I had an interesting time at a BBQ yesterday chatting with some of our counterparts in the legal professions. It reminded me a lot of this NY Times article that I had previously blogged about. Frustration with the profession seems prevalent in law according to some of the young associates I spoke with. One told me that he cannot think of anyone he works with at his large, big name corporate firm who actually likes what they do. About 5 minutes later he said, "actually I just thought of one guy, but he's a workaholic who enjoys sleeping 3 hours a night, and that can't be healthy." They share many of the frustrations that residents do: concerns about lack of time for a fulfilling personal life and rising debt load preventing them from getting to do what they would really like to do ideally. Another one told me that after following her ideals and going to work for a non-profit organization, she made so little money that she could not afford her loan payments and had to find random odd jobs on Craigslist on her day off to supplement her income. After about a year of this, she got so burnt-out she had to quit and now work for "an evil corporation."
Several of them lamented being in work that had no meaning. This was similar to the concerns echoed by another young lawyer I met a few months ago. They were frustrated with pushing paper to help big companies and felt it was not really what they went to law school to do. Also of concern was getting stuck in a big firm job out of necessity to pay back loans and then not being able to get out once they had been trained to work in very specialized sub-fields of law. Just as was discussed in the NY Times article, it seemed that several of them felt that working for a start-up or .com would be an ideal career for some of them because they viewed it as more creative, flexible, and interesting. And there was a start-up worker at the party who waxed on and on about how wonderful it was to work in Silicon Valley with the exciting energy, great people, and casual atmosphere of her company.
Overall, hearing them talk made me very happy that I abandoned the plans I once had for law school very early on in the game. They also wanted to hear about how things were in medicine and could relate to a lot of what I had to say in terms of paperwork, bureaucracy, debt, etc. But in the end, it did seem like despite all the crap we deal with, we do get the satisfaction of knowing we are helping someone at the end of the day. And in law it sounds like it can be hard to carve out that niche, especially early on when you are paying back all of your debt.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
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3 comments:
Dudette,
Your post is like deja vu of my life. My girlfriend is about a week away from finishing up her law degree from one of the top environmental programs in the country. She has a masters in environmental law that she earned concurrently with her JD. She's on track to graduate cum laude and has 3 semesters of practical experience in local environmental advocacy, writing legislation and lobbying. You'd figure that she'd be on track for a low paying but rewarding non-profit career pushing environmental issues somewhere in the very active Boston enviro law scene.
But can she find a job that allows her to fulfill her desire to do something good for her community and environment? NO! She could sell her soul in an instant and push papers for some big company for way too much money, but her conscious wont allow her to do it. So she's looking into substitute teaching, moving back home to study for the bar and sitting on her $200k of debt until someone hires her into her field of interest. I admire her for her stubbornly entrenched good principles.
At least medical students have a formalized system to coddle us through the transition from student to employee. 95% of people get through it and end up doing something that's slightly more rewarding than pushing paper around for some nebulous corporate entity with some insane senior partner breathing down their neck.
Wow, I wish her the best of luck in finding something, and I too admire her decision to stay true to her ideals. After talking to the law students, and hearing her story, I must say that despite the many flaws with the resident training system, it is very nice to have guaranteed $ coming in for the next few years, and to hopefully have the structure built in to make finding a job easier at the end.
Thanks for the vote of confidence LC. She'll be alright, it's just a matter of time before someone hires her.
Really, who couldn't love a pathologist!!! They're always so pleasant, well rested and ready to engage you in conversation because they've been talking to themselves while sitting in front of tissue slices all day! I used to actually talk to myself when I'm doing lab work...it's kind of weird when you catch yourself doing it for the first time...but it gets better when the voices go away.
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