Oprah, I'd like my prize car to be red, please

You know how attorneys have a reputation for being pretty abrasive? In my experience, practicing for a few years tends to mellow them out. We are at the pinnacle of our jackass-ness when we are in law school.

Take the most competitive, type-A person you know, multiply that by 5, and add in extreme sleep-deprivation (and a smidge of any number of personality disorders), and you'll get a picture of the average law student.

Now trap that person and 600 others like her in a building together for 60+ hours a week and pit them against each other in direct competition. Tell them they need straight A's to land a salary capable of taking on the mountain of debt they've been accumulating. Then only give about 10% of them A's in anything. For fun, hold extra-curricular competitions in writing and mock trials. It's just a recipe for crazy.

This being the friend pool I was fishing in, it surprised me when during law school I found a handful of really good friends. Mellow, kind people who lucked their way into and through our school, all of whom at some point realized they were probably better suited for something less cutthroat than the law, but by then were too far in to turn around.


Hubs and I were treated with an overnight visit by one of these friends, who is on his way across the country with his new wife (another very cool person), to begin work at a big, fancy firm in Chicago next month. Like, BIG and FANCY. And scary. And he knows it's scary and that makes me love him all the more.

But he will obviously kill it in his new job, because he's a rockstar. He earned his J.D. and his Masters at the same time. That means he made it through four years of law school. Three almost killed me. And then he went on to pass the IL bar exam and then take the WA bar (results pending) in under a year. And clerk for some fancy judge on the west side. See? Rockstar.


Don't worry, L. Just work for them for a little while, pocket the fists full of cash they give you, and then get out, just like you've been planning. Then come back to WA and set up shop and we'll run the coolest little boutique immigration/adoption/legal aid clinic around.

Love, J

PS ~ Just don't get so busy at work that you can't camp out for Oprah tickets with us when we come to visit, okay?