When I entered law school in August 2005, I was already 29, married and my wife was expecting our first child. I had been a teacher since I was 21 and continued to teach high school English until 2008 when I graduated. After an appellate clerkship, I began representing mostly plaintiffs at a firm in Montgomery County.

Over the last few years, I’ve represented plaintiffs in all kinds of cases, from motor vehicle accidents to medical malpractice to a worksite electrical explosion. I’ve also handled some general litigation — insurance coverage matters, business disputes — and even a corporate investigation.

I recently moved to the Bethesda office of Offit Kurman and, more specifically, to its landlord representation group. This means that I represent landlords in all aspects of their businesses, including litigation. I am not, however, a “young” lawyer. Moving forward, my practice will likely also continue to include representation of clients in business disputes, insurance coverage matters and some plaintiffs’ work.

At the end of the day, though, even after nearly three years of practice, I’ve still spent most of my working life as a high school English teacher. This continues to present hurdles for me.

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Here’s another reason why I love Generation J.D.: the most-read blog posts of the year include tips for job interviews and reminiscing about the bar exam. But the most-read blog post of the year prominently features Dungeons & Dragons.

A big thank you to all of the contributors this year for making this blog a success. We’ve got 10 people blogging right now (you’ll meet our newest blogger tomorrow) but are always on the lookout for young lawyers who want to write about their experiences being, well, young lawyers.

If you’re interested in one day blogging for us, please send me an email.

And now, without further ado, the most-read Generation J.D. blog posts of the year:

1. All gang members start of playing Dungeons & Dragons — Jan. 31

It took 20 pages for the U.S Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit to decide that convicted murderer Kevin Singer was not allowed to play Dungeons & Dragons in prison because it could lead to gang activity.

(Sidenote:  I saw this story first on a website I visit daily — www.syfy.com — which I always type in as www.scifi.com. All of you nerds know why. It even had a link to a great Above the Law article on the subject.)

I had some friends in junior high school who played D&D.  They were all nerds (I say this lovingly — I was and still am a nerd). Every last one of them embodied at least 75 percent of the stereotypical nerd description — unpopular, academic, lacking in sports knowledge, lacking the ability/desire to play sports, routinely bullied and with a severely compromised ability to interact with the opposite sex.

2. What I hate about lawyering — April 4

We did a good job for that client.

Our firm represented her a few times before the Workers’ Compensation Commission. There was an appeal to the circuit court, and trial was on the calendar. We negotiated a fantastic settlement, submitted it to the commission, and it was approved. The check came in the mail shortly thereafter.

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Our state’s attorney swore us in as his newest assistant state’s attorneys, quoting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson:

A prosecutor has more control over life, liberty and reputation than any other person in America. Their discretion is tremendous … he can have no better asset than have his profession recognize that his attitude towards those who feel his power has been dispassionate, reasonable and just.

It was the first week of March 2009 when I began my training as a new prosecutor. Some of the baby prosecutors were fresh graduates from law school. Others, like me, had just completed a clerkship with a judge in the county. My predecessors tried to describe the intensity and pace of running dockets in District Court.

“It’s a near impossible job,” some would say.

Three to four days in court with an average of 20 to 60 cases to handle each day. Much like describing the first year of law school, no one could accurately convey the controlled chaos of District Court without experiencing it for oneself.

And so I plunged into my first day of my six-week training with a senior District Court ASA. Training can aptly be described as a hazing process. Although there isn’t any forced binge drinking or induced violence, the effect on the trainee is the same — feelings of inadequacy, self-loathing, crying and nausea.

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I never imagined that I would find myself blogging but you never know what lies just around the bend. With this space I hope to provide a different angle on the legal profession and its relationship to the rest of the world.

I went to law school with the simple desire to “help people.” While I didn’t specifically know what that meant, I knew everywhere I turned there was a lawyer in a position of trust. Writing this feels corny, especially when many of us may be wondering whether law school was worth the investment. But I know I’m not alone.

I didn’t always want to be a lawyer — the idea came sometime after wanting to be a fireman or an astronaut as a kid. The seed may have come from knowing it was a legal aid lawyer who helped my mom decades ago. Or, it may have been planted by the giant example of Thurgood Marshall.

Either way, I find it interesting that each role model — the legal aid attorney and the Supreme Court justice — can be equally important in shaping the future of a kid like me whose family never had a college graduate.

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One of the things they do not teach you in law school is how to be a supervisor. Yet many young lawyers will find themselves in a supervisory position early on — like me.

I began working at Bodie, Dolina, Smith and Hobbs PC as a law clerk in 2006. I had been one of the “staff” for almost two years; that is the role I knew and understood. In 2009, after a judicial clerkship, I returned to the firm as an associate attorney.

I joined a team with a senior attorney, several paralegals, legal assistants, law clerks and interns. I knew how to take direction, but how would I be at giving it?

I can distinctly remember that first day. I sat down and looked around my office. I was no longer in a cubicle. I had two large windows and a massive desk. I had filing cabinets, a bookshelf and two chairs facing my desk. I also had a staff who needed me delegate to them, to organize them and to work with them to accomplish our department’s objectives. I had to be a leader.

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At 25, I’m at the young end of the “young lawyers” spectrum. I was one of those kids who went straight from college to law school and, in the back of my mind, I had high hopes law school would be an extension of college.

Those dreams were crushed the day I looked at my course syllabi, all of which had reading assignments due on the first day of class (in College Park, this was blasphemy!), but I digress. I started law school at 21, and turned 22 toward the end of first semester of my first year.

Although I was young, I’m no Doogie Howser, and I certainly was not the youngest person in my class – in fact, one poor fellow from my first-year section celebrated his 21st birthday on the day we took our first law school exam.

I first became painfully aware my age was going to work against me when I was a summer associate. I was on the phone with an opposing pro se party, who stopped me mid-sentence to say, “I’m not sure this is a real phone call. You don’t even sound old enough to be a lawyer!” Granted, I wasn’t a lawyer at the time, but I was scarred, wondering if my phone voice was too high a la Nina, the Office Space secretary.

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