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Law in Contemporary Society
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The Kind of Lawyer I Want To Want To BeI don’t believe in bullshitting. I think this comes from my Israeli father, who says what’s on his mind and does not to pull any punches. When I see problems in society, I think about them in this way. I pick them apart and try to analyze what causes them, how they proliferate in society, and how to solve them. But I am also very practical. This comes from my mother, who, chooses her battles carefully and really thinks things through before acting. This quality causes me to brush many of the problems I identify aside as “unsolvable,” or to buy into them and allow them to proliferate further. This conflict has been a constant struggle for me. I want to want to be a lawyer who pursues meaningful goals and changes the world. But I have not yet decided if it is practical for me. I came to law school with the intention of starting my career in a big law firm and gradually working my way up in different organizations to accomplish something in sports. I have always had a strong background in sports, and upon coming to law school I thought that one day, I might like to be a prominent sports agent or the commissioner of a sports league. My motivation for this was multi-faceted. I wanted to be involved in an industry that I was really interested in, and I wanted to make a lot of money while doing it. Pursuing this course would require me to “sell out” to a certain extent – to operate within a system for the sake of achieving my own economic, social, and material goals and to forego the chance to make an important difference in the world. This is the track that I feel that I have been on ever since I got into law school, and until recently, I thought I would have no problem pursing it. As I have gone through law school, I have thought more about the problems I recognize in society and have discovered numerous others. I have become cognizant of the fact that I, as a future lawyer with an education from one of the best schools in the world, am one of a rare class of people who might be able to do justice in the world. I am no longer sure that I can live a happy life pursing a career in sports law (or another brand of corporate law) while real problems exist in society. The adage “with great power comes great responsibility” seems to really resonate with me. I want to be a lawyer who is not afraid to challenge the dominant system and start a revolution. However, this awareness has presented a number of concerns for me: First, I do not know which issues I care about enough to want to pursue. I want to do meaningful work, but I also want to truly care and have a personal interest in what I am doing. Job satisfaction is really important to me. Second, I do not yet know how to solve these big problems in society. A revolution cannot be started on a whim. It obviously has to be readily thought out and executed, accounting for every contingency, with every move planned out five steps in advance. I hope to learn the necessary strategic and tactical skills in law school, but I anticipate that I will need to extract as much as I can from Columbia’s network in order to do so. I may decide to work for a law firm for a few years to augment this process by borrowing their network. Third, I do not know if this course will provide me with the amount of wealth that I need to be happy in life. Like everyone, I will need a certain amount of income, and I hope to be able to earn that amount pursuing a career I am passionate about. While I realize that money does not buy happiness, I do not think that I will achieve happiness solely through making a difference in the world either, and I fear that I might be lured by the promise of a paycheck and an opportunity to make this sum of money. Fourth, I believe that pursing such a course will put me in danger. I want to be a lawyer who brings about justice by challenging the dominant power structures to spark a revolution. My goal will be to uproot broken systems that many people are a part of and whose injustices are unknown or shrugged aside by most of the world. Numerous power structures and people will regard me as “the enemy” and will want to do away with me in order to remain in power. To make any successful change in society, then, I will have to become dangerous, and in doing so, I will put myself in harm’s way. In theory, I am okay with all of this. For something I truly care about, I would be willing to put myself in harm’s way. But, I am not sure if I care about something that much yet. For the time being, I am in a state of limbo. I want to want to make a difference in the world, but it is hard to commit to doing so at the moment. While it makes me uncomfortable, I know that it’s alright to feel that way. I have at least two years before I have to commit to my first step, and will spend that time figuring out what I truly care about and learning the skills to eventually make a difference. If I don’t find such a thing, I know that I at least care about the people around me. In that case, perhaps starting my own practice and working for people I care about in order to make their lives easier would satisfy me.You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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