Question for Practicing Attorneys...

<p>Would you agree with this? </p>

<p><a href="http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/should_i_go_to_law_school_the_speech_text.phtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.tuckermax.com/archives/entries/should_i_go_to_law_school_the_speech_text.phtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>It sounds harsh.</p>

<p>his list of reasons that people use (when thinking about going to law school) is pretty common. i get the same warnings from mentors and counselors about "dont go to law school for the wrong reasons."</p>

<p>my question is, what are the right reasons? how do i know if i will like law when i havent really experienced it (and even if i did an internship, i'd only get the environment, not the actual substance). </p>

<p>i know i'm not one of those who wants to go to law school for the wrong reasons (didnt identify with the reasons listed on that website), but i'm still wondering what are the right reasons....</p>

<p>In my opinion, it is never wise to take serious advice from a writer who writes largely for entertainment purposes and uses profanity to entertain.</p>

<p>Or uses logical and cogent arguments. Never listen to them.</p>

<p>I think Tucker Max said it all when he revealed that he got fired from his lawyer job after three weeks? THREE WEEKS? That's his basis for his rant about the legal profession? Wow, that's convincing. </p>

<p>Practicing law is not for everyone. There are plenty of dissatisfied lawyers out there (just like there are dissatisfied teachers, investment bankers, doctors and accountants). This profession can be incredibly demanding, though I think that it can be very rewarding as well (both in a "my job is very challenging and stimulating" way and financially). I think that your best bet is to pay attention to what Tucker Max has to say for its entertainment value, if you choose, and leave the evaluation of what it is like to be a lawyer, teacher, investment banker, etc. to those who have actually held those jobs for more than a few days.</p>

<p>There are plenty of threads on cc, both on the Law School forum and the Parents forum regarding how practicing lawyers feel about their jobs. Search for those threads.</p>

<p>I already responded to this in full here:</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=201264%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=201264&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<ol>
<li>"I don't know what else to do"</li>
<li>"It's the only way I can think of to use my humanities degree"</li>
<li>"Everyone says I am good at arguing, so I should go to law school"</li>
<li>"I want to be like Ally McBeal or Jack McCoy from "Law & Order"</li>
<li>"I want to change the world/help homeless people/rescue stray kittens/whatever"</li>
<li>"I want to make a lot of money"</li>
</ol>

<p>his points here are legit (if you ignore all the stuff that provides entertainment value). these are all wrong reasons to go to law school.... though numbers 5 and 6 may be debateable i guess.</p>

<p>Anyone who uses the top 4 reasons on his list to go to is a moron anyways.</p>

<p>You can do a lot with a law degree from a top school. Bill Clinton seems to be doing quite well now with his Yale law degree helping people in Harlem. Yes, most if not all of his power comes from being a former president and not a Yale lawyer but there are many more socially minded HYS grads that are out in the world forsaking hundreds if not millions of dollars in earning to try and make a difference. They may not be a majority but they are there.</p>

<p>And I know plenty of law students at top schools just there for the money and I have a lot of confidence that a lot of them will be successful despite this. Just like there are a lot of doctors just doing it for the money. Just like there are a lot of investment bankers just doinng it for the money.</p>

<p>There are better ways to make a lot of money and you don't need a law degree to rescue stray kittens.</p>

<p>You don't need a law degree for politics in DC, but it's helpful.</p>

<p>You do need a law degree if you want to be a legal advocate for the poor.</p>

<p>You need a law degree to argue animal rights cases in court. You need a law degree to work pro bono for recent and poor immigrants. You need a law degree to go work for a corporate law firm and begin networking with corproate America (though there may be easier ways). A law degree is probably one of the safest routes to making a lot of money for a hard worker who's 97-99th percentile in inteilligence. </p>

<p>Though in many cases Tucker may be right, he just overgeneralizes too much and provides too little actual evidence to buttress his accounts aside from anecdotal evidence.</p>

<p>i think the author is right. how can you lawyers survive working 90 hours a week? i might rather shoot myself.</p>

<p>You're making 6 figures. Name me a 6 figure job that doesn't require 15 hour days? They are very few and nearly impossible to get. Lawyers get their just rewards.</p>

<p>"Just like there are a lot of investment bankers just doinng it for the money."</p>

<p>Uh, so, what else would they be doing it for? Please.</p>

<p>there are lots of six figure jobs that dont require 15 hour days.....it just takes a while to get there....instant six-figure gratification is going to require time sacrifices if you want it right out of college</p>

<p>right. six figure jobs that you can get straight out of college will require long hours. but you can eventually reach a six figure goal working 40 hours or less. i dont see the point of working 90 hours a week just to make 125,000 a year with a good chunk of that going to taxes, law schooll debt.</p>

<p>Well, the extra money you earn will begin accruing interest much earlier, which will have a dramatic effect on your ultimate financial situation. Money earned and put aside when you're young is significantly more valuable, in the final analysis.</p>

<p>ok, well, if money is the most important thing in your life then perhaps being a lawyer from a top school and working 90 hours at a top law firm is a good path.</p>

<p>nah you'd be better off working 90 hours at a top ibanking firm ;)</p>

<p>I wouldn’t give too much weight to Tucker Max’s opinion of whether practicing law is a good lifestyle choice. At this point, he’s too young to answer the question of whether unbridled hedonism is a good way to spend a life. Ask him again when he’s fifty, if his liver holds out that long.</p>

<p>Likewise, if you’re thinking about law school, it’s likely to be many years before you’ll know with any certainty whether it was a good path for you. (You’ll never know whether it was the best decision you could have made; you can only speculate about the road not taken.) I had concluded well before the end of my first year of law school that I would be miserable practicing law. But after a couple of decades of practicing law, I’m very glad I stuck it out at law school. (I only managed to stay there by convincing myself that I was going to take my diploma and find something completely unrelated to do with my life.) </p>

<p>I was working on those other plans when a lawyer I knew offered me a job. I discovered to my surprise that practicing law was a lot more interesting than going to law school. </p>

<p>I enjoy practicing law, most of the time. That isn’t true every day; there have been a couple of patches in my career where I didn’t enjoy practicing much at all, until I turned things around by changing jobs, and then changing my area of practice. </p>

<p>I would have been miserable working 90 hours a week at a big law firm early in my career, or even 70 hours a week. And yet I find myself rather contentedly working consistently for about 70 hour a week now (in-house at a corporation). People change. Law school is a well known catalyst for such change.</p>

<p>The odds are better you’ll be happy with your decision to have gone to law school (a very different thing from being happy to be in law school) if you’re a compulsive reader of non-fiction who takes a perverse delight in knowing obscure facts, in sharing that knowledge with others, in being right, and demonstrating it to others. It will also improve your odds of being happy to have gone to law school if you’re a more than a little obsessive about syntax, grammar, and punctuation. They’re the stuff good prose is made of.</p>