Legal Commentary

Throughout this year, I've been thinking about whether I need to change the advice I give my law students based on the bleak job prospects for lawyers

I guess I'm not the only one.  Now there's a report in the ABA Journal stating:  "The chairman of an ABA commission studying the impact of the economic downturn on the legal profession has some advice for would-be law students: You may want to reconsider."

That advice, however, isn't quite nuanced enough to be helpful.  I recommend instead the following, sent to me by my friend David Vandiver Wilson, a practicing lawyer at Hays, McConn, Rice & Pickering in Houston:

No one should ever have gone to law school for the pipe dream of Big Law riches. The happiest lawyers I know are in every type of firm and practice. . . . The true path to unhappiness is to chase the mythical brass ring of Big Law success without a love of the profession itself. Being a lawyer has to be something that you are, not something that you do, in order to truly be happy in the profession. If you love what you do in the profession, law school will have been the correct choice no matter the size of your W 2.