The Law Degree: Limitless Career Possibility?

Like many people, I went to law school not knowing what I was going to do with that law degree. To be perfectly honest, I HATED every minute of law school, but that deep aversion to reading case law and parsing through statutory language didn’t worry me one bit. Every time a professor called on me to explain the reasoning of a case that had been no clearer to me than that smudge of coffee at the bottom of my cup, every time a professor tried to humiliate a classmate who had not read a case, I didn’t worrry. Not one bit.

That’s because I had a little mantra that became my version of Linus’s security blanket. It was a mantra that was repeated by every professor, every classmate, every neighbor, and even every stranger, who all said the exact same thing: “There’s so much you can do with a law degree.” My law degree was something like the key to limitless career possibility.

And then I graduated from law school, passed the bar exam, and had to figure out what came next. It was at this point that worry began to creep in. My friends from law school had all gone to law firms, where they began to parse their days into six-minute billable minutes. That kind of life wasn’t for me, though, so I looked around for all those other things that I could do with my law degree.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see many alternatives to being a law firm associate. The law school’s career services office certainly didn’t maintain records of jobs that one could do better because one had a law degree. Recruiters were nearly all partners of big law firms looking for students in the top 10% of the class. Where could I find information about limitless career possibility?

This blog will help shed a little light on all the ways a law degree can help you find your career’s Happy Place.