Why I Went To Law School

I receive many emails from current 1Ls and 2Ls who think they still would like to get their JD, but who feel fairly certain that being a traditional lawyer upon graduation is not for them.

They struggle with whether they should actually finish law school. They wonder if they should even go through with it and take the bar. They are looking for guidance on how to find alternative non-law jobs upon graduation. And they find it so difficult to even admit to themselves and their family and friends that they don’t want to be a lawyer in the traditional sense.

There is no easy answer for them.

And reading these emails got me thinking about the reasons why I decided to apply to law school (exactly twenty years ago).

I’d like to think my reasons were virtuous (“I aim to save the world”) or intellectual (“I want to become a professor of Jurisprudence”) or critically thought through and well planned (“I’ve paralegaled for three years, I have done numerous informational interviews and I know being a lawyer is what I’m on this earth to do”).

But alas, looking back, I think I can safely say that I went to law school for three main reasons:

1. Growing up, many people close to me said I should be a lawyer

2. My two good friends were entering the same law school as I was, at the same time

3. I hadn’t really taken the time to think about what else I should do

Yup, that’s right. I really had no well thought out reason for going to law school. I just went. I just did. ‘Cause.

And as I’ve counseled attorneys over the years in how to leave the law and create alternative, non-law careers, I have come to realize what many of us unhappy, disgruntled, lack-of-potential-feeling attorneys have in common: So many of us also went to law school without a well crystallized reason for doing so.

And when we realize this fact, that we didn’t really think through applying to law school back, then it starts to make a lot of sense why we aren’t that happy as an attorney right now: being a lawyer might just not be for us.

And to take this one step further, having gone to law school just might have been a mistake.

And while this may seem harsh to say, or too self critical, it really is liberating. When we give ourselves permission to admit that going to law school wasn’t the right path for us back then, we then can understand why we aren’t happy now.

We then can understand why we aren’t currently in alignment.

We then can understand why we are not motivated.

We then can understand that we are worthy of something better.

We then can understand that we can find a new role that aligns with our interests and skills and strengths.

I usually write back to the 1Ls and 2Ls that I can’t really tell them whether to leave law school or not, or whether to sit for the bar or not, or whether to tell their parents now that they don’t really plan to be a traditional lawyer, or to wait some time to tell them.

But I can tell these 1Ls and 2Ls that feeling disconnected in law school, feeling mistaken being in law school, feeling a lack of confidence in law school, are all just signs that there is something else better for us out there. This ostensibly horrible, negative feeling is really just an indicator that we can now be on the brink of a new, positive direction.

We just have to muster the courage and clarity to admit it to ourselves.