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What if I spend my life thinking I want this Career, even go to school for this career, then turns out I hate it ?

Iḿ asking this simply because my dream is to become a lawyer, and its been my dream for a long time, but what if as strongly as I feel about this job, I end up hating it once I get it. #law-practice

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D. Robert’s Answer

Law practice can be tough, especially in large firms with big salaries and bigger billable hour expectations. Clients can be demanding, hours can be long, pressure can be high, gratitude can be fleeting, partners can be unreasonable, etc. You can conjure up a long list of horribles about the legal practice, just as you can with any job. However, just like with any other job, if you are truly passionate about it, and you believe in it, and you take delight and satisfaction from the types of victories that you can have through law (winning for your client, yourself, society, etc.), that will vastly outweigh the negatives. To me, solving a complex problem, taking a difficult situation and creatively navigating through it to find a "yes" for my client, using the law to enable clients to get things done, is what fuels my continuing passion and gets me through the difficult times.
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Heather’s Answer

If you end up not liking being a lawyer - you pivot and use your law degree for something else or find a whole other career. What is awesome about a law degree is that there is an ever-growing list of career pathways that you can pursue with your law degree outside of simply working at a law firm. For example: working at a law firm advising lawyers on how to use different legal technologies; research and big data legal analytics; working within a company in a legal department; working within a company within a privacy team; working at a law school as a professor, librarian, career services; policy advisor at local, state, federal level for government or advocacy organizations and many other careers that are yet to come.

In the meantime - I'd highly recommend doing your research on what being a lawyer (in any of those pathways) is like. Talk to lawyers, find high school/ college internship programs, read, volunteer. Becoming a lawyer is a journey and you should make sure to go into it with all the information you can gather.
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Kyle’s Answer

I had decided when I was in the third grade that I wanted to make video games for a living. By the time I was holding my bachelor's degree in my hand I was deeply unhappy with what I was doing and what my career trajectory looked like. Two years later I began pursuing a legal career because I wanted to make a difference. Today I'm volunteering part time at the public defender's office while looking for a job shortly after finishing law school, and I couldn't be happier with the work I'm doing and my career outlook. Life is a long journey. You have time to try things out and change course if you're not happy. It's a very hard choice though, I was very depressed during those two years that I was trying to find myself. I have seen people that took the trajectory that I left that are very happy and think they are making a difference in the world. The reason is because it is something they are passionate about. I found my passion in law. If doing legal work, the research, the writing, the argumentation, is something you are passionate about then I'm sure you'll find something you love in some field of practice. If there is something else you find you are passionate about it may also make a good career for you, even if you're not sure a career exists there. Hopefully you'll find something you love to do that doesn't require the drastic change I made, but if you find that you are unhappy just keep your mind open, and think about what you feel passionate about doing.
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Warren’s Answer

I have been a lawyer for almost 39 years, and the lawyers I know who aspired to become lawyers from an early age are all excellent lawyers and very successful. There will be days that you don't like it, but you will find your niche if your passion stays with you.

Warren recommends the following next steps:

Read some biographies of famous lawyers or books by famous lawyers. Gerry Spence is a great trial lawyer and has written several books. Notorious RBG is the biography of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Yankee from Olympus is an old but charming book about Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. And The Wrong Man, by James Neff, is the gripping story of Sam Shepard, the Cleveland doctor who served ten years for the murder of his wife, a crime that he did not commit.
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