What's good about being an attorney?

[ranaok]

The prevailing culture in our organizations and institutions is strongly biased toward a deeply embedded 'rational/empirical' approach that favors professionalism.

Here it is a post along the same lines,

The idea that the universe has a rational structure that the mind can apprehend characterizes an older trend in European philosophy called "rationalism." Rationalism traces its roots to Rene Descartes and to the birth of modern philosophy. Most of 20th century European philosophy was a direct reaction to this older tradition, a reactionary attempt to explore the possibility that the universe has no rational structure for the mind to apprehend. Phenomenology, for example, as advocated by Edmund Husserl confines itself to observing and describing our own consciousness without drawing any conclusions regarding causes or connections.

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/students/index.php/topic,2385.msg33197.html#msg33197

[boston08]

Here is a good discussion of the pros and cons of a legal career:
_____________________________ _____________________________ ________________

Date: September 6th, 2006 2:24 AM
Author: TheRepoMan

0Ls [0Ls are those who have not entered law school yet], by now, you've probably had a few people warn you about going into the law. Perhaps a practicing lawyer has told you to not become a lawyer. Maybe a law student has warned you not to go to law school. You probably laughed nervously and stuck your nose back into your TestMasters prep book thinking "What do they know?"

They know a lot.

By all means, listen to them. They are not trying to shut you out of some exclusive guild. They are trying to help you. Misery lies ahead. They are giving you a coded warning about what the morass you are willingly throwing yourself into is actually like.

"The law" is just some bull invented by people. It's not a legitimate academic field of study, like sociology or philosophy. There are no "right answers." You will learn how to justify any position, no matter how outrageous. You will hear these terms, among many others, until you want to f**cking puke: "public policy considerations," "reasonableness" and "balancing." You will seriously consider questions such as whether or not a four year old can batter an adult woman, without pausing to think about how absurd the question is in the first place. You will jettison any common sense, decency and fair-mindedness you once had and replace it with mechanical, pseudo-intellectual thought processes that do nothing to advance the quality of life in our society. Laws are written and applied arbitrarily. If not, they are applied depending on political considerations. Liberals and conservatives are equally guilty of this. "The law" is nothing more than a set of fictions agreed to by elites -- it is a giant lie. For the rest of your professional career, day in and day out, your job will be to read this enormous tangle of equivocal language, evasions and hedges. You will find that the quality of both academic and professional writing in the law is uniformly terrible. Your job will be to pass it off to others that you can somehow make sense of the senseless. Being a lawyer is futile. Your soul will be sucked out of your eyeballs and you will regret going to law school. It's nothing like it's portrayed on TV or in the movies or in potboiler paperback legal thrillers. Don't waste your time, don't take the LSAT, don't blow $140,000 on a law school tuition. You are still young. Enjoy your bodies while they still work, enjoy this planet before humans destroy the environment entirely. Go outside. Bike. Hike. Go to the beach. Play football. f**ck. Go to a bar with your friends. Do whatever it is you really want to do, like become a chef or fly airplanes.

Just don't go to law school.

Date: September 6th, 2006 10:18 AM
Author: Pinderhughes

This is as good an articulation of the pitfalls of law as I've seen written. All true.

Date: September 6th, 2006 12:33 PM
Author: Doctor Zaius

If you want money for supporting a family, vacations, and some standard of living there's a good chance you'll need to enter the corporate world. Whether you're an ibanker, analyst, accountant, or lawyer - your concerns will largely be the same. Too many hours, disillusioned idealism (which you really should have left in college anyway), 'fictional' rules invented and largely adhered to by elites..

So the OP is suggesting not to goto law. What praytell should I do? Become a graduate student in one of the more 'academic' fields like sociology? Become a farmer or choose another job where I do 12+ hours of PHYSICAL labor (which is always worse than the air conditioned office hrs whined about here). Please. The only thing this rant proves is that OP has never held a real job outside of the law. With no basis for comparison its yet another annoying case of grass is greener syndrome.

Date: September 6th, 2006 12:42 PM
Author: William Walton

The last post is correct. Work sucks.....it's as simple as that. Do they think being a Big 4 accountant is more fun than being a lawyer? What about slaving away in middle managment at some retail chain? Management sucks people. And most people burn out of banking so it must suck too.

Date: September 6th, 2006 12:50 PM
Author: Doctor Zaius

Right. The majority of corporate jobs are middle management in nondescript back offices. Talk to those guys about their soul. Half of their jobs are being shot to India and the ones that remain revolve around ensuring that TPS reports have the correct amount of signatures or that their budgets come in favorable. BIG four accountants end up working as much as some lawyers for less than half the pay and usually in the client's 'audit room' which is a windowless closet shared with 10 other drones. Soul sucking seemingly meaningless and arbitrary work is not isolated to the field of law.

[Kaliope]

Being a paralegal is no subsitute for being an attorney.  I have five years of paralegal experience, work for a leading company in my field and still don't make enough to buy a house in the current market.

To most attorneys, paralegal, legal assistant, legal secretary and receptionist have the exact same definition.

However, I can't tell you enough what a good decision it was for me to work as a paralegal pre-law school.  The most important reason is that I know what I want to do after law school. I know what it will be like and I know that I enjoy it.  It's an extreme comfort given tuition rates.

The second benefit to being a paralegal is being exposed to the real life of various kinds of attorneys.  I've seen real estate, development, land use, T&E, entertainment, workers comp, personal litigation etc.  I know what it's like to be one of these attorney's for a day....but that came at the cost of waiting five years to go to law school.

In the end, if you have no great career asipirations and don't mind working for typically demanding people, it's fine.  Don't think for a second it will satiate any genuine desire to be an attorney.

[seine]

"The law" is just some bull invented by people. It's not a legitimate academic field of study, like sociology or philosophy. There are no "right answers." You will learn how to justify any position, no matter how outrageous. You will hear these terms, among many others, until you want to f**cking puke: "public policy considerations," "reasonableness" and "balancing." You will seriously consider questions such as whether or not a four year old can batter an adult woman, without pausing to think about how absurd the question is in the first place. You will jettison any common sense, decency and fair-mindedness you once had and replace it with mechanical, pseudo-intellectual thought processes that do nothing to advance the quality of life in our society. Laws are written and applied arbitrarily. If not, they are applied depending on political considerations. Liberals and conservatives are equally guilty of this. "The law" is nothing more than a set of fictions agreed to by elites -- it is a giant lie.

[tom]

What about the respect of the community? Attorneys are held in high regard and often chosen as leaders in society.

Are you sure that that's the case?

[ontheright]

LOL tom! Sounds like Joan Crawford shouting "Why can't you give me the respect that I'm entitled to? Why can't you treat me like I would be treated by any stranger on the street?"

[johns259]

It's a mixed bag. On the one hand, a majority of elected officials hold a JD. On the other hand, entering law school you have a statistically greater chance of being a criminal defendant than a criminal defense attorney (Dershowitz, "Letters to a Young Lawyer").

[verbal]

ENTJ

[TheSunDevil]

It's a mixed bag. On the one hand, a majority of elected officials hold a JD. On the other hand, entering law school you have a statistically greater chance of being a criminal defendant than a criminal defense attorney (Dershowitz, "Letters to a Young Lawyer").

great book 

[niels]

ENTJ

Wanna meet up?