Wanting to help people & wanting to make money conflicting with each other?

[Diplock]

Look. If you're asking if there are opportunities to still use your law degree to help real people and causes that are not directly tied to making as much money as possible, sure there are. Now you're going to have to swim upstream against the urge to spend your increasingly-valuable time making money rather than donating it, but if you're prepared to do that you can find worthy things to do. So if that's all you need reassurance about, it's certainly possible.

If you're asking if there is an inherent conflict between making the most money and working for people with the most need...of course there is. Insert strong, expletive-laced rant here. No one is being douchy enough to really deserve the rant fully, but of course there's a conflict. The way you make the most money is by working for the people and the entities that have the most money. And those are not, quite obviously, the people and causes with the most compelling need. I mean...duh.

The absolute extreme on either side is a lie. You can have a perfectly reasonable career and lifestyle even helping the poorest and neediest in society. As Hegdis has pointed out, you aren't taking a vow of poverty to do that. At worst you'll be comfortably middle-class. There is also no job so lucrative that you'll be tied only to serving your wealthy clients to the exclusion of anything else unless you allow that to become your priority. In fact, the risk of over-committing either way is real, but still a personal choice. I know lawyers who have become over-whelmed by over-identifying with their clients' needs, but that's a universal risk. Stay in control of your own priorities and there's no reason you should ever occupy an extreme.

All that said, the biggest risk is simply not keeping an honest account of yourself and what's happening in your life. And frankly, the way the OP blew off the concern as solved by some hypothetical future self...that's how it happens. You don't need to solve this issue before you even attend law school, obviously. But you also can't defer the question until you're years into practice by saying "one day I'll do good work, but for now I'm going to do whatever anyone will pay me the most to do." You can make that choice in your career. But please, don't lie to yourself about where that's going to lead you.

Anyway, good luck.

[Yogurt Baron]

I don't know if my voice is needed on this or if I'm saying anything particularly interesting, but I do want to amplify one thing.

My average annual income from ages 25 to 35 was $8,000. The weirdest thing about working for lawyers is that I encounter a pretty significant number of rich-ass lawyers who consider themselves middle-class and two or three millionaire lawyers who, without a jot of irony, consider themselves objectively "poor" - because maybe they have less than some of their colleagues, or less than they'd dreamed of. If "financial security" for you means "not being homeless", which is what it means for me, then any law job will do that for you several times over. If "financial security" for you means "being richer than literally everyone", then you know what your path looks like. The problem is how easy it is for students to start out in the former category and then have their expectations warped with time. I guess my advice is to try not to lose touch with reality the way some do. Like, if you want to get rich, get rich, but don't delude yourself that anything less than Wealth is actually poverty.

[Hayesy-B]

7 hours ago, Yogurt Baron said:

I don't know if my voice is needed on this or if I'm saying anything particularly interesting, but I do want to amplify one thing.

My average annual income from ages 25 to 35 was $8,000. The weirdest thing about working for lawyers is that I encounter a pretty significant number of rich-ass lawyers who consider themselves middle-class and two or three millionaire lawyers who, without a jot of irony, consider themselves objectively "poor" - because maybe they have less than some of their colleagues, or less than they'd dreamed of. If "financial security" for you means "not being homeless", which is what it means for me, then any law job will do that for you several times over. If "financial security" for you means "being richer than literally everyone", then you know what your path looks like. The problem is how easy it is for students to start out in the former category and then have their expectations warped with time. I guess my advice is to try not to lose touch with reality the way some do. Like, if you want to get rich, get rich, but don't delude yourself that anything less than Wealth is actually poverty.

Couldn’t agree with you more. Maintaining perspective is very, very important. Not long ago, I had a conversation with a colleague where I was trying to explain that a household income of $300,000 per year is way more than enough to be financially secure, and saying otherwise means that 99.99% of people (probably more in reality) are not financially secure. It was lost on deaf ears for the most part. 

[Mountebank]

6 hours ago, Hayesy-B said:

Couldn’t agree with you more. Maintaining perspective is very, very important. Not long ago, I had a conversation with a colleague where I was trying to explain that a household income of $300,000 per year is way more than enough to be financially secure, and saying otherwise means that 99.99% of people (probably more in reality) are not financially secure. It was lost on deaf ears for the most part. 

Honestly, $300k isn't all that much when you consider even the most basic motoryacht will put you back $500k if you're buying in CAD. And that's before taxes, freight, and bullshit dealer fees. Plus, what the accountant charges to make it a business expense.

[Hegdis]

Some one once told me that for most of us financial security - when you get a solid foot in middle class - is when your time can be more valuable to you than your money.

I have always remembered that. I think it’s mostly true. 

[Garfield]

In family law, I have seen how much some lawyers actually earn. There are lawyers in many areas of law that make a fuck ton, including in areas of law that are not hyped up by career development offices at law schools. Of course, I don’t know how long it took for those lawyers to get to that point or whether they are the exception or the rule. If there are fields you’re interested in, I would reach out to lawyers in those fields (and speak to lawyers at different stages of their career, not just juniors but also partners) and see what they say, what the pay structure is like, what you can expect, etc. 

[GreyDude]

On 3/9/2023 at 2:38 PM, Hegdis said:

I don't... I don't know what that is. Is it like, suckup? Kissass? Groupie?

I am over 40 and need an education from you kids. I hear "sus" a lot these days too from my kids and when I use the full word "suspicious" I get these extremely patronizing looks which are very hard to take from people who still regularly put their underpants on backwards.

I feel your pain