JUST FIVE YEARS OUT OF STANFORD LAW SCHOOL, KHALID JONES HAS ALREADY LEFT LAW PRACTICE. While handling securities litigation at a big firm, including a stint on the Enron case, Jones ’03 was recruited to serve as chief operating officer of Thrasher Capital Management, an asset management company geared primarily to the underrepresented 18-34 age group.

Though Jones entered law school without a master plan, he did know that he wasn’t going to practice law indefinitely. “I figured if I worked in law too long and got too far down that road, I’d become ‘the law guy,’” he explains.

His statement is a testament to the juris doctor’s versatility and the broad application of legal skills. According to Jones, law school graduates can look beyond a career in law practice as it’s traditionally known.

“JDs can use the lens that law school gives them to interact in business in a meaningful way,” he says.

Plotting a Career Course of Change

Attorneys always could and have moved to careers outside of the law, according to Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean Larry Kramer. “But what has changed is that new fields have opened up for lawyers and many now make the move out of traditional law practice much sooner,” he explains.

Statistics seem to confirm Kramer’s observations. According to a NALP study published in 2007, the number of graduates going straight to law firms has decreased somewhat—down from 60 percent in 1985 to 55 percent in 2006. The same study shows that 15 percent of new associates leave their firm positions by year two; 36 percent by year three; 56 percent by year four; and 71 percent by year five. Clearly there’s movement from—and or between—firms.

Stanford Law’s own data may be more telling. While the majority of graduates go directly to law firms, an informal study of alumni data for the classes of 1985, 1995, and 2005 confirms the trend of movement out of the legal profession as careers progress. Approximately 61 percent of the class of 2005 is currently employed at a firm—a percentage that has remained fairly consistent for recently graduated alumni, according to the Office of Career Services. And only 2 percent of that class is working in non-legal positions. But then there is a steady drop: down to 33 percent at law firms and up to 20 percent in nonlegal positions for the class of 1995; 27 percent at law firms and 22 percent in non-legal positions for the class of 1985.

“Most of our graduates go directly to careers at law firms,” says Susan Robinson, associate dean for career services, who notes that Stanford Law alumni are partners at approximately 88 of the Am Law 100 firms and attorneys at 95 of them. “But clearly not all stay—some don’t want to, and some can’t. The pyramid management structure of large firms today simply does not allow for partnership careers for everyone. And there are many opportunities in business and elsewhere.”

Recognizing this reality, the career services office now offers a program called “And Then. . . .Preparing for Life After the Firm,” a nod to third-year students, says Robinson, who told her they planned to “go to a law firm—and then.” The series, she explains, is designed to get students thinking early about what they’re going to do next—and what to do between now and then. Similarly, every spring, Robinson offers an Alternatives To Law series featuring alumni from venture capital, investment banking, management consulting, and lobbying fields, among others.

“We’re not graduating students to fit into a particular mold,” Robinson explains. “They have a whole array of skills; it’s part of our interdisciplinary approach that our graduates are better able to branch out into other things.”

The law school’s interdisciplinary program, bolstered in recent years to include joint degrees in a range of fields from engineering to economics to public policy, offers the extra benefit of helping students to not only enhance their legal careers but to also develop interests in non-legal areas. The JD/MBA is a case in point—many graduates of this program never practice law. But, according to Kramer, learning the process of critical thinking in law school is useful “no matter what you’re doing.”

SUZANNE MCKECHNIE KLAHR: DEVELOPING YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS

For Suzanne McKechnie Klahr ’99, the law school experience itself defined her career goals, which wound up being on the periphery of law. She is the founder and CEO of BUILD, a nonprofit organization that uses entrepreneurship to engage students who’ve been left behind in education and encourages them to start a business.

McKechnie Klahr’s years at Stanford Law coincided with the dot-com boom. “I was a non-traditional student,” she says. “I was president of the Public Interest Law Students Association but I also studied corporate law. I was always on the fence between the public and private sectors.”

While in law school, McKechnie Klahr won a Skadden Fellowship through which she provided legal services to low-income entrepreneurs. One day, four teenagers told her they planned to drop out of school to try to make money instead. McKechnie Klahr negotiated a deal with them: She’d help them form a business but they had to remain in school. She founded BUILD as a direct result of that experience.

“I saw so much equity offered to entrepreneurs for what I thought were harebrained schemes,” McKechnie Klahr explains. “But in [low-income] East Palo Alto, no one could get funding for even the most basic business. ”Today, 100 percent of BUILD program graduates—50 to date—have gone on to college.

Though she’s not practicing law in the traditional sense, McKechnie Klahr says her Stanford Law studies helped her to find her current success. “It allowed me to be analytical,” she says. “My professors taught me to think creatively to solve problems. I worked on the law review and clerked for a judge because that’s what I thought I should do. But working with professors and doing clinical work—that helped me find my passion.”

Though McKechnie Klahr uses her law degree “all the time,” she has no plans to practice law. For now, she’ll continue running BUILD and teaching an Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship class at Stanford Law, where she is a lecturer in law. “I hope to inspire and motivate a new generation of attorneys.”

A Good Starting Point 

Some JDs know early that traditional law practice is not for them but see law school as an effective springboard to another career. Other graduates start out practicing law but eventually find they cannot ignore creative impulses, such as writing, which they’ve had since childhood. Still others, like Jones, move to other careers serendipitously. But even JDs who are doing something wholly unrelated to traditional law practice insist that they are still using their legal training.

For Melissa Johns ’01, law school was a calculated step to get where she wanted to go—outside the law. A senior private sector development specialist at the World Bank, Johns helps countries such as Liberia and Cambodia revise outdated commercial regulations to attract foreign investors and support local entrepreneurs.

“I always knew I would go to law school,” says Johns. After graduation, she joined a large Washington, D.C., firm doing securities and corporate law, with “the end goal of using my legal skills to do development work.”

When the firm asked her to specialize in her legal practice, Johns resisted. “I knew I wasn’t going to find my niche there,” she says. Yet Johns believes that attending Stanford Law School was critical to her current success.

“I’m doing exactly what I always wanted to do and what I entered law school hoping to do,” she says. “In law school I learned not only what the law is but also how to examine what the law should be. That wasn’t just a theoretical exercise—I use those skills in what I’m doing now.”

Like Johns, Linda Newmark ’88 viewed law school as a deliberate stepping-stone to a job outside of law practice. As executive vice president of acquisitions and strategic projects at Universal Music Publishing Group, Newmark handles the acquisition of rights in musical compositions, which is precisely the career she set her sights on after a college internship in the entertainment industry.

“I examined who were the people very involved in negotiating the deals and making things happen,” Newmark explains. “In film, it was the agent. In music, it was the lawyer.” After law school, Newmark worked at law firms representing musicians and then transitioned to a non-legal management position in a music company.

As an executive, Newmark has found that her best hires are former attorneys: “When you hire a lawyer, you’re getting someone really smart and open to learning. Lawyers have already taken on an intellectual challenge and it speaks highly of them.”

For Newmark law school was great preparation for her career. Paul Goldstein’s copyright class, in particular, directly applies to what she does today. “I approached law school as practice in analyzing the issues, helping to figure things out. Being around a lot of really smart people was, of course, very helpful,” says Newark. “Classmates’ opinions may be different from yours but you get to hear their logic and reasoning. I also learned to express myself clearly in writing, which is a skill that applies to all kinds of things.”

Some new attorneys decide to leave the law because they soon feel that it is their clients who are doing the truly interesting work. Instead of representing the action, they want to be a part of the action. Charles Crockett ’92, for example, always planned to be a corporate or tax lawyer. To prepare for that career, he joined the financial analyst program at an investment bank before law school because, he explains, “I thought I’d better understand my client when I became a lawyer.”

But after two law school summers experimenting in corporate and tax law at big firms, Crockett returned to investment banking following graduation. “The speed with which one has direct and extensive exposure to the client was much faster in banking than in corporate law. My career instincts were dead-on. I liked banking more.”

After a few years in banking and a few more in the leveraged buyout business, Crockett transitioned to venture capital work. He and friends had been investing their own capital and, after repeated successes, founded Ascend Venture Capital Group.

Though he never practiced law in the traditional sense, Crockett believes that legal training is “really, really wellsuited to the venture capital and leveraged buyout business because there’s so much documentation work,” he explains. “You need to be aware of documents put in front of you. Also, having that additional writing training—and being on law review—helped me tremendously. Being forced not to write in bullet points was a huge plus.”

Crockett adds that he chose Stanford Law School precisely because students there were “thinking expansively” about their careers. “For students there, it was not just about going to X, Y, Z law firm or getting a clerkship.”

Even some satisfied attorneys leave law practice when they realize they can no longer deny a creative passion. Meg Gardiner ’82 (BA ’79), for example, came from a family of lawyers and chose law school because she “saw how much it fascinated them and how dedicated they were,” she recalls. “I saw the law as worthy and secure. I saw satisfied lives.”

After graduation, Gardiner joined a small commercial litigation firm. Before long, she gave up law practice because she had three kids “in quick succession.” When her children were young, instead of practicing law part time, Gardiner chose to teach legal writing classes. Then her husband’s job took the family to the U.K.

“I always wanted to write a novel,” Gardiner says. “And it was time to put up or shut up.” She spent a few years writing a crime thriller that was later published. Since then, she’s written a book a year in the same series and her work has been translated into a dozen languages. Gardiner’s series has legal themes: The protagonist is a lawyer-turned-journalist whose boyfriend is a trial lawyer.

Gardiner insists that being an attorney helped her success very much. “The intellectual rigor prepared me for a lot of things. The grounding in legal knowledge has been helpful in practice, in teaching, and in being a writer. I learned not to write in legalese. I learned how to tell a story and take a position.”

But when asked if she has any plans to return to law practice, Gardiner quickly replies: “Nope. I’ve escaped and they’d have to catch me. But that is a measure of my satisfaction with the career I now have rather than a distaste for the law.” In fact, Gardiner adds, her Stanford Law School experience “helped imbue me with the understanding that I could do anything I wanted. I could be a Supreme Court justice. Or I could sing with Bobby McFerrin.” According to Kramer, there is something special about the spirit of Stanford Law School, of Stanford University, and Silicon Valley that accounts for so many alumni winding up in unconventional jobs. “Our students are entrepreneurial in the best sense of the word,” he says. “The philosophy here is ‘Take a chance; it’s okay.’ And they hear that.”