I just finished my first year. I am working as a summer associate in a secondary market. The hours are much shorter than on the coasts. Most people leave by 6 and don't come in before 8, but they still make way above the median salary for the area. The new associates have houses and nice cars. They all seem happy. I think you have to decide what is important to you and seek a career in the law based on that. I guess I am strange, but I like to read, research, and learn about new things so the study of law fits me just fine. I also think lawyers are generally intelligent, well spoken, and interesting people to spend time with.
I don't agree
[...] there's not that difficult to figure out what is it about law that makes some (or should I say most) people hate it ..
1. Law school engenders greed and intellectual myopia.
2. Law school breaks people. It is experienced as a trauma, an assault. If law school changes people, it is rarely for the better.
3. Law leads to self-loathing, mental illness and substance abuse.
4. Law uses fear and shame as a motivating force.
5. With the help of the bar exam, the law school graduate is nothing but a licensed fraud.
6. Law is crowded and full of despair.
I disagree. I don't think it is law school that engenders greed, but the law firms recruiting law students or the massive student debt. Nothing about the school, career services activities excepted, has anything to do with being greedy that I have seen. I have not been assaulted at law school, but pleasently surprised by the collegiality of the professors and other students.
I don't think the law leads to self-loathing, mental illness or substance abuse. I think those things come from compromising yourself. Nothing inherently present in the practice of law causes any of those things. I doubt lawyers who practice honest and upright law practices loath themselves.
I guess some might say that criminal law uses fear and shame for deterrence and the risk of liability creates a lot of work for lawyers,but I think of those things not as bad but as good things
Licensed fraud? give me a break
Law is somewhat crowded and in some this does create despair. This may sound elitist, but 4th tier private law schools generally put many of their graduates in despairing situations where they cannot pass the bar or get a job or both, but they are still saddled with loads of debt from paying 25k+ per year in tuition.