Would You Advise Your Son to Follow Your Footsteps and Become a Lawyer?
For some of you this may be a pertinent question, others may wish that they had received the wisdom of this particular answer a little earlier. Either way it raises some interesting points. Mark Steinberg, a retired Los Angeles attorney, wrote an essay addressing the subject for his son Matt on his graduation from high school in 1999 which he recently published on Lawdragon . The issues he discusses apply to a career in law generally so don’t be …
For some of you this may be a pertinent question, others may wish that they had received the wisdom of this particular answer a little earlier. Either way it raises some interesting points. Mark Steinberg, a retired Los Angeles attorney, wrote an essay addressing the subject for his son Matt on his graduation from high school in 1999 which he recently published on Lawdragon . The issues he discusses apply to a career in law generally so don’t be put off that it comes from an American perspective. Take the following extracts by way of example:
We – your Mom-lawyer, Dad-lawyer and you – have led a pretty good, pretty interesting life over the past seventeen years. We’ve traveled, met a lot of people who like to laugh as much as we do, and acquired a car that even you aren’t embarrassed to drive…
At the same time, it occurs to me that your perspective on our life together might be a little like that of an audience member at a play. What you’ve experienced – the things we’ve done as a family – is the end product of effort that has gone on mostly outside your field of vision. I worry a little about that because it may have deprived you of a real, or realistic, view of what making a living as a lawyer involves.
It also considers the evolution of the profession:
At the time we started down this career path, the law was not a choice someone made because he or she wanted to get rich. It was an honorable alternative to college teaching, not investment banking. It was something you did mainly because you liked to think, to write, to argue and, almost incidentally, to eat – sometimes at a nice restaurant…
I believe that the practice of law – even BigLaw – can still be a place where smart, well-intentioned people do important, socially useful things, even while providing a reasonable material life for themselves. But to make such a life for yourself in the prevailing atmosphere requires self-discipline and balance.
As the Law Society tries to get students to take a more realistic view of what is involved in a law career, maybe they could take some inspiration from this. Click here to view the full article.
August 20, 2009
If I had one. No.
August 20, 2009
Well balanced essay – the current crop of idealistic wannabees should be made to read something similar.
August 20, 2009
yes someone’s going to have to look after me when i retire early
August 25, 2009
No. My parents wanted me to be a lawyer because I would have a “job for life” (LOL) and be “respected in the community” (Hmm..). I have been lucky -and it was luck- in getting to do genuinely interesting work which has gained me some limited respect along the way. But my work is no longer viable due to Government cuts and relies on investment / subsidy commitments which managements are less and less willing to give. For me, the work that makes being a lawyer worthwhile, is drying up and unless you`re pathologically masochistically driven, law with a social justice element to it, will become the sole preserve of pressured “saints” with non-existent home lives. I wouldn`t wish that on my children-if I had any.
August 25, 2009
I wouldn’t wish the life of a corporate biatch on my offspring either but if they want to be rich they might have to unless I make it to partnership and stay there for a considerable amount of time.