What do you want to do with your law degree? I think that question has been overlooked. If I were going into law school at this point, I would need to have a more specific goal than "be a lawyer."
I just want to be presented with challenges everyday and argue for them being solved. That may be naive and maybe it is, but that's my line of thinking. Just to be up against the gun, having to be prepared and well versed, having someone trying to make me lose, etc.
For the record, at dinner last night while I was talking with my friend, she said that her first case she was handed 90 documents some of them 400 pages long and had two days to prepare before she was in court. That gave me a huge brain boner. Stuff like that excites me.
something had to have gone horribly wrong for this to happen or she works for a firm that is irresponsible. or she is lying to you about how prepared she needed to be for court that day.
No, that crap happens on the reg. Now, crap definitely went horribly wrong, but it was probably before the firm got hired to deal with it (and by "you" i mean the partners who will get paid for your work)
Thats kind of what I was saying, but its more than that. It is a conscious decision to take on new work or a new client. If the firm decided to take on a case two days before trial (if it was in fact a trial) then they acted irresponsibly, imo. To expect an associate attorney to drop everything that they should be doing and concentrate wholly on nothing but one matter for a period of two days --a time frame that usually isn't adequate for anything complex-- and then effectively represent a client is putting your firm in a poor position, with a very sizable potential for recourse.
I considered not posting this, thinking it wasn't related to the topic at hand, but it is a fair example of some decisions that come alongside getting into law. Is that the type of practice you want to be involved in? There are various paths law allows an individual to travel, whether its being handed down files from 'big shots' and trap yourself in mounds of research or legal writing by joining a larger firm, engaging in a practice that allows you more control of your legal work, or utilizing your degree to pursue other oppy's like running a business.