My Law School Journey

A college chum just emailed me to ask me why I went to law school. I think my response is fairly informative...so here it is:

"It's no bother at all; I'm glad to expound on my path to law school. Mine should be quite different than yours, if only because I'm now about $200,000 in debt that can't be excused (I ADORE the U.S. sometimes).

I got my B.A.s in Psych and Spanish, then got my Master's in Counseling. I suck at counseling. I got a job with a computer software firm, and did that work for 5 years. I realized that there was no growth in that field unless I was an engineer. By then, my sister had already gone to law school and was a practicing attorney. A good bit of my decision was sibling rivalry, and some was remembering that when I was young, my dream was to be a judge.

I figured I'd try the LSAT, see how that went. I did fine, not Harvard good, but well enough to get admitted. I did, and off I went.

To be honest, I really didn't have a huge passion for the law until my second year of law school. The law school experience is a different story, one I'll tell you if you decide to give this a go.

Once I could choose my own classes and explore my own interests, I was hooked. I was amazed that there's an area of law for just about every passion. Even if I used my previous degrees for inspiration, there's health law, advocacy law, immigration law...

My dream job now would be in a small- or medium- sized firm, where I could pursue immigration and tax law. They seem different, but they're not, really. They're both very rule-based specialties, and I enjoy reading those rules and finding the loopholes. And as much as I hated taking Constitutional Law in school, I find that I get a kick out 4th Amendment issues, and I'm pretty good at Equal Protection and Due Process, so that's a possibility for the future.

I'm now doing research for a friend in regards to a family law case. I like that kind of law as well, although it's incredibly messy.

If this last part sounds snooty, I do apologize: What I love about the law is that I can see issues that most people wouldn't even notice. This is why people hate lawyers, because they think that lawyers look too closely at little things and don't pay attention to what the clients think is important. It's true, and that will always be the dichotomy. However, the details win cases. And I'm not really all that detail-oriented, yet I've been trained to look."