What's your inspiration?

[sejul]

I know most of us have written personal statements by now, and I'm sure a good majority of them centered around our personal (and very creative!) reasons for going to law school...reasons like wanting to improve education or the prison system or to "speak for those who can't speak for themselves."  But I want to know the REAL inspiration...be it the $$$, the free aid for your sketchy family, the fact that med school turned you down...

I'll go first:  when I was 11 I read the book A Time to Kill by John Grisham.  It was gritty and graphic and arguably not the greatest book ever written, but it was set in a town about 2 hours from my hometown, it was about Southern people involved in the legal profession, and Jake Brigance's closing argument was just about the best thing my 11-year-old self had ever read.  That's heady stuff for a sixth grader, and it made up my mind immediately to become a lawyer. 

What did it for everyone else?

[buster]

I won't claim a direct line of inspiration from then to now, but To Kill A Mockingbird had a similar effect for me.

[vmersich]

I need to be in a profession where tedious argumentation is valued.  For several reasons, the PhD in philosophy won't work for me.  So here I am.

More specifically, I think that I will do well as a lawyer, and not just financially.  I also like the idea that I might be able to have a positive effect on someone through my work directly or through my influence as someone in a position of power (which we all need to realize and accept: lawyers are, generally speaking, powerful people). 

My inspiration definitely isn't money. Many people on here that make 80K and just need a better paying job confuse me (when they don't have children).  If I make 50K+, I expect to be quite comfortable (I am fine with my 13K/year now.

[seankenn]

My general reason for attending law school is for the money and prestige of being a lawyer.  But a part of me also wants to do something that makes a difference in someone's life.  But really its for the money, so I can buy my BMW and waterfront home.  And also my trophy wife, too.

[sejul]

I need to be in a profession where tedious argumentation is valued.  For several reasons, the PhD in philosophy won't work for me.  So here I am.

More specifically, I think that I will do well as a lawyer, and not just financially.  I also like the idea that I might be able to have a positive effect on someone through my work directly or through my influence as someone in a position of power (which we all need to realize and accept: lawyers are, generally speaking, powerful people). 

My inspiration definitely isn't money. Many people on here that make 80K and just need a better paying job confuse me (when they don't have children).  If I make 50K+, I expect to be quite comfortable (I am fine with my 13K/year now.

How long ago did you decide to go to law school?  It sounds like a more recent thing than a "knew all along" situation. 

[vmersich]

I have considered the idea since I was 16, but I commited to studying philosophy in college.  It was a hard choice, actually.  It's certainly not an entirely recent thing for me.

[trogdor]

i have to admit, it's definitely prestige.  oh, and also world peace.   

[sejul]

i have to admit, it's definitely prestige.  oh, and also world peace.   

You will get no tiara for your good intentions here, Rando .

[amarain]

I'm doing it for the children. They are the future.

Seriously, I'm interested in having a relatively lucrative and stimulating career. I don't actually want to be a real lawyer, but I am very interested in international communication law, and in order to really be qualified to do anything with it, I have to study law in the first place. So, I'm going to law school to get that education.

[sejul]

I have considered the idea since I was 16, but I commited to studying philosophy in college.  It was a hard choice, actually.  It's certainly not an entirely recent thing for me.

Oh, I was asking because I was curious, not because I think there's a definitive way to make this decision.  I was also curious because while I technically began telling the world that I was "gonna be a lawyer when I grow up," I didn't start thinking about it seriously until last year (after college graduation) and I didn't get off my ass to start studying for it until August, and I still have incomplete apps to finish...so for a dream that's 12 years in the making, I have done my share of procrastinating .