I knew I wanted to be a lawyer since I was a teenager.
I loved engaging in exciting political debates. I was relatively quick on my feet. I loved writing. And I had a natural ability to speak in public.
I won’t jump out of a plane, and I’m scared to death of chairlifts where your legs just dangle below, but I’ll happily get up in front of 2,000 people and speak.
I also loved how television and movies made the courtroom look so exciting. Tom Cruise shouting, “I want the truth!” and Jack Nicholson snapping back, “You can’t handle the truth!” is still one of my favorite movie exchanges.
“I want to do what they do on TV,” I recall saying in college when someone asked why I was headed to law school. A part of me wanted to be an inner-city high school teacher, but I didn’t want to struggle and live month-to-month like my parents did. I already hit my limit on coupon-cutting and buying clothing marked irregular at TJ Maxx and Marshall’s.
My mom was a schoolteacher, and we all know how much they’re underpaid.
I figured I could still follow my passions by becoming successful and using my position to alter the course of the world in other ways.
A lot of people think their profession needs to match their world purpose, life’s passion or spiritual calling. It doesn’t. Yes, you should really enjoy what you do for a living; otherwise you’ll be super unhappy. Maybe even depressed.
But you can enjoy managing a restaurant and not have restaurateuring as your life’s passion. You can thoroughly enjoy being an IT or cyber security professional and not give up painting or playing the guitar as the part of life that makes your heart sing.
It’s OK to make a living and still follow other passions.
Of course if you can make a living doing something that serves your purpose, even better. I’m not at all suggesting a sculptor can’t try to make that his or her living. Or that someone passionate about social justice shouldn’t take a job working for an organization in that field. I know many people who do this day in and day out. I applaud them.
Just don’t think your purpose has to be your vocational path.
My passion since my teens was to do what I could to make society more racially fair and just. I felt it in my soul since I first met Black kids in 6th grade.
I knew I could pursue this purpose by gaining some level of power in society and then using my voice to do good. I realized early on my that profession didn’t need to be about racial justice to continue fighting for racial justice.
I quite often hear people say they’re thinking of going to law school. That they want to be a lawyer.
I hear it from high school kids. College students. And even people in their 30 and 40s.
If you want to be a lawyer because you think that’s your ticket to making money, you’ll want to make an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.
Are you a good writer? Are you good at critical thinking? Are you able to see multiple sides of an issue even when you don’t agree?
Not all lawyers are rich. Not all lawyers get to work for well-paying, large, national law firms. And not all get to have their names on buses or billboards.
So if you’re choosing the legal path, assess whether you think it’s something you’d enjoy, even if you don’t get rich.
If making money is your main motivation (it certainly was one of mine), know that only the top 10% of law school graduates get high-paying jobs at the top 200 largest law firms. The ones that pay $175,000 or more a year to new grads.
There are federal, state and local government jobs. Jobs in company legal departments. Jobs at smaller law firms. Jobs with court systems. And of course you can start your own law firm and learn to swim by jumping in the lake. The salaries at these places range from teacher-level salary to great money.
Also know that sometimes you have to put in some years and gain experience before making a good living. Patience is a great virtue if you want to earn a living being a lawyer.
On top of that, there are literally hundreds of areas of law. When you say you want to be a lawyer, are you imagining suing doctors when they make errors? Handling car accident cases? Defending or prosecuting people charged with crimes? Handling messy divorces?
Or were you thinking you’d be writing contracts for businesses? Helping people write their wills and health directives for end-of-life planning? Being a sports or entertainment lawyer?
Or maybe handling lawsuits between competing companies?
The list goes on.
You don’t have to decide all of this before you go to law school, especially since you may not get your first choice, but if you’re going to invest time, extremely challenging intellectual energy, and a lot of money, you should at least have some ideas about what piques your interest.
I knew I wanted to go to court and be a trial lawyer, but I had no idea at age 20 I would end up going to court fighting over trademarks, patents, copyrights and other business disputes. Hell, I had never even heard of patents or copyrights in 1989. The smart phones and the internet hadn’t come out yet.
Finally, law school is hard for most people. It’s nothing like undergrad. The sheer amount of reading. The 3–4-hour-long essay finals. The writing. All new.
Nobody should shy away from things just because they’re hard, but if you’re going to attend law school, be prepared to put in the work.
I love being a lawyer. It’s intellectual challenging. I’m constantly learning new things. And I’m never bored.
Good luck on your journey.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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