“Hold the door!”

I look up from my phone. A young man in a collared shirt and clip-on tie comes running across the lobby toward the elevator. I quickly hit the door open button, and he almost slams against the back when he dashes in.

“Thanks,” he wheezes. I smile politely at him, then return to my phone.

The elevator resumes its climb.

A moment later, I notice that he doesn't hit any floor buttons. The young man brings it up first. “Kaufmann & Kaufmann?” he asks between huffs.

I don’t look up from the email I am typing. “Mhm,” I reply. But he already knows--Kaufmann & Kaufmann is the only office on the forty-second floor.

A short silence, which he then breaks.

“So, uh, what brings you there today?”

The sound of clicks as I tap on my phone screen. “Work, as it always does.”

“Heh, same here.” Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him tug at his tie. “Well, hopefully, at least. I’m applying for an internship there.”

That catches my attention. I put my phone into my purse. “Oh?”

Now I have a proper look at him. His hair is brown, well brushed. He holds a folded blazer over one arm and a folio in the same hand. Fitting slacks held up with a brandless belt. New shoes, but tinged with mud underneath. He’s in his early twenties, looking like a schoolkid--if not by his youth, then by his optimism.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Josh.” He extends a hand. “Nice to meet you, Ms....”

“Please, call me Miranda.”

We shake hands, and he seems to have caught his breath now. 

“Internship, hm? What school are you from?”

“University of Washington,” he says. “Second year, looking to get my J.D. next year.”

“A Husky, then? What brings you all the way to San Francisco?”

“Work, as it always does.” He smiles. “I was Computer Science in undergrad, you see--I interned at a startup on Market Street for two summers.”

It seems to be an increasingly common trend these days--science majors go for a law degree to try to become patent lawyers. Some do it for the money, others for prestige. But law graduates have twice the average unemployment rate, and unless you’re from the big-name schools, you’re better off working at a startup.

“So why law?” I ask. “It sounds like you had a good thing going on as a programmer.”

He shrugs. “When I first went into C.S., I had big dreams. I wanted to build the next Google, or Facebook, or even Zynga. But then I quickly realized just how little impact I had--babysit this database, write that login page, monitor our product for whatever’s making our cloud stuff so expensive to keep running. It just wasn’t for me.”

“So you decided to go into patent law.”

“It’s a growing industry, and I figured arguments here would have more impact than how a button looks on devices of different sizes. And the technical details are still intact--that’s what makes it different from, say, bird law, doesn’t it?”

He shuffles about and puts his blazer back on.

“Guess this is a story you’ve heard many times, isn’t it?” he asks.

“It’s also a reference that I’ve heard enough times to ban from the office. Nevertheless, I’m intrigued.”

“Huh?”

The elevator dings as we reach our destination.

“I’m Miranda Kaufmann, partner here at Kaufmann & Kaufmann.” Now I’m smiling. “And a bit of advice: you may want to look just a little more into who leads a firm before the interview lest you run into them. Good luck.” We walk through the door to the office, and Josh is led to a conference room somewhere.

Optimism can be nice, sometimes. I walk toward my own office and get back to my email.