just said, we will happily match. And we're talking about a difference. So he's saying we will happily match the scholarship. You know, so he had the unilateral power as the Dean of that school to make a decision to increase my scholarship by, I think it was a degree of about $40,000 or $50,000. And he made that decision within four minutes unilaterally and just sent, we will happily match. So that's the kind of power that these Deans have and the kind of flexibility that they have. So I, you know, I can't emphasize it enough. I didn't end up going to UCLA because then I went back to Texas and then they said, oh, well now UCLA is matching, so we'll go up again. And so you can really negotiate these things. And when these schools want you, and they will want you if you get that high score from the LSAT, those schools would not have been interested if I had used my first, second, third, or fourth LSAT score. It was only when I got that five, that fifth and final score that I could really use that, use that as leverage. So I can talk about this a lot, but those are some tips that I would definitely advise. I mean, I think all of this is incredibly useful, right? So, you know, accessing resources, really being, I think, careful with, you know, I think test prep right is the way to go. I think a number of my guests have recommended that. And actually it's funny, you mentioned some of the names that you did because there's having a conversation with a couple of friends who, both of them attorneys, and I was asking them about their experience. And so they shared some of the names that you mentioned as reputable and sort of better performing, I think. And so thank you. Thank you for walking us through that. I wasn't aware, nobody had shared with me the, you know, about the importance of your LSAT score in relation to the kind of offer you could get, you know, as a student, I think that's phenomenal. And so thank you, thank you for sharing that. And also, I think putting into context, right? The, I've taken my LSAT, I've gotten it out of the way. And I think a lot of students are like, okay, I got over that hump, that's my score. And I'm okay with it, right? I'm gonna apply. But I think giving the context of, would you rather work hard for four months improving on that score, right? Or accumulate more debt, right? Paying on the back end, you know? So thank you for putting that into context. I appreciate that. Now, I think as is the case for a lot of us, when we get to college, when you get to law school, graduate school, right? There can be a shock to the system, because it's just a different environment. What was that transition like for you to UT law? Yeah, absolutely. There was a shock to the system for me. I had really no idea about pedigree and college and how, you know, this whole thing. I went to, so for undergrad, I went to UMass Boston, which was a state, you know, it's a state school in Massachusetts, it's a commuter school, but not, you know, it was full of people like me. And I felt very at home there. And I didn't even really, I didn't really even think about the fact that like, what Ivy leagues were, or what it took to get into them, or, you know, I didn't apply to them even, or even position myself. I wasn't really thinking about that. You know, I think that, you know, I've talked a lot about how my parents supported me really well, but they didn't really understand necessarily that kind of stuff either. They weren't really thinking about that. They were thinking about like supporting me in an education and going to college, but they didn't necessarily consider what college or why that mattered. I think cost, you know, was just a huge consideration. And going to a state school, you know, I relied on Pell grants, I relied on scholarship, and that was, you know, the central factor. It was like, oh wow, we can afford this, so let's do that. So when I got to University of Texas, it was, I was not prepared at all for the type of folks that were there, and the type of preparation, and sometimes the, to be totally honest, sometimes the cutthroat nature of the student body. I mean, one thing about law school is that it's graded on a curve. So I'll share an anecdote about that. So well, just to, before I share that anecdote, I'll just, what is the curve? The curve means that if, that the professors are required to have a median GPA when they grade a class of law students. So that means if somebody gets an A, somebody's gonna have to have a D or a C or something like that to balance that out, because their curve might be, you know, I think the curve at the median at University of Texas was 3.3. So that means you can't give everybody A's, because that would equal a 4.0. So you could maybe give everybody B's, but obviously there's gonna be higher performers and lower performers, so you've got to balance that out. But in theory, if you have a whole class of people who really crack down and do absolutely phenomenal, what do you do in that case? You have to make some hard decisions, and some of those people have to get lower grades, even at a school like, you know, University of Texas or somewhere where people are really working hard and trying very, very hard. So that's a very challenging thing. And it does kind of create this sense of competition. So for example, one, the anecdote that I was gonna share was one of my classmates in my 1L semester, just a few weeks in, I asked him if he wanted, we had been hanging out in a social setting, and I asked him if he wanted to study together for one of our classes. And he said, no, I only study alone. And I said, okay, I understand that everybody has different strategies, right? Like maybe you can focus better on your own. And he said, no, no, it's not that. It's that we're all on a curve, and your gain is my loss, and I don't do free handouts. He said that to me directly, and I was like so taken aback, I couldn't believe it. And just to warn people in case anyone thinks that's a good idea, he ended up dropping out in our 2L year, and that didn't surprise me at all. Because at the end of the day, you gain a lot more from collaboration, and the best way to learn material is to teach it or explain it to someone else. That's what I've found. So I would not recommend that strategy, but in these higher ranked schools, that wasn't everybody, but there were people like that. And the other thing that was very shocking was, I was not used to the degree and the pedigree, and the people who had come from backgrounds that were just steeped in law. And they knew UT in and out, they knew a lot of the legal concepts, they knew the classes well before they came. I was looking at my first semester schedule, and I'm like, okay, torts. I have a class called torts, what is a tort? Like I don't even know. I don't even know what this class could possibly be about. And meanwhile, I'm meeting people who have last names of these big law firms because their parents or grandparents are founding partners in these firms. I remember I got invited to, I was going on some dates with a classmate of mine, and she invited me to a football game. And I thought, oh, nice, this will be watching the longhorn and stringing some beers in the back of the bleachers or whatever. I get there and she hands me like this like plastic, like premium thing. And I'm like, she's like, come with me. We go up this elevator and she's like, this is my family's private box. And we go in there and she's like, this is my grandma, she's a federal judge. This is my dad, he's a, has this big firm. This is, and then Matthew McConaughey walks by and there's like a congressman who comes in and I'm just like, what is this? Like what is this world I've entered? So it was just an entirely different ball game where I was just, it was like a splash of cold water to the face. It was just something I hadn't experienced. So I did find people who were much more, who I was much more comfortable with. And I did make friends with a lot of folks who have different backgrounds, who have a lot of family members who are attorneys, who are steeped in that. And some of them are very nice and you would never know, they don't throw it in your face or anything like that. But one of the communities that I ended up getting along with very well was I helped to found the first generation law students group at University of Texas. And that was a really, that helped, I think, a lot with the culture shock and finding people that were on similar grounds and similar backgrounds to myself. Wow. I, you know, I regularly asked my guests about that transition, I'm given wherever the space is. And so I wasn't expecting to get all of that. But I can imagine the, absolutely the culture shock walking into the space and you're right, you're expecting to go to this football game, you're gonna sit in the bleachers and you're kind of just with your peers, right? And then all of a sudden you're going in and just talk about it, I mean, it is just a completely different experience. Very few people have that experience and that opportunity to be in that space. So one, thank you for sharing that. And then thank you, I think, for creating that space for students like yourself, students who, again, those first timers are first generation students who, I think people forget, people underestimate what that transition is like for somebody who's never stepped into that space to understand, to feel welcome, to not feel like an outsider, but also to sort of learn sort of those customs and expectations and what do I need to do so that I can not only fit in, but excel and do well. So thank you for that work. You graduate from UT and what was that transition like then now going from school into finding work into the type of law and hold on to that thought, but did you know the kind of law you wanted to practice? Yeah, so law school is very interesting in the sense that you really line up your job while you're in school, right? And most of the time it doesn't always happen that way, but there's a lot of pressure on you to, that directs you into certain jobs, especially at a place like University of Texas where it's the highest sort of ranking school in the state and in the South pretty much. And so you get a lot of targeted, there was a lot of targeted pressure from for example, big law firms. The very first day that you show up to orientation, you're getting these branded water bottles and you're getting these branded swag and then these law firms are coming into campus and they're trying to recruit and find the right people and they're hosting these happy hours and all of this stuff. And then meanwhile, you don't really have much of that from the public interest side of things. So I always wanted to go to law school to do public service, to give back, to help those in need, but I do think I got swept into the current of that big law. And I think part of what ultimately helped me to make that decision to go into big law was the fact that a lot of these firms now are starting to create space to do pro bono work, to do public service work. And that was never really a thing decades ago to my understanding, but now a lot of these firms, well, a lot of the biggest firms now even have dedicated pro bono partners or pro bono teams. And that's kind of where I found my niche is once I was in the law firm, they allow you to most large firms will allow you or say they allow you to do unlimited pro bono hours. So, and those will count towards your billable hours. So that was one of the most attractive propositions to me from going into a law firm is thinking, wow, I can actually have resources, I can have support, I can get my foundation laid, I can create a financial support for myself. I mean, the salaries are really astronomical. You can look them up, there's this whole thing called the crevasse scale where all the law firms move and lock step and pay a very particular salary to associates depending on your year. So it was more money than I could even fathom. But at the same time, I had this opportunity to do a lot of pro bono work. So I found myself kind of getting swept into that even though I wanted to ultimately go into public service. And I think a big part of that is because it's just, that is the direction that everything flows. They really, the law schools, a lot of them create this funnel into big law. And it's unfortunate in a lot of ways because there are so many other great jobs that sort of get left by the wayside because they don't, a lot of these nonprofits or government agencies or other organizations don't have the resources to compete with the big law firms in that sense. And then there's this whole process of on-campus interviewing that I'm sure you've heard a bit about where all of the law schools come and they interview. So I participated in that. I remember I did like 30 plus interviews over two days. It was just this pretty grueling gauntlet and ultimately got callbacks and then got two offers and ended up going to a firm that seemed like it would be a good fit, which was Gibson Done. And ultimately had a lot of really great experiences there. I stayed true to my passion of public service and contributed over a thousand pro bono hours while I was working there at Gibson Done in Houston. And to be totally candid, they, despite the policy of unlimited pro bono hours on paper, when I went to my performance evaluation, there was a little bit of, well, you did 500 pro bono hours. That's like 20% of your total hours. It's a little much, maybe we can scale it back. But then of course I started winning some awards, some pro bono awards for the firm and they kind of changed a little bit. And they were like, oh, this is actually pretty good. So there was a lot of, there was a lot of different aspects to that. But it was, that pro bono work was really incredible. And I was grateful to the firm for, allowing me to do that and supporting that. And I worked on tenants rights cases, tenants who were facing eviction. I worked, I was the lead attorney on a trial for a family law case where there was, she was, our client was a disabled veteran who was facing abuse at the hands of her now, thankfully ex-spouse and he was abusing her child. It was a really awful situation, but we ended up winning her full custody and a massive amount of child support. So like those wins and seeing, getting, seeing her reaction and getting, to see her life be changed forever. There's just no substitute for that. And that to me is meaning. And I worked with a lot of asylum seekers and other immigrants, Ukrainian, a Ukrainian family. I helped a young man to secure temporary protected status and then to get his mother into the country through the Uniting through Ukraine program. So all of those really cemented my interest in this work. And then ultimately I transitioned to Joan State's border project. So I've been working on the border project for the past year, which is almost like a, that was a full-time pro bono role. So, you know, I thought that would be a much more comfortable place for me where, that they have a full-time pro bono office supporting asylum seekers down in the Texas, Mexico border in Laredo. Wow. Wow. Thank you. Thank you for walking us through that. And also, you know, kudos to you for, for staying true to the work, the kind of work that you wanted to do and finding that work and, and then, and then continuing to do that work. When we jumped on the call, when we jumped on the call before we started recording, you talked about this transition that you're finding yourself in. Let's talk about, if, you know, if you're comfortable, let's talk about that transition. Tell us about where you're at now. And, and if you wouldn't mind talking about sort of deciding like, you know, I want to move in this direction. What was it that led you in this direction? Yeah. I think there, there are a lot of, so, so where I'm looking, what I'm looking for now is to move into the full-time public interest public service space. I don't really have an interest to continue working for big law. I came into the border project, I think with an open mind. I saw that they were having a huge impact down there. You know, they work with, we, for the past year, I've been working with asylum seekers and detention centers. You have these attorneys who fly down to Laredo and they volunteer. And my job was to train them up to get them situated, to get them oriented, to teach them the law, to teach them how to cons, consult, have consults with these folks who have horrific pasts, a lot of them. And we made a huge impact. I mean, it, you know, we've, we met with thousands of asylum seekers and helped them through the asylum process over the past year. And so I felt great about that. And, and I, I was skeptical at first because, you know, Jones Day has a bit of a reputation, but I was persuaded by going down there by, by visiting and, and seeing the work that they were doing. Ultimately, you know, I don't want to take up too much time talking about my decisions for leaving, but I'll just say that, you know, I think one of the big turning points was, one of my supervisors came to me just after the presidential election and said, you know, we need to check in because you need to understand that the internal policy is for the, for this administration is advanced acquiescence. So I want you to know that. And we need to be very careful about how you, how you continue to conduct this work and how we continue to conduct this work. And I think that for me was a big turning point where I realized I'm not sure that my values and missions are going to align with this. I don't know how we can continue to do asylum work if we are acquiescing with an administration that's doing the kinds of things that it's doing now. So ultimately I did, I think feel a little betrayed by the firm to be totally candid. And, and now I'm, you know, I think where I want to find a fit is in an area where I can, that will align with my mission and values. I've been interviewing with a lot of nonprofits. I've been interviewing for a couple of teaching fellowships as well. You know, I've had that experience teaching in Taiwan. I've had, you know, this past experience, this experience for the past year of supervising and teaching and orienting practitioners to the ways of immigration law. And I think I've, you know, I love being a mentor to students. I, you know, first found my footing, I think in a lot of clinical settings at University of Texas, where I got my footing. I mean, that was, that was some of the first, I mean, that was the first real practical legal work that I did. And I was so thankful to those mentors and those practitioners for showing me that, you know, I talked a bit at the beginning of this episode about how realizing what the nature of the work is and making sure you know, and you like that work and you're able to do it is such a big, important piece. So those clinical settings really helped to show me that yes, I do like this. And this is very meaningful helping these folks and working with indigent clients. So being able to give that forward, if I go into academia, I think could be a great option. So I've been applying to some of those, but I'm still, you know, a little bit undecided. What I do know is that I want to be working the public interest in the public service full-time. Wow. Wow, awesome. And you know, and Ezra, thank you for, I think throughout the interview, being very candid about your experiences. Because I think sometimes like it's easy for us to gloss over them. But I think, you know, when I created the podcast, it was about giving young people sort of, you know, a different perspective and getting them to see behind the curtain what happens because I think a lot of times we see a career, we see somebody doing something and maybe like you said, it's something that they see on TV or something, but really giving them a better sense of, you know, the day to day and what's happening behind the scenes and some of the decisions that folks have to make as they're choosing, you know, am I gonna go to law school? Am I gonna go this path? Whatever. So thank you for being very candid throughout the interview. Ezra, as we transition out, because I do want to be mindful of our time, we're coming up on the hour. What last piece of advice would you like to leave for our listeners and viewers out there? Yeah, thank you. And it's really been a pleasure talking to you today. I really appreciate the opportunity to share some of my background and my story. I think I'll leave off with two things. First, don't be afraid to ask for or seek out resources that will support you. I think there's a lot of hesitancy sometimes to, you know, who is this person that, you know, they have this career, they have this some kind of, you know, position of power or why would they want to talk to me? I've had so much, you know, those are the thoughts that can bounce around in your head and the fears that can bounce around in your head, but I've had so much success about just reaching out to people. If there's somebody that you think you want to emulate or the career you want to emulate or think that they would have good advice for you, just reach out. I mean, there's been so many random attorneys that just weighed in and gave me so much great advice just because I decided to reach out. Like I said, I didn't know any attorneys. So the only way I was gonna be able to talk to them was by kind of cold outreach. And a lot of them are more than happy to talk to you. And I'm more than happy. I always love to pay it forward. If you're a law student, if you're applying to law school, if you're an early, you know, just out of law school and you think I could help you, I'm happy to meet and to talk. And even also thinking about those resources, you know, scholarships and grants and different things, you know, I'll share one quick anecdote from law school where I, I was still wearing my, the only suit that I had to wear was this one suit that I'd have all the way through the ages from like high school and it started to get holes in it. And like it was deteriorating. And I remember from my first moot court competition, you know, I had to go and you pretend to argue in front of an appeals panel. And so I couldn't wear my jacket because it was like deteriorating. So I borrowed a classmates and that thing barely fit and it like wouldn't button. And I remember I got points deducted because I said, you have to button your jacket. And so then I started to think about, well, how can I, you know, what resources can I do to, I need some new clothes. And I found the scholarship that was specifically for, you know, clothing. And, you know, part of me was like, man, am I really the type of person who needs this? But like you got to swallow your pride and you've got to do it. Because yes, I was, you know, and as much as we like to think about ourselves highly and that we, you know, don't need assistance, we, that stuff is really helpful. And that ultimately was really grateful and I was really grateful for that. And just the second thing that I'll say is there's such a broad background of folks who are first generation attorneys or first generation professionals. And it can be a great community. And I learned that from, you know, forming the first generation law students at University of Texas. But there's also differences within this community and recognizing one another and being tuned into that, that all of our circumstances aren't the same. I've still, despite, you know, some of the challenges that I've had on this path, I still very much recognize some of the privileges that I've had growing up. And, you know, because I'm a white male, for example, it's such a huge privilege. And I remember one of the feedbacks, one of the pieces of feedback that I got from a classmate, they went to one of the meetings for first generation law students and said, this is not my community, I don't feel at home here. And I was curious by that because, you know, she was very much a first generation lawyer and professional. And then when I started to learn that classmate story and learn some of the really incredible hardships that she had gone through, you know, with family having to do with, you know, drug abuse and deaths and illnesses and real extreme poverty. I mean, that was not my experience, certainly. And I could see how a lot of people, you know, talking about their path to becoming an attorney, even if it was first generation, if they're the first generation professional, did not experience those same kinds of things. So recognizing that there are, you know, kind of gradients in that somebody like me, being in a culture shock environment, you know, in that, you know, football stadium, for example, might be a very similar experience to this classmate, being in a culture shock, you know, coming to this first generation meeting and realizing and thinking, whoa, these are not my people or I don't feel at home here. So really to, when you're thinking about this space to really consider everybody's backgrounds and how, you know, even within the first generation community, there is a lot of different levels of privilege and a lot of different ways that we can make each other feel included and thinking about everybody's background. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. You're absolutely right, Ezra. You're absolutely right. Ezra, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to data share your story and your journey I know will resonate with a lot of folks and I appreciate all of the advice that you've given us because I think you've left us with a real treasure trove of advice that certainly, you know, for the countless of lawyers that I've interviewed, a lot of things that I didn't know and hadn't heard of. So thank you. Thank you for that. Well, thank you so much for having me and for this doing this podcast. I imagine this is a tremendous resource for so many people. So thank you. Thank you. This concludes another episode of the Way to College podcast. Thank you to our guests. Thank you to our listeners and viewers out there. Remember to share the podcast with one other person. I'd appreciate it. And don't forget to subscribe, follow rate and all of that other good stuff. We'll see you again soon. Thanks again. Bye-bye. You