Other people can’t create topics in the tutoring section and also I can’t leave this blank; posts have a minimum length.
How do I reach a firm decision on a career? I think, in part, due to Objectivism I think my career is a very important choice in my life and I think due to, in part, Roark in The Fountainhead I feel like I should know what I want to do and singularly focus on it. I think I’m decided on law but I’m unsure. Or am I? I think some of my unsureness comes from some general life stuff going on that makes me wary to go on and commit to law in the present moment. I think I’m confusing myself on being unsure with that with being unsure about law.
I guess related to that would be should I strive to reach a firm decision on my career? Should I try and be more flexible and open to changes? Would a good method be to go out and do a bunch of stuff (I’m kinda open to this but also I don’t think there’s a job I’d really hate)? Should I care about this kind of thing?
I think Ayn Rand is wrong about stuff like knowing exactly what you want to do with your life when you’re 10. I don’t think she has good advice on this topic. Most people don’t know very well what they want to do with their life when they’re 20 and that’s fine. A few people can know early but don’t expect it.
One thing I’d bring up is what your expectations are. If you expect a high paying job at a big law firm, and you’d be unhappy with any backup plans, I think that’s a major problem. I understand there are way too many lawyers for too few big law spots. I hear that what jobs you can get is also affected significantly by how prestigious of a law school you go to.
If you’re happy doing a solo practice in a small town, or various other options, then getting a law job you’re happy with is more realistic. I don’t know a lot about the lawyer job market overall.
Another issue is that a lot of lawyers do unethical work. And I think ethical work may correlate with lower pay and not working at a major law firm. I don’t know what ethical boundaries you have now, what you might realize you have or should have once you start working somewhere with ethical issues, etc.
There are lots of different types of potential unethical behavior by lawyers. You could write a list of what you know of and then do some analysis about how you might deal with that.
I think how much the work is unethical also depends on what type of law you practice. Do you have a particular type in mind like criminal law, tax law, employment law, personal injury? There are also other major factors like whether you’re a trial attorney or stay out of the courtroom and whether you specialize in working for the prosecution or defense. If you haven’t decided on that stuff, I think it makes sense to not be fully decided on law overall since you don’t actually have a clear idea of what job you’d do.
Some of the more appealing jobs in terms of doing good work that makes society better may be lower paid work for non profits, and I don’t know how hard to get those jobs are or how ethically compromised a lot of them are. A lot of high paying law work benefits big corporations and rich elites, whereas I think e.g. trying to reform and reign in the government tends to pay less.
Flexibility is good but in the US as far as I know you basically have to do law school or not be a lawyer. Or maybe there is an apprenticeship option then study for the bar? idk. But regardless you can still do a lot of non-law jobs with a law degree because the degree communicates that you’re smart, so I think flexibility is still decent even if you get a law degree. There are a lot of career directions where you aren’t a lawyer but a law degree isn’t wasted/irrelevant.
What are your thoughts on being a philosopher? Not interested, or don’t think you’re good enough at it, or want to do some on the side because you think law pays way better, or?
I wouldn’t necessarily delay law school over it, but if you’re not going right away anyway then trying a variety of stuff sounds good. Including maybe trying to work as a secretary or whatever else you could at a law office. And generally trying to find out in some real detail what a lot of jobs, including lawyer but also others, are actually like. I find TikTok has some of the best information about what working in various professions is really like.
That’s fair but I assume one should, at some point, be sure of what exactly they want to do for a career. Yes?
Nah. Well partially. I think I want to work in a big firm for a while to see what its like but not for a long period of time. I’m very open to various fields of law. Big law, on the whole, kinda seems like something I’d hate.
~yeah. I’m very open to many options. All forms of legal work interest me (though I would say most work interests me).
Thats one reason I want to work in a big law firm. I want to get a better sense of reality for why certain areas of law suck. Big law isn’t exactly a field of law, but most of these firms, afaik, do not so great things while working with corporations (typically).
Also yeah typically from what I can tell ethical work doesn’t pay as well. I do think most of the time you’re not getting paid to help an innocent client.*
*Not related to the paid question but do you have any opinions on guilty people needing representation?
No not really. I do like employment law due to crappy bosses and what not. I’m not too worried about the field. I do know I want to avoid courtrooms.
I like the Institute for Justice. I’m interested in working for them at some point. I don’t think they have any cases that I think are bad. I think, unfortunately, for smaller jobs (in terms of business size) its probably a lot of who you know (I could be wrong).
There is but I need a bachelor degree. Wack. Oh yeah it varies state by state. I think most states don’t, but Virginia, where I reside, does.
Actually I never really made that clear did I? I think I want to be a philosopher who does a lot of law stuff. I’ve shared this before but I’m very easily, genuinely (I’d like to think) interested in stuff. I had the largest period of interest in philosophy and I like the scope of the field. My goal in becoming a lawyer is two-fold:
1.) The pay. afaik you’re pretty much the only good philosopher and you’ve shared that you don’t primarily make money from philosophy. maybe I could get lucky and i’ll be different but idk. along with that you clearly have a lot of skill in philosophy that will take me a long time to reach and again, for all that skill, you don’t get paid well to do what you’re doing. skill doesn’t equal pay sure, but I still feel like I should be really good before i get paid. So since I like law I figured that would be a good place to earn my income from.
2.) instead of suppressing my interest i felt like i could integrate it. law to me seems like a very philosophical field and so i have thoughts about integrating philosophy work with legal stuff.
pays the biggest reason in pursuing becoming a lawyer. I can figure out other ways to get the legal experience I want if I wasn’t concerned with pay.
Yeah I’ll look at TikTok and stuff. I also have a regular at my Starbucks thats a pretty big defense attorney in my city (well, the regular is the wife). I get along with her well and was planning to ask her if I could shadow him. I also have a friend whos quite well off and his dad knows quite a few lawyers so I could go that route.
No. You can invest a lot in a specific career and plan to stick with it. The investment can make sticking with it make sense, not because of sunk costs, but because you have easy access to good jobs whereas if you switched fields you’d have to invest a bunch more time, effort and money to get started (and take on a bunch of risk of things not working out as hoped). But you can still consider things tentative and fallible, and still potentially be open to changes if they make sense.
You don’t need to ever feel especially sure. You just want to not have refutations of what you’re doing. And also you want to not feel particularly unsure, doubtful, hesitant, confused, etc. You don’t want to have those negative feelings.
I think you should investigate ethical issues now/soon, research it, journal about it (about what you think is and isn’t unethical and why, your boundaries, how you’d handle various situations, etc.), and optionally post about it. Don’t just try to get the job and then see how bad it is and potentially be blindsided or surprised when you get there.
There are also some other issues to consider like what you will do if you encounter problems with judges who are illogical, unreasonable, won’t follow the laws as literally written, get facts wrong, come up with weird misreadings of texts, overrule correct objections, sustain incorrect objections, etc. Even if you’re in a supporting role, not speaking in court, these things could still be relevant to you.
Does that mostly rule out working for yourself and require you to work with other people who would handle the courtroom part when needed?
I think Justin Mallone (who has posted a lot on my forums in the past) worked with them or knows about them. Email him and see if he’d like to tell you anything about them or about other law career stuff.
I didn’t try all that hard to make money from philosophy since I had other options for making money. If you think you could get a big social media following, that’s one way to make money with philosophy. I have no idea if you have the right personality and skills for that and would enjoy it.
People also do make a living as writers, e.g. freelancing and selling articles. I think this requires some social networking. If you’re good at social networking, maybe that would work for you. I don’t know a ton about it. I know topic restrictions are an issue, but I think it’s possible to sell some articles on good topics even if you don’t have full freedom to choose your topics.
People also get think tank jobs. Again I think social networking is a big deal. For jobs like that, I’d be concerned about potentially not respecting one’s coworkers or boss intellectually and having to get along with them. (Of course, similar problems can come up in all sorts of other jobs, e.g. if you’re a lawyer and your boss overrules you on a decision about how to handle something.)
Yeah finding some way to visit a law firm, see what it’s like and talk with some lawyers sounds like a great idea.