4 ms·
Ask HN: Was a dev. Became a lawyer. How do I become a dev again?
I attended a top 5 law school and am currently a first-year in biglaw. Previously, I was a self-taught dev at small startups in LA. Nothing sophisticated, just standard MVC apps. I was mostly back-end (my front-end skills do include JavaScript, but not include CSS or ability to make things look pretty, etc) and I was able to maintain and deploy web apps all on my own. The last thing I did before law school was an accounting app I built from scratch and of which I was functionally the CTO. Technologies I used during my career: Python, NodeJS/TypeScript, C#, React, Postgres.
I want to go back into tech. Assuming I want to be a software developer again:
1. What should I focus on learning to get a backend developer job that pays 180k+ in a major market (NY, LA, or SF)? Things I was starting to find interesting towards the end of the main part of my career include scripting to automate build processes, integration tests, and I guess what one could call crude architectural stuff that probably isn't worth the name (Should I build the data layer using a "repository manager" class for each table and inheritance? At what point is it not over-engineering to bring in a cache?).
Trying to enumerate those examples brought home that I did not do anything remotely sophisticated during my career lol :( Maybe if I don't know the answers to basic questions like that, those are the places to start.
Anyways, what are some of the next big things? One thing I think I might like is natural language processing, maybe I should start there.
2. Suppose I want to throw money at this (since I have some now)--is that even possible? For example, any recommendations for coding interview tutoring (which would be something to do near the end of the transition, after several months or more of self-learning)? I was pretty bad at dev interviews the last time I did them several years ago.
Please note:
Why I went into law in the first place and why I want to jump back into tech is not really something I want to hash out in this thread. Suffice to say, my interest in leaving is not because biglaw is awful or high-pressure or the people are toxic or anything like that, as some might think. I basically got very lucky: I am at one of the best firms in biglaw in terms of work-life balance and cordiality. It's certainly the only one I know of that's like this. My reasons for wanting to go back into tech have more to do with things that I miss about tech and business, such as the creative aspect of working on a product, the mission-orientation, etc. I know some of you will say "reflect on why you stopped wanting to be a dev in the first place", but please suspend that argument for purposes of this thread.
Let's assume for now that my timeline for leaving biglaw is probably about a year hence.
Thanks for all advice in advance.
- ssss11 5y agoI work in the back office of law firms and tomcam has made a good suggestion, to look t software for law firms, because I can tell you the “digital transformation” all other industries have been going through for quite a few years has only just begun in law firms.. they are risk averse and therefore move slow. Lots of technology innovation going on in this space
- ss108 5y agoYeah I think there's a lot of opportunity in legal tech and that I am well-poised to be a part of it.
- ssss11 5y agoLet me know if you have any specific questions I may be able to help. The incumbent PMS and DMS vendors have the market captured for large law firms and the systems are generally slow and expensive to change, but smaller ones have more saas options and smaller ones move quicker. There is a lot going on in legal ops, innovation and newlaw- things like eDiscovery tools for forensics of new data types - social media, audio and video etc. there’s ML contract review, there’s workflow apps, docusigning, relativity, nuix …. In general IT space Le firms are slowly moving to cloud so there’s the whole azure, aws piece, other adjacencies like auth (eg. Okta) There’s also the blockchain hype.. smart legal contracts, lawyers who can code etc
- ss108 5y ago> There’s also the blockchain hype.. smart legal contracts, lawyers who can code etc Yeah if you know more about that, I'd like to know. Thanks
- tomcam 5y agoPainfully obvious question, but are there gaps in the legal software world you think you could fill?
- 5y ago