Law

My new job is being a legal assistant. Everyone (being my friends in law school) told me it would be really really boring and thought I was crazy for wanting it. I knew it would be really really boring but also knew I needed it on my resume if I wanted to go to law school, since Starbucks and art-directing are not really great recommendations for my logic skills. The job is boring. I do a lot of data entry, a lot of filing, a lot of doing nothing. And it is formal, I have to answer the phone and say “Your Highness” and “Please hold” and wear real clothes and my boss does not really like to joke around a lot. I have gone three weeks without mentioning what I did over the weekend. Nobody here knows my grandmother died. This is weird to me.

On the other hand, who ever though corporate law could have interesting side effects? Granted, I do not want to practice corporate law, but knowing that there are these actual things that are created because I fill out a form and someone else says they saw me do it, and because forms are consistently filled out with slightly different wording, is pretty fascinating to me. I am not at all surprised that I find something so boring uniquely interesting – this has always been the case in my life. The purpose behind these gazillion companies that these people own is quite intriguing. Now, my dream for becoming a lawyer is several-fold a) I want to go to law school. I want to be challenged the utmost I can as an intellectual, I want to contemplate strange ethics of white people in a way that St. John’s didn’t let me because it entirely denied intuition whereas there is an entire field of law that has to do with it, b) I really truly more than law want to do environmental things and law is the best way to do it, since it is the only way I can see myself making an impact and c) I have this lovely dream that I could be a Riverkeeper in South America, someplace beautiful and slightly romantic and simple where I can be surrounded by edible plants and walk down to a watershed that I spend my days working to protect, where there are people who couldn’t care less about corporate mergers and Ponzi schemes, and where the culture is based off of storytelling and magic. And somehow law school will help me do this, I guess. Anyone see how this happens in my mind? Or am I completely dreaming?

Here is a post from one of my new favorite bloggers about being a lawyer:
http://heliotrollop.blogspot.com/2009/06/objectionable.html#comments. She brings up the issue I am terrified of, and which made my relationship with an ex-regional manager at a shifty one (She had left law to work for this retail company) and basically all these people are unhappy with being a lawyer. I am terrified of being unhappy. I refuse to let it happen to me. And I am convinced that if I do make the plunge to try to pass the bar, I will be satisfied because my goal is to utilize law for another purpose, instead of being convinced that law in its own is the end – perhaps as if others’ unhappiness arises from their previous conviction that as lawyers they could be happy, and were disappointed with pushing paper around, whereas I believe as an environmentalist I will be happy, using law.

Rory, you can identify with this constant convincing in your head as to your future, and this is just one of the conversations I have recurring about it. I hope you all don’t mind listening to me trying to figure out my life, and tell me – does any of this make sense?