Non-Trad Testosterone Thread... What's better than Law School?

[Comm-Law]

Scary seeing this thread of IT castaways.  Of course, I have to thow-in that I'm of that sect as well.  10+ years IT.  I worked the gambit... Help Desk to Network Admin to Programmer to Small-business-owner managing an IT company with five employees.  After all of that, I'm burned-out on the whole IT game.  I must ECHO the sentiments regarding layoffs, mergers, outsourcing, retraining.

I imagine that many talented IT professionals will leave the field in the next five to ten years and fewer and fewer will choose to enter that field.  IT isn't the same game that it was 10 to 20 years ago.  You don't get to train for programming COBOL and do COBOL all your career.  Likewise you don't get to learn how to install Token-Ring networks and work for IBM for 30 years and retire with a big pension.  IT is a never-ending cycle of retaining because technology changes so rapidly.  Plus IT is RARELY a "profit-center" in a business.  IT is usually a "cost-center" which means that when the bean-counters look to cut or optimize, IT gets looked at!

At least in law, we'll be part of the "profit-center" most of the time 

- Comm-Law

[upNdown]

OK, here's my story.  I'll turn 32 this month.  I spent come time as a techie - help desk, field repair, but got laid off a couple of times and ended up recruiting techies.  Turned out that was a terrible cut-throat racket - not dissimilar from selling cars.  So I got my paralegal certification and ended up in my present job doing real estate work for a small firm and managing the gophers.  I make 40K doing this.  Its a nice convenient place to work, but I need more.  The increased salary (I figure anwhere between 10K and 100K more per year, depending on where I end up) will be helpful, but really, I just need something stimulating. 

[student]

Could not outsourcing affect the legal field? As a prospective law school student, I wish it is not going to happen. But it does not seem too difficult.

[Paperback Writer]

Could not outsourcing affect the legal field? As a prospective law school student, I wish it is not going to happen. But it does not seem too difficult.

I have seen outsourcing up close and personal, and I am very skeptical of claims suggesting that lawyers are threatened by outsourcing.