Life After Law School!

Naomi Stuart: Welcome back to Applying Yourself, a law school admissions podcast hosted by the admissions team at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. My name is Naomi Stuart. I’m a Director of Admissions at WashU Law. And then today we have with us Anna Donovan. Would you like to introduce yourself, Anna, and our special guest?

Anna Donovan: Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Naomi. My name is Anna Donovan. I am the Communications Program Manager at WashU Law and I roped our so-willing guest into coming on our podcast today, who is a very good friend of mine, Ben Guthorn, who is also a 2015 grad of WashU Law and currently works and lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Thank you for coming on, Ben.

Ben Guthorn: Thanks for having me.

Anna Donovan: Yes, yes, big deal. So Ben, do you want to start off by telling us a little bit about yourself, but also your work history? You are currently the Acting Director for the Department of Legislative Reference for the city of Baltimore, is that correct?

Ben Guthorn: That is correct.

Anna Donovan: I got it. Do you want to talk about your work history out of law school and then a little bit about what your role entails and what you do now?

Ben Guthorn: Absolutely. So I was technically a slightly non-traditional entrant into law school in that I took time off of undergrad to work for two years. I worked in political campaigns and then I worked for an official office in Annapolis, Maryland.

I came back, I actually went to WashU for undergrad and studied art, of all things, with a major in photography.

Anna Donovan: Awesome.

Ben Guthorn: And decided to come back because I actually truly love this city. It’s really… People have questions, but I will talk to anybody about how much St. Louis is an amazing place.

Naomi Stuart: Me too, full agree.

Ben Guthorn: And came to law school thinking I wanted to do public interest, wanted to go to government, really loved state and local government. And wound up doing a state appellate clerkship in Maryland after graduation. So I graduated in the summer of 2015. I then went to clerk for Judge Dan Friedman on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. And because Maryland is an old state, it has strange names for its appellate courts. And that is the intermediate appellate court. It’s your court that you go to once you appeal from a lower level court. You have the right to go there.

And from there, I went to work for a midsize firm, a regional firm, as they would call themselves, and practiced doing real estate finance, bond financing, real estate development, a few other things here and there. I worked there for… I always get it wrong. I’m gonna say generally two and a half years, maybe three, and went on to a second firm, a national firm, but in their Baltimore office, doing specifically bond finance work, and we can talk about what that means, and affordable housing development work as well.

And since then, I left that job in April of 2021, and then started with the city of Baltimore. In a slightly different role, just as what was called a legislative services analyst in the department of legislative reference and since July have been serving as the acting director after a director who had been serving for 26 years finally retired. And I can talk about what that entails now, but I’ll take a breath.

Naomi Stuart: What does that entail? I’m just so curious. What does that entail?

Ben Guthorn: So our department has existed in its current form or in some form since 1906. It was actually at the time it was founded an organization or department that served both the state legislature in Annapolis and then also the city council in Baltimore. And its primary responsibilities over the years has been the researching, drafting, and codification of laws.

Eventually it was spun off, and we just now operate for the city council in Baltimore. There is a brother-sister agency for the state that’s called legislative services or legislative reference, same sort of thing.

Anyway, my day-to-day is researching and writing laws for the city regulations and then shepherding that through the legislative process, writing amendments, working with agencies and their legislative representatives, working with elected officials, with their staff, and working with constituents and their interests and putting together bills on their behalf for local issues like zoning.

And eventually for those items, those bills which are going to become law and become in the code for the city of Baltimore codifying them, which means organizing them in a fashion so they’re findable and understandable in context. And we also handle the code of Baltimore regulations annotated and the charter for the city of Baltimore, which is like our constitution and the public local laws, which is a different flavor of thing that’s in Maryland, but the detail is less important.

Naomi Stuart: That is fascinating. Do you love it?

Ben Guthorn: I, for the first time in my legal career, really love what I do on a day-to-day basis. And there’s a bunch of different reasons, and I have been lucky, really through the course of my career after law school, to really enjoy the people that I work with. At the end of the day, it was always what I was doing for work that was a little bit hit or miss, and that came out in my work product and just my attachment to what I was doing and the passion that was behind it and the level of intensity I was able to do those things.

So, I’m very, very happy now, and it drives me crazy. You know, working for government isn’t always easy, but it’s the type of crazy that I like.

Naomi Stuart: Yeah, yeah, red tape, I’m sure, everywhere. Do you have any examples of, like, really interesting laws that you’ve had to, like, rework or codify or, I mean, like, just funny stories that have come up? We can absolutely cut this part out. But, like, I don’t know, if, like, if herding cats used to be illegal in Maryland and now it’s not, or something, I don’t know.

Ben Guthorn: I mean, I don’t know if I have any, there are certain, some quirky things in city law. The city has existed as the city of Baltimore since 1796. So it’s an old place. And the code has gone through many different permutations over the years, as has our charter.

Our relationship with the state of Maryland is actually incredibly similar to the relationship between the city of St. Louis and the state of Missouri. My understanding is that they both are two of three or two of two independent cities that live inside of a larger separate municipality. So here in St. Louis, it’s the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. In Baltimore, it’s Baltimore City, Baltimore County. In Maryland, the city of St. Louis, excuse me, is one of 24 separate jurisdictions. It effectively operates as its own county, but you’ll see throughout state law that its counties and the city of Baltimore because the city of Baltimore is older than most of the other places in the city, in the state, excuse me.

Naomi Stuart: That is just fascinating. And maybe it’s like my love for St. Louis coming out and like hearing about, like because I know it’s really just us and Baltimore, and I don’t know if there’s anyone else who is structured like this, which is fascinating and has so many fascinating implications for…

Ben Guthorn: It does. So St. Louis, when people come to school here, will eventually learn that especially things that came out during the terrible Michael Brown murder that happened here and all throughout those different events is that a lot of the function of the police at that time was directly related to the size of the police departments that operate in all the various different municipalities that exist within the county of St. Louis. And there’s been longtime conversations about combining the city and the county here, as I understand it, for a bunch of different reasons.

They are less strong in Baltimore and Baltimore County because everywhere else in Maryland, it’s, you know, it’s a large county, so things are pretty well managed. Whereas here, people have the best of intentions, but resources are really tight and the motivations are sometimes not always on the up and up.

But getting back to your original question, which was anything interesting, it ties back to the relationship between the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland. We, like St. Louis until recently, do not control our police department. The police department is technically a state department. It’s an instrumentality of the state. And that dates back really to the civil war and states not trusting strong cities to have their own police departments and other considerations around those times.

And currently on the ballot for the 2022 general election is a charter amendment to make the police department for the city of Baltimore a vehicle or department of the city. And that has come after a bunch of different work in the state legislature. And now finally, the voters of the city are going to be saying, yes, we want this, or no, we don’t want this.

Naomi Stuart: And then is that unique to Baltimore or is that something that we see in other cities where the police are run by the state, essentially?

Ben Guthorn: It’s very unique. Speaking about Maryland, of the 24 jurisdictions, we are the only jurisdiction that does not control its own police department. Similarly, I believe across the country, St. Louis was another very big example of a large city that did not control its own police department until the past decade and I forget which year that changed.

We, in addition to changing who controls the police department, we want to change how we control the police department. So currently it’s a very strong police commissioner structure. And if you look at Los Angeles or St. Louis or Chicago, there are all sorts of different styles of commissioners and boards and some combination of mayor and police commissioner about how it works. And so that’s the big, very big conversation.

Naomi Stuart: And I know it just, it reminds me of in Southern California and really California at large now, this is different, but fire departments are all now more intertwined and have changed the structure that they are controlled because if there is a fire, you need whoever sees it first to respond to it. And so it’s been a huge, huge change in how fire departments there work because of the necessity of changing that structure.

And so we are going a little bit off topic of Ben Guthorn, but see, this is what happens. This is what happens when you’re talking about, you know, legal jobs and talking to alums and…

Anna Donovan: I think, you know, as I hear Ben talk about this, you can probably tell that Ben deeply loves Baltimore and knows a lot about it and its history. Ben probably loves Baltimore as much as I love St. Louis. We can tie this back to law school.

We can. I realized that you started law school, you know, a number of years ago.

Ben Guthorn: 2012.

Anna Donovan: Oh, I was gonna say everyone can do their own math. But okay, you gave a great…

Ben Guthorn: A crisp 10 years ago. Let’s not think about it.

Anna Donovan: Ben, do you remember choosing law school? And do you remember… So we don’t have to go into the details, but you were admitted off of the wait list.

Ben Guthorn: I was.

Anna Donovan: Which is, you know, like, you know, there’s always so much, you know, happening over the summer with law schools. But, essentially my question is, like, how did you know WashU Law, like, was the school for you? Like, staying on the wait list, you know, really hoping to get in. Why WashU Law?

Ben Guthorn: I think there’s a push and pull of how much does law school cost? Where does the school get you in terms of the post-law school job market? At the time, 2012, right before then, law schools still weren’t terribly popular since the ’08 recession. And at that time, law students were really empowered to negotiate scholarships and other things for the first time in ever or a long time. Either of you could speak to that far better than I could.

And so my conversation with myself was, where do I want to wind up and what do I want to do? And I knew probably that I was gonna wind up back in Baltimore. I have a very strong connection to my family. But what I didn’t know necessarily is what I wanted to do. And because I didn’t know that, I didn’t know if a law degree from a local school would carry me the distance ultimately to what I wanted to accomplish.

And in making that decision, WashU was generous with their scholarship money for that time and ultimately took me off the wait list. And I think I had already put a deposit down at a local school in Baltimore and made the decision to come back out to St. Louis, which was not my original plan, because of the notoriety of the school, the strength of the alumni network, and really ultimately the strength of the education itself, because I knew that I would be able to count on not just the degree and the piece of paper, but also what I learned, and I could use that wherever I wanted to go.

Naomi Stuart: Excellent. And so, in your time at WashU Law, what were you involved in? What kinds of things did you do that you feel like prepared you? Prepared you for this incredible career of codification?

Ben Guthorn: I’m not sure that any one extracurricular activity prepared me for any particular job that I had there at the clerkship or the two firms that I’ve been at or now this current job with the city. I will say the thing that was the most important about – I participated in something called the American Constitution Society. I participated in something called Outlaw, which is the LGBTQ Law Student Association, to a very high level or just to a degree of obsession or maybe involvement that we don’t need to get into.

But it was really just working with my classmates and getting to know them and their interests outside the classroom. And just, you know you’re with incredibly smart people every single day, so getting to know them and understand their interests and what motivates them outside of the classroom, I think is invaluable because really it teaches you, I mean it teaches you how to relate to a lawyer across the table or the person that’s helping you put together whatever project you’re on, a paralegal or some other person working in the office.

And I will say I was very lucky. I wrote on to the law review. I was as surprised as maybe anybody could have been that I wrote onto it rather than graded onto it, but I met fantastic people through that process. And I don’t know if I loved editing, even though that’s what I do exactly now every single day. I still use the same edit marks that I was taught at that time, but I would say that group of people was also really incredible to get to know because they were also very academically curious and just, I don’t know, they were asking questions about the world and what was happening and why we do things the way we do things in a similar way that I was thinking about them. And that was fun.

Naomi Stuart: So you, you know, touched on obviously still using the skills that you learned in law school now in your current role. Can you talk a little bit about like how you stay connected to the law school and sort of your role as an alumni and sort of what that means and that network that you’re a part of?

Ben Guthorn: So I went to Washington University in St. Louis for undergrad in addition to law school. So my connection is a little bit deeper, perhaps, than the average WashU law student. That being said, my connection is deepest with the law school because it’s my professional community and it’s where some of my closest friends are from now.

And my involvement with the law school has to do with staying in touch with those friends. And those happened to be professional connections at some point, but really, they’re my friendships. And we talk about law school, we send each other memes, which is such, I guess, a, is that a millennial habit? I’m not sure. GIFs. I’m not allowed to send GIFs anymore. Anyway.

Anna Donovan: It’s TikToks now then.

Ben Guthorn: As you know, I’m such an avid consumer.

Anna Donovan: Yes. Uh, that’s excellent. You know, I, I. I’ll try and tell people, like, you know, probably as someone who did not go to law school, law school is really hard, but like the takeaway is, obviously besides like a job you’re excited about, is, like, the people and like making the most of your time in law school.

And that ties me to, I think you also love, you love St. Louis.

Ben Guthorn: I do.

Anna Donovan: I really actually do. And, you know, I think we’ve mentioned this on a previous podcast, but, you know, when I talk to someone about my love of St. Louis, I think people are a little dubious because I’m from here and I’ve lived here. Like, of course you love it! Like, blah, blah, blah. You would say that.

Naomi is our sell, you know, for the West Coasters. She moved here from San Diego. And I actually find a lot of similarities between Baltimore and St. Louis. But can you talk about what you love about St. Louis and like maybe like your pitch to people who are like, I’m not so sure about St. Louis. Like, why should I live there for at least three years?

Ben Guthorn: I think it’s accessibility for on many different things, but that’s the word that I would use as the selling point. I think that I mean, beyond the professional things, and I can get into that, but getting into different social networks, and for me as an outlaw student, it was incredibly important to find connections in whatever city I wound up in, in the LGBTQ community, both specifically from a professional level, because I could have a relationship with an alumni or somebody who’s in the profession, and they could relate to me on a particular level, which is that there aren’t a lot of us in the profession. There are, but there aren’t.

Same thing with, you know, black and brown members of our community and other minorities. It’s incredibly important to find your family, and it was very easy to find my family in St. Louis. And that isn’t something that I necessarily experienced when I was an undergrad. It’s something that St. Louis really… it became for me in law school because, in part, of the professors that I had in law school and their connection with St. Louis and their concern for what happens day to day in the city and in the community, about how involved they are with any number of different organizations on any number of different special topics, focusing on local government, public defenders, any sorts of different social justice issues.

I mean, the commitment is real and it is deep, and they will put you in people’s living rooms and at their dinner tables and get you just close with people in a way that I don’t know if it happens other places. I just know that I really appreciated that it happened here.

Naomi Stuart: I really hope it does, but we have that. And you, again, when people don’t believe me when I say that, hopefully they’ll believe you.

We will wrap it up, but then we end all of our podcasts with kind of like a takeaway from this episode. So I’m gonna give this to you. What advice would you share with, I mean, it could be prospective students or it could be just about legal professions. Got any advice with all your years of sage wisdom and experience?

Ben Guthorn: I think, for prospective students, I think that knowing that you wanna go to law school is the hardest choice. Picking what school you wanna go to matters, but you should know that wherever you go, it’s going to be a good experience. You’re going to get a good education. It’s best to know why you’re going, where you’re going, and what you’re getting into, and the experience that you’re going to be paying for in some way.

So, listening to this podcast is an excellent way to figure that out. I’ll just plug it. This didn’t exist when I was, you know, when I was applying, and if it did, they were a thing, but anyway, I mean, but more broadly, and I think more importantly, and I think this is broader than just the legal profession, but I think it’s more important for traditional professions like the law, perspective is hard to get a handle on, and careers are long, and it may seem that your summer between 1L and 2L, or 2L and 3L, and your first job are the very most important things that could ever happen.

But for somebody who wasn’t always successful in either school or, you know, looking for that first opportunity that they truly wanted, you know, being interested in your passion is the thing that’s gonna make it happen for you because you’re smart and you’re going to an amazing school and you’re gonna find a good place. It may take some time, a few years even, which is painful to all of us who are, you know, the three-minute TikTok is an eternity these days, so years is impossible to think about, but I think trying to keep hold of that perspective is really important.

Naomi Stuart: Yeah, I think that’s really smart, as, you know, all of our 1Ls, I think, are in the midst of starting to think about those 1L summer jobs, and it feels so crushing and important, perspective is excellent advice. Thank you for being on our podcast, Ben.

Anna Donovan: Thank you, Ben. I don’t know that we’ll ever get you back here, even though I tell all of our guests that we’re gonna rope them into coming back, but… thank you so much for joining us.

Ben Guthorn: Thanks. Well, you know I’ll be in St. Louis.

Anna Donovan: That’s true. Thanks. Then, yeah, then comes back on the reg, so, you know, when you’re, what’s like the step up from your job when you’re the… acting, or the real, the full-time?

Ben Guthorn: Well, we’re just gonna, like, you’re the real director.

Anna Donovan: The real deal. Yeah, the next time. When you’re the mayor of Baltimore? When you’re…

Ben Guthorn: I’m just shaking my head. Yes for this sweet visual medium.

Anna Donovan: For your 40th birthday, Anna. Fantastic, I appreciate you. Thank you again, and thanks for…

Naomi Stuart: Thanks for joining.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, thanks for joining. Great. Good team.

Naomi Stuart: Alright, bye.