Legal Guide

5 Reasons to Consider a Law Career

There are many kinds of law and many different law careers. If you want to be a lawyer, that’s certainly a worthy ambition. There are several valid reasons why you’d want to pursue the law and make upholding it your professional life.

In this article, we’ll talk about some of the reasons why people want to become lawyers. If any of these sound like your outlook and mental state, you’ll know that law school is a pursuit that makes sense.

You Want to Uphold Justice

Some people get into legal careers because they want to hold guilty parties responsible when they do something wrong. Many people need personal injury lawyers because, without them, wrongdoers would get away with their misdeeds. People need lawyers when:

  • A product harms them or makes them ill
  • They injure themselves at work, and their company does not want to pay them worker’s comp
  • They get in car accidents that were someone else’s fault, and the other driver’s insurance company does not want to pay for it

There are many more instances where an individual needs justice, and you can help get it for them. You'll feel deep satisfaction if you can make a company or individual pay the penalty for their carelessness, recklessness, or negligence.

People Always Need Lawyers

The first time one of humanity’s earliest ancestors stole a colorful rock from their neighbor, they needed someone to adjudicate the argument. That’s another way to say that:

  • People frequently need lawyers
  • Society will always need people to argue on behalf of the accused and the accusers

Many professions need to worry about things like automation or becoming obsolete. There’s no reason to think that will ever happen with lawyers, though. It doesn’t seem likely we’ll have robot litigators in courtrooms in a couple of decades.

If you pass the bar and become a practicing lawyer, you’re always going to have work, provided you’re good at what you do. A steady profession always looks better when you’re starting your adult life than a potentially shaky one.

Legal Jobs Pay Well, and You Can Get Famous Doing Them Too

Some people get into the law because they want to serve the justice system, and you can certainly do that. However, you might also get into it because you want to become wealthy.

Some legal jobs pay extraordinarily well. If you’re a high-profile criminal defense lawyer, for instance, you can charge your clients hundreds of dollars an hour. If you’re a corporate lawyer representing a big conglomerate, you’re not exactly going to find yourself waiting in line at a soup kitchen either.

As a lawyer, you can make great money, and you can also become famous if that appeals to you. If you win some high-profile cases, you can have clients lined up around the block and only select the lawsuits that will get you front-page headlines. You can even write a memoir someday talking about your most famous legal battles.

You Can Make the World a Better Place

You may not care so much about the money. Maybe you want to be a lawyer because you’re concerned about the world and where it’s headed.

You can become an environmental lawyer. You can keep businesses from stripping the rainforest’s resources, or you can stop fracking or industrial polluters. You can protect endangered species or Native

American tribal lands.

You might work for the EPA or similar well-intentioned agencies. You could defend women’s reproductive rights or protect the LGBTQ community.

You might not make piles of money, but you can go to sleep every night knowing you’re stopping climate change or making the world a better place for your children and grandchildren.

You’re Detail-Oriented

The law is like a malleable substance. As you learn about it, you can bend it to your will.

If you’re a meticulous person who’s detail-oriented, you can help win just about any lawsuit to which you put your mind. You can cite forgotten cases and come up with brilliant new legal strategies.

No society ever sets the law in stone. It is always developing and changing to fit society’s needs. You can be on the cutting edge of that. Law students a hundred years from now might cite a landmark case you argued.

Whether you want job security, money, fame, or you have more humanitarian interests, as a lawyer, you can pursue all of that. Becoming an attorney is not easy, but it’s well worth the time and effort.  


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