My Journey Towards the Law

This first draft served the essential purpose: it got you to the question. Both as autobiography and as analysis, it refined the issue it only can raise in its last sentence: how do I build a practice in which I can do work that I want and meet my material needs? The brush has now been cleared: you have shown us both why you can frame such a practice, because you know how to combine love of justice with the work ethic that will not only deliver for clients but for yourself. So what remains are the real issues, which lie not in the past but in the future: how to make such a practice and how to use law school to prepare yourself for that building process. That resolves into another layer of fundamental questions:

What do you want to practice about? That includes not only the work in specialties where practicing profitably is hard, and other specialties, where you also enjoy working, that can finance the practice as a whole. Where do you want to work, in real geographic and social space? How do you need to use law school to fit you to get the results you will deliver to clients from your practice, and Who does law school have to help you add to your network who will assist you to deliver those results and to find and be retained by the clients to whom you will deliver them? Finally, How Much does this practice have to produce in order to make it self-sustaining, and to afford you the level of income that will satisfy the need for yourself, for family, etc.? These are the basic objectives on which a strategy to build your practice, from its beginnings in law school to the other end, can be based. The next draft of this essay can't be The Plan, or even the plan to have The Plan, because it's too early. But you can begin to train your imagination, which is all that you need at this stage.