-: I think education law is something to transition to,
but it's very difficult to transition from
because it's not something that's found at a lot of firms
or law offices.
And so I would say number one,
do something that's litigation-based first.
I was a public defender for five years
before I transitioned to education law.
And so the skills that I developed as a public defender,
organization, being able to problem solve,
think quickly on my feet.
All of those things translated well to education law
because now, number one, I know how to respond
to a lawsuit, I know how to appear in court.
I know how to conduct an investigation,
because, you know, all things that I had to do
as a criminal defense attorney.
Organize, because you're going to be supporting
a number of schools and all those schools have needs
and you'll be dealing with individual students.
You need to remember who goes where.
The ability to sort of handle a lot of things
coming at you at once is really key.
So it's all about the preparation I would say
is pick another position as an attorney that is demanding
and you'll probably learn all of the things
that you need to learn
and then the law you can pick up quickly.
The thing about working in an educational organization
is that the focus is not legal services.
So you're dealing with a lot of non-lawyers
who don't understand the risks
of some of the things that they might be doing
and so you need to really give them that like
next level of why
when you're explaining why they cannot
or why they should do something.
You have to break it down into like very small nuggets
so that non-lawyers can understand it
and also recognize it in their day to day experiences.
Like oh, Tagan said we have to educate this child
in the least restrictive environment
and we have him working one on one with someone.
That's not really the least restrictive environment.
Maybe we should figure out a way
to include this kind of individualized attention
in a classroom with his peers.
And so it's really normalizing what is otherwise
like boring and dry and multiple pages for lay people.