January 11, 2006
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Would You Take a 70% Pay Cut…
to do more interesting and meaningful work? Today’s Wall Street Journal reports on a lawyer who did. For those of us with (or headed towards) high-paying, low-meaning jobs, I wonder what keeps us there. Fear of financial instability or falling off “the track”? Attachment to the nicer perks of life? Lack of compelling alternatives? I can’t help but think that God has something better in mind — an abundant life. What would that look like?
Lawyer Swaps Big Salary, Perks To Represent Guantanamo Detainees
By PERRI CAPELL
CareerJournal.com
January 11, 2006Jobs in human-rights litigation in the U.S. aren’t
plentiful, and anyone seeing Tina Monshipour Foster in 2004 might have
said she was a long shot to get one — or take one.She was a fourth-year associate in the midtown
Manhattan office of Clifford Chance LLP, one of the world’s largest law
firms, with annual pay of more than $200,000. She had a secretary,
word-processing staff and a car and driver at her disposal when she
worked late. At night, she went home to a loft apartment overlooking
the East River.But at age 29, Ms. Foster gave it up to become one of
three attorneys working at the Center for Constitutional Rights on
behalf of prisoners at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
She earns less than $70,000 annually and works out of offices in an
older building in the Soho area of New York City. Studded with gum, the
rug in her office is “disgusting,” she says. Home is a studio apartment
one hour away by subway in Queens, N.Y.…
remainder of the article here (open to WSJ Online subscribers only)
and also on my first comment until they send me a cease-and-desist letter.
Comments (16)
Lawyer Swaps Big Salary, Perks
To Represent Guantanamo Detainees
By PERRI CAPELL
CareerJournal.com
January 11, 2006
Jobs in human-rights litigation in the U.S. aren’t plentiful, and anyone seeing Tina Monshipour Foster in 2004 might have said she was a long shot to get one — or take one.
She was a fourth-year associate in the midtown Manhattan office of Clifford Chance LLP, one of the world’s largest law firms, with annual pay of more than $200,000. She had a secretary, word-processing staff and a car and driver at her disposal when she worked late. At night, she went home to a loft apartment overlooking the East River.
But at age 29, Ms. Foster gave it up to become one of three attorneys working at the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of prisoners at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She earns less than $70,000 annually and works out of offices in an older building in the Soho area of New York City. Studded with gum, the rug in her office is “disgusting,” she says. Home is a studio apartment one hour away by subway in Queens, N.Y.
“I love it,” she says of her job.
The transition to human-rights work actually happened through Clifford Chance. Ms. Foster, a litigator, liked her colleagues and enjoyed having top-shelf clients with deep financial pockets. But she handled small portions of the cases and couldn’t always see the value of her efforts. Clients were primarily large corporations, “and I didn’t have a connection to any individual,” Ms. Foster says.
Ms. Foster started pro bono work at the firm for CCR in the summer of 2004. By the fall, she was so involved with it that she requested a six-month unpaid leave of absence, which the firm granted. At the end of that period, she decided to leave Clifford Chance and join CCR full time.
The decision took plenty of soul-searching. Ms. Foster and her mother emigrated to the U.S. from Iran when she was three, and Monshipour is her birth family name. She grew up in Rochester, N.Y. Her mother and stepfather felt that in her corporate law job, she was in the “big leagues,” she says, and they worried about her giving it up.
“They were concerned it would be difficult for me if I gave up all that money, and I questioned whether this would take me off track if I found I didn’t want to do public interest law the rest of my life,” she says. But the need to be more emotionally connected to her cases prevailed.
CCR typically receives about 150 applications for every job opening and another few hundred general work inquiries a year, says Michael Ratner, president of the center.
In certain cases, the center might be skeptical about hiring an attorney from a large corporate firm, Mr. Ratner says. Ms. Foster worried initially that the center might not take her seriously. However, the six months proved her commitment, and she was hired because she knew the Guantanamo issues intimately and “she’s really smart and works really hard,” says Mr. Ratner.
Her position as counsel for the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative has her coordinating more than 400 individual cases and a “John Doe” case on behalf of unnamed prisoners. Most of the cases are being handled pro bono by law firms nationwide. The prisoners, who have been held without being charged since after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, are challenging their detention.
“There are almost no human-rights litigation jobs,” says Mr. Ratner. “And the important issues now are the post 9/11 detention and torture issues, so this is possibly the best job you can get in America.”
Ms. Foster was an English major at Boston University and then went to law school because “I wasn’t qualified to do anything else,” she says. After graduating from Cornell University Law School in 2000, she wanted to eventually do international law. She clerked at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York for a year and then joined Clifford Chance because of its strong international connections. The firm has offices in Hong Kong, Brussels and Sao Paolo, Brazil, among other far-flung destinations.
The firm asks associates to do 50 hours of pro bono work per year, says Warren Feldman, a partner and chairman of Clifford Chance’s pro bono and community affairs committee. After Sept. 11, it was asked to assist with cases related to the terrorist attack.
In 2002, CCR took on the cases of four detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay and sued for their habeas corpus rights, or the right to know why they were being imprisoned. After several lower-court defeats, CCR appealed to the Supreme Court, which decided the case, Rasul v. Bush, in favor of the detainees’ habeas corpus rights in June 2004.
With 600 prisoners still being held, the work had just begun. The detainees now needed to individually challenge their detentions in court, and CCR needed help from private law firms in filing the suits. At the time, detainees were reputed to have ties to al Qaeda, and working on their behalf was controversial for white-shoe law firms, Ms. Foster says. Still, Clifford Chance agreed to help CCR, and Ms. Foster volunteered for the project, says Mr. Feldman.
When she requested the leave of absence, the firm continued to provide her benefits, allowed her to keep her office and hoped she would return to her old job, says Mr. Feldman. Ms. Foster had saved enough money to live on for the six months but decided to scale back, starting with the move to the studio apartment in Queens. In April, she accepted a full-time job at a salary of between $60,000 and $70,000, says Mr. Ratner.
Besides being paid less, Ms. Foster has fewer resources. She shares paralegal help and makes her own photocopies and travel arrangements. No private car is available to drive her home when she works late. With debt from law school left to pay, “I completely changed my lifestyle” to survive on the new salary, she says.
Ms. Foster says she hasn’t ruled out the idea of returning to a large law firm like Clifford Chance. “This work is very exhausting and it’s possible I could get burned out on it,” she says. Clifford Chance would welcome her back in future depending on its need for an experienced attorney, but she might not make partner at that point, says Mr. Feldman. “I don’t know where on the track she would be,” he says.
For now, Ms. Foster is at peace with that. “I really like what I am doing, and that means a lot in terms of your quality of life,” she says.
Write to Frances.Capell@dowjones.com
I know it’s a pay cut but $70k isn’t exactly peanut-butter & sandwiches money. It’s nice that the Journal did a piece on her, but there are countless kids that leave top law schools for jobs that pay half that much money. I know several former federal clerks (and members of Law Review) from my alma matter that are now busting their humps at Legal Aid for less than $33,000. They could be working anywhere.
The “funny” part about all of this is that the public interest jobs are harder to get. The federal defender service in DC only makes about 8 hires a year.
But it’s nice to see someone make the jump. This is where I’m trying to get:
http://www.appellatedefender.org/
But I think I’m unqualified. I make (literally) four times as much as these guys and I’m unqualified.
That’s an entry for me to write, in itself.
I’ve been struggling with a similar problem–making less money and feeling more satisfied in my work, vs making more money and feeling less satisfied. I always arrive at the same conclusion, that I made the right choice feeling more satisfied in my work.
um, $70,000 ain’t that shabby.
I don’t think I could do it. For one thing, I don’t think I can take a step backwards in terms of quality of life. But then again, I like my job. And I think it helps people and I feel good about what I do. If I were a corporate or personal injury lawyer, and I was overworked and burnt out, I would probably agree with Ms. Foster and take a more gratifying, yet less financially rewarding job.
are their jobs really ‘low-meaning’, though? …do their jobs have less meaning than shepherding or selling custom-made woodwork?
ya 70 G is pretty good… I agree w/ banrock staton
that’s a great article. thanks for posting that. i’m thinking about these things a lot too.
$70K in Manhattan is $40K in Boston. In other words, it’s not much money at all.
I think the woman who did that is awesome. Those Guantanamo prisoners need representation, it’s incredibly inhumane what is happening to them.
I don’t know if I could take such a drastic pay cut but sometimes it’s not in my control.
It’s fascinating how $70K is a lot of money or very little money depending on who you are. I bet age & industry account for the majority of different perspectives.
I’ve taken multiple pay cuts for more meaningful jobs, and have never regretted it. “Meaningful” is also self-defined.
i’ll bet she worked 70~90 hrs per week doing the $200K job (ask any associate at a law firm) versus 40~55 hrs per week doing the 70K job.
assuming this (80, 50 hrs per week worked respectively), she made 2.5K per hour/week vs 1.4K per hour/week. That’s a 44% cut, not 70%. now, having worked 80 hours a week before, i know that the last 20 hours are worth a lot more than the first 20 in terms of quality of life (less sleep, less social time, less hobby time). if you factor that in (though that’s hard to measure in pure dollar terms), i’d guess the paycut she took is more like 10~20% in order to do more meaningful work. that’s a pretty decent tradeoff, i’d say, but not nearly the drastic thing that the article makes it out to be.
call me a cynic, but i don’t think her sacrifice was THAT great. now people that go out and fight wars… that’s real sacrifice (quality of life and otherwise). why spotlight someone like this instead of a myriad of others who’ve given up a lot more? i’m guessing this writer has an agenda to make his liberal friends look good.
Of course!
starting salary for public interest lawyers ranges from $35k to $50k in major cities, including nyc. $70k is a considerable amount for a public interest lawyer (except that she loses out on loan forgiveness programs that require you to make less than $45-50k usually, unless it’s graduated).
that and non-profit lawyers at such organizations can easily work more than 70 hours a week if they’re doing litigation and/or management. granted, there may be more flexibility, and you’re not some partner’s b*tch. still, the 40-50 hour/week assumption is likely inaccurate, especially if CCR is paying her that much.
this is a separate discussion, but people who go out and fight wars tend to be those who don’t have other choices (ever noticed the low military ranks in actual combat draw disproportionately from minorities/low-income teens? probably not b/c you haven’t been there yourself). both people in the military as well as this woman have made sacrifices, but the latter actually had other and “much better” options. this does not inherently make her sacrifice greater, but a little more unusual in our society.
oh, there are plenty of teachers out there who were previously engineers or programmers. when i meet one, i ask, “so, you wanted to do something more meaningful with your life, huh?” and they look at me in amazement and ask, “how did you know?” hehehe.
interesting. i think for a 29-yr-old single person, 70K/40K isn’t that bad. if she’s trying to pay off school loans too, it’d be harder. i think i’d take a huge paycut for a job i found to be a better fit, if i could live independently on the salary – the difficulty would be in figuring out what that job would be.
altoz — if i’m reading changed’s post and the article correctly, this is about choice and self-actualization more than it’s about sacrifice. it’s in the career section, after all.
i would… but i already work in non-profit. it really depends on how much one derives from the work s/he does and how much spending power s/he needs to live or enjoy life - obviously difficult in an expensive city. actually, i think ms. foster is doing pretty well compared to a lot of people who share a similar passion… (and she’s from rochester, too!