so i'll have a law degree soon...

[Mr. Now]

Ask three questions to get your answer:

1. What would I do if I no longer had to worry about money?
2. What have I achieved that has given me satisfaction and a feeling of importance?
3. What would I do if success were guaranteed?

[wire]

OMFG.

You have 200K saved and you're in law school, but have no intention of actually being a lawyer? I don't know how you take your coursework seriously, dude.

I bet 95 % of your classmates, if they were in your position, wouldn't be in law school. No one wants to spend their days in a law office.

[Todd Terry]

I graduated from law school, worked at a firm more or less full time during my second and third years, and practiced law for 8 years after that. IMO while you learn something in law school about the law, it isn't nearly enough to have a real understanding about how the legal process works that would allow you to have confidence in your opinions about legal issues in whatever situations you find yourself in -- only practicing law for a number of years gets you to that point.

Additionally, since the practice of law is so specialized, while having a law degree will allow you to have much more intelligent conversations with your attorneys, I don't think it will ever obviate the need for having an attorney in a given situation. Also, to the extent that you want to have a law degree as some sort of backup plan in case your current endeavors don't work out, I think practicing for a number of years right out of law school is the only way to make yourself an attractive candidate to prospective employers.

My general opinion is that a law degree is useful if you want to practice law, if you want to be a businessperson (since so much of what you do is law-related and it will allow you to make better decisions based on the advice of your attorneys), or if you want to be a politician. Otherwise, I don't think it's worth the effort and cost, although getting a law degree isn't particularly challenging compared to say getting a Ph.D. or medical degree. It certainly is expensive though.

[Dustin D]

I'm in similar situation. I graduate from law school in a month. After about a year of law school I was pretty sure I would never practice. I decided to still finish my degree because it didnt require a lot of effort and having the degree still had value to me. I would have felt like a bit of a failure in some ways even if I made say 10 million playing poker. School was also good for me in that it balanced my life a little, and got me out of the house. During law school I would estimate I still played a minimum of 50 hours a week of poker so I was mostly full time poker and doing just enuf to get by in school