Nontraditional Akron Law student leaves his mark on the path to a new career
From left to right, Professor Patrick Gaughan, Patrick Warczak and Professor Richard Lavoie. Gaughan sponsored Warczak's submission to the Excellence in Writing competition, while Lavoie was his advisor on the Law Review article. (Photo: Nick Toth)
Like many “nontraditional” students at The University of Akron School of Law, recent grad Patrick Warczak, Jr., attended part time while working full time. But Warczak stretched the outer limits of the term.
“Nontraditional” refers to students who didn’t come to law school directly out of college. Most of them worked several years or started a family before returning to their education. Warczak was age 51 with a wife, three young children, and a well-established corporate career when he started law school in fall 2018.
“I decided to go to law school in part to change my career direction but also just for the experience of law school,” he said.
“I’d worked with lawyers in my job. There was one experience that made an impression where I worked with an attorney at Covington in Washington, D.C., who did a lot for us on the regulatory side. She devised a neat legal solution to a problem my company was having with the Food & Drug Administration.”
But what really got Warczak started on the path to thinking seriously about law school was the 2008 HBO miniseries about John Adams.
Historical inspiration
“I loved it so much I read the book that it was based on and kept on reading and listening to books about that era and on up to more recent constitutional history. In late October 2017, I was listening to an audiobook about the transition from the Rehnquist Court to the Roberts Court, when it just hit me: I really wanted to go to law school.”
Five weeks later, he took the LSAT and was subsequently accepted by Cleveland State and Akron.
Professor Dana Cole and Patrick Warczak (Photo: Nick Toth)
I visited both schools. The first person I met at Akron Law was Professor [Dana] Cole, and that was a good thing. He just has that welcoming personality. I felt good about the atmosphere, and Akron was more accessible from my home in Kent—and they actually have a parking lot right next to the school.
“I remember visiting Cleveland State on a cold day in February. Walking from where I parked my car to the law school, I was thinking, ‘I don’t want to do this for four winters.’”
Making the most of the experience
Most students in Warczak’s position would probably try to minimize extracurricular activities. But remember, it was also about the experience.
In addition to graduating summa cum laude, Warczak was on the moot court team, served a year as secretary for the Business Law Society, was a student in the SEED Legal Clinic, and then served two semesters as a SEED Fellow. And he was on law review. That was where he really left his mark.
“Getting on law review and getting published on law review were two of my goals for law school,” he said.
His published article, The Cobra Effect: Kisor, Roberts, and the Law of Unintended Consequences, was named Outstanding Student Note from among the Akron Law Review articles produced in 2019-20. In December 2021, the article took third place and a $3,000 prize in the Brown Award for Excellence in Legal Writing.
“This was the second time in the past three years that one of our students has placed highly in this national competition that’s been around since 1993,” said former School of Law dean Christopher J. (C.J.) Peters. “That’s a real testament to these students, and to the quality of Akron Law’s training in legal writing.”
Origins of the article
There is a good story behind The Cobra Effect.
One of Warczak’s initial areas of interest for a topic was judicial deference. For decades, courts have accorded deference to agencies’ interpretation of their own rules, he explained. This precedent is generally referred to as Auer deference.
“In recent years, conservative members of the Court have been critical of Auer deference, and speculation was that they would use the 2019 case of Kisor v. Wilkie to overturn Auer. Court watchers were really surprised when Chief Justice Roberts sided with the progressives to uphold Auer.
“I had read about Auer when I took [Legislation and Regulation] with Professor [Richard] Lavoie, which is why I thought he would be a good advisor if I decided on agency deference for my topic,” Warczak continued.
“While he and I were talking after Kisor came down, he mentioned that he believed the real reason Roberts voted as he did is that he’s worried about public perception of the Court. That offhand comment is what got me going in a different direction.
“As I read more, it became clear that Kisor was a better topic than judicial deference more generally. There was more at stake. First, there was the principle of stare decisis—that’s Latin for ‘to stand by things decided.’ It refers to a court’s reluctance to overturn precedence.
“Then there was the even more fundamental issue of the legitimacy of the Court as an institution and how Roberts had been wrangling behind the scenes for years to steer the Court into calmer waters. Had he voted differently in Kisor, it would have represented the fourth case in the last two terms in which the Court had overturned well-settled law,” Warczak said.
Now he had his topic, and before too long, his point of view. As he wrote in the Introduction of his article:
The Kisor result was a win for stare decisis. But the decision ultimately did not represent a victory for the Court (or the lower courts, for that matter), as the version of Auer deference left behind following Kisor is weak, perhaps even untenable….
…[B]y leaving Auer intact, but in a weakened state, the Court—and Roberts specifically—likely did more harm than good to the Court’s institutional reputation. Stability in the law comes not just from reliance on precedent. It comes from providing clear, decisive direction to the lower courts. It springs from overturning bad law. And it arises from the Court’s steadfast authority over the interpretation of the law. The outcome in Kisor may have also weakened all of these.
Deaths in the family
“The standard part-time program is four years,” Warczak said. “I decided when I started my third year that I could get it done in 3-1/2 years if I kept the pedal to the metal—summer classes and a decent credit load. My heaviest semester was 14 credits, which is a challenge with a full-time job.”
In spring 2021, as he was starting his job search, he learned that his father had been diagnosed with leukemia. Within a couple weeks, after the kids finished school, the family headed to Wisconsin to stay with his father and visit his mother for two weeks. His mother suffered from dementia and had been living in a nursing facility for several years.
“My dad died on Father’s Day. I stuck with one course that summer, which I needed to graduate in January. But I put almost everything else on the back burner to deal with my dad's rapid decline, cleaning up the estate, preparing for a funeral, and taking over as my mom’s guardian. Then my mom died in August, and we were off for another funeral,” he said.
“My wife, Tanneill, and my family made it all bearable. I could not have done anything like this without their support. She is a saint, and we are both excited about the law degree and my work. We’re truly in it together.”
A new career direction
When he could find slivers of time last spring and summer, Warczak talked to a lot of different lawyers. They mostly reinforced the idea that it wasn’t going to be easy for him to find a position. At his age, he wasn’t a great candidate for the traditional law firm associate path, and he didn’t want that anyway. He was a rare breed, a unicorn, as one of his professors described him. But most of the attorneys assured him that some company out there would find his skill set really valuable.
He believes he’s found that company. Tangible Global is a legal tech startup based in Portland, Oregon, founded by a former Seyfarth Shaw partner. The firm seeks to use a combination of software and staffing to enable law firm clients to work more efficiently.
Following periodic discussions beginning in the spring, the company made Warczak an offer in September. He accepted and started full-time in January, working remotely.
“The timing was good. It was time for me to move on in a new career direction. It’s an exciting opportunity that leverages both sides of my brain. I’m doing legal work, but they want me to spend 25% of my time in marketing to help grow the business,” he said.
“I am excited about graduating, taking the bar exam and taking on the new job, but it's bittersweet because I shared this with my dad too, who took a real interest in my schooling and my career.
With the new job, Warczak’s legal article writing days are likely over. But he will probably still set aside some time for reading about American history and the Supreme Court.