Welcome to The Spurious Lawyer. This site is focused on one particular topic and that is the lawyer. I’ve always enjoyed the law and television and movies really glorify the legal profession and lawyers in general. I am sure that in the day to day business it’s not as exciting as it is on tv. But, the freedom of owning your own practice would be appealing.
A good friend of mine is a lawyer working over seas and honestly even though he is like program chief of the country he is in, I couldn’t really tell you what he does. He gripes about how there are too many out there and if anyone wants to find a lawyer, it should be pretty easy. It’s funny too, because I don’t think he even really likes it.
It probably depends on what area of the law that you specialize in. There are so many types. You could be an immigration lawyer, a divorce lawyer, a personal injury lawyer but I think the key type to be today would be bankruptcy lawyers.
Can you imagine?
With corporate bankruptcy filings such as GM and I saw today that Eddie Bauer filed as well. Add that to all of the personal filings that we’ll probably see over the next few years because of the economy and it’s probably going to be a very, very lucrative field to be in. I predict that all of the lawyers will be very busy taking care of those.
My first exposure to legal profession in the “real world” was when I worked managing collections at a bank I used to work at. When people didn’t pay there bills and we took them to court to obtain judgements and wage garnishments, I actually got to testify in court. For the most part, it was like the People’s Court with Judge Wapner or on Judge Judy. You just step up to a podium and answer questions. Once though, I did actually get called as a witness in a court where I had to take a seat in the witness stand. I have to say that I was a little nervous because I was only like 20 some years old at the time.
Later, when I worked for an insurance company we had a tax attorney on staff who was an expert on estate planning, taxes and contracts. We used to have lunch all the time and it was really cool learning about the different facets of the law that applied to insurance. I think that the general public has no clue what the legal system permits to people who really know how to use it. I think that if they did, they would be more open to using all of the tools the system provides.
Speaking of taxes, I had another tax lawyer teach an income tax class in college who did an awesome job explaining and otherwise boring topic.
If you are smart and independent, I’d encourage anyone trying to figure out what to do to consider the profession. I’d imagine that the toughest part of building a practice would be not the law so much, but in getting clients for your practice. It’s for that reason that I would look into being an attorney in a very populated place with lots of potential clients. If you were a Chicago lawyer, a Houston Lawyer or a Los Angeles lawyer, you’d be better off than working in a town with only a few thousand people.
I think that most lawyers take the path of working for an established practice before they go out on their own which I think makes a lot of sense. Because I’m sure that there is a lot of practical knowledge they don’t teach you in school, you could pick up on their dime instead of yours.
Once I decided on a town I wanted to practice in, and whether I wanted to start my own first or work with someone else, I would probably decide on what type of law I would focus on. I think where you decide to live would definitely factor in. I would guess that in the southeast of the country, they might need a lot of immigration lawyers since it’s so close to Mexico. I don’t have any demographics on it but that would seem to make sense.
I’d probably want to live in Hollywood if I wanted to hang with divorce lawyers since there are so many high profile divorces. And, if I wanted to go against the likes of Perry Mason and be a criminal defense lawyer, I’d want to go to a place with a high crime rate. I know that seems really exciting but I doubt that it would live up to the expectations.
If you do go into law, plan on it being tough to get started in the beginning. I know that one attorney I knew who worked in the town I grew up in. He was new and he ended up filing bankruptcy. I remember at the time thinking that he probably felt he failed but when it comes down to it, bankruptcy is just a tool that can be used. I think they encourage companies to do it, but when it comes to individuals, they make it out to be some moral issue to prevent you from doing it. The fact is that if there’s any moral issue it should be the other way around in my opinion.
Another attorney that seems kind of glamorous is an injury lawyer who takes on a case as a class action suit to really sock it to the big corporation. That seems kind of tedious and really drawn out. In fact, I read the other day that Exxon Mobil had start paying on a lawsuit that was originated from that oil spill back in 1989. That’s like 20 years ago. There are probably attorneys that started working on that case who are dead lawyers now.
Anway, I guess if I had to chose to read more about the subject, I would check Wikipedia’s lawyer page too. If I needed to find one I would check out this lawyers site.
As for me, I won’t be making a career change but if I was just starting out, I’d strongly consider it. I’m sure I would enjoy it and will be exploring the subject in greater detail in later posts.