After graduation from law school, you are going to be a lawyer.
At some point, someone started a rumor that a law degree is flexible. Someone told you that you could go to law school and then do something non-legal with it, something interesting, even something fun. You cannot. When you graduate from law school, you become a lawyer. And being a lawyer is rarely fun.
Being a lawyer probably does not entail the day-to-day tasks that you think.
Before going to law school, you should know what lawyers do during their days. Law has many different practice areas, and a lawyer in each area performs different tasks on a day-to-day basis. You might think that litigators are in court arguing, corporate attorneys are negotiating deals and entertaining clients, and real estate lawyers are negotiating deals and assessing projects, but you’d be wrong. Most of them are buried in papers, reading boring documents, and researching boring law.
You may not find a job at all.
Even if you concede that your job won’t be meaningful or lucrative, you still may not find a job at all. The world already has too many lawyers. Not every person with a law degree is able to find a job as a lawyer.
Being a lawyer probably won’t be as meaningful or lucrative as you hope.
You may think that as a lawyer you can do meaningful, important work. You may think that as a lawyer, you can make a lot of money. You might be right, but you are probably wrong. Meaningful jobs are very difficult to get, and if you are able to get one, you will barely be able to afford to live. In addition, lucrative jobs are also difficult to get. Therefore, most lawyers have jobs that are not meaningful or lucrative, and very few have jobs that are both.
If you are able to find a job as a lawyer, you will have to work with other lawyers, who are often unpleasant people.
If anyone ever tells you that you should be a lawyer, be offended. Being told that you should be a lawyer is not a compliment, especially when being told by a parent. If you are a ten-year-old child, and your parent tells you that you should be a lawyer, your parent is telling you that you are argumentative, annoying, unpleasant, and excessively competitive, that you think you’re right all the time, and unable to admit when you’re wrong. If you become a lawyer, you will be surrounded by lawyerly people, you won’t like it, and you will inevitably become more lawyerly.
