Lawstudents.ca

OK so clearly most law students will be practicing law when they graduate. I mean it is law school, after all.

But some of us might not be, and I'm wondering if there are any law students/3Ls/recent grads/whoever here who might have different ideas after the JD or LLB...or, if anybody has any anecdotes of friends/classmates who might have taken different, non-traditional career paths after graduation or after a few years of practice.

Very interested to hear what some peoples' non-traditional career plans might be. I often hear that law grads do more than just practice law but I rarely get a decent picture of what those positions are or how they got there.

CEO, CLO, PM, IC, etc.. though not right after graduation. Are you talking about people who study law, and then never become a lawyer?

What's "PM"?

Punnani Muncher

The reason for that is because very few law students go through law school with the plan to not practice law.

I don't intend to practice law after graduation. I intend to pursue a career in the development industry where a legal background can be beneficial in negotiations and contracts.

PM = Prime Minister Basically, I meant politics.

I plan on becoming a singer-songwriter once my LLB is complete

Yes. I'm talking about law graduates who never happen to practice law, as well as lawyers who may practice for a little while, then move on to something else.

Real estate development?

I recognized that at the beginning of my thread. I have met some law students in 2L and 3L however who I presumed were all about the law but gradually started to talk about their shifting career plans, like establishing one's own business, for example, or going into banking. Maybe they lost some interest in the legal industry as law school went on, I don't know.

A few people go into government positions, others into policy. Really, sometimes it depends on your background interests prior knowledge and education, etc. I know of a few people who went to get MA degrees afterwards, other people who went into PR/Communications agent type work, some people talk of publishing. I even heard of a guy who went back to do a BFA.

And you know what? No matter what, they are able to bring law back into their chosen field.

But a few of them do try to article just to say they are a lawyer. But not all do. At McGill, we had the VP Public-Relations from Bombardier come speak to us. She is McGill alum, and chose to never article. She spoke about law education, and how she benefited from it. But the role of lawyer had never interested her.

Yup in both commercial and residential development. Though I will article and get called to the bar first.

Yeah. I have a couple friends in LS who do plan to work in business law, and could probably have any law job they want, and even they don't plan to be in the law field for that long. Like they literally say, "I'll do this for a few years maybe then I'm out."

I have a friend who went to law school 20 years ago and never articled - she's now the managing editor of a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal. I also know a former lawyer who now works for the government as a policy analyst.

I have quite a few friends who graduated from law school, 3 of them did not go the traditional route.
One is working as policy expert for a think tank. One is a law professor. One edited/researched, then went on to web design.

I know a law librarian, law professor, a legal publication editor and a headhunter who decided not to practice or never had any intention of doing so.

Despite a handful of anecdotes, you need to be aware that going to law school with the intention of not being a lawyer is, in most cases, a monumentally stupid idea. One of the worst career decisions anyone can ever make.

Do not do it.

You will die alone.

It's only "monumentally stupid" (to use your hyperbolic phrasing which I find arrogant and don't appreciate) if the financial cost, and 3-year opportunity cost, of law school are too high for anybody but a "lawyer" to pay off. A 0L thinking about asking for $100k in loans not knowing how s/he'll be able to pay them off, and not even thinking about being a lawyer when the degree is finished? Yeah, probably a pretty risky idea.

But that's not everybody. My feeling is that many if not most non-lawyer law grads either finished LS and around that time decided that they didn't want to be lawyers anymore, or practiced for a few years, then decided to do something else. This pool of individuals is more than just a "handful" of cases and you can see that I'm assuming that they mostly thought they'd practice law when they started 1L.

I'm simply interested in what these people transition into, after the law, and if anybody has any relevant posts. If the attrition rate of lawyers in Canada is anything like it is in the United States, I'm sure there are many cases, hence this thread.

If one can financially afford law school without any loans and graduate with a solid professional degree is it still "monumentally stupid"?

Senior Policy Analyst STARTING income with the Federal Government is 68k. This position is available to law graduates. Average corporate articling position in my city is roughly 40k. I'm not sure I see how I cannot afford life afterwards.

Communication agents start off at around 35-40k, depending on degree/experience. A friend of mine landed a job at 45k with only 1 year experience as a coms agent. How much do public interest lawyers make?

I thought this board has disproved time and time again that all lawyers earn big bucks. Sure, they're not typically only scrapping by, but it isn't daily lobster and champagne dinners.

But that's an awful research question. The nature of the internet is such that a bunch of people will come in here saying "oh yeah I know a guy with a JD who's not a lawyer" and the hamster wheels in the 0L's mind will turn with the magical possibilities that exist for the 1 guy out of a graduating class of 100 who got out of the legal grind. This has about as much value as going to a career services presentation about opportunities outside of the law.

The US legal market is a remarkable case because it's in freefall. At this point it's not really about "attrition rate" (which implies a desire to "get out" of a hypothetical legal job market) as much as it is "not starving to death" because of the unbelievable glut of lawyers the US is experiencing, leading to enormous difficulty for a young lawyer in finding employment. In such a situation, the JD is an albatross around the job seeker's neck: employers simply will not take you seriously because they believe you're jumping ship as soon as a legal opportunity comes along.

Sure, we can sit around the campfire and tell stories of a cousin's best friend's wife's neighbour who has a JD and got that rockin' job as a sales manager at Winners, but it's intellectually dishonest to throw out isolated cases with absolutely no context or counterpoints.



No, at that point it's merely a waste of time and money. Which is dumb, but inoffensive.

Generally speaking, I'm with Zangief. If you're not interested in being a lawyer, there are usually educational options that are much better-suited to your career goals. Maskedavenger mentioned government policy as a possible career for law grads, but it's also available to MPA grads with faster, cheaper degrees.

Agreed. As I mentioned before, there are very few law students who have no intention of practicing law. As much as I'm truly a believer in the intrinsic value of an education, the purpose of law school is to produce future lawyers, not policy advisors, not CEOs, not authors. Are there lawyers out there who are not practicing? Of course but I've never seen any distinct pattern to those in that position. Some are never able to find articles, some are never able to find an associate's job, some never pass the bar, some are let go by their firms after a few years because it becomes evident that they're not on the partner track, some can't hack the biglaw life they thought they wanted and burn out and leave, some try to set up their own practice and find that they can't make a go of it. On the other hand, some transition from being very successful practicing lawyers (usually in biglaw firms) to inhouse positions (usually having been lured away by clients). Some practice for many years and then start their own businesses, a few that I know of personally moved into the restaurant business, the sports agent business, and one is a legal recruiter/headhunter. Two others I know of were recruited by Revenue Canada to come to Ottawa and work there - both were very well-respected tax lawyers, one being probably in the top two or three in his field in the country.

So, yes, lawyers do end up in other types of positions but very few of them, in fact, none that I know of, planned that in law school. It is much more common after practicing for a number of years and for most of the examples I've given, it's after many years of very successful practice and making a name in the legal community. We can all give our anecdotal stories but the reality is that most law students want to be practicing lawyers and most graduates go on to do so. I suppose if you have the plan to start your own business of some sort, and you have the time and $$ to go to law school, that's your choice, but I honestly don't see the benefit to you or to your business in the long run. It's not as though your legal expertise is going to be sufficient for whatever the business' legal input will be. Remember that old adage that goes something like, a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. You will still have to have outside or inhouse legal counsel, regardless of the type of business you have. For the comments about how those in all of these peripheral types of careers are able to bring the law into their work, well, that's not exactly true or possible. It may be possible to informally inform your own business decisions but you cannot be practicing law and/or giving legal advice if you are not a practicing lawyer who has passed the bar and who is a member of the Law Society.

While it's interesting to hear what other kinds of work law graduates end up doing, there's really no informed data that will make it applicable or useful to anyone who is entering law school.

It doesn't make any sense to work your butt off three years and then not practice law. If you go to law school, plan on becoming a lawyer. If you go to medical school, plan on becoming a doctor. Which doesn't mean you can change your plans after, if you get an opportunity, but probably best not daydream about leaving your career, better to daydream about girls or something.

MPA may be faster and cheaper but you do not understand the law the same way law school trains you to.

I'm curious as to why so many people are so vehement about law school= lawyer? Is it the Type-A personality? Or your own desire to be a lawyer? In any case, let people do what they want. If they purposely chose law school as a means to their ends, why are you going to jump down their throat?

Law school hardly trains you to "understand the law", especially in a public policy context (you'll be lucky to take 4 classes with a significant public policy component - the rest will be a waste of time).



Despite what law school actually teaches, it's theoretically a professional school. It's supposed to teach you a profession - a pretty good one too - and going to law school because you "want to get into politics" or "start a business" makes as much as sense getting your P.Eng to be a plumber. Sure it's tangentially related, and maybe helpful here and there, but it's a monstrous waste.

People will react violently to this because once in a while message boards are used to give advice instead of functioning as a happy circlejerk for people's dumbest ideas.

I agree that the number one reason to go to law school is to practice law.

But this thread wasn't meant to be a discussion on this idea, or an invitation to be told that any current law student who's thinking about doing something non-legal at some point is an imbecile.

The point is, many lawyers eventually get out of the profession, not because they can't find a legal job, but because they get tired of it and simply want to do something else. Or maybe in their last year of law school they decided that perhaps being a lawyer wasn't as attractive as working in some other profession, so they went after that. Often these people leverage what they've learned in law school or in law practice to do these things. I just wanted to hear some anecdotes about what these things might be.

Thats fine. There is a difference between figuring out you don't want to do law at some point down the line and not wanting it before law school.

I think jobs outside of law are a talking point for schools as much as international law. It sells the school to say "Law degrees are so awesome, they teach you to do anything!" even though its probably not a very efficient method (arguably wasteful) to get a competitive edge. I don't have as big a problem with this as I do with international law (as defined as lots of travelling and dealing with multiple countries legal systems) because I do think that there are jobs for lawyers outside of law. The problem that I do have with it is it is disingenious to say that law actually trains you to do it. Those who can get into law school can often break into these fields directly, and while there may be a marginal benefit its not what .

I don't know much about the subject, but what is your issue with "international law"?

Can of worms here but basically because the field is essentially non-existant.

Yeah, sorry about the slight derail there. But I worry that some people will read threads like this and say "Ah, a law degree can get you into so many professions, I should go to law school since I don't know what I want to do with my life." That kind of thinking needs to be proactively challenged.

If this thread were full of lawyers who had been called a decade ago rather than law students, it might be very different. I would be stunned if less than 15% of lawyers are doing something besides practicing law 10 years after they graduate, and I would guess the figure is significantly higher. My guess is based on the lawyers I know, and what I've heard from law graduates. But guessing may be unnecessary since the law societies probably keep data on this.



Obviously. Public policy schools don't teach the law. But more importantly, law school offers a great intellectual and practical education. It makes you think better, write better, and analyze information more fluently. I'm not saying MPA programs fail to develop the same skills, but it's reasonable to doubt that they develop them as well as law schools do.

That said, I agree that it doesn't make sense to go to law school if you have no intention of practicing law. And if you do go to develop skills you plan to use in another profession, it might make sense to drop out after 1L. (This is the advice of a very successful non-practicing lawyer)



True. I also think it's important to challenge the assumption that because you received an acceptance letter from a law school, you will definitely spend the rest of your career practicing law.

I think if a non-lawyer finds success in a field other than law, it's less because she simply had the legal background or law degree and more because she's the kind of person who could get that background or degree in the first place and use the skills developed from that experience.

And I also know of a lawyer who left the field to work for a business-related policy organization.

The stat that's floating around is that 50% of law school grads are not/no longer lawyers 5 years after they graduate.