Should You Leave Law And Learn to Code? A Conversation With Lawyer Turned Programmer Will Ha

Bill Simmons is one of my conversational heroes.  Not only were his conversations with Malcolm Gladwell a partial inspiration for building ReplyAll, but Simmons revolutionized podcasting and completely reimagined the interview format.  The B.S. Report was never simply a Q&A with an interviewer and an interviewee, it was a mutual conversation between equals.  But, part of what made his podcast stand out was the fact that, while he did interview celebrities, he also made an effort to introduce his audience to people he considered undiscovered gems.  I try to follow that model with my conversations here on ATL, so while I do throw in the occasional Mark Cuban, I have also published conversations with my old colleague Ethan Lutske and current my partner and former accountant Ari Gold.

I consider lawyer-turned-software developer Will Ha something of an undiscovered gem, and I encourage everyone to check out his blog Williamha.com and his site quitlawandcode.com.  I discovered Will’s blog because of a post he wrote on why it makes more economic sense to become a programmer rather than a lawyer.  And, after Elie’s post last week on the amount of money he passed up by leaving Biglaw, I thought it apropos to find out how much money lawyers are passing up by choosing to to pursue a career in law in the first place.

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Zach Abramowitz is a former Biglaw associate and currently CEO and co-founder of ReplyAll. You can follow Zach on Twitter (@zachabramowitz) or reach him by email at [email protected].