Should I return to Law School in the fall?

I received your comments and agree that I should explore an issue that will be more useful to me.

The Allure of a Predictable Path

I decided to go to law school in my junior year of college because I realized it would enable me to keep doing what I was doing–following a set formula and checking all the boxes: Get a high 170s LSAT score, keep my GPA above a 3.9, and I would be virtually guaranteed admission into at least one top law school given their heavily statistics based admissions approach (as opposed to the far more holistic undergraduate or medical school admissions process). From there, so long as I didn’t bomb my OCI interviews, I would be virtually guaranteed a coveted “biglaw” job, earning a starting salary of $240,000, where I could pay off my law school and undergraduate loans easily, put my parents into a comfortable retirement, and, after about 2 decades of grinding away as a billing monkey, meticulously tracking every five minute increment of my miserable existence, retire with enough savings to sustain a middle class standard of living for the rest of my life, watching as much football as I wanted and spending quality time with friends and family.

The choice fit my risk averse nature well: I’ve always hated the feeling of uncertainty–of the possibility of things going completely wrong. Opting for this path, even though it meant lowering the ceiling for what I could achieve, provided a high floor of security. I could reasonably assure myself that even in the worst-case scenario—working at a less prestigious biglaw firm with slightly less job security in a recession—I would still be in a favorable position. I wouldn't have to worry much about networking or finding clients. I could mindlessly grind out whatever work was put in front of me for 20 years and then retire. I would never be out in the cold, relying solely on myself.

The Path of Least Resistance

Although I always harbored doubts in the back of my mind, it became increasingly clear throughout my first year of law school that my initial reasons for attending were insufficient to justify returning next fall. In one of my favorite songs, Rush’s “A Farewell to Kings”, a particular line always resonated with me: “We turned our gaze from the castles in the distance, eyes cast down on the path of least resistance.” I was doing exactly this with my career path. A life of avoidance of resistance may be one of ease and comfort, but it also is one of stagnation. Even at only 23 years old, I already regret the large number of decisions I have made where I turned down a challenge and took the easy way out. I do not want one of the biggest decisions I will make in my life–what sort of a career I pursue–to be another one.

Another reason I am questioning whether to stay in law school is the realization that I may lack the inherent aptitude necessary to thrive in this demanding environment. Martha Tharaud‘s observation that “some get it immediately, some take a while, and some never get it at all” applies universally. Early in my childhood, my dream was to become a professional basketball player. I spent every waking moment outside of school on the court at the park near my house developing my basketball skills. In 6th grade, I was invited to a basketball camp with some of the best players from the region. Despite the fact that most of the other kids were only there because their parents made them go, spending every day at camp counting down the minutes until they could go home and play video games again, they effortlessly outclassed me in every facet of the game, blowing by me on fastbreaks, poking the ball lose no matter what moves I made, and some were even able to dunk. Their combination of skill, natural athleticism, and height simply made me no match for them. It was clear that I didn’t have what it took to realize this dream.

I encountered several of these “I don’t have it” moments my first year of law school: Observing some of my classmates’ incredible abilities to think on their feet or incisively cut to the core of the issue at hand in tricky cold calls, witnessing a peer with a photographic memory flawlessly recite a whole paragraph from our casebook, and receiving grades barely above the class median despite exhaustive study efforts all made me question whether I had the innate intellectual gifts to excel in this field.

Why I Will Return

I ultimately believe it is still the correct choice to return to law school in the fall. Even if I lack the gifts that some of my classmates have, I don’t need to have “it” to still be a good lawyer. This is not like basketball where one needs to be in the top 0.01% of the population in terms of relevant natural gifts to even consider having a career in the thing. It might be that I don’t reach the heights of some of my more gifted classmates, but I don’t need to be the next Lebron James of the legal profession to still make a positive impact on the lives of hundreds and possibly thousands of clients. Whatever my intellectual gifts may or may not be, what matters is whether I use them most optimally–if, at the end of my life, I did what I could with what I had. And I still believe the skills involved in a legal career align best with my constellation of natural strengths and weaknesses.

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