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< | On Dropping Out of Law School |
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> | On (Not) Dropping Out of Law School |
| | -- By MatheusEleuterioMirandaDias - 22 Apr 2024 |
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< | I came to law school looking for certainty. A stable job, a good salary, and most of all, a way to resolve the post-undergrad limbo of “what the fuck am I going to do with my life?” Never mind that I didn’t know the first thing about having a practice or of being an advocate. Sure, I had been a paralegal at a large firm for a few years, but that just showed me that many lawyers are glorified paper-pushers. |
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> | I came to law school looking for certainty. A stable job, a good salary, and most of all, a way to resolve the post-undergrad limbo of “what the fuck am I going to do with my life?” When Eben asked, in class, whether we wanted to be “just a lawyer with a job” or to actually have a practice, I thought that just being a lawyer with a job didn’t sound so bad. Never mind that I didn’t know the first thing about having a practice or of being an advocate. Sure, I had been a paralegal at a large firm for a few years, but that just showed me that many lawyers are glorified paper-pushers. |
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< | I now see that my coming to law school was a fool’s errand. Not because there is no certainty to be found, but because I’ve always been drawn to the uncertain. (Those who don’t know me deeply would balk at that assertion, taking my generally methodical nature to indicate quite the opposite.) |
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> | I’ve come to law school for the wrong reasons. This much I have realized. Could there be, then, a more legitimate reason for my being here? Is there something more profound than creature comforts (international travel, expensive scented candles, fine dining) that should keep me here? (I will note that other non-luxury considerations played into my wanting to just be a lawyer with a job, e.g., providing for my mom in the future.) |
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< | Plato’s Forms always struck me as a simplified bore of our world, imputing to the concepts around us a “truth” when none exists. By contrast, my mind revels in Nietzsche’s world. At the risk of tooting my own horn in associating myself even slightly to that genius, my first encounter with his work found me feeling less alone in the world. |
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> | Eben has said that those who should be in law school either love justice or hate injustice—or something along those lines. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t think that I love justice or hate injustice enough to earn $60,000 a year. |
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< | It wasn’t that he expressed what I thought. It was that he put into words what I had at that point only been able to feel. He turned into essay what I thought was my complete inability to connect to the world around me in any tangible way. Hofmannsthal’s Lord Chandos may have described my state best: |
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> | No: if I were to pursue a career without regard for money, I would get an MFA in Creative Writing, as a former professor once suggested. Getting published is a hit-or-miss kind of business, so I would likely need to find a relaxed 9-to-5 job that would give me time to write. |
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< | "Even in familiar and humdrum conversation all the opinions which are generally expressed with ease and sleep-walking assurance became so doubtful that I had to cease altogether taking part in such talk. […] My mind compelled me to view all things occurring in such conversations from an uncanny closeness. As once, through a magnifying glass, I had seen a piece of skin on my little finger look like a field full of holes and furrows, so I now perceived human beings and their actions. I no longer succeeded in comprehending them with the simplifying eye of habit. For me everything disintegrated into parts, those parts again into parts; no longer would anything let itself be encompassed by one idea. Single words floated round me; they congealed into eyes which stared at me and into which I was forced to stare back-whirlpools which gave me vertigo and, reeling incessantly, led into the void." |
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> | Or maybe journalism? I don’t fucking know. Which is part of the issue, and what landed me in law school in the first place. I’ve become the exemplification of the classic liberal-arts-to-law-school pipeline joke. |
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You can't afford 152 words of decorative quotation.
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> | Of course, I could not pursue a career for money, and instead pursue what I find value and meaning in. And contrary to what I assumed in a previous version of this essay, perhaps I can pursue something in the law that I find value and meaning in. |
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< | Those around me seemed to speak about X, Y, or Z with ease while I was often paralyzed by trying to deconstruct the meaning of their words. Did they assume I understood each word in the same way they did? Were they not transfixed, as I was, by the flimsy tool we call language? |
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> | There are two exceptions to my unwillingness to earn $60,000 a year: animal welfare or LGBTQ rights. I would be content being a lawyer and earning less than $60,000 for those two causes. But pursuing that would mean dropping out of law school anyway: public-interest positions are notorious for not sponsoring visas, so I would eventually return to Brazil, with a useless law degree. |
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< | What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus. But the further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say “the stone is hard,” as if “hard” were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We separate things according to gender, designating the tree as masculine and the plant as feminine. What arbitrary assignments! |
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> | Or I could risk it. I already have the funding for law school—which will see me graduate without any loans—so the only cost would be time. The rewards could be huge: doing something I care about. The risks are that I wouldn’t find a visa sponsor, and need to return to Brazil (or find another job that provides me with visa sponsorship—outside of big firms, this would likely be NGOs). |
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Not in English, however, which is the language in which the thought was eventually put.
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> | This discussion forces me to admit that the other major reason for my coming to law school is the possibility of emigrating to the United States, which has been my goal for almost a decade. But as I’m coming to realize, I am not willing to become a paper-pusher simply to live in this country. While getting deported (again!) would be bad, it would be worse to resign myself to corporate America. |
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< | Medication has turned paralysis into fascination, which is much more manageable. But I’m still drawn to the uncertain, to the grays as opposed to the black and white. |
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> | The risks I’m facing stand in stark contrast to the risks I’ve seen students on campus face during the recent encampment and related protests. Seeing their resolve and willingness to put their very futures on the line—whether due to expulsion or being doxxed—to support a cause they believe in has motivated me to take some risks myself, even if not as compromising. |
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< | I’ve come to law school for the wrong reasons. This much I have realized. Could there be, then, a more legitimate reason for my being here? Is there something more profound than creature comforts (international travel, expensive scented candles, fine dining) that should keep me here? |
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> | My practice here would not likely not involve my opening up my own shop: I’ve looked into the requirements and the visa situation is complicated. While I could open up a business as a nonresident alien, I’m not able to work for that business without a valid visa. |
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< | Eben has said that those who should be in law school either love justice or hate injustice—or something along those lines. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t think that I love justice or hate injustice enough to earn $60,000 a year. (There are two exceptions: animal welfare or LGBTQ rights. I would be content earning less than $60,000 for those two causes. But pursuing that would mean dropping out of law school anyway: public-interest positions are notorious for not sponsoring visas, so I would eventually return to Brazil, with a useless law degree.) |
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> | Would working for an already-established practice—with the goal of eventually opening up my own shop—risk placing me in a position of being “just a lawyer with a job”? I think that, as long as I keep the eye on the ball, i.e., my own practice, having attorneys I “report” to can be an important steppingstone to understanding how my own practice should function. |
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< | No: if I were to pursue a career without regard for money, I would get an MFA in Creative Writing, as a former professor once suggested. Getting published is a hit-or-miss kind of business, so I would likely need to find a relaxed 9-to-5 job that would give me time to write. |
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> | While the possibility of earning $60,000 worries me, I am comforted by what comes along with it: the ability to make the world a more just place. When I think about advocating for the rights of animals, I see great honor, accompanied by great responsibility: I would be the voice for those who are truly voiceless. |
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< | Or maybe journalism? I don’t fucking know. Which is part of the issue, and what landed me in law school in the first place. I’ve become the exemplification of the classic liberal-arts-to-law-school pipeline joke. |
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> | When looking at those two factors side by side, my “worry” about earning what the median U.S. household earns is… pathetic. While money is not to be ignored, I need not worry if I know I will live comfortably. |
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< | Is this progress? It feels like regression, like the last five years since college have been a complete waste (what’s more likely is that this is the sunk cost fallacy in action). At the end of the day, it is progress to break from the plan of just being a lawyer with a job. |
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> | I see two enormous privileges in my future: (1) graduating debt-free and (2) working to make the lives of those who cannot advocate for themselves more livable. |
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< | I’m reminded of Nietzsche’s interpretation of eternal recurrence. Perhaps I should consider what path to take next by evaluating how content I would be with my actions recurring eternally. Would I be proud of them? |
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> | As for next steps in making my practice a reality: reach out to the Public Interest Public Service ASAP to get more information on immigration factors, and research providers of legal services to animals and/or LGBT folks. I need to get some hands-on experience and to meet the type of lawyer I want to become. |
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< | As Kundera put it, einmal ist keinmal. |
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It would be good to answer some question, rather than merely strewing question marks rhetorically about. What should keep you here, if anything? I think a stronger next draft would actually put some effort to work answering. |