BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER

From Global Lit(erature) to Global Lit(igation)

Working for a law firm, an English Ph.D. spends his days teaching writing but actually getting paid well for it

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By BENJAMIN OPIPARI

For four years, from 2002 to 2006, I got a taste of what it would be like to pursue an academic career. I was director of the writing center at Colgate University while also a Ph.D. candidate in English language and literature at Catholic University of America.

My wife and I, both natives of the Washington, D.C., area, moved to upstate New York feeling fortunate to escape big-city life. As soon as we arrived in Hamilton, a town of little more than 2,000 people, the stress melted away. My commute on foot to the edge of the campus took two minutes. We made a killing selling our condo in Washington and bought a five-bedroom house for less money.

Life really was like that movie Doc Hollywood: We walked everywhere, from the grocery store to the coffee shop to the hair salon to the post office. At night, with our windows open and the country air wafting in, the sound of kids playing flashlight tag outside was innocence defined.

After a year in Hamilton, we found life there slow but good. After two and a half years, I looked at my wife and announced confidently that we had done everything in Hamilton there was to do. It occurred to me that "slow" was just a euphemism for "boring" to suburban-slickers like me (having spent my entire life in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., I can make no true claim to the city proper).

But the moment I knew we had to leave came one morning when we went to one of those big-box stores. Whereas a trip there had elicited dread in Washington ("We have to go?"), in Hamilton it was a cause for celebration ("We have to go!").

With my defense date on the horizon in early 2006, I started looking at tenure-track jobs. Getting out of Small-Town America was a certainty. I imagined myself in my ideal job, one squarely in my area of interest. I would put myself in front of a class, lecturing about Tennessee Williams. Yet every time, my mind was overtaken by the latest quarterback controversy with the Washington Redskins.

In a moment of reflection, I realized that whenever I looked at a job opening, I was always noting its proximity to Washington. Was I really willing to give up on D.C. forever?

Clearly not, and neither was my wife. To be sure, Colgate's campus is spectacular, the town is quaint, and the surrounding countryside belongs on a postcard. But moving back home to Washington overruled every other consideration -- even, I realized, if that meant leaving academe.

We missed friends, family, and the excitement of living in Washington. I found life in a small town stifling for many reasons, not the least of which was because it was impossible to separate my work from my home life. Since we lived so close to the campus, when I walked our dog or took our kids to the playground, I saw my office. When we went into town, I saw colleagues and co-workers. When I mowed our lawn, I waved to people from work. There was no separation. Say what you want about a long commute, but it gives one necessary distance.

And I cannot overstate the effect that weather had on my psyche. Snow from October to May — 190 inches of it one winter — and brutal cold made me miserable.

Of course, to return to Washington, I had to find a job. And let's face it: English Ph.D.'s are not a hot commodity outside of academe — or inside it, for that matter. One day I noticed that Howrey LLP, a huge law firm that specializes in antitrust, global litigation, and intellectual-property law, had advertised the newly created position of writing instructor.

Howrey wanted to hire an academic to develop a writing curriculum for its associates and partners. Most firms hire outside vendors to do one-off programs, but I liked that Howrey took writing seriously enough that it wanted someone full time to teach it. I was dogged in my pursuit of the position, and after a few trips to Washington to interview, the job was mine.

A big litigation firm like ours is filled with nothing but writers. One lawyer here, in fact, tells people that he is a writer when they ask his occupation (insert joke about lawyers' public perception here). My main duties are twofold. I travel to our offices around the world twice a year and conduct seminars on all aspects of the writing process, from punctuation to Aristotelian argumentation. I also work with associates and partners individually on their writing (what the corporate world calls "coaching" and academe calls "tutoring"), either in person or over the phone. They contact me at any point during the writing process. I sometimes answer questions on the spot, but it's much more common for lawyers to send me a draft, which we meet to discuss.

My job is endlessly rewarding. I work in a five-member office of professional development. Three of us have Ph.D.'s, all in different fields. I teach an enthusiastic population: Professionals, especially those who write for a living, are eager participants in the learning process. Some of the intellectual-property and antitrust cases are fascinating; unfortunately, I am not permitted to tell you about them.

People perceive legal writing as impenetrable, ponderous jargon, and some of it is. But it shouldn't be. In fact, many judges say that lawyers should imagine they are writing for their nonlawyer college roommates. What makes my job gratifying is taking an impenetrable text and seeing it through to the end, when it has become both readable and lucid.

In more than one way, the challenges of teaching lawyers how to write clearly are the same as those I faced when teaching undergraduates. I talk about topic sentences, thesis statements, paragraph development, order of arguments, and even comma splices.

There are those of you who might look at me with disdain — as a sellout who left behind the higher calling (and lower pay, I must add) of the humanities for the greed of a law firm that defends big business. You would be right. But before you call me nasty names, take a look at your mutual funds. Big business is probably earning you money.

There are times when my life as an academic seems far away. I have a BlackBerry. I regularly use terms like "face time," "talent management," and "competency model," with no trace of irony.

As I write this, I am on the 31st floor of the tallest building in Amsterdam, overlooking the city. In the past week I have been to our offices in London and Brussels. In the fall I will come back to those three cities, as well as to Madrid and Munich, to work with our European associates. We also have offices in Los Angeles, Irvine, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Salt Lake City, Houston, Chicago, and New York. The travel is not easy on my wife and two young children, but the calculus is easy: My job makes it possible for my wife to be a stay-at-home parent.

The business-model side of me says that, financially, my decision to leave academe made sense. I have a master's in education, and before getting my Ph.D., I was a special-education teacher in a public school. Had I stayed in that job, I would be making more money than I could as a new assistant professor with a Ph.D. It didn't make sense to me that more schooling would earn me less money, so perhaps with that attitude I am better suited for the business world anyway.

Some colleagues in academe, blissfully unaware of the irony, warned me to watch for the "huge egos" in a law firm. Right. Because I never ran into any of those in higher education. But this is no rant against academe. I liked my colleagues, I loved the classroom, and the campus was bucolic (albeit too slow-paced for me). I left with no trace of bitterness. It's just that I recognized — fortunately, early on — that other factors were more important to my happiness and my family's.

I have not looked back. In the big picture, I am responsible for making sure that hundreds of lawyers write well. But on the micro level, I develop classes, administer an online writing center, write an e-newsletter, and work individually with eager students — all components of most teaching jobs in academe.

I am back to hating [enter name of big-box store], but in my happiness, I now love the fact that I hate it.

Benjamin R. Opipari, who holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Catholic University, is a writing coordinator in the Washington office of Howrey LLP, an international law firm. For an archive of previous Beyond the Ivory Tower columns, see http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/columns/beyond_the_ivory_tower