7 ms·

I thought for a moment I blacked out and posted to HN without knowing it. I too am a 38 years old attorney who learned CS/Programming late in life. I haven’t ha

I thought for a moment I blacked out and posted to HN without knowing it. I too am a 38 years old attorney who learned CS/Programming late in life. I haven’t had any success in finding relevant job openings for my particular coding knowledge, but I keep looking. Just knowing you exist gives me hope I may still be able to break into tech, at some level. And given that Hurricane Laura just decimated my city ( and my home and my office) I need some hope right now.

eecc 6y ago
Well, being an attorney you could dig yourself a nice rabbit hole with Lucene, a Java library for text indexing and analysis at the foundation of many Java based search engines (for example Solr, Elastichsearch.) Combine it then with your expertise to analyze documents from your business domain for example
joelbluminator 6y ago
If you're capable of becoming a lawyer you're capable of becoming a programmer. 38 ain't that old. But why drop being attorney?
- csboyer 6y ago
  Knowing people in both the legal and software world, law is a tough profession with old world business expectations. Almost everything is “last minute” due to either court deadlines or your client dropping everything on you because something happened and it has to be fixed now. In-house counsel jobs can be a bit more relaxing, as you might be working on longer term projects rather than the latest disaster that fell into your lap.
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    Exactly, I would try to find something in-house. And choose some very narrow field I can be an expert on (GDPR, tech laws, tax etc). Not saying it's easy though.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mellavora 6y ago
  Can't speak for the OPs reasons, but some evidence suggests that law schools have created an oversupply of people with law degrees, which impacts career possibilities. <filterbubble> one source which supports my worldview: https://www.thecareercookbook.com/hello-world-6/ https://www.thecareercookbook.com/hello-world-6/ </filterbubble>
- throwaway17_17 6y ago
  Lawyering is not really the problem, I have a quite successful career. I am mostly content to just program in my spare time and programming/automating those areas of my practice where there is value. But, and it’s probably more specific to my situation, but I do almost exclusively criminal defense work and it can be tiring, I’ve been at it long enough that I could use a change of focus. Biggest problem for me is that my areas of knowledge/interest for CS/programming is limits solely focused on low level, performance oriented domains, programming language theory And type theory. That is not the most marketable skill set, but I love doing it.
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    > That is not the most marketable skill It is, but you have to be quite the expert. It's not like app development where even limited experience can be enough to get by. However if you like that sort of stuff you can try to become a web develoepr (pick say Python or Ruby) and then become an expert in backendy / performence issues.
mcv 6y ago
I think there's a lot of room for programmers with deep domain knowledge about some topic. If writing software for lawyers or law-related issues, I'm pretty sure experience as a lawyer can be very useful.
- client4 6y ago
  Just interviewing other lawyers for their “if it existed I would buy it” software would show there’s a lot of opportunity. A friend of mine has been looking for a service that emails her whenever a local municipality does something with easements/property access. This actually took me down a long rabbit hole of how local government software is horrible and someone could crush this area — my only concern would be lack of traction as local governments seem to prefer operating in obscurity/making it difficult to hold them accountable.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Funny, I know a guy doing just that, former roommate He was mostly writing code for things that handle municipal water supplies and other water monitoring stuff. He worked for a code shop that built the original system and after he left he kept doing maintenance work on the side until he went (mostly) full time at it. OTOH, he's basically a one-man show, and has implied that if he had to scale -- e.g. add 3+ people -- then the $$$ wouldn't go as far. By himself it's a decent paycheck, though. The problem is municipalities are all different, with different state/local requirements, and they often don't have the money or operational depth to support deeply customized software. I grew up near a park that had to shutdown for several months because they couldn't get enough funds together to have people mow the lawns; where would they find the money for custom code?
screye 6y ago
I am guessing this is one of the situations where you might need to make that niche for yourself. Take on contracts to do something that is traditionally done with hand -> write scripts to automate it -> take on more contracts. At that point you would probably be paid for 20 people's worth for 20 people's work....but automating it will allow you to pocket all of it due to zero (low) costs. Our startup tried doing this with automated 3D map creation for drone use surveying. It is incredibly easy to undercut traditional competition at a technical level. Convincing corporate to trust in your experiment tho, kinda hard. It is the classic: 'No one has been fired for hiring IBM' conundrum.
anodyne33 6y ago
Have you had any eDiscovery experience in the past? I was an analyst for 15 years and AI is really coming on strong now. I've seen, in my job search, a few places where a JD coupled with a little CS knowledge could be useful. A buddy of mine is a patent attorney and quit his firm job to start his own shop doing natural language processing against the US and foreign patent databases. He didn't get his hands into writing the software but he's had to develop a reasonable understanding to guide his process and sell it.

eecc 6y ago

Well, being an attorney you could dig yourself a nice rabbit hole with Lucene, a Java library for text indexing and analysis at the foundation of many Java based search engines (for example Solr, Elastichsearch.) Combine it then with your expertise to analyze documents from your business domain for example

joelbluminator 6y ago

If you're capable of becoming a lawyer you're capable of becoming a programmer. 38 ain't that old. But why drop being attorney?

csboyer 6y ago
Knowing people in both the legal and software world, law is a tough profession with old world business expectations. Almost everything is “last minute” due to either court deadlines or your client dropping everything on you because something happened and it has to be fixed now. In-house counsel jobs can be a bit more relaxing, as you might be working on longer term projects rather than the latest disaster that fell into your lap.
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  Exactly, I would try to find something in-house. And choose some very narrow field I can be an expert on (GDPR, tech laws, tax etc). Not saying it's easy though.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mellavora 6y ago
Can't speak for the OPs reasons, but some evidence suggests that law schools have created an oversupply of people with law degrees, which impacts career possibilities. <filterbubble> one source which supports my worldview: https://www.thecareercookbook.com/hello-world-6/ https://www.thecareercookbook.com/hello-world-6/ </filterbubble>
throwaway17_17 6y ago
Lawyering is not really the problem, I have a quite successful career. I am mostly content to just program in my spare time and programming/automating those areas of my practice where there is value. But, and it’s probably more specific to my situation, but I do almost exclusively criminal defense work and it can be tiring, I’ve been at it long enough that I could use a change of focus. Biggest problem for me is that my areas of knowledge/interest for CS/programming is limits solely focused on low level, performance oriented domains, programming language theory And type theory. That is not the most marketable skill set, but I love doing it.
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  > That is not the most marketable skill It is, but you have to be quite the expert. It's not like app development where even limited experience can be enough to get by. However if you like that sort of stuff you can try to become a web develoepr (pick say Python or Ruby) and then become an expert in backendy / performence issues.

mcv 6y ago

I think there's a lot of room for programmers with deep domain knowledge about some topic. If writing software for lawyers or law-related issues, I'm pretty sure experience as a lawyer can be very useful.

client4 6y ago
Just interviewing other lawyers for their “if it existed I would buy it” software would show there’s a lot of opportunity. A friend of mine has been looking for a service that emails her whenever a local municipality does something with easements/property access. This actually took me down a long rabbit hole of how local government software is horrible and someone could crush this area — my only concern would be lack of traction as local governments seem to prefer operating in obscurity/making it difficult to hold them accountable.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Funny, I know a guy doing just that, former roommate He was mostly writing code for things that handle municipal water supplies and other water monitoring stuff. He worked for a code shop that built the original system and after he left he kept doing maintenance work on the side until he went (mostly) full time at it. OTOH, he's basically a one-man show, and has implied that if he had to scale -- e.g. add 3+ people -- then the $$$ wouldn't go as far. By himself it's a decent paycheck, though. The problem is municipalities are all different, with different state/local requirements, and they often don't have the money or operational depth to support deeply customized software. I grew up near a park that had to shutdown for several months because they couldn't get enough funds together to have people mow the lawns; where would they find the money for custom code?

screye 6y ago

I am guessing this is one of the situations where you might need to make that niche for yourself. Take on contracts to do something that is traditionally done with hand -> write scripts to automate it -> take on more contracts. At that point you would probably be paid for 20 people's worth for 20 people's work....but automating it will allow you to pocket all of it due to zero (low) costs. Our startup tried doing this with automated 3D map creation for drone use surveying. It is incredibly easy to undercut traditional competition at a technical level. Convincing corporate to trust in your experiment tho, kinda hard. It is the classic: 'No one has been fired for hiring IBM' conundrum.

anodyne33 6y ago

Have you had any eDiscovery experience in the past? I was an analyst for 15 years and AI is really coming on strong now. I've seen, in my job search, a few places where a JD coupled with a little CS knowledge could be useful. A buddy of mine is a patent attorney and quit his firm job to start his own shop doing natural language processing against the US and foreign patent databases. He didn't get his hands into writing the software but he's had to develop a reasonable understanding to guide his process and sell it.