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What was your motivation?

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Noah’s Answer

Great question! My motivation for becoming a lawyer was that I wanted to be the lawyer that my family and community never had. My family had legal troubles when I was a kid and we didn't know lawyers and had no one that we could trust to support us. I didn't want other families to go through what we went through because of a lack of a trusted lawyer.
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Trudi’s Answer

I was a paralegal for 15 years as I was not sure I wanted to go to law school and become an actual attorney as it is a big financial and time commitment. My motivation for wanting to work in law was because my father was involved in an accident when I was in high school and I saw my mother go through a long litigation process. I wanted to help other families involved in that same situation which I did as a paralegal.
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Ashunda’s Answer

I was motivated by my strong desire to find purpose. It was important for me to give a voice to those that may not otherwise have one. Also, to have a life with meaning. In my life there were not a lot of things that I saw all the way through. I would keep a job six months and quit. Keep a relationship a year and then self-sabotage and break up. I would study for an exam and do good enough to pass. However, my motivation to become an attorney, provided something different. It always seemed impossible until it was done. I became motivated by challenging the status quo. I had never met an attorney that looked like me. The only female attorney I had that came close, was Clair Huxtable from the Cosby Show. :)
I found that if something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor and continue to believe in yourself.

"Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with one single step" Lao Tzu
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SoRelle’s Answer

Lawyers who like what they do have a range of motivations. I'm an employment lawyer, a type of attorney who works with companies and employees on issues related to the workplace (payment, discrimination, HR policies, employee problems). I did not expect to be a lawyer but was working in another field and really enjoyed giving companies advice. For me, people are endlessly interesting and their job is really important to them, so I find it fun and rewarding to work in those areas.

I know lawyers who practice in family law (a lot of divorce cases unfortunately) and they might say they enjoy helping parents and kids get a new home in a better situation. Criminal law attorneys often want to help those who have gotten a difficult start and may be treated unfairly by the justice system. Tax lawyers (I know!) find it interesting to solve the problems presented by complex financial situations. None of those careers would be a good fit for me, but they are all different "flavors" of being an attorney.

So there are pretty much endless good reasons to explore law as a career. I know that a _terrible_ motivation for being a lawyer is to make lots of money. It often doesn't happen and you may hate the time and energy it takes to get the degree and practice law. I have law school colleagues who teach high school, work in a jewelry store, and simply have never used that degree they earned and paid for.

Another bad idea is to go to law school mainly because it would make someone in your life proud. If you're going to get a law degree (after a 4-year college degree), consider it because there's a good fit between what you're interested in doing and what lawyers do in the field you're interested in. You don't have to start law school knowing what type of lawyer you want to be, but you should start it excited to learn and explore and work with other students.

SoRelle recommends the following next steps:

Talk with and ask to shadow lawyers in the area you're interested in. One way to do that is to contact a law school near you and ask to speak with admissions, then ask their counselor to help you get in touch with lawyers who might be able to show you what they do.
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Baljit’s Answer

Hi Camila,
Most people think the motivation behind going to law school is the money you can make as a lawyer. But in my case it was to get myself educated on my own terms. I wanted to have the education that I could use in everyday life and to help others. I also knew I could branch out and do other careers due to the prerequisite degrees I had to do in order to get into law school. I think the education that a person has also depicts their dedication to the educational system. Law school is very much theory that you have to apply to cases (just like working in law).
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