Become a lawyer?

Question

I'm interested in the law, government and politics. I'm in college studying political science and I do very well and like my major a lot. I also like history. A lot of people tell me I'd make a great lawyer. I have doubts though. How do I decide to go to law school? Do lawyers have good lives? Do they have lives outside of work? I want to pursue the law, but I also want to have a family and a good life. Are there happy lawyers with happy families? Or is it all stress until you get depressed, become an alcoholic or commit suicide?

Answer 1

I've been a lawyer for almost 30 years and I love my job. Every day I look forward to going to work. I work about 10-11 hours a day, but never work weekends. I've been married 30 years (to the same woman) and I think I have a great marriage and raised a good family. My first job, in 1979, paid $28,000. I will not disclose my income now, but it's a lot higher. You can be a lawyer and have a great life or you can live with stress. These are choices we make and I handle stress with exercise and daily meditation for about 20 minutes in the morning. If you can learn to leave your job at the office, you can have a great life. That was not an easy lesson to learn, but I managed to do it--while representing abused children. I think a good lawyer is like any other occupation. You have to develop other interests--not hobbies necessarily--but work time and home time have to be kept separate. Your concerns are valid regarding alcoholism. We have the double the rate of alcoholics than the general population. However, I think the same is true if you isolate any profession and look at substance abuse. Doctors abuse drugs at a greater rate than the normal population. If you feel like you NEED a drink, then you need to deal with that issue. Law doesn't cause alcoholism, but it can contribute to it. And-btw-a law degree can lead to a lot of careers besides practicing law. Land use and planning or business careers are 2 quick examples. Some areas of the law are more stressful than others and after you get your feet wet in the law field, you can choose the area of law you like and concentrate on that. I hate family law and haven't handled a divorce case since 1988. I do land use and development and local government law. Intellectual property law is a major field now and the internet has led to a whole series of legal issues that are still unanswered. Also, I did not go to a prestigious law school. I went to a state university and it didn't matter. If you want to work on Wall Street for some ungodly reason, then you need an Ivy League school. In my state, law jobs are easy to find. Choose a place you'd like to live and you'll find a job. Law also has the advantage of allowing you to be self employed immediately.

Answer 2

I just graduated law school and I would recommend that you only go if you know you want to be a lawyer. I can't imagine devoting three years of my life to law school (and not to mention this summer of studying for the Bar) and then not using my degree afterward. If you don't know if you want to be a lawyer, spend some time doing an internship at a law firm or prosecutor's office or legal aid office to help you figure it out.

Regarding quality of life, you can really determine whether you want to be at a large firm (where you sell your soul but make a great living) or a small/medium firm (where you don't sell your soul and make slightly less money) or at a government agency or non-profit (where quality of life will probably be best but the pay stinks).

Alcoholism and depression happen to be common in the legal profession but I think that if you really want to be a lawyer and pursue an aspect of law that you are really passionate about you can have a happy career in the law.

Answer 3

Well, if you are a good attorney and enter the corporate world you can expect long hours and not Monday through Friday.

Most lawyers do not have a great starting salary. About $30,000 a year for many who can find a job.

If you graduate in the top 10% of Duke, Yale, Dartmouth, Harvard and a few others, they will be recruiting you. If not, good luck!

About the other, those you can find in most high stress jobs, just as many who served in Iraq have or will commit suicide! Generally Dentist's and Veteranarians are the worse

"Don't Go To Law School
Someone just found my blog with the Google query: "don't go to law school." Hmmmm. Whoever you are, you're probably wise to be thinking hard about whether to do it or not. I don't know whether Google will have the answer. I certainly don't have the answer. But here are some things to think about.

Don't go to law school right out of college because you're smart and you've been encouraged to by various history professors or relatives or because you like debating or arguing and you vaguely think you might want to get into politics someday. Don't go to law school because you're not sure what else to do, or because your parents really want you to. Or, at least, don't go to a really expensive law school for those reasons, unless you have the means to do so without incurring big big debt. Don't go to law school, in other words, to avoid making a decision about your life as an adult and what you want it to be like. Because if you incur big debt and make your peer group an extremely competitive and perhaps atypically unhappy group of people you will limit your ability to make that decision, clearly and well and for the right reasons." Yale Law graduate

The title she used for this was "Stay of Execution"!

http://civpro.blogs.com/civil_procedure/2004/03/dont_go_to_law_.html

Answer 4

haha it depends on how you do on the LSAT :-P