Questions That I Dread (Part 2)

In my last post, I said there are two questions that I dread.  I talked through my answer to "what kind of law do you want to practice?" but didn't get to "why law school?"

I think "why law school?" is the question I dread more, mostly because I have yet to figure out how to articulate my answer.


I've wanted to be a lawyer since I was in third grade, if not longer.  (Longer is possible, it's just that the first time I can remember thinking or saying it was in third grade.)  When I was a kid, my favorite thing to do at family reunions was listen to my lawyer uncle talk about his work.

When I was in sixth grade, Colorado passed Amendment 2 and, good little Berkeley liberal that I was, I was outraged.  More than I was outraged, though, I was fascinated.  Once the challenge started moving through the courts, I watched with rapt fascination and spent hours researching the judiciary system so that I could understand what was happening.  I read the full text of Romer v. Evans and vowed that one day I would understand everything about it.  

I went to a very small high school and for reasons that I'm still not entirely sure of, one of my teachers decided that instead of doing what the rest of my American History class was doing, I should be reading his undergrad con law textbook and writing about the cases.  It was one of the only things that I didn't hate about high school.

When I turned eighteen, I read the full text of proposed ballot initiatives before voting and found the precision of the language to be fascinating.  I might be one of the only people out there who has read the full text of every iTunes TOS agreement.  In undergrad, I took a ton of law classes and they were, without exception, my favorite classes.  I loved the way these classes made me think, I found even the most minute details endlessly fascinating and probably spent more time doing external research because I had questions that went beyond the scope of the course than I did actually studying for my non-law classes. 

So there's that.  I want to go to law school because I find the law to be endlessly fascinating, even the dry, boring bits.

The thing is, it sounds like a dumb answer.  Moreover, it's an incomplete answer.

Another answer is that I like to write, I generally write well, and I want a career that will allow me to do so.  Again, it's kind of a dumb answer.  People who like to write don't jump to becoming lawyers.  They jump to journalism or, you know, becoming writers.

Again, incomplete.

I want to go to law school because I want to do something with my life that requires me to think.  I want to do something that will challenge me, that will allow me to exist in the rational, analytical part of my brain.  I like that part of my brain.  It's comfortable.

For all that I'm comfortable with the analytical part of my brain, there's also a part of me that's still hopelessly idealistic and naïve.  There's a part of me that wants to say that I'm going to law school because I  believe that the law is a noble profession, that it exists to ensure justice and provide protection to all.  Don't misunderstand me, I believe that the system is flawed and often corrupt, but the idea of the common law justice system is enough to remind me that I'm not nearly as cynical as I like to pretend that I am.

So that's "why law school."  I just don't know how to make it pithy.