You can go into business or real estate after being a lawyer, but usually it's a line of business that you fall into because you're a lawyer, and you realize that you've learned something about the business and can make some money at it.

I loved going to law school. I can't say I loved every minute of it, but I wanted to be a lawyer since I was in 6th grade. It's about all I ever wanted to do. I am lucky enough to love being a lawyer, but I've had good jobs that interested me. There are so many different kinds of law that you can usually find an area that interests you, but there is only one thing you can do with a law degree, and that is practice law. As Scott said, would you go to med school just for the liberal arts training and intellectual stimulation of it? Of course not. So if you don't want to be a lawyer, don't go to law school, unless you're willing to sink a hundred grand and three years into an intellectual exercise to be a more rounded person. The lawyers I know who are happy like being lawyers. The ones who are unhappy went to law school for some mixed up reason and found themselves lawyers despite themselves.

Minkoff - My 25 year old daughter, Katie....I guess she is using "Katherine" is a newly minted lawyer. She just took the oathes last Tuesday here in Pasadena. She took the Testmasters LSAT course and says it raised her score from the average score in the country (her diagnostic test score) to the 98th percentile. Her final testing score was up 20 points.

She attended USC's Gould School of Law, graduating last June, 2007 at age 24. She took and failed the bar last July by 3 percentage points - DOH! Re-took it in February and found out she'd passed in late May. She was an Political Science major at UCLA as an undergrad.

frankly, she has a ton of school debt but contrary to what some have posted, I did not/do not feel it is my responsibility to pay for her graduate education. I strongly advised her that a graduate degree was advisable in today's work climate, but with an undergrad degree from UCLA she should be very capable of putting herself to work. Its just that she wanted to continue on and do it while it was all fresh in her mind despite her young age.

Those that know me on the board know I am terribly proud of both my kids. I only wish my father could have lived long enough to see her accomplishments. Neither my mother nor father finished high school and of my two siblings, only I attended/finished college. I later did a graduate degree and I think this truly made an impression on my kids. Best of luck to your daughter (and to you!)

Oh, P.S. She is working for Disney in a temporary capacity but supposedly they are trying to create a position or her(fingers and toes crossed).

Very well said, Natasha is keeping up on this thread. She will be fairly young when she graduates from under-grad school (21) Its hard to get a read on her seriousness. She has expressed she wants to be a lawyer for the last 3 years, but now she cant believe how fast 4 year college can wizz by. She just began her senior year (summer school) and cant believe its time to prep for law school. I think she is a little scared. All I can do is encourage, pay, push, and deal with the drama over the next few years.

Oh Yeah Dan In Pasadena congrats on your daughters success.
Pretty young 24, to become a lawyer, I pray for the same

Years ago my then wife, a tenured professor at the University of San Diego, decided she wanted to give up teaching and become a lawer and, being on the faculty, she could attend the (then, dunno 'bout now) highly rated law school there free of charge.

Oh, and so could her esposa! She wanted to flee CA to the east coast and drag me with her (HA!) so I took the LSAT there, beligerantly and just for kicks, no prep whatsoever and ended up being accepted into their school of law :eek:. Well, I'm an artist with no desire to be a lawer so the marriage predictably ended (a good thing).

Point is, I think if I'd anxiuosly gotten my panties in a bunch and taken prep courses or whatever, I'd have probably done nowhere as good as I did. As someone posted earlier, one is able to think that way or not and I don't personally think that one can "prepare" one's self to think that way if it's not natural.

But WTF do I know? I'm an artist not a lawer :D.

Don't know idf the prep courses really help--depends on the type of person she is--is she tightly-wound and would taking the prep course make her more at ease knowing that she did all she could to prepare to take the LSAT? Sometimes it is a mental game more than anything--if the person feels relaxed they will do better. It depends on what makes them feel relaxed.

I took it in 96 cold turkey and scored a 158.

encouragement is great
paying is great
dealing with the drama is difficult

pushing is not so great

i was 21 when i entered, and 25 when i graduated. one of the youngest in my class.
sometimes, well often, i think that if i wasn't pushed so hard by someone concerned for my future, that i would actually be doing what i love now.

parents sometimes forget that we kids are the ones that will be living with this choice day in and day out, long after you are gone.

its a good sign that she has expressed a desire to do this for a few years already. i had no such desire.

Im like DARISC above, only, i continued on with the swiming up stream. i was/am an artist, felt totally unprepared by college and because of youth or ingnorance, did not know what else to do....AND was continunally told that you can "do anything with a law degree".

hahaha, I realized as soon as those student loans came do, that I couldnt simply do "anything"

When it comes to pushing...I would advise you to try to sit back and watch this all happen passively. If your daughter is like me, and should find herself unhappy or just not fitting in with law school, she may stay in it just because she doesnt want to let YOU down. This is not good. trust me. working as a lawyer is very difficult in its own unique way and trying to do it while being miserble or regretful is really unhealthy.

I am growing more concerned that your daughter doesn't really want to be a lawyer. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to discourage her. I am trying to make sure she is doing something she wants to do, not complete law school because she got the idea to do it once and everyone's told her she should ever since. My expeience, and the experience of less happy lawyers on this board is instructive. I love being a lawyer. I can't stand the idea of being anything else, even on bad days. I still get a thrill every time I represent someone. I can still hardly believe that someone pays me real money to represent them. That's what makes me be a lawyer.

Fortunately my skills and iterests are perfectly alligned for being a lawyer. I read a million words a minute, I speak well and can articulate issues and ideas quickly, I can't spell or count worth beans, but I can see the big picture without losing the forest for the trees. It's not so much that you have to be smart to be a good lawyer, it's a particular kind of smart. It's almost like a knack that you're born with or not, just like some people are born able to run fast, and others can't catch their own shadow no matter how hard they train. I also can't run, but I'm a ferocious high jumper.

If your daughter has a burning desire to be a lawyer she should go to law school. If she likes the idea of being a lawyer, she should take a couple of years of and join the Peace Corp and use that time to decide what she wants to do with her life. If she wants money and prestige, she should go to business school or go to work for a land developer.

?!?!?

Agree, nor can success in life be predicted by GPA, SAT, GMAT, etc.

Which, while accurate, isn't the point. The point is that law schools DO use LSAT scores as a component of the admissions process and if you give up ONE question, ONE point, you are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage.

It's a game. If you are going to play the game, play to win.

Kaplan. DRILL DRILL DRILL DRILL DRILL DRILL DRILL. Practice tests EVERY day. Logic Games until you puke, then Logic Games for dessert. PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. If you are prepared you have a shot at winning. If you are underprepared you LOSE.

Kaplan sucks, OK, but the point is you GO TO THE CLASSES and it forces you into a routine and peer climate of competition which reinforces this. Don't do anything else during the process.

The testers don't care if you had a life. The admissions office has three piles: immediate accept, immediate reject and "read the application." You want to be able to make it out of the middle pile with essays and the rest, but if you don't clear the initial bar it won't ever be read.

Remember this: the BAR is a standardized test.

"My schoomasters called me a Dunce and a Fool; but at cuffs I was always the cock of the school. . . " -Jonathan Swift, Hamilton's Bawn

I have known a ton of lawyers over the past 11 years of working. I think I have met, maybe, 1 or 2 lawyers that felt like MRM.

I can say with confidence that 99.9999999% of all my lawyer friends regret their career choice...even those that wanted to be a lawyer at the beginning. The ones I see everyday at court do not hide the fact that its a drag.

This job burns you out quick because of many reasons.

If a young person considering going to law school asked me what being a lawyer is like, my condensed version would be as a general rule, the following:

Working as a lawyer is like being perpetually stuck in final exam week until either retirement or death comes.....with, I suspect, the later coming sooner than the former.

I feel like I never left school and that school got a hell of alot harder. The work requires constant study, constant preparation and constant striving to get an A+. Unlike school where frankly, it doesnt matter if you get a C in your property law course, you can not score a C on your clients case. ....the client goes to jail, the client loses money and their house goes into foreclosure and their kids dont have food, they lose custody of their children, they pay too much estate tax, they dont get the medical treatment they need.. etc....if you mess up.

I would never attempt to discourage someone from going to law school BUT, I would be happy to explain every detail of the negative aspects of it so that they are fully informed. I had nobody to shed light on the mystery.

Ill say this, whatever dislike I have for the work, I can say that I am still an excellent lawyer and that I get satisfaction from helping many people in horrible situations. The money for the most park, SUCKS. However, lawyer jobs seem to be quite recession-proof and stable.

Interestingly, as a kid and student - I was absolutely terrified of public speaking situations. Now, the one thing I really love about being a lawyer is being in court. I love knowing every detail of my case and shattering the defenses argument. I love to win my case. I love impressing the judge with my well thought out and articulate agrument. Its a thrill. Especially so, if you live in a big city and work in big city courts. Im in a small town now and its not so thrilling. I did work in NYC for about 7 years and I really enjoyed walking into the court house each day ready to do battle. If your daughter is going to be in SF, she can take advantage of many great opportunities to gain experience. And, furthemore, being in a large city like SF, she will be able to practice types of law that someone living in Fresno wont be able to. For example...does she like music and films and art? Then she should check out entertainment law. I would love to be doing that. ..but being in upstate NY now, who would I represent...the local accordian player?

And here is a very important tip to be aware of from the beginning of this process. Once your out and you work in an area of law for a few years...you get type-cast. Changing one's area of practice is not something law firms like in a lawyer with a few years of experience....unless that lawyer is willing to take a substantial drop in salary in order to compete with new graduates. It is therefore essential to start developing an interest in particular types of law asap.

The fact is, unless you are very lucky or very rich.....work is work. It all sucks. Im sorry. Work sucks. The problem with why lawyering may suck more than other jobs is.....working your butt off and not being compensated adequately and yet the general population thinks your a millionaire when in fact you live paycheck to paycheck....obviously there are excepections. None of my lawyer friends are rich. They are all middle-income people living middle-class lives, they just happen to work their brains harder than most

Scott that was an excellent post, and also quite true.

+1 Great post Scott, I am so glad I started this thread. What great insight and information. Thank you much.
My wife and I will be going up to SF in a few weeks to move her into her new apt.
She is still adamant about being a lawyer. The wife and I are going to have real sit downs with Natasha.

The worst part of being a lawyer, for most that I know, is that you are for the most part just an employee, answering to everyone. You have to answer to the client. If you work in a firm, you have to answer to those above you. You have to bear responsibility even for things you can't control. As a business, the hourly rates have gotten so high, you can't waste time being overly careful, but you bear full responsibility for any mistakes.

The other thing people don't realize, is that most successful lawyers aren't successful because they "can argue so well" or "can read a lot." They are successful because they are successful SALESMEN. Yep, at the end of the day, law is a SALES job.

If you get a job at a firm out of law school, yes, you can go a few years doing grunt work, without salesmanship. But that is a HUGE mistake. From day one, a lawyer needs to start building a client base, and controlling that base. Without controlling a client base, a young lawyer's future at a firm is going to only be short-mid term (maybe 5-7 years). You won't make partner unless you control a book of business. And a grunt work associate pushed out of the firm at 7 years is in a miserable position.

Sales: You need to sell yourself to get clients. You need to sell yourself to keep clients. You need to sell the job that you are doing and have done for the client (i.e., they have to be kept happy, and most of the time people hiring lawyers are not in happy positions). You have to sell your bill to the client, i.e., get them to pay, which is often difficult given the high rates these days.

If your daughter isn't into sales and self-promotion, it probably isn't the business for her.

Yeah right...an' like you, they still be toolin' roun' posin' in their 'spensive Porcha SC's, huh? Didn't that old vociferous Limey dude who was always runnin' 'round shakin' his spear say "The first thing we do,is kill all the lawyers." :D

Having earlier posted my worthless $.02 in a moment of boredom, I've become intrigued with following this thread.....which I find extremely edifying!

Minkoff, having no offspring (arguably a good thing) I am still struck with this idea: How about, in a loving, parental way, proposing to your daughter that she prepare and present to you, her case; "Why I want to be a lawyer and why you should support me financially to enable me to become one" (with emphasis on "Why I want to be a lawyer").

If your lovely daughter balks at this challenge, 'twould seem reasonable that a smile, tinged with a smirk, and the question, "Too tough a case for you to handle?" might test her mettle and be meaningfully revealing to the both of you, eh? :)

Great idea!! I will give some time to prepare.

Thank you. That'll be $267.34 please. :cool:

No Way, you probably thought about the idea for 10 minutes, 5 minutes to draft it.
$400.00 per hour, I owe you $100.00. If you dont like it, see you in small claims courtSmileWavy

I begrudgingly accept your paltry negotiated fee and will pm my adress to you. Next time, however, I won't go so easy on you! SmileWavy

The problem with being a lawyer is that you will:

1) Be a slave at a large firm billing 2,000+ hours per year and have NO life.

or

2) Get a job at a small firm and eat what you kill. Talk about STRESS. If you don't start bringing in the bucks after a few years you will be gone.

On the brighter side, you can start at a large firm and transfer to a cushy in-house counsel job. Or love what you do and be a great rainmaker at a small firm.

Things to consider:

What if you are 40 years old and your law firm blows up? NOONE will hire you unless you have an impressive book of business. I worked for a legal temp agency at the end of my legal career (I switched out of law) and saw many smart and talented 40 and 50 something lawyers who got pushed out of their firms or somehow or another lost their jobs and couldn't get on with any other firm because they had no book of business. Its a tough job.

On the good side, you can always do something else with a legal degree. Its also a great education to have. I also have some friends who are at mid-size firms and they absolutely love what they do and are very successful. Just some food for thought.

Scott