Bio:
Mr. Michael Spain is a lawyer at Fulbright and Jaworski. He majored in US government and minored in modern Chinese history at Vanderbilt. He started law school at UT Austin before dropping out and choosing to earn a master’s in modern US and Chinese history. He then worked at St. Mark’s as a teacher before ultimately rejoining UT Austin’s law school and completing his degree. After successful completion of J.D., he joined Fulbright and Jaworski, one of the largest law firms at the time in the US.
Please tell us something about you and your career at high level.
I was at St. Mark’s School of Texas as a humanities teacher from the early/mid 70s and then left St. Marks to go to University of Texas law school. Then, I practiced law in Richmond, Virginia for five years before moving to Texas to join one of the largest law firms in the US at the time, Fulbright & Jaworski (Leon Jaworski was one of the prosecutors in the Nuremberg war crime trials following World War II and one of the Watergate prosecutors during the Watergate time). I was a municipal bond lawyer, and did not do any litigation work; instead, I did finance related work for healthcare institutions for the last 27 years of my career.
My career is a bit unusual in that I have never once appeared in court in the 30 years I have practiced law. I really enjoyed my job since I never really liked the argumentative aspects of litigation practice but always enjoyed the business-transaction aspects.
When you were in high school did you know what kind of career you wanted to venture into? Did anyone influence your decision? Did you have like a mentor or teacher?
First, I wanted to be an attorney as two of my relatives (my grandfather and his son, my uncle) were lawyers of 1969. I went to Vanderbilt for my undergraduate study; I majored in US government history and minored in modern Chinese history. I started law school at UT law school in the fall after undergraduate school, but after half a semester I dropped out of the law school and changed to graduate school instead. I earned a master’s degree in modern American and Chinese history, then joined as social studies teacher at St Mark’s school of Texas in Dallas and taught high school and middle school students. I later taught social studies and English in the 5th and 6th grade program. BTW, 5 of my 5th and 6th grade students became lawyers with me at Fulbright & Jaworski. Three years into teaching, I was at a party interacting with some students’ dads, who were lawyers at Dallas firms. They did not know about my previous interest in practicing law, but they urged me to become a lawyer. I applied again and got accepted into the UT law school and graduated with honors in 1979. This time, I really enjoyed law school because I had experienced many other things in life. I had had a job, owned a house, etc. Near the end of my career with Fulbright & Jaworski, the firm joined with 5 other international law firms (becoming Norton Rose Fulbright) with offices (150) every continent except Antarctica and one of the largest law firms in the world.
How did you decide to become a teacher?
I heard about St Mark’s School of Texas when studying at Vanderbilt as many of my classmates were graduates from St Mark’s. When I interviewed for the job: it just so happened that the history teacher had quit unexpectedly. I used my past interest in teaching others to decide if this was my future career.
Is there anything from your career or just in general that you would go back and change or do differently?
No; although it had cost me a few years of seniority as an attorney, I still feel that having had another set of life experiences helped me in becoming a successful lawyer. I was more ready the second time I applied to law school. I would not advise anybody to go straight from undergraduate school into law school. For some people it works, but for most it may not. My recommendation would be to try some internships in a law firm and try other areas like medicine, consulting, etc. before deciding to pursue a specific career path. Within the law firm there are multiple options like general practitioners or specialization in an area or corporate law; internship will help in understanding the different type of law practice.
What is your advice on work life balance?
Very important. In the early 90s, I had a medical problem that stopped my practice for about three or four months. I nearly died. Since then, I began to focus on spending more time with my family, my daughter, and my wife. I am also involved in doing things that are not as typical for lawyers such as backpacking, hiking, etc. Now, my law firm has a retirement program where the individual who is retiring transitions from a busy practice to slowly reducing the number of work hours and focusing on training the young lawyers and mentoring them.
What are some desirable traits that some young graduates and people looking to go into law have?
In transactional practice, which is what I do, one thing that is often overlooked is the ability to be a good writer and effectively communicate via a written statement with your client. You have to express clearly and concisely what the issue is and what you recommend as a solution for the issue.
For lawyers, especially for people that are going to be in a transactional practice, one of things overlooked in legal and in pre-legal education is the ability to be a good writer; there are many people who have done well in law school but when they work in summer clerkships they’re not really very good writers and much of the time when you’re dealing with clients all day, the younger associate or maybe even young partners that you’re very good at what the legal issues are and you’re pretty good at explaining the legal issues to your client and in some instances the client contact that you’re dealing with is not someone who is a particularly good writer and therefore not particularly a good reader. So what I would tell our young lawyers especially the summer clerks you need to be able to communicate with your client or whoever your client contact is in a very effective way and you should assume that whoever you’re writing a letter to within the company is a good writer and recognizes good writing and explaining what an issue is or what the solution might be and when you make a mistake when you don’t treat your client as an educated recipient of your advice. Sometimes lawyers can write a letter to clients and their mistakes in the in the letter is, you defined the term then you don’t use it, or you use a term but failed to define it. Another common mistake is, you don’t check your grammar and you ought to assume that everybody you deal with as a client and even lawyers on the other side as educated. Because if you express your analysis of a problem and their mistakes in the letter or if you can’t properly express what the issue is, then why shouldn’t they assume that you’re not sloppy in the quality of your advice. So being a good writer is really really important particularly as a transactional business lawyer. It may be somewhat less as a litigator but in terms of dealing with clients and dealing with their day-to-day issues you need to be able to express clearly and concisely what the issue is. Also, you should assume that the letter to a mid-level vice president is going to get pushed to another vice president or up the line to somebody more senior and they’re not going to appreciate a badly written letter or memo or whatever it is but they will definitely appreciate a well-done explanation of what you think the issue is and what you think the solution is. Next thing is effectively communicating with clients about the legal issue and possible solutions are.
In general, without going into specifics, how well do you think the lawyers are compensated when compared to other professions?
I believe they lawyers are compensated very well; I saw a 250% increase in my compensation when I switched from teaching profession to my first job in the law firm. In the law field, compensation depends on what type of practice you are a part of; if you’re in a solo practice, compensation is mostly plaintiff-based, but in a big law firm, you get paid more but also have much more work and stress. Compensation also depends on your interests, for example, whether you want to focus on the profession itself or start to get involved in the business aspects of your job. Whether you’re a lawyer, doctor, or engineer, there are always opportunities to get involved in the day-to-day business operations of your company. So, it could significantly vary by firm, reputation of the firm, location, type of lawyer, whether you are involved in the business operations or not, etc.
Is there anything about being a lawyer that you don’t like?
I have developed thick skin against lawyer jokes. There are lot of negative connotations around being lawyers. For that reason, I have started to introduce myself as a lawyer who has not gone to court or sued anybody in my entire career.
Having said that, in terms of legal work I don’t think I would change anything at all; I had a couple of instances in my career where I was working on a really complex transaction where I didn’t really enjoy my work. Otherwise, I liked what I did.
I felt that running an honest practice was really important to me: I had partners who did other kinds of transactional work where they felt like they could never trust anybody on the other side of a transaction, but I’m glad I never had that experience.
I followed my principles: you need to treat people fairly, and you should expect them to treat you fairly as well. When they do, be sure to let them know that you appreciate what they did and how they treated you. That was very important in my area of practice, and it made my work very pleasant to deal with every day.
When a highschooler approaches adults to seek advice on what they should become, they usually hear “follow your passion”; what is your opinion about this and how important do you think passion is?
I felt that my passion was helping people get their transactions done and get their businesses built. I didn’t necessarily realize that right away but once I began to realize that as my passion, I really enjoyed my work. I got to help people do what they needed to do to help their communities. Money or compensation were not what attracted me to this job: don’t get me wrong, I was certainly well-compensated, but that’s not why I chose to do what I chose to do. You need to think about what you find interesting over the long-haul and you will get pleasure from having been involved in it.
What is your general advice to highschoolers applying to colleges, who are deciding their majors in college and wanting to choose their career paths?
If you’re interested in law, choosing great law schools that have a worldwide reputation such as Harvard, Yale or Stanford offers more opportunities to work in a lot of good firms after graduation. Also, if you want to join a big law firm, you should consider summer clerkships and prove yourself (your character, work ethic, etc.), as many law firms first hire lawyers directly from their summer clerkship programs. Secondly, for any professional careers such as the lawyer, doctor, engineer, or accounting careers, it is important to stay focused and always put forth your best effort; it’s a hard truth, but it’s a truth, nonetheless. To get into internships at top firms, first year grades are very critical. Be focused no matter the distractions that surround you. Stay on top of your studies, projects, and exams. Always be well-prepared in whatever you choose to do.