My Desert Lawyer

Should You Really Be A Lawyer?: The Guide To Smart Career Choices Before, During & After Law School

Description

Are you making the right decision to get into--or remain--in law? Whether you're a prospective law student, a current law student, or even a practicing lawyer, the decision to enter--or remain--in law ranks among the biggest career decisions you'll ever make. From the latest research on decision-making, authors Deborah Schneider and Gary Belsky have written a unique career-building guide that will help you evaluate and answer the most basic question facing you now: Should you really be a lawyer?

Reviews

Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2010-02-14
Summary: "Of no help in answering its question"

Exhaustion made me quit this book halfway, but that's more than enough reading to discover that its authors have embarrassingly little to say about the legal profession beyond the obvious. The first three chapters can be summed up in a sentence: don't go to law school for the wrong reasons, because it's expensive. That's a fine notion, but rather than explore the issue in any meaningful way, they just dish out banal pop culture references, TV & movie quotes, generic anecdotes that go nowhere, and a whole lot of repetition. Making matters worse, they smack down a big glossary of psychobabble terminology early on (i.e. "confirmation bias", "decision paralysis", "information cascade"), then refer to the terms constantly in a misguided attempt to sound intelligent and scientific.

Check out this passage from page 9:
"Deborah was obsessed with getting a graduate degree by 30, an arbitrarily chosen age that took on far too much significance in her decision-making. This common trap is called ANCHORING -- attaching great importance to a fact or figure that may have little or no bearing on our judgments or decisions.
When she decided to stay in law school, Deborah was influenced by her fear that she might later regret her decision to leave. Again, this is another powerful force called REGRET AVERSION, which means that people tend to shy away from taking an action because they fear they'll regret making their decision later. Like a lot of CHOICE CHALLENGES, the practice of making decisions based on fear of regret sounds obvious when you hear it explained, but the extent to which this tendency affects your decisions is greater than most people think.
Deborah was also overwhelmed by the thought of how to decide what to do if she left law school. This reflects a common CHOICE CHALLENGE called DECISION PARALYSIS -- a reference to the difficulty people encounter when having to select from many options. For Deborah, ruling out law ruled in everything else, and the thought of choosing among all those professional paths was too daunting."

Isn't it scary how so many words can contain so little information?

Second example (page 65):
"If you don't like using the skills that most lawyers use, you probably won't enjoy being a lawyer. If you dislike thinking about legal subjects and reading legal documents, it doesn't bode well for your happiness in law. It's better to find out before starting school whether you would enjoy working in a legal environment, and whether legal work is in line with your priorities. If you don't consider these questions now, you may wind up confronting them later when the stakes are higher -- after you've invested three years and a ton of money on a JD."

There's also a section headlined "What Psychological Experience Can I Expect From Law School?", whose given answers are the following (and I quote):
1. Read about it
2. Talk to law students and law school counselors about common stressors
3. Try it out

Seriously.

In sum, this is a cheaply conceived, badly written, and sloppily edited hybrid between a third-rate career book and a fourth-rate psychology book from two morons who show no indication of having ever been lawyers.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2007-08-13
Summary: "Simple, but true"

I can boil this book down to one thing: Do informational interviews with real attorneys in order to see if the law is right for you. The book has some lengthy and, in my opinion, not too useful self-assessment exercises. And just when they get you thinking that they are going to impart wisdom about what it is that real lawyers DO, they tell you to go out and schedule informational interviews with real lawyers. This is a great idea, but you don't need to read the book to get it. If you really can't think of enough questions for an informational interview, then pay the $10 to buy this book and use the appendix. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

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Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2007-07-21
Summary: "Not the greatest buy"

About the greatest thing about this book is cover which is even not that great. For someone who proclaims to have gone through law school as the author claims, the book is very poor in written form. The book also does a LOT of repeating and dressing up "facts" in a way that is often used by marketers to sell their product. Although there may be one or two good points in the book, most of it is common sense. Basically, it is an expensive way of telling you to ask yourself the questions as to whether or not you know what lawyers do and whether or not you have researched the field of law enough to have the confidence to head to law school. Like I said before, she (the author) has some valid points but everything in the book can be found online for free and is basic common sense. I would'nt suggest forking out the cash for this reading.

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Rating: 1 / 5
Date: 2007-05-03
Summary: "Bad editing and geared to college juniors"

The major problem I found in this book is the lack of editing. There are serious grammatical errors, misspellings, missing punctuation and sentences with no logical end.
If you are thinking about attending law or graduate school, this book should be one of the first books to read in the junior year. The career strategies are extremely helpful to anyone making the drastic choices near the end of undergraduate studies. I felt like most of the information is useful to any student who are considering career counseling, since it will get you thinking about what life will be like after college.
Unfortunately, I have twenty years experience after college in the work force, learning and utilizing most of the strategies in this book. If you have worked in any career after college, then I wouldn't recommend this book.

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Rating: 2 / 5
Date: 2007-04-03
Summary: "Is there anything positive in this book..."

aside from the success stories of everyone who has left the legal profession? I appreciate some of the self-assesment tools, but the remainder of the book is filled with anecdotes about miserable law students and lawyers who were much happier when they made a school or career change. The subtitle should be changed to "NO! We don't think you or anyone should be a lawyer!" Ridiculous.