A while back, I did a post about a guy at my office who wanted nothing more in life than to receive a promotion. At the time, I figured he would become my nemesis and I would torment him with a variety of schemes and pranks. Well, as it turns out, a couple weeks after I made that post, he told everyone he got a promotion and moved to a different department.
His move was not a promotion. It was, at best, a lateral move to a position with a slightly more impressive title. My boss told me in confidence that this guy decided to forgo a scheduled pay raise in exchange for the new job, and that the new job paid him the exact same salary as his old one. So in essence, he took a pay cut to look slightly more important than he already was. (Note: He was not, nor is he now, at all important to the company.)
Anyway, because of his move to a different department and my general surliness at work towards people I don't like, I hadn't spoken to this guy since about March; that is, until this past Thursday when he cornered me while I was buying a Diet Mountain Dew from the vending machine.
"Hey Mike, do you have a minute," he asked me, timidly.
"Sure, what's up?" I asked in a disinterested tone.
"You went to law school, right?" He was still acting very timid.
I sighed. "Yeah."
He perked up. "I thought so. The reason I ask is because I am seriously considering applying to law school."
Now I perked up. A few years back, I made it my mission to dissuade anyone and everyone who wanted to go to law school from going. I was in the midst of my own private hell and the altruistic part of me wanted to keep other people from going through the same thing. If someone asked me about it, I would cite evidence both empirical and anecdotal about why it is usually a bad idea. I would take them down the road of examining their own reasons for wanting to go, and then use those reasons against them to show why it was a foolish choice. I would present logical argument after logical argument as to why they were not making a wise decision. But, I was mostly unsuccessful. As I noted in this post, the undefined quality that drives a person to want to go to law school is the same mechanism that makes them believe that they will be the exception to the rule.
Thus, I stopped trying to talk people out of it. If someone expressed interest, I asked them why. Back in my Barely Legal days, Russ and I did a list of bad reasons for going to law school. (You can find links to all of them here.) After typically hearing one of the bad reasons, I would simply recommend that they work for an attorney first, as a paralegal, so they could make sure they actually wanted to be an attorney. They would usually humor me and say it's a good idea, and disregard the advice. Those people deserve whatever comes their way.
Back to the guy from my office. We took a seat at one of the tables in the break room and told me he is looking for a challenge. I warned him of the tight job market and high cost of student loans. Then I asked him why he wanted to go to law school. "Well, for one, I want to make a lot of money," he told me. (Bad Reason for Going to Law School #8)
"Plus," he said, "I've been working here for a while and I am sick of it. There is no real opportunity for growth and I want to get out of the corporate world and move into something less less cutthroat. (Bad Reasons for Going to Law School #9 and #3) He looked at me for a response. "I see. Is that it?"
"Well, I won't lie, I've always dreamed of going to law school. It's a lot more impressive than what I do now," he said.
"The prestige factor?"
"Yeah, definitely." (Bad Reason for Going to Law School #4) Then he mentioned my favorite bad reason. "Plus, I've always been argumentative so I think it will be a good fit. (Bad Reason for Going to Law School #10). "So what do you think?"
"I really should try to set him straight," I thought. "I should fill him in on the facts, to point out all of the bad reasons he just stated, to save him from himself." Then I looked at him in his shirt and tie at my casual-dress office, his face full of enthusiasm and blind ambition, completely oblivious to the reality that lies ahead of him.
"I think you'll do great," I told him.
