via Instagram
When considering law school, students must weigh whatever pie-in-the-sky dreams of fat paychecks they may harbor against the grim realities of the process. There’s the student loan debt, the widening bi-modal salary distribution, and the ever-declining top-notch job prospects. Even with an elite degree in your pocket, long-term success is no guarantee anymore.
That’s why, sometimes, it’s just a better career move to blow people on camera.
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And while most people are reading this far because of the words “porn star,” this woman’s story actually says something serious about the future of the legal profession.
Ella Hughes — who, according to Twitter, won Female Performer of the Year — spent a year pursuing her law degree in England while also taking her first steps into the world of pornographic acting:
I always thought I’d be a lawyer, but when I was in my first year of studying law at university, things changed. I was working so hard – in lectures from 9am to 7pm every day – that I couldn’t find a way to earn money. I didn’t really need the money – I had a student loan – but I hate depending on people and always wanted my own money.
That’s where you know this story is about Britain. Over there a transition from school to porn story reads, “I didn’t really need the money — I had a student loan.” In America, that line would read “I had a student loan, so I was already forced to jerk off guys in a back alley just to buy groceries — porn seemed like a natural next step.”
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That Hughes is British deserves some consideration. In a country with a much more sane system of higher education costs than the U.S. — one that trains attorneys faster than the warrantless three-year law school program — a woman still walked out on joining the profession for a job offering better pay and more secure short-term employment prospects. As long as law is pitched as, “sacrifice years worth of earnings in your prime, go into debt, struggle with an uncertain job market, then maybe you can make ends meet by the time you’re 40,” it’s going to struggle to entice promising talent to take on the legal tasks that desperately need doing while leaving disillusioned law grads unable to pay their loans with legal work in its tragic wake.
Eventually, Hughes realized that her burgeoning fan base — her first video netted over 4 million hits — and the steady cash flow made porn a better career option. She says she earns earns “between £500 to £1,000 for a shoot.” Since shoots last around 20 minutes according to Hughes, that’s a billable hour between $2000-$4000. And it involves fewer moral compromises than working at Jones Day.
Not that there aren’t downsides. Hughes has had to deal with insults, threats, and a stalker. It’s a sad testament to the strictures of the paradox women face. Try to make some money on your own terms — face threats as a slut. Finish your degree and be a good little solicitor — face a lifetime of career-hobbling discrimination and disdain for being “the argumentative type.” In the end, she has no regrets:
Even so, I can’t imagine myself ever going back to my law degree. I think my life would have been really boring if I’d become a lawyer. Instead I’ve travelled the world and I’ve met so many unique people I never would have met outside the industry.
True, but she’s also missed out on taking a deposition at 8 a.m. in a stock room in Wichita and there’s really no way getting f**ked in a rented McMansion can ever top that high.
‘It wasn’t an easy decision’: Student quit law degree to become porn star over concerns about money and graduate job prospects [Legal Cheek]
Ella Hughes: ‘I quit my law degree to become a porn star’ [BBC]
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Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.