1. I’m assuming that the skills we’ve acquired in law school are on their own not enough for us to earn a livelihood. We have to learn to apply these skills so as to perform a service for which we’ll get paid. If so, why not use the firm as a paid residency? Medical students have to pull 36 hour shifts without getting paid; why can’t we get our ‘hands on’ training from the firm and earn 160k in the process?

2. X years down the road, I’d like to open a private practice, set my own hours and practice a field of law that I want to practice. Does working at the firm provide a stable foundation (both financially and professionally) with which to advance those desires? If not, what other options are there?

3. Are future career options (e.g. in-house counsel jobs) more limited if we don’t land the big job at the big firm? Word on the street is that it plays a HUGE role.

4. How do we repay our loans as quickly and painlessly as possible? Does LRAP make any sense? Firm?

5. Is it possible to achieve a work/life balance while working at a big firm?

-- DavidM - 16 Apr 2008

I'm swayed by the idea that my husband has enjoyed his Midwest private practice career over the years. Observing him traverse his career path, but admittedly often from a fair distance, leads me to believe that I can have that, too. Given that we're talking a non-national firm market here, how likely am I to be mistaken in making this leap of faith?

-- BarbPitman - 16 Apr 2008

How will one become an influential writer, in the 21st century?

1. If a writer is one talented at creating audiences, will that talent still be lucrative?
   • Will it remain a matter of choosing which publisher-corporation one wants to be an advertisement for (e.g. New York Times, Columbia University, Vogue magazine ... or whichever website gets the best traffic)?
   • Or will the internet destroy publishers? will I have to call writing a "hobby?" If so, what other marketable skill should I learn?
2. What are the social diseases that the Internet will create, that I need to become equipped to protest?
   • loss of identity, information integrity, social control? ... How will these diseases spawn and spread?
   • What professional routes will permit me to be an open (or at least productive) critic of the way in which corporate marketing degrades human dignity and free choice? (paraphrase: How much more ethical are we capable of making CEOs?)
   • Can I make others feel the indignity that I feel, when I'm the victim of successful advertising? (should I?)

-- AndrewGradman - 16 Apr 2008