Washington Lawyer September/October 2026
By Jade Wu
It was a sunny morning in Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2011. The roads were busy. Dust was in the air. The lavender-colored mountains were not far away. Local schoolgirls skipped along as they headed for class.
I was sitting in an armored vehicle wearing a bulletproof vest while being driven to an appointment with a judge at the local courthouse. He was going to tell me about his job: the types of cases that came his way, the way they were usually processed, and how he interacted with local authorities. My role as a rule of law advisor was to represent American values in Afghanistan, encouraging the concepts of fairness, equality, transparency, and accountability in the legal sector. I had always wanted to be this kind of attorney abroad, and now I was finally doing it.
Before I entered Afghanistan, there were many years when I thought I would never reach my goal of working overseas as an American attorney. Many of you can likely relate to the feeling that your jobs have been pulling you further from your ideal — and that the work you've always wanted remains out of reach. I hope my story will give you inspiration to keep pushing through.
First Steps Abroad
After getting my bachelor's and master's degrees in political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1992 and 1993, respectively, it wasn't yet clear to me what I wanted to do as a career. I knew I wanted to work overseas because I was always fascinated by other cultures: their history, languages, music, and cuisine. I started out by applying to the U.S. Peace Corps, which sent me to Malawi, East Africa, to work as a volunteer English teacher from 1995 to 1997.
This was my first assignment overseas, and the experience of working with people in that country while representing the United States was very rewarding to me. I learned about their way of life, but at the same time I shared aspects of mine. Together we enriched one another's lives and were able to find better, more efficient ways of doing things.
After my service with the Peace Corps, I still had a strong desire for international work, so from 1999 to 2000 I was in Kosovo as part of a humanitarian mission during the Serbian–Albanian crisis. It was during this time that my father, who is a California attorney, encouraged me to try law school. A legal career with international aspects appealed to me. I imagined working as a lawyer for our federal government in the international sector, or at the United Nations or another international entity.
So, I flew from Kosovo to Rome in 1999 to take the LSAT, and this in itself was almost a surreal experience. Taking an American standardized test overseas? Well, there were the familiar proctors who checked identification, Number Two pencils, test booklets, and stopwatches. Unfortunately, I was never a great standardized test taker. My LSAT score fell into the middle range, and I ended up attending California Western School of Law in San Diego. After working in cold, snowy Kosovo, I decided that I needed to see sunshine and the beach if I was going to toil away over law books for three years.
Overcoming Rejections
During my third year in law school, when most of my classmates took local internships, I traveled to Manila, Philippines, to work as an intern in the Office of the General Counsel at the Asian Development Bank. That experience gave me a firsthand look into what some Western-trained lawyers did at an international organization. For example, they reviewed the water rights and contracts for a group of locals in a rural part of the Philippines who needed access to fresh water. They also reviewed contracts for other services for disadvantaged populations in member states — medical, food, housing, and infrastructure projects funded by the international entity. These services made a real difference in the quality of people's lives. I liked what I saw and wanted to be part of it.
When I returned to California after the internship and graduated in 2003, I did as everyone expected of me — I took the California bar exam. I was not successful on my first or second attempt, but instead of feeling discouraged, I paused and did a strategy check: Where did I want to go and what do I have to do to get there?
I figured that I just needed a bar license and decided to try to get one from next door: Arizona. The following year I drove to Tucson, took the bar exam, and passed. Then I relocated to Phoenix with no job offer, but luckily, I was a saver — plus I was blessed with a partner who was financially able to sustain us as I looked for employment.
Soon I had two offers: one as an associate with a midsize law firm and the other as a deputy county prosecutor. After some investigating, I went with the latter. Work as a prosecutor gave me the immediate experience of handling my own cases, writing pleadings, and arguing and persuading in court.
In 2006, after more than a year as a prosecutor, I changed jobs and joined a boutique law firm in a small town in northern Arizona. At the time there was a quiet voice in me that asked whether I was heading in the wrong direction — this firm wasn't the sort that would get any international cases. Yet I soon discovered there were many pluses. Being part of a small firm meant opportunities to strategize with the senior partners, learning about billing, overhead costs, and maintaining relations with clients as well as with those in local positions of power. Indeed, I learned a lot about running a small business.
When I hit my two-year mark with the firm, the United States was very involved with issues in Iraq and Afghanistan and was sending servicepeople as well as contractors to promote certain programs. I remember looking at a map of the world one evening in my home and getting excited at the prospect of once again navigating a foreign land, culture, and language. I knew I had to make a move.
I relocated to Washington, D.C., with no job offer and interviewed with every entity that had an international program that would give me the time of day. Over a span of a couple of years, I was interviewed several times for a federally funded rule of law advisor position in Afghanistan, sometimes by someone located in Washington, D.C., and other times by an interviewer calling from Kabul. But each time, for whatever reason, I was not chosen. In the meantime, I worked on e-discovery projects to make a living.
But sometimes opportunities present themselves in unexpected ways. One day I saw an ad placed by a federal contractor right across the street from my apartment. He was looking for people to teach business English to Iraqi government workers who worked for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad. I picked up the phone, made an appointment with him, interviewed that same afternoon, and was hired.
Consistency & Courage
I flew to Baghdad in 2010, excited yet aware of the dangers it presented. Though the job was not an attorney position, it paid well and gave me experience working in a Muslim country. I made friends with the students I taught as well as their supervisors, saw the Tigris River, visited an old castle previously owned by Saddam Hussein, and even entered a local mosque during prayers.
When I returned to the United States after Iraq in the latter part of 2010, I started interviewing again and received two offers — an attorney position with the United Nations in Kosovo and a rule of law advisor position in Afghanistan. Since I had already been to Kosovo, I chose the latter. Though Afghanistan was dangerous to be in, I was fascinated by its culture and history.
I flew to Afghanistan in 2011 and got to work, collaborating with members of the local justice system while representing American values. Much of what I did was for disadvantaged populations, such as advocating for access to justice for women. Being in a war zone was not a stable long-term work environment, and I returned to the United States in 2012. Still, I felt I had reached my goal and was proud of having made a difference in people's lives.
As you can see, my journey to overseas work was filled with discouraging years of numerous rejections. It was not an easy road to get there, but years of determination, resilience, and creativity eventually paid off. When I returned home from Afghanistan, I was able to move on to other legal work and I even got a book published about my experiences working overseas, recounting some funny stories and foibles I encountered while abroad.
So, if you have a dream job that has been out of reach, keep trying. It might take doing a lot of homework, networking, and working some jobs that seem like detours along the way. But with consistency, courage, and flexibility, as well as a little bit of imagination and creativity, you might just find what you're looking for. Do not give up.
Jade Wu is an attorney licensed in the District of Columbia and Arizona, and author of Flash Points: Lessons Learned and Not Learned in Malawi, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan (State University of New York Press, 2017). She now works remotely, reviewing contracts and writing articles, which allows her time to play the piano, give recitals, and compose music.
