Nebi Mema

What motivated you to pursue a career in law? 

Law always came naturally to me, it’s something I found I never forced myself to learn, it just came out of genuine interest. And over the years I’ve had many coworkers and undergraduate professors encourage me to go to law school because they saw the potential in me and I didn’t want to regret never going into law years down the line despite the amount of knowledge I already had in the field. 

What advice would you give to current or prospective Temple Law students? 

You’ll meet people smarter than you, and the sooner you make peace with that the better, because half the value of the place is the people next to you and you can’t learn from them while you’re busy racing them. I came in as a CPA with years of tax work behind me and still got outrun by people on things I figured were my turf, which turned out to be the point rather than the problem. And don’t take it so seriously you forget it’s school, the person brute forcing every cold call isn’t having a better three/four years than you are. 

Do you have any networking advice for current or prospective students? 

The best networking advice is really just get along with people. The legal profession, for as many lawyers as there are, is a small world and there might be an instance years down the line where a classmate refers you to a firm because of the positive interactions. 

What challenges do you see facing the legal profession today and in the near future? 

The challenge I see is outside money coming into law firms and the way large firms are engineering around rules meant to keep it out. Non-lawyers generally cannot be part of a law firm ownership structure or share fees so firms have now begun borrowing the private equity structure used to in medical/dental fields: Spinning off a “managed services organization” that owns/provides technology, staff and back office support. The lawyers still own the firm on paper but investors own what the firm cannot run without. The sales pitch is modernization and private equity has now moved into public accounting on the same promise. But the experience there raises question about who ultimately benefits from that modernization. I think the legal profession is going to have to decide whether complying with ownership rules in form is enough or whether these arrangements undermine independence those rules were intended to protect. 

How did you balance law school with your personal life and responsibilities? 

What helped a lot is that my wife also graduated from Temple Law so she understood what it takes to balance law school, work, family, etc. so I would attribute the successful balance to her help and understanding. Now she’s glad I don’t pester her with law school questions anymore. 

What do you wish you had known before starting law school? 

Just how much the first year has enormous snowball effects. Not that I have any particular regrets about my first year but I would have taken more chances, whether it be something as small as participating more in class.