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< | The Kind of Lawyer I Want To Want To Be | >
> | The Lawyer I Want to Be: Adding a Commitment to Social Justice to My Practice | | | | |
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< | I hate bullshitting. I think this comes from my Israeli father, who says what’s on his mind and doesn’t to pull punches. When I see problems in society, I tend to think about them in this way. I pick them apart and try to analyze what causes them, how they proliferate, and how they can be solved. But I am also very practical. This comes from my mother, who, chooses her battles carefully and really thinks things through before acting. This quality causes me to brush many of the problems I identify aside as unsolvable, or to buy into them and allow them to proliferate further. This conflict has been a constant struggle for me. I want to want to be a lawyer who pursues meaningful goals by fixing the problems that I identify in the world. But I have not yet decided if this course is practical for me. | >
> | The opportunities and successes that brought me to Columbia were largely a product of chance—complete luck of the draw. I was born into an upper-middle class family in the United States, attended two of the best universities in the world, and grew up knowing some of the most influential people in modern society. Everything I have been able to accomplish in life (most notably my admission into Columbia Law School,) has only been possible because of where and to whom I was born. While I did not appreciate this concept as a child or even as a college student, my recent acceptance of it led me to the conclusion that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Accordingly, I want to use the power I acquire at Columbia to effectuate social justice. But I have not yet figured out how to do so in a way that is practical for me. | | | | |
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< | I came to law school with the intention of beginning my career in a big law firm. I planned to work my way up and eventually pursue a partner track with the firm or go in house with a sports, entertainment or media company. Coming into law school, I thought I’d like to be a prominent sports agent, the commissioner of a sports league, or private counsel to Hollywood executives and celebrities. My motivation for pursuing this track was twofold: I wanted to be involved in a “sexy” industry (that I believed I was interested in) and I wanted to be able to make a lot of money while doing so. | >
> | I came to law school with the intention of becoming a prominent sports agent, the commissioner of a sports league, or private counsel to Hollywood executives and celebrities. My motivation for pursuing this track was twofold: I wanted to work in an industry I was passionate about and I wanted to make a lot of money while doing so. I believed that law school could get me these things and that as long as I worked hard, I would be able to achieve these material goals without much trouble. My experience as a first-year law student not only reaffirmed this belief, but strengthened it. I could easily spend a few years working in a law firm that represents major players in the sports and entertainment world, make the right connections, and forge a career for myself as a sports and entertainment lawyer. This is the road that many others have taken before me, and given Columbia’s network and prestige, it seems like an easy path to follow. However, I don’t believe such a career would satisfy me as I once thought it would, given my emerging desire to do something more meaningful with my life. | | | | |
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< | However, as I have gone through law school, I have become more cognizant of the fact that I, as a future lawyer with an education from one of the best schools in the world, am one in a rare class of people who might be able to do justice in the world. I may be able to address some of the problems I have noticed in society and really make a difference. Further, I even feel somewhat responsible for effectuating justice. There are plenty of smart people out there, but very few have been given the opportunities to learn the tools and skills that I am acquiring in law school. “With great power comes great responsibility,” and I want to live up to that responsibility.
With this in mind, I am no longer confident in my previous plans—I am not sure that I will be happy pursuing a career in sports or entertainment law while real problems exist in society. In my view, to do so would render me a “sellout” to a certain extent; I would be operating within an unjust society to pursue my own economic, social, and material goals at the expense of making an important difference in the world. Rather, I believe my future happiness will stem from becoming a lawyer who is not afraid to question society, challenge the status quo, and start a revolution. But this new awareness has presented me with a number of concerns that I will have to overcome before I am able to commit to a career of effectuating change.
First, I do not know if such a career will provide me with enough money to be comfortable. While I realize that money does not buy complete happiness, I know that I will not be happy unless I acquire the wealth that I need to live my life as I have always envisioned it. This isn’t an exorbitant number, but it is significant enough to make me question whether I will be able to achieve it on my own. I know I could earn a great salary playing the corporate game, and I only hope to be able to earn that amount pursuing a career I am passionate about.
Moreover, I have realized that attempting to change the world will put me in danger. I am talking about being a lawyer who brings about justice by challenging dominant power structures to spark revolutions. My goal will be to uproot broken systems that support countless individuals who do not even understand the systems they are a part of. Average citizens will regard me as “the enemy” for challenging their potential sources of income, ideals, or insecurities and will want to do away with me in order to sustain the status quo. Leaders of these unjust organizations, ideas, and practices, will do whatever they must to remain in power. I will be as dangerous to myself as I will be to society.
I am considering trading a career of glitz and glamour for one as an outcast. While this is a bit unsettling, I would be willing to make this trade if it is for something I am truly passionate about. But I am not sure what I care about just yet. I am in a state of limbo. I will spend my remaining time in law school searching for the right opportunity, figuring out what I truly care about, and learning the skills to eventually make a difference in the world. In the end, it may be that what I care about most isn’t a particular problem in society, but rather the people around me. I wonder if I might be satisfied effectuating change for the people I most care about, rather than for society as a whole. This might be the only thing that I would risk my life for.
I think this rewrite improves the clarity and force of the
statement, at the expense of realism. You're not actually
considering life as an outcast, Elie. Nor should you.
You're asking how you can add an acute sense of social
outcomes, maybe even a commitment to social justice, to
the work of supporting yourself in the style to which you
want to become accustomed.
Your current draft says, basically, that if a world-moving
passion showed up, you'd follow it anywhere. But that's
not the temperament you consider yourself to have. Anyone
could say that the world is well lost for love, and that
in response to a Grand Passion they'd abandon it all for
life on the beach with the object of their adoration. But
in general the world adopts satisficing monogamy and finds
itself living, Babbit-like, with gentle but ultimate
disillusion.
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> | As I went through my first year of law school, I became more cognizant of the fact that I, as a future lawyer with an education from one of the best universities in the country, am one in a rare class of people who might be able to make a difference in the world. I even feel somewhat responsible for effectuating justice. There are plenty of smart people out there, but only a very small percentage of them have been given the same opportunities to learn and grow as I have. I don’t want to become a participant in a system that merely satisfies my own material goals at the expense of not doing justice in the world, as so many of my privileged contemporaries have. I want to help change the world. “With great power comes great responsibility,” and I want to live up to that responsibility. | | |
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> | The question I have yet to answer is precisely how I will incorporate a commitment to social justice into my practice. While I know that pursuing my own economic, social, and material goals without regard to the world’s problems is not an option for me, I don’t plan to give up on making enough money to support myself in the style to which I want to become accustomed. I also still plan to work in a field that I am passionate about (whether it’s sports and entertainment or something else). But some part of what I do with my life must revolve around making the world better. This uncertainty is a bit unsettling, but I still have two years of law school (and an entire career) to figure it out. I will use my remaining time at Columbia to discover what I truly care about, search for new opportunities, and learn some of the skills that will help me change the world. This is a far cry from the way I approached the majority of my life, and I can’t wait to find out where it takes me. | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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