WHY DID YOU BECOME A LAWYER? . . . A student from Ponaganset Middle School in Rhode Island sent me the following email, which she said I should post here if possible:

Mr. Schaeffer: I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for a lawyer paper I have to do for school--

1. What is roughly your yearly income?

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

3. What school did you go to and for how long?

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?

Any lawyers who are reading can help out by answering any or all of these questions in a comment. I'll do the same.

Comments

[Evan]

Here are my answers to the questions--

1. I'd rather not disclose my yearly income. When I was first hired by a law firm in 1990, I think I made $55,000 a year, which was the going rate for large firms in the Midwest. Now I have my own firm and don't have a yearly salary. I get a percentage of the firm's profits, which are unpredictable from year to year.

2. I decided to become a lawyer because after working for awhile after college as a fundraising consultant, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to extend my education either in business by getting an MBA degree or law by getting a JD degree. I decided to get a JD degree, and was planning on going back to work in the business world, possibly in the development department of a university. But then I did well in law school and got a job at a large law firm, so I stuck with that. There is a slightly longer account of why I became a lawyer here.

3. To get my JD degree, I went to St. Louis University School of Law for three years.

4. Since I don't do any criminal law, I don't have to worry about what to do if I know my client is guilty. However, I think that all people accused of crimes should have the chance to have their guilt or innocence determined at trial in a court of law.

5. I handle "civil" cases--that is, disputes between people or business that do not involve crimes. For example, I used to represent hospitals and barge companies when they were sued by people claiming that my clients had injured them. Now I more frequently represent injured people--for example, people who claim they were injured by taking a dangerous medication.

[Dave]

1. What is roughly your yearly income?
I have my own firm and that changes from year to year. One of the things I liked about becoming a lawyer is that you can do public interest work and still make a decent living. I chose to help people who had been hurt.

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?
I read To Kill a Mockingbird in seventh grade English class. I don't know if I have ever seen anything more heroic than Atticus Finch. One man standing against the town and the system to change things. In high school, I read 'A Man for All Seasons' about Thomas Moore and also saw a one man play of Clarence Darrow.

While there have been a lot of detractors recently, I strongly believe in representing people that wouldn't have their voice heard without their lawyer.

3. What school did you go to and for how long?
After college, I went to Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in Cleveland, Ohio. I worked as a computer programmer in the day and went to law school at night. It was a four year program.

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?
I don't do criminal law, so fortunately I don't have to worry about that. Back when I was starting out, I did a *little* bit of criminal law. For the most part, I got people's sentence reduced and I did not feel bad about that.

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?
I handle injury cases and workers compensation cases. It is very rewarding. A lot of my clients are construction workers or immigrants and have not been treated real well by 'the system'. For a lot of them, it's the first time that anyone in a suit, or part of the system has stood up and fought for them.

Every now and then, I'll lose a case and be devastated. Oddly enough, my clients will console me and tell me that they just feel bad that I did all that work and won't get paid. They're grateful that someone listened to them and told their story and really fought for them. They are more concerned about me, than themselves.

Those are the times that I really see what it means to be a lawyer. When we get good results, the discussion turns to the disbursement of the money. But on the few occasions when I get bad results, I really get to see the value and importance of being the person's lawyer.

[Derek]

1. What is roughly your yearly income?

I recently started my own firm, so I don't know what my yearly income will be yet. Before I started my firm, I was making $50,000 per year as an associate at a 10-lawyer firm in a medium-size midwestern community.

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

Like a lot of people my age (I am about to turn 34), I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I got out of college. I started looking around at what I might be good at. I have very strong analytical reasoning skills with a pretty diverse educational background (I started out as a physics major in college and ended up getting a degree in math and philosophy). Law seemed to be the best fit. I really wasn't excited to go to law school -- at the time, it felt more like I didn't have anywhere else to go. The main attractions were that as a lawyer I would be constructing arguments (something I liked doing) and also helping people in the real world ("pure" math and philosophy don't have much impact in the real world). There were a lot of people in law school with me who also kind of "backed into" the law instead of deciding to become lawyers when we were younger.

3. What school did you go to and for how long?

I went to the University of Iowa College of Law for three years to get my law degree. Before that, I went to the University of Iowa for 4 years to get my college degree.

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?

I do a lot of criminal work, so this is a question I can answer. In the vast majority of criminal cases, the defendant is guilty. Most of these cases also result in guilty pleas. The defense attorney's job is to make sure the defendant gets the same punishment everyone else would get under the same circumstances. For example, if two criminal defendants have similar criminal histories and are charged with the same offense, they should get the same punishment. The attorney's job is basically to make sure the defendant is treated fairly.

In other cases, I will take a case to trial even though I know the defendant is guilty. This sometimes happens if we can't reach an acceptable plea agreement with the prosecutor or if the prosecutor's case is weak. If my client has confessed to me, I cannot allow him to testify that he is innocent. Attorneys are prohibited from suborning perjury -- this means I cannot call a witness to testify and let the witness lie to the jury. If I know a witness is lying at a trial, I have to take steps to get the witness to tell the truth.

Even if my client has not confessed to me, there are lots of times when I am pretty sure my client is guilty. I still have a duty to do everything I can to protect my client. Just because I think my client is guilty doesn't mean I'm right. A few years ago, the governor of Illinois gave a life sentence to every prisoner on death row in Illinois because a bunch of death sentence convictions had been overturned using DNA testing. If I remember correclty, the DNA testing showed 18 men had been convicted even though they were actually innocent. It's very dangerous to just assume people are guilty because they have been charged with a crime and the evidence looks bad. Police officers make mistakes and so do juries. As a criminal defense attorney, my job is to make sure the police and prosecutors do their job in every case. If criminal defense attorneys don't do this, a lot of people will get convicted even though they are innocent.

Much of my job in representing guilty people is hand-holding. I help these people work their way through the legal system (usually ending in a plea agreement). Most of these people aren't "evil" although they have done bad things and frequently hurt people. As a defense attorney, I am in the somewhat unique position of getting to see the defendants as human beings and not just criminals who need to be punished. I get a great deal of satisfaction out of helping them through the criminal justice system.

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?

I have a general practice which means I handle lots of different kinds of cases rather than specialize. Right now, most of my work involves criminal defense and family law (for example, divorces, child support cases, etc.). Over my career, I've done just about everything except tax law, intellectual property (i.e., patents), and class action suits. I'm a litigator which means most of my work involves going to court and dealing with lawsuits or criminal defense work, but I have done some business law in the past.

[aep]

1. 60,0000 per year plus a percentage of firm profits. I work for a very small plaintiffs firm in the southeast

2. I like to argue, and figured that I could turn my talents to good use.

3. I went to George Washington University Law School for 3 years.

4. I do a small amount of pro bono work defending juveniles accused of crimes. They deserve my best efforts, guilty or not. It is never something that has bothered me.

5. I represent injured people. These are people who have been hurt in car accidents, or sometimes, people who have not had good care by a doctor. I like getting to know my clients, but it can be hard sometimes.

[U.A.]

1. I'd rather not share; not enough for the hours I work.
2. Because I found that I was good at oral advocacy (no jokes, please) and really enjoyed reading cases and writing about legal issues.
3. A small private law school in the Northwest, which charges WAY too much for tuition. (Shoulda gone to state school.)
4. My clients are always "guilty" (i.e., responsible), at least to some degree, or the cases don't make it to trial. I know that everyone deserves a good defense, and we tell the truth and let the jury decide.
5. I too handle civil cases, all litigation - everything from professional liability (doctors and lawyers) to environmental litigation to construction defects to your basic car accident. Lots of time in court, not so much writing, which is sad for me.

[Bill]

1. What is roughly your yearly income?

It was $60,000 (base) last year when I worked for a medium sized firm. This was not, based on what the bar publishes, the going rate for the type and size of firm I was at for the locality we were located in. I have since opened my own practice and am waiting to see how much it will be.

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?
Like one of the other replies it was after reading To Kill A Mockingbird (the talk about why he had to take on the Tom Roinson case). I did not back into law school, it was a conscious choice.

3. What school did you go to and for how long?
The George Washington University School of Law (formerly the National Law Center) for 2.5 years. I did one semester, during my second year, at the Santa Clara University School of Law because of personal reasons.

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?
I do not practice criminal law anymore. I used to work for the Attorney General's Office for a state on the east coast. The flipside of that question, however, would be what do you do if you know the client is wrong. The first set of instructions I was given by my superiors, from the AG down to my division head, was that if we were in the wrong (i.e. charging the wrong person, keeping the wrong person in jail) that we were to own up to it immediately and make sure that the mistake was corrected immediately. That did not usually happen in my unit, but in my buddy's unit they did it all the time.

For a time after law school, before I started with the AG's office, I worked for a solo who did criminal law. Invariably the clients were guilty. The real question, as we viewed it, was whether they were guilty of the crime which they were charged. If they were, then it was a matter of an appropriate punishment. If they were not, it was a fight to see that they were not convicted of something that they had not done. Much easier to defend them, it seemed, when they were guilty because then there was not the worry that the client would end up in jail.

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?
Now I do general civil litigation. When I got out of law school, my goal was to criminal cases only and to never do any IP work, family law, or tax cases. Most of my prior experience has been in landlord-tenant disputes, on the tenants' side, and personal injury/wrongful death matters. Since leaving the insurance defense side, I have also started working on probate matters, business litigation, family law and copyright cases. So I am constantly amazed at what I become involved in, either through my own clients, through pro bono opportunities, or through other attorneys who need assistance.

[KT]

1. What is roughly your yearly income?

I make $50,000/year as a first-year associate working for a solo practitioner. This is at the high end of average salaries for first year associates at very small firms like mine.

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

I had a succession of jobs that I just didn't like at all and I wanted to try something completely different. I decided to get my law degree because I tried taking the LSAT and did very well on it, and I thought that if I decided not to become a lawyer, a law degree would at least open up some new options for me, jobwise.

3. What school did you go to and for how long?

I went to Southwestern University School of Law for 3 years. I had no idea the emphasis placed on law school rankings when I was applying for schools and went there because it was in the right location and they offered me a scholarship. I now think that I was very lucky to find a job I liked coming out of a lower tier school and I would have chosen to take out some loans and go to a higher ranked school that accepted me had I known how much more limited my options would be coming out of a third tier school.

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?

I don't do criminal law, so I have never had that dilemma. But whatever the situation, we tell our clients honestly what can and can't be done for them and try to advocate for our clients as best we can given the circumstances of the case.

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?

My specialty is elder law. This is mostly estate planning (wills and trusts) and also conservatorships and guardianships, and financial counseling for end of life care. We also do a small amount of litigation and corporate work for small family owned businesses.

[J.D. Crane]

1. What is roughly your yearly income?

My yearly income is 55K from my day to day job, and an additional 6-7K from side work.

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

I didn't go to law school until I was 29. I had previous careers as a computer consultant and as a mental health therapist, and I just became intellectually bored. I looked for another career, had some friends who went to law school, and they though I was a good fit:) They were right!

3. What school did you go to and for how long?

I told Georgetown, Indiana U. and Washington University in St. Louis "no thanks", and went to DePaul University School of Law in Chicago for three years (it's all about the scholarship, baby.)

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?

I don't do criminal law, so I don't run into this very often. I did some criminal appellate work in Law School, where I knew up front my client was guilty. It didn't bother me, though. I firmly believe that the job of a criminal lawyer is to make the state work as hard and as ethically as possible in their job. Every criminal lawyer's goal should be to get their client off the hook. Better some guilty go free than some innocent be locked up.

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?

I do Family Law exclusively, which is secret lawyer code for Divorce. I go to court every day and represent people who are dissolving their marriage. Sometimes they are fighting over money, sometimes over the children, sometimes just to fight. Sometimes, when the people who are divorcing are behaving very badly, I act as a lawyer for the children, to make sure someone is looking out for their interests. But mostly I just kick the other side's ass. My side work is drafting section 1983 complaints against the Cook County Sheriff in Federal Court for a solo practitioner. He needs to GO.

[Jared K]

1. I make $125,000 a year as a second year associate in a large east coast law firm.

2. I became a lawyer because of family history. My father was a lawyer so it seemed like a natural choice for me. I also went straight from college to law school, so I didnt know how to do anything else.

3. I went to Temple U. for three years and loved every second.

4. I have never done any criminal work, so a guilty client has never presented itself. I have witnesses that needed to be reminded that during a deposition they are under oath and have to be truthful, but in every circumstance they have been honest, even to their detriment.

5. I practice civil defense work, mostly products liability. I would say that 90% of my time is spent defending pharmaceutical manufacturers from product liability lawsuits.

[AS]

1. What is roughly your yearly income?

$60,000. I work for a small-to-medium size (around 10 attorneys in total) specialty firm in the Northeast. From speaking with friends, this seems like a fairly average starting salary around here.

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

I was a Physics Major, Math Minor in college. I figured that from there I could go on to get my Masters and Ph.D. and then go into research or teaching at the college level. That *really* didn't appeal to me. I've always liked "the law" and thought that it might be worth it to become a lawyer. I'd heard of patent attorneys, a legal career that blends law with science. I'd also heard that patent attorneys made good money and were in demand. So I went to law school after college and am now on my way to becoming a patent attorney. (I haven't passed the state bar exam or the Patent Bar yet so I am neither a Patent Agent or a Patent Attorney yet, though I do work for a patent firm.) I generally like the work so this may be a good fit for me. Unfortunately, I think the salary and availability of positions were overstated. It wasn't easy to find a job and I know of friends of mine who have had an equally difficult time. Plus the salary, though nice, isn't as big as I was told it should be.

3. What school did you go to and for how long?

Univ. of Connecticut School of Law for 3 years.

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?

Since I write and prosecute patent applications, I don't have innocent or guilty clients. However, I do see a few patent applications that I don't think are inventive. If I come across one, I try very hard to find a novel aspect of the "invention" and focus on that. Fortunately this isn't a common problem that I've run into. (I've only really hit it once and the application was already filed - I was just responding to the Examiner.)

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?

Patent applications. I write them and I help prosecute them, i.e. get them accepted as full patents. Some of the cases and technology really are quite interesting.

[Daniel Olivas]

1. What is roughly your yearly income?

Low six figures.

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

To make the world a better place (yes, it's true).

3. What school did you go to and for how long?

UCLA School of Law for three years.

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?

I practice civil law in the area of environmental enforcement and land use so the concept of "guilt" doesn't play a role. But if I think my client made a mistake or was in error on a permitting or other land use matter, I strongly urge settlement.

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?

Environmental enforcement and land use on behalf of state agencies (in California).

[younglitigator]

1. What is roughly your yearly income?
Under $50,000

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?
I wanted a job where you are required to think on your feet, where your tasks vary from day to day, and where you get to make a difference in people's lives. Being a lawyer provides that.

3. What school did you go to and for how long?
A large college in the midwest for undergrad (4 years). A large college in the midwest for law school (3 years).

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?
This is a great question that I am actually asked often by people I run into or know. And the answer is not that it rarely ever happens. Most people accused of crimes are guilty. They are afforded counsel to assure that their Constitutional rights are upheld throughout the criminal process (this means from time crime committed until sentence imposed).

In many instances (at least when they are guilty) assuring a client's Constitutional rights are upheld means thoroughly examining the evidence and how the evidence was appropriated by the state to ensure that no funny business took place. After that, assuming the evidence was collected legally, it comes down to negotiating the best plea for the client.

Not everyone is innocent, but not everyone deserves the harshest punishment either. Defense attorneys are there to make sure the state and the sentencing judge have both sides of the story so that a fair and just punishment can be handed down.

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?
I work in a smaller sized town, so I do just about everything. The only things I try to stay away from are family law and probate. Family law just doesn't appeal to me, and the managing partner in our firm does all the probate, so those two are out of the picture. Otherwise, I am involved in criminal defense, plaintiff's civil litigation (which involves resolving many different kinds of disputes - contract, property line, etc.), and civil defense too. My focus, at this stage in my career, is nailing down procedure and getting as much court exposure as I can.

Hope this helped!!

[William]

1. What is roughly your yearly income?

Low six figures.

2. Why did you decide to become a lawyer?

Good money, I enjoyed research and writng

3. What school did you go to and for how long?

South Carolna School of Law for three years.

4. What do you do if you know your client is guilty?

Make the State prove it beyone a reasonable doubt or attempt to get a satisfactory plea bargain.

5. What kind of cases do you take care of?

Criminal, appellate, litigation.