Excellent, excellent, excellent advice from
@lexde and
@Laura33. Search my posts on here and you will find that I owe these two (and others) a great deal of gratitude for their unwavering advice and support over the years.
I have a bit of a different perspective, because my experience likely represents what you think is your worst case scenario -- no offer, what do you do for your job, etc. If you take anything from this bit of rambling I'm about to go on (have to get to a hearing here soon) --
the worst case scenario in your head is likely nowhere close to the actual real world worst case scenario if you work hard and do great work.
So my story. I had a 2L SA at a 100 lawyer firm that always retained its SA's. Welp, in my summer, two of the most important partners left and...boom...all six of us SA's got no-offered (firm almost went belly up actually).
I went back to my university (Ohio State) and sent out resumes to a bunch of firms. All rejected. I then worked out a grant position where OSU paid me $2,000 to work at a firm in my hometown (Youngstown...not the best market) for three months. This added up to about $2.50 per hour.
But I worked my ass off -- in at 8:30, out at 6:00 or 6:30, which is a lot when they aren't even paying you -- and turned this into an associate position. After three years, it led to this thread:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/employment-dilemma-take-new-job/First page of that thread is me deciding to leave my firm to work with what I thought was a reputable solo. Post #37 is my first post about working with said solo. Top of Page 2 is about when shit starts hitting the fan there. Post #82 is when it really really hit the fan (only 3ish months in). And then the rest of the thread is me going out on my own.
So I started my own solo practice, which is what I always wanted to do anyway. If you're thinking a similar route, you can learn a lot from that thread.
I still have my first spreadsheet from my first month of invoices. I had nine clients. Nine! But I worked at my practice a lot. Worked a lot on my website and letting hometown friends know I was open. I met people, went to a bunch of bar association events, met up with friends from high school, and, as referenced a bunch of times above, always made sure to do exceptional work.
Fast-forward to my November invoices and I have 31 clients and 42 active matters. By end of this year I will have made about $66,000 in seven months here. Granted, this includes a couple settlement checks ($22,000 and $7,700), but hey, I worked hard for those, so bring them on.
Starting in 2019, I am getting another $22,000 settlement check, and then also another flat fee ($12,000) to try a case. And then I do appearance work and criminal appointment work, and I might be picking up guardian ad litem work (still considering), so I'm already well, well on my way to having another good year.
Point of my story is not to brag at all. There's solos on here who blow me out of the water. But again, I hit "rock bottom" twice in five years -- got no offered as an SA and then ended up essentially being forced to preemptively go out on my own -- and ended up fine.
Point being, again --
the worst case scenario in your head is nowhere close to the actual real world scenario that will play out if you work hard at your craft. Just giving a shit will put you ahead of a ton of competition. Best of luck to you, and always feel free to PM me for advice.