What little internet traffic finds it's way here, a good deal of it starts with a blog I wrote while I was applying to law school a couple of years ago. Writing the blog was fun, and I had fun applying to law school. The LSAT was an intriguing mental game, the cut and dry nature of LSAT and GPA made the law school application process feel more like a game than anything with serious real-life repercussions, and waiting to hear decisions on my applications made checking my email a fun adventure. There was a community aspect of the whole process too. Keeping up with, and occasionally posting, on the Top Law Schools forums became a regular part of my day. Law School Predictor, Law School Numbers, these law school application social media sites consumed a tremendous amount of my time. My engagement with these sites had a lot to do with my engagement in the application process.
Getting into law school took several months of focused effort. I threw myself into the process. I was ready to hit the law books and work hard at the next stage of the law school game, getting the top grades. It was hard to leave it behind when I finally had to face reality and recognize that the time and money that would be required to get a law degree were definitely not worth the effort. I always knew that the process would end with me staying exactly where I was, that seems to happen to me more often than I want to deeply consider at the moment, and that's probably why I never gave serious thought to what it means to be a lawyer. I would hate being a lawyer. But that's not really why I'm relieved I didn't go to law school.
Every first year associate at a big law firm is pursuing the same career path. They started down that road when they started preparing for the LSAT or picked their major. They'll stay on that road until they burn out, fail to make partner, or retire from their office or life. The course is fixed for every Big Law attorney. Maybe a few of them will step out and become in-house counsel for a corporation, my college roommate did that, or perhaps a few of the lucky ones with the prestigious resumes will become law professors. In any event, their options are limited. The study of law requires no imagination or creativity, and the practice of law is largely a practice in drudgery and minutia.
I could put a link into every word of this sentence, hell, probably the remainder of this post, that would take you to a blog or a website that offers abundant stories and reasons why you shouldn't waste your time and money in any law school, much less the vast majority of schools outside of the top 15 or 20 programs. All of those sites go on about how there are very few jobs, you spend more than I spent on my first house to get the degree, and the frustration that too many people feel over doing everything right only to end up living with mom and dad while making an hourly wage. The same basic theme pervades all of those sites (Google will get you to a few if you ask), law school closes opportunity.
That's why I'm relieved I didn't go to law school. Had I made that choice, I would have had basically one career path open to me. It would be the standard lawyer path, with the wrinkle that I would be in IP. My career template would be to join a firm's intellectual property group, work like a dog to repay my loans before my kids start college, keep at it until I just can't do it any longer. That would be it. The job wouldn't require my best skills. I would probably be competent enough to do alright, but I would never be the best. The cases would change, the names of the clients would be different, but the work would be pretty much the same thing year in and year out. Write the patent, defend the patent, schmooze the client. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
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