A Juris Doctorate gives you career options. You can work as a lawyer for the government, law firms, non-profit organizations, corporations, yourself, or pursue a career teaching law. You do not even have to practice law; a recent article in the ABA Journal featured how lawyers are being asked to lead some of America’s biggest corporations as their Chief Executive Officers. The point is – you have options. Options are important; they give you autonomy and flexibility.
Why am I sharing this with you? Because many articles seem to recount the "doom and gloom" of obtaining employment as a lawyer, but such articles fail to consider the creativity and self-motivation of many J.D. holders. A recent Wall Street Journal article discussed the dim prospects of employment for lawyers, especially new lawyers. The article goes so far as to encourage those considering law school to reconsider. Really? How many degrees do you know of that will provide so many career options? In his D Magazine article "Lawyers Don't Think Like the Rest of Us," Jason Heid highlights five vastly different career paths that evolved from having a J.D. Mr. Heid notes “Juris doctorates are put to a myriad of uses, in an array of environments.”
So, what determines which career option is right for you? Passion. If you pursue your passion, you will not only succeed, you will be happy. Cynthia Pladziewicz, Chief Development Office at Thompson & Knight in Dallas, advises “It’s important for a lawyer, I think, to be happy being a lawyer. There are different areas of the law that might better fit with their passions and their skills that could make them happier.”
The take-away: (1) don’t be discouraged by the “doom and gloom” articles; (2) you have made a wise investment that gives you career options; (3) identify your passion; and (4) allow that passion to motivate you to be creative in achieving a happy and successful career.
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