Should I become a lawyer?
Trying to decide between Wall Street and law. Wondering if there are any lawyers on this forum who can give me their take on this.
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@T30graduate
Always
Former lawyer here. Please post your LSAT, goal in going to law school, and what you do for work now. If an undergrad, please specify major, year, and whether you plan on going straight through.
177. White Male. Not really sure I have a goal yet for law school, Big Law seems not worth it, I just did well on the LSAT. Am a junior in undergrad right now, took the LSAT relatively early during summer after sophomore year. Have a internship at a top PE firm lined up for this upcoming summer which gives FT returns.
Based on your score, you can go to a school where you can do no studying and get a big law offer. The two tracks are litigation and transactional. If you are interested in transactional, then do the PE internship, get the offer, and go into finance instead of law. The responsibilities, ability to advance more quickly, and pay instead of student debt make it an obvious choice. If you have second thoughts, talk to in-house counsel and see if you can look at what outside counsel do. It will be mundane and full of fire drills.
Litigation often appears more interesting than it is. It is a research and motion writing position. If you are interested in this, go to the local courtroom and observe as many trials as you can to get a sense of how much of it is procedural. Feel free to meet the litigators for coffee and try to shadow them. You will make more money in PE, unless you are in contingency cases for medical malpractice or toxic tort.
Feel free to let me know if you need any clarification.
I have very limited experience here, but may be able to offer some insight.
Given what I know now about the practice of the law, I would not recommend being a lawyer (and I'm not drawing only from my own experience here, but from the experiences of my classmates, alumni, and people in my network, whose opinions I've mined extensively before deciding to pivot away from a career in the law).
I'm also the type of person who you'd be surprised to hear this from:
Even with all these working in my favor, however, it still hasn't been enough to overcome my plain dislike of the practice of law (just ask any lawyer if they really like their job).
Also, since you're on WSO, you're probably the type of person who needs to hear this: It'll be incredibly hard to get back all the opportunities you're likely awash in now as a (seemingly) successful undergrad. As an undergrad, I felt like hot shit. Now, as I'm sending out teasers to the finance world, I feel like no one wants to touch me.
Hope this helps.
Go PE - you don’t want to be a lawyer
https://www.tuckermax.com/blog/why-you-should-not-go-to-law-school
Most of the links to the sources he gives are broken, just fyi
WSO should not be your go-to place for advice on a legal career. You are primarily going to get feedback from disgruntled former lawyers or law students. You are going to get a very jaded view of the legal profession.
It is because he is on WSO that the advice is don’t go. If you have any interest in business you have no reason to attend law school. The advice on, say, Top Law Schools Forum is different because those people asking don’t have his credentials or PE summer offer.
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