My days of law school are gone. I had spent about 15 years doing various sorts of law work. Now it is time to tell you why law as a career will be either a good or bad choice for you.
Law can be a lucrative and prestigious career, but law is not for everyone. You must posses necessary qualities to succeed in law as a career.
Everything I wrote below about why law as a career is a good or bad choice is based on my personal experience and knowledge.
Why Law Is a Wrong Career Choice
Here is the list of reasons why law as a career can be a bad choice for you.
Why Law Is Not Best Area to Make Good Money
Money is probably the worst reason to go into law as a career. You may become one of those bad and sleazy lawyer types which everyone hates. And you also may be miserable as a lawyer.
The average take-home pay for a lawyer in the USA is only $40 per hour. That is far cry from the millions of dollars many believe most lawyers are making. Only a small percentage of lawyers make millions of dollars per year.
Here is why the law often does not offer good money.
Law as a career rarely yields lots of money in the first 4-5 years of your career. Often lawyers struggle for decades to get enough experience, reputation, and clientele.
Only then do they make good money. Many lawyers quit the law profession for good.
There are too many lawyers. About 80% of people who need legal services go without them. This was official statistics somewhere. They blame the high cost of attorneys.
Law as a career is hard. Go into sales, medicine, or tech instead if you want money. Become a programmer. Become a plumber or electrician and you will be making decent money quickly.
In fact, there are way more engineers among billionaires than lawyers. Do you want money? Become an engineer or programmer and develop some invention into a business.
Therefore law as a career is not a good profession for those who go into it only for the money.
Do You Really Want to Be A Lawyer?
The desire to be an attorney is often cited as a reason why young people choose law as a career. The problem is that they have no idea what the lawyer really does.
Why law is subject to misperception so often? Because people see lawyers in court on TV shows and confuse lawyers with celebrities. They think the law is all about socializing and parties. That is not true.
Law as a career is all about very boring and hard grueling intellectual work daily. It is about fast thinking and lots of knowledge required.
You will have to read very technical and extremely boring legal texts every day for the rest of your life.
You must understand the meaning of the law and figure out how your next action is based on what the law says. You may need to twist the law in favor of your client. Law may change on daily basis in a precedential system like the USA.
Lawyers deal with people’s problems and with the bad negative side of society on daily basis. That may be quite depressing. So, why chose law as a career if you do not know anything about it?
Try to work in a law office, and talk to people who work in law. Read articles and blog posts by lawyers, ex-lawyers, and those who work for them. Figure out what lawyers really do on daily basis. Most likely, it is not what you think.
Therefore, the law as a career may be an improper profession for those who do not know what it is about.
Why Work-Life Balance in Law Work Is Bad
Law is not a 5 to 9 job. It is typical for a lawyer to have a 60–80-hour work week. Basically, lawyers live in the office. Some lawyers literally sleep in the office. Lawyers often do not have much time for anything else except work.
Specifically, litigation is bad due to deadlines. Lawyers in large law firms work themselves to death to meet their annual billable hour requirements. Because only a portion of the attorney’s work hours can be billed to a client.
Law as a career is essentially a marathon. The first several years of law as a career will include lots of hard work and grueling work hours. Without freedom in scheduling. Can you handle that?
One way to fix that is to either work from home or find your own clients. But the law requires years of experience as a lawyer before representing own clients. Mistakes can lead to malpractice and can cost a license for an attorney.
Therefore, the law as a career is not a good profession for those who just want a regular job.
Why Law Does Not Offer Job Stability
Here is why the law is far from being a stable career. There are just too many lawyers in the field and not enough clients for them. Competition is stiff among lawyers in the USA.
Each time economy makes wrong turn people and companies cut budgets. The legal budget is one usually cut the most often. That means lawyers are left without clients.
In such a case lawyers may be let go quickly. Many fresh lawyers cannot find a job and start their own legal business. They must find clients who can pay good money.
Such clients are hard to come by because lawyers do tend to charge a lot of money for their work.
Therefore, the law as a career may not be a good profession for people who do not have a strong desire to work in law. You must like or enjoy legal work to be a lawyer.
As one of my lawyer friends, formerly a biotech engineer, told me: it is much more interesting but much harder to make money in law. However, very experienced lawyers will always have clients. In most cases.
Why Law is A Right Career Choice
Why Law Is About Intellectual Challenge
Law as a career requires intelligence way above mediocre level. Essentially, law work is about solving legal problems for clients. Often, it happens after those problems already occurred. The lawyer also must be able to predict and prevent problems.
No wonder many lawyers succeed in other areas too. You should go into law only if you like hardcore intellectual work. Why go into law for those who cannot even read books?
Here is why the law is all about good thinking and proper judgment.
Just reading and understanding the law itself is a challenge. Applying it to help and advise a client is an even higher level game. It takes lawyers years of experience to develop an ability to read, understand and properly apply the law.
Are you capable of deep critical thinking? I think IQ has something to do with the ability to be an attorney, but this is not the only factor.
Therefore, the law as a career could be a good profession for smart, intelligent people.
Are You Familiar with Lawyer’s Work?
Why law as a career is so often misunderstood? Because there are no TV shows about a regular daily boring side of the law.
I mean, we never see a TV episode about a lawyer just sitting deciphering crazy boring legal text for 3-4 hours straight.
But if you have good familiarity with what lawyer’s work is about and still want to be an attorney, then you may be good to go.
To find out more about law as a career try doing legal work by interning in the law office. Make sure you try to read and understand the law, not just do copying and filing.
Say, you have friends or family members who are lawyers. It does not mean you should become one too. But then you may have direct access to Q&A opportunities. Maybe even possible to observe them at work.
Make sure you see their facial expressions during the time of work pressure. When they curse at the never-ending stream of problems they must solve and deadlines to meet.
Then you will know exactly how they feel. You will have no illusions about a lawyer career. And you will be prepared enough to face the challenges of being a lawyer. And there are many challenges.
Why Law is a Prestigious Professional Area.
On the one hand, people do turn heads when you say you are an attorney. On the other, some people feel strongly against attorneys. Others admire attorneys.
Being a doctor is more prestigious than being a lawyer. There is still this aura of mystery and charm about lawyers which attracts people. Lawyers do have to be good thinkers. And people know that.
Lawyers are problem solvers. Law as a career is about problem-solving. And good lawyers can make good money. Lawyers know how to operate laws and institutions in society. That plays into the prestige of the profession.
Some people think lawyers hold power in society. It may be true but only partially. Big business has power in society and lawyers serve the business.
While some lawyers go into politics, the law is not a prerequisite. But AI developer sounds even cooler.
Therefore, the law as a career may be a proper choice for people who want some additional perk of prestige to their profession.
Why Law Is Good If You Can Work 80 Hours a Week
Lawyers are probably some of the most hardworking people. A profession requires so much reading, paperwork, calling, and so on.
I think, most other professions do not have as many technical daily numbing technical mumbo-jumbo tasks to perform as lawyers.
Most professions essentially involve the same work every day. Almost mechanically.
Many lawyers do not have that luxury. Every new case presents many new facts. And lawyer must constantly learn new things and adjust the work process. It is hard to build a large business out of law because of that.
The trend of customization and standardization in law helped to build businesses like LegalZoom, or eMinutes.com, where I worked. But work still required plenty of adjustments for each individual client.
You must really love your problem-solving job to be a lawyer. Because you will have to work day and night. Are you ready for that?
Therefore, the law as a career may be a good profession for workaholics with lots of energy.
Why Law Is Proper If You Have Thick Skin
As a lawyer, you will deal with almost all the negative sides of society. You will deal with many cheaters, liars, and negative people.
You will constantly deal with arsholes who try to screw your client or you. You may even deal with arshole clients who pay good money. You will have clients who cannot pay the money.
Why law work is so stressful? Lawyers are constantly dealing with people’s problems and life disasters.
Litigation, for example, is an ugly business. You must regularly negotiate with or fight against the opposing attorney. And that attorney may use dirty tactics and techniques to win.
Because bad people and arsholes also go into law more often than in engineering, for example.
You must grow a thick skin. Learn to not take things personally. You must be able to accept this dirt and grease as a necessary evil of the job. And learn to forget about it as soon as you switch to work for another client.
And lawyers are constantly in a state of war and stress. That and many deadlines put a lot of pressure and stress on lawyers. If you are prone to stress then the law as a career is not for you. If you can manage stress well then you can be a lawyer.
Therefore law as a career may be a proper profession for people with thick skin.
Law Is About Reading
Law starts with reading legal texts. As a lawyer, you must be able to read a lot of complex legal material on regular basis. Lawyers cannot fully rely on a legal assistant or paralegal to perform reading for you.
Reading and comprehending large volumes of texts is very helpful in the legal profession. It helps to get good grades in law school too.
Why Law Requires Excellent Memory?
Good memory is also important for a lawyer. Lawyers deal with a multitude of issues and often with many different clients each day.
Lawyers must remember not only names but also which problems belong to which clients.
Despite powerful scheduling and practice management software systems in existence, memory is still key for success in the legal profession.
You may choose law as a career if you have a good memory.
Can You Dance Well (Sense of Humor)?
Here, I am just kidding. But because of all the stress in law, you need to understand humor. Ability to crack a few jokes here and there really helps during long working hours.
Can You Resist Substance Abuse?
There is a large substance abuse percentage among lawyers. That includes alcohol or drug abuse, or both.
There are several reasons for that. Some addicts initially go into the profession.
Many people go into the profession not realizing all the pressure and stress they will encounter. Thus, they turn to substance abuse to relieve stress.
Do not be one of those people. Substance abuse can destroy the career of a lawyer. Law as a career is about clear thinking and good unhindered judgment.
If you cannot resist drugs or alcohol, then the law is not for you. But if you can handle stress and pressure without turning to anything like that then you may be a lawyer.
Many lawyers do not have a substance abuse problem. They work hard and know how to handle pressure well. They have family and take care of their life and health. Be one of those lawyers.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this was useful information for you. There are many reasons why the law is still a lucrative profession despite stiff competition among a huge number of lawyers.
You can succeed in law. Although, succeeding in law may be harder than succeeding in many other professions. Because most of the work must be taken care of by a lawyer and it is hard to delegate.
Really want to be a lawyer? Learn more about law and then make your decision.