As a lawyer that has been practicing for more than a decade, I can say that not everyone is cut out to be a lawyer. Far from it. In fact, there are dozens of lawyers I know that are out there practicing that are ill-cut for the profession and you can tell it in their attitude. Being an attorney is not easy work, nor is it easy on your mind or your emotional state sometimes.
The first thought you have to consider is the long road to even getting to the starting line. The time and expense of law school has to be your initial concern. Three years and tens of thousands of dollars of student loans. Your first year will take up massive amounts of your time and make you question your decision to enroll from the first day. Then the extra activities you need to add to your agenda in your second and third year to keep up and make your resume unique from your fellow students are going to be a huge time suck also.
Then you have to pass the bar. Let me put it this way -- studying for the bar exam, and then taking it, will be the most difficult thing you have done in your life to date. It saps the mind and the body of all energy over the weeks of preparation. The practice questions will make you question if they are even about legal topics. You will never look at multiple choice questions the same way ever again. And then the test -- two or three days of agony. When you walk out of that test, no matter how good your grades were in law school, you will be firmly convinced that you failed.
But you passed and now are a newly minted lawyer. Do you have the mental abilities to make it in this profession? It isn't a question of smarts or legal knowledge -- you passed the bar, you've studied for years. That isn't the key in my mind.
Are you willing and able to keep your emotions in check? Emotions are the key enemy to logic. Too many lawyers are simply unable to approach problems with a completely rational, logical and non-emotional point of view. They like their client too much --- or dislike them. Or think the problem is something they personally don't agree with. That is the enemy of good lawyering.
Dispassion is an underrated quality in a lawyer. You are a professional, just hired to get a job done. The plumber or dentist doesn't care about the personality of their clients or whether they are good or bad people -- you will need to approach things the same way. or you don't need to go into this line of work in the first place.
