During my first few years of undergrad, I was absolutely certain that I wanted to go to law school and become a lawyer. But by the time my senior year rolled around, I was less sure. The more stories I read about the lack of work-life balance in the legal field, the less certain I became that I was ready to commit so much of my life to work. However, law is still deeply fascinating to me and I really enjoy reading and writing.
My question is: How do you know if law school and a career in law is right for you before you get there? What advice do you have to make sure you make the right decision and don’t end up majorly regretting it?
- Anonymous
I always say that the best way to learn more about career paths is to talk to the people who currently work in the industry. Reach out to alums of your college (your school's Career Services should maintain a list and where they went after college, at the very least) who are lawyers in different practice areas (e.g., immigration, criminal, corporate, tech, privacy) and employed by different kinds of entities (e.g., biglaw, midsize and small firms, solo, government, in-house, NGOs). There are so many different ways to practice law or work in law-related fields. I think the horror stories often stem from not finding the right combination of practice area/employer entity, rather than law as a whole. There are many legal paths that offer reasonable work-life balance; you just might not make the millions glamorized on TV. (Check out Do I need to know what practice area I want to go into before law school? How do I learn about practice areas? in my FAQs for resources to learn more about legal practice areas.)
When you talk to these lawyers, ask them what their days or weeks look like in terms of what they read and what written deliverables they produce. Ask them what they like the most about their particular practice and what they like the least. As you listen to them, ask yourself whether their responses resonate with you. Often, I will listen to someone explain to me why they like a particular practice area and think to myself, There is no way I would like something because of that reason. And that's perfectly okay! In fact, focusing on your internal response to their responses will give you a lot of information about which parts of their practice you would like to have in your own (or not).
More generally, try to break down why you were 100% on law school and becoming a lawyer initially. There are likely elements in your earlier idea of lawyering that you would want in any job that you have--lots of reading and writing? Thinking about rules and structures? If you can extract those elements out, you can explore jobs (whether within law or outside of law) with those elements. If you like lots of reading and writing, corporate law will likely not be your jam and maybe you would like being an editor; if you like thinking about rules, maybe compliance fields in law would interest you and public policy or government jobs might also be good fits. The more you can separate out what you want in life from the predefined paths offered to you in college, the more you'll be able to customize your own life path in a way that hits a lot of what you want while minimizing what you don't want.
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