The Best Profession Ever

Last night my husband and I watched A Civil Action with John Travolta. In my civil procedure class 1L year, we read about the Woburn case as a case studying for learning the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Like Rule 11, my professor was obsessed with Rule 11. I'm pretty sure my husband was bored with the movie. Not a typical thriller. No violence, no blood, no shooting.

And when I was running at the gym last night, 60 minutes came on featuring Justice Scalia. It was amazing to watch him interact in the interview. He's a real, down to earth person. Even he has days where the legal profession makes him angry. How amazing would it be to be a Supreme Court Justice?

Every once in a while I doubt my decision to go to lawschool. But the truth is, being a part of the legal profession- even if just as a student for now- is like being in some exclusive club. I feel special knowing things that are not common knowledge. The shared experience of law school torture, socratic method, and taking a bar exam just initiates all lawyers and lawyers-to-be into the same social club. It's a separate academic and intellectual world that we become part of.

And I love having access to the legalese:
Joinder- sounds like a type of drug to me "hey man, wanna smoke a joinder?"
Quantum meruit- a type of space travel, perhaps?
Interrogatory- a torture tool
Indemnification- just sounds dirrrrty...

Mostly, I'm proud to be part of the legal profession. Unlike how I felt my 1L year- lost, dazed and inadequate, I am now confident, in awe of legal concepts, and I have a sense of belonging. I have taken law and made it mine. I feel like I belong to it, and it belongs to me. I feel like it's something that makes me unique and sets me apart from others while at the same time, uniting me with lawyers and law students all around the world.

I still have my off days and I still have days where I hate law school more than I hate folding laundry or more than I hate paying a cover to get into fun places (that's some intense hatred there).

But the best part of the legal profession is that as you grow intellectually, there is always something in the field to stimulate you. Law's philosophical roots tie us to great thinkers like Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Jefferson, Madison. It also connects us to current events and asks us to come up with solutions for society's existing problems. There will never be a shortage of people to help, legal doctrines to study and law articles to read.

Law is the best profession ever. Now I just have to repeat this mantra 100 times a day until finals are over.