The Kind of Lawyer I Want To Want To Be

I hate bullshitting. I think this comes from my Israeli father, who says what’s on his mind and doesn’t to pull punches. When I see problems in society, I tend to think about them in this way. I pick them apart and try to analyze what causes them, how they proliferate, and how they can be solved. 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 by fixing the problems that I identify in the world. But I have not yet decided if this course is practical for me.

I came to law school with the intention of beginning my career in a big law firm. I planned to work my way up and eventually pursue a partner track with the firm or go in house with a sports, entertainment or media company. Coming into law school, I thought I’d like to be a prominent sports agent, the commissioner of a sports league, or private counsel to Hollywood executives and celebrities. My motivation for pursuing this track was twofold: I wanted to be involved in a “sexy” industry (that I believed I was interested in) and I wanted to be able to make a lot of money while doing so.

However, as I have gone through law school, I have become more cognizant of the fact that I, as a future lawyer with an education from one of the best schools in the world, am one in a rare class of people who might be able to do justice in the world. I may be able to address some of the problems I have noticed in society and really make a difference. Further, I even feel somewhat responsible for effectuating justice. There are plenty of smart people out there, but very few have been given the opportunities to learn the tools and skills that I am acquiring in law school. “With great power comes great responsibility,” and I want to live up to that responsibility.

With this in mind, I am no longer confident in my previous plans—I am not sure that I will be happy pursuing a career in sports or entertainment law while real problems exist in society. In my view, to do so would render me a “sellout” to a certain extent; I would be operating within an unjust society to pursue my own economic, social, and material goals at the expense of making an important difference in the world. Rather, I believe my future happiness will stem from becoming a lawyer who is not afraid to question society, challenge the status quo, and start a revolution. But this new awareness has presented me with a number of concerns that I will have to overcome before I am able to commit to a career of effectuating change.

First, I do not know if such a career will provide me with enough money to be comfortable. While I realize that money does not buy complete happiness, I know that I will not be happy unless I acquire the wealth that I need to live my life as I have always envisioned it. This isn’t an exorbitant number, but it is significant enough to make me question whether I will be able to achieve it on my own. I know I could earn a great salary playing the corporate game, and I only hope to be able to earn that amount pursuing a career I am passionate about.

Moreover, I have realized that attempting to change the world will put me in danger. I am talking about being a lawyer who brings about justice by challenging dominant power structures to spark revolutions. My goal will be to uproot broken systems that support countless individuals who do not even understand the systems they are a part of. Average citizens will regard me as “the enemy” for challenging their potential sources of income, ideals, or insecurities and will want to do away with me in order to sustain the status quo. Leaders of these unjust organizations, ideas, and practices, will do whatever they must to remain in power. I will be as dangerous to myself as I will be to society.

I am considering trading a career of glitz and glamour for one as an outcast. While this is a bit unsettling, I would be willing to make this trade if it is for something I am truly passionate about. But I am not sure what I care about just yet. I am in a state of limbo. I will spend my remaining time in law school searching for the right opportunity, figuring out what I truly care about, and learning the skills to eventually make a difference in the world. In the end, it may be that what I care about most isn’t a particular problem in society, but rather the people around me. I wonder if I might be satisfied effectuating change for the people I most care about, rather than for society as a whole. This might be the only thing that I would risk my life for.

I think this rewrite improves the clarity and force of the statement, at the expense of realism. You're not actually considering life as an outcast, Elie. Nor should you. You're asking how you can add an acute sense of social outcomes, maybe even a commitment to social justice, to the work of supporting yourself in the style to which you want to become accustomed.

Your current draft says, basically, that if a world-moving passion showed up, you'd follow it anywhere. But that's not the temperament you consider yourself to have. Anyone could say that the world is well lost for love, and that in response to a Grand Passion they'd abandon it all for life on the beach with the object of their adoration. But in general the world adopts satisficing monogamy and finds itself living, Babbit-like, with gentle but ultimate disillusion.