Was Being A Lawyer A Good Career Choice?

[payton67]

How long did it take until you started earning money and how much do you make a year?

[Idris]

To be very honest with you, the answer is a huge resounding No!!!!!!!!!!

I was a real estate major in college and then I went directly into law school with the hope of earning a good living.  But by the time I entered lawschool I was already 27, and did not graduate until I was thirty. Your age when you graduate lawschool makes a huge difference and where you go to school. Lawfirms want to hire people who are young so that they can work them to death for a couple of years, you can get away with being older and going to lawschool if you had a previous career, but I didn't really, I ran a small property rental and real estate business.  You see I had to work full time while I went to college. What I didn't know when I started lawschool was that you will only make a good living in the law if you went to a good lawschool. I went to a bottom tier school because it was close to home so I could save money by not moving. Because of all of the years I spent to finish college my heart was not into lawschool and I did not know how to study for the exams so I did not do well my first semester which in turn made the rest of lawschool a game of catch up to try to raise my GPA so that I could get my first job.  But because I spent so much time studying my second and third years I wasn't able to get alot of experience, which in turm meant that when I finished no one was willing to hire a person with very little experience.  

I never really practiced law to a great extent but I still have my license, I went back to working in real estate and property management.  That is because the attorney jobs that I had no one would pay me enough to earn a living.  I don't like to practice law on my own because it can be very lonely, stuck in an office all day by yourself, I am a social person. When I was practicing I never made more than $25,000 a year.  I still have alot of friends from lawschool and the legal profession and I get together with them regularly.

So what is the moral of the story. #1 Go to a great school preferably a top 100 law school

#2 Get tons of experience, no one wants to hire anyone without experience.

#3 The law is not for everyone, and if you don't know what you are getting yourself into you will endup with a huge debt for something that you will rarely use.

#4 I should have become a CPA, many more job opportunities.