Quick story

Lawyer, Doug Dorst, turned writer featured in San Francisco Chronicle

Of course, I always love these type of stories. Lawyer leaves the law to pursue writing career and it works out for him! One of the interesting things that I discover about most attorneys who leave the practice is that they are hesitant to admit that law school was a mistake.

Doug Dorst has this to say:

Q: Regrets?

A: Several years ago if you asked me that, I would have said going to law school and not jumping into writing right away. But now I feel it served its purpose as another learning experience.

Is it a cop-out to stand by a decision to go to law school for no other reason that it was "another learning experience?" Backpacking across Asia is a learning experience that I would have welcomed a lot more but what do others think?

Comments

[Taisha Rucker]

Thanks for your comment. First, I think it is great that you are seeking the opinions of lawyers. My opinion about this is one that I have shared since my first year of law school, which is that the only reason one should enter law school is to practice law. If, at some point, you leave the law, so be it. But I dont think that law school should be used as an alternative to pursing your passion (music) because doing so would be difficult. Building a legal career is also difficult, especially if youre dreaming of making music. :-)

One of the myths about law school is that it prepares you for any and everything that you may want to pursue. The reality is that, having obtained a law degree, we feel compelled to justify our training in some way. We perpetuate the idea that law school and/or law practice opens doors for us and prepares us for just about any field we someday go into. But this is true about life in general. I dont have any regrets about attending law school, but the truth is that there are other passions that could have been nurtured during the years that I was focused on practicing law and certainly the money spent to attend law school could have enabled me to do other things that are important to me.

My advice to you would be to research a few equal justice agencies and music-related businesses and ask for an informational interview to find out if the day-to-day jobs are something that would really interest you. Is it possible for you to seek an internship at one of these businesses before deciding whether or not to attend law school? This will help you decide if a law degree is really necessary to doing what you want to do. I dont want anyone to speculate about the opportunities that having a law degree might bring. If you decide to go to law school, I want you to have a definitive plan about how you intend to use this degree to build a career in which you will thrive.

[Sonny]

Wow, that is such a negative comment about law school- and I do NOT say that in a critical way.

I understand your standpoint, and every mistake isn't really a mistake, so much as it is a lesson. I'm sure that even in the IT field, things you learned in law school will help you navigate this field.

Currently, I'm a senior undergraduate student who has been considering law school for the past 6 months or so.

Like you, music is my first love, and I think having a career in it would leave me relatively satisfied. Yet, it is one of the toughest industries to break into.

But I have always felt an equal desire to help people, doing something that brings help to those who are in need.

I feel law school will expand opportunities for me, whether that be in agencies that strive for equal justice, or whether that helps me to maybe own my own business one day, even related to music.

These are my opinions. I'm still weighing my decision, and was wondering on any feedback others might have in deciding on whether to make the law school investment.

[Ed]

Sometimes you don't know something is a mistake until you actually do it.

If I knew then what I know now, I would not have gone to law school. So in hindsight law school seems like a mistake.

Problem is there is no way I could've known then what I know now. Law school certainly seemed like a good fit for a young person who liked to write, and who wanted to work on substantial policy issues. I was the first in my family to graduate from college, and I really wanted to make something of myself. Because I had gotten good grades and been praised for being smart all my life, I thought I would do well in law school.

Then first year grades came in, and the taint of them rendered me a 2d-rate lawyer for the rest of my career -- even though I finally figured out how to take a law school exam and made dean's list.... A good semester doesn't erase a bad semester -- it just evens it out. My first semester of law school brought my average down enough that I didn't get any of the magic words on my resume. I should've quit then but I'm not a quitter. That counts for something in any other career.

I also thought long and hard about what some of the glamorous law jobs actually involve -- foreclosing on widows, keeping child molesters with their kids/victims, keeping rapists on the streets... Just not for me, thanks....

I finally decided 12 years after graduating that the legal profession was never going to get me what I wanted from a career. I'm going into an IT-related field, taking night classes with kids 1/2 my age, taking whatever freelance IT work I can get, hoping one day to earn a respectable middle class income doing a job that is not immoral.

I have realized that my dream of a great legal career will never come true -- nor will those dreams that I put off to go attend law school. I'm way to old to try to make a living at music, the love of my life, for example. Sometimes I just stare out the window and wonder what the **** happened to me.

I can't think of any other career that I could have chosen that would have left me with so little after putting in so much work. So yeah, in hindsight, law school was a mistake.