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As a practicing attorney, it doesn't sound like you want to practice law, but to do something exceedingly specific. My own firm has seen several young attorneys leave in the past couple years because they find the cases too similar and the outcomes too unsatisfying. So they move to something they think will be more fulfilling only to find that the cases are just as similar and the outcomes just as unsatisfying. And this is in litigation, which by its adversarial nature is more exciting than transactional work. I did that for a decade, and the final product is a series of recommendations that you give to the client without any concern for whether they're followed or not.
Most cases just are routine and don't involve any juicy legal questions. Either there's liability and its obvious and the only question is how reasonable the settlement will be, or it's obvious that there's no liability and the plaintiff let's you out of the case because they aren't going to waste their time. Even if you're arguing in front of the Supreme Court, keep in mind that most of the cases that go before the court aren't scintillating constitutional issues. Do you want to argue Arbitration Act cases? Tax cases? Bankruptcy cases? If you get a case of great political and social import, are you okay with arguing either side of it?
There are obviously some areas of the law where I'd prefer not to practice (family law, anyone?), but the nature of the job is that your loyalty is to your client and you have to be willing to put in all the grinding, boring work that enables you to make the best case possible. Last month, I spent several hours going through the contents of a filing cabinet that the plaintiff took from his former employer after they went out of business. It was mostly information about equipment and suppliers, but plaintiff's counsel turned it over to us and it was my duty to make sure there was nothing that implicated our client. Everything I've said applies to plaintiff's side work as well as defense, except with defense you don't have clients constantly blowing up your phone.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't do it if you think you'd like it better than your current job; I couldn't imagine writing code all day. It has some intangible plusses. The prestige is one. You'll get a private office and a secretary and paralegals and will never be the low man on the totem pole at any firm you work for. When we get summer associates the boss usually has them do paralegal work and they're tickled to death when one of the attorneys notices that they exist and gives them real work to do.
Don't get me wrong, I like my job, to the point where I don't even mind Mondays, but I also don't have any expectations that every case is going to be a corker. The thing that separates mediocre attorneys from good ones is that the good ones pay attention to the details of the case and treat everyone as if it has the potential to be a corker. Instead of going through the motions, they'll find something to argue about, and don't mind if things don't work out in the end.
Every once in a while, I wonder if I missed my calling as a tax attorney. It's probably mostly just the grass is greener on the other side of the fence (and the ways our cows found to access grass beyond the fence were endlessly creative) but it always seems like tax would be this neverending optimization problem.
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Thanks @Rov_Scam, as an aside I'm always looking out for your comments because I know you're a lawyer and have a particular viewpoint on whatever is being discussed.
So weirdly enough, as you were discussing the job of practicing law, it keeps reminding me of similarities to the job of a SWE. "Hours of going through the contents of a filing cabinet" on the face of it doesn't feel boring to me. It would be similar to when if I change something in an upstream service, I would be responsible to go check on how my change affects all the downstream services. Or I suppose a better analogy is if my boss or higher made a change then tell me to go clean up for them. I suppose the reminder here is every job needs you to be masochistic in particular ways to be successful and you need to choose the flavor of pain you can grind at for years.
You are right. I don't want to just switch from the SWE-ladder to the Lawyer-ladder like some kind of class-change. I also understand that with regards to the default allure of a career in law, the goal is to have a lucrative career. Well I kinda already have a lucrative career (in a relative sense, my household income barely reaches big law starting salary atm, but that's still pretty good compared to the median American household) so "doing something with law" has to really fulfill something else in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs (so to speak), AND justify the opportunity cost (time honing my SWE career path, law school costs, SWE less stressful working environment).
The allure of law personal to me are:
I do wonder what you think of all that. If you have any more advice or opinions, I would welcome it.
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