Seriously questioning if law school was the right choice
Before everyone shits on me, I’m on a full merit scholarship, so I’m not going into a ton of law school debt over this. I was a political science major in undergrad, I’m first gen, and honestly law school always felt like the only professional career that really made sense for me. I always thought I wanted to be a litigator.
But I’m about to start 2L on Monday, I’m finishing my summer internship this week, and I feel like I’m having a legitimate crisis about whether I actually want to practice law.
I absolutely fucking hate legal writing. Like with a burning passion. I hate sitting at a computer all day researching and writing motions and memos. I hate how much of my day is spent alone staring at a screen. This summer I’ve gotten to the point where I am so checked out that I can barely make myself do anything at work anymore, and that honestly scares me.
I knew I wanted to pursue higher education and build an actual career for myself, and law school seemed like the natural path. Otherwise I felt like I was looking at graduating and taking some paralegal/legal assistant job making around $20 an hour with no clue where I was going from there. And I live in Manhattan, so cost of living is obviously no joke. I need a career where I can actually support myself here. Now I’m looking around at completely different professions and wondering what the hell I was thinking.
I really did always think litigation was right for me. I love the idea of being in court. I like people. I like being social, persuasive, competitive, active, and actually involved in what’s going on. Trial advocacy was one of the few things in law school where I thought, yeah, I could actually see myself doing this.
But obviously litigators don’t just magically appear in court all day. There’s a shit ton of writing behind it, especially when you’re junior, and I’m realizing I may have seriously underestimated how much of the actual job is the exact thing I hate most.
So at this point I’m basically like... what other careers can I realistically go into with a JD? Especially careers where having the degree is actually useful, the pay is enough to live in NYC, and my entire life isn’t sitting alone at a computer writing briefs.
I’m not dropping out. My tuition is covered, I’m already going into 2L, and it would make no sense to throw the degree away. But I’m starting to think I need to broaden my idea of what I’m supposed to do with it because I genuinely cannot imagine spending the next 40 years feeling the way I’ve felt at this internship.