My whole life I have been studying law in hopes of becoming an attorney one day but I have not been getting the lsat score that I wanted in order to get into T-10. After many attempts, (my dream score is a 170) the closest score I got to my dream score is a 167 but that is not a good enough score IMO to get into those prestigious law schools. The reason I want to get into these schools is because if I was going to get into a huge amount of debt, I at least want to have a higher chance of paying back my loans as quickly as possible by practicing big law. Of course, you have to be in these prestigious schools to even have a chance at getting an interview. At one point, I started to reevaluate my life and I noticed that the idea of becoming an attorney is not as exciting as it once was for me. I don't wake up excited to study towards becoming an attorney anymore, it starts to feel more like a job and that was not the case in the past. I don't know if this is a normal feeling for someone going through a rigorous process like studying for the lsat while working full time but it just doesn't feel the same way as it once did. Now, I believe in my best opinion that for me at this point, going to law school just does not make financial sense to me. Given this, I am considering studying Computer science through a rigorous bootcamp and become a Full Stack engineer. I actually took a couple of courses in college and loved it but I didn't really put anymore thought to it because my dream at that point was to become an attorney. Is there anyone out there that can offer me advice in terms of anyone who has undergone a career change? I feel like I might be making a mistake by choosing to quit but I want to hear other peoples perspective who have a similar experience that I do. I guess I should have stated this earlier but currently I am a corporate paralegal and the experience made me realize that a lot of attorneys at my company don't even enjoy their jobs. This is also something I am considering when transitioning to a new career. #tech #law #legal #fullstack
I totally get shooting for the best schools and the aversion to all that debt, but you can definitely go to a tier 2 law school with that type of lsat and land a great job in tech or at a firm. As a corporate paralegal, you are probably not getting to work on the āfun stuffā that is available on the legal side such as product, privacy, ip, and others. Tough to push anyone towards law school given itās law school, but donāt necessarily throw everything out because youāll need to go to a T-30 school.
Yeah true I mostly worked on projects that I didnāt really find interesting but I tried studying for the lsat and I canāt seem to get over this hurdle. I think youāre right, Iām not completely giving up on the idea of law school but I donāt think itās in my best interest at this time if that makes sense. Like I didnāt mention this earlier, but my folks for the longest carved this career path for me and I didnāt really venture off into things that I got to choose.
A top 5%le engineer will most likely make more than a top 5%le lawyer but outside that you are better off being an attorney atleast financially.
I am also considering wlb and of course attorney are constantly working and stressed all the time. If youāre a software engineer, how would you describe your wlb?
Attorneys working in a corporate setting have good wlb; in private practice it can be challenging. Engineering wlb will be bad until you are comfortable with the codebase of your team in a product company (e.g google, Amazon) and have ramped up; problems take unknown amount of time so that can mess with you as well. If you get an it services or corporate it job then wlb can be better but you will make less than paralegal for those roles. In companies like Facebook, google : corporate it is not considered swe
What happens when you're grinding through bootcamp and you realize you're not passionate about it and it just feels like a job? For 99% of people, work feels like work 95% of the time. I'm an engineer and even though I've always loved programming (still do), I'm still not that enthusiastic about my job atm. At the very least you should talk to actual lawyers, ask if they felt the same way while studying for the LSAT (they almost certainly did) and then ask them if they regret continuing with the legal profession.
I definitely thought about this strong possibility as well. I understand itās not an easy path to become an engineer as well but yeah I guess I am burnt out. I want to talk to more attorneys but the ones Iāve talked to (at work and outside of my work) they all tell me they regretted going to law school. At first, this didnāt faze me one bit cause that was my dream, but I guess after hearing it over a long period of time it made me second guess myself.
You should probably talk to some people that went through software bootcamps too then. Though note: many of those people won't actually have become successful long-term software engineers.
Leetcode
I donāt think itās a bad plan. Go for it. You may find synergy in structured logic.
Yeah itās not a bad plan in theory at least. The thing is now I want to be able to communicate with someone that is a software engineer and ask them what their daily life is like in the workplace. This way I can see if I will even like the job that I do.
Isnāt lsat also structured logic ?
Yes very much so. The test essentially makes you look at various arguments with premises, conclusions and look at the reasoning to how they got to their conclusions. Your job would then be to see if the reasoning makes sense with the premise/conclusion. Thereās more to it but this makes a good majority of the test.
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Lots of productive software engineers I know have non-CS backgrounds. Iāve heard coding bootcamps can be hit-or-miss. If youāre really dedicated, you might consider self-studying. Doing the LearnEnough tutorials, 100+ problems on leetcode, and attending every coding meetup you can should be enough to get your foot in the door somewhere. As for wlb, Iām sure it varies by company and team, but mine has always been great.
Yeah my boot camp class doesnāt start until November but Iām currently studying everyday to understand the basics. This way, boot camp isnāt such a grind. Also, yeah I agree with the wlb aspect but that is something I highly value in any job.
Thatās tuff š„šÆ
Hahaha yeah I am currently experiencing an identity crisis haha šš