Anonymous Lawyer

I had my best round of golf in weeks today, thoroughly embarrassing one of the firm's biggest clients, trouncing him by at least a dozen strokes, more if he hadn't kept "miscounting" when he thought I wasn't looking. I'm a lawyer. I see everything. After golf, we went and got dinner at a local bistro, where he spent most of the meal bothering me about his son who just got his LSAT score. He's finishing up his junior year at a well-regarded liberal arts university and planning to apply to law school next year. The kid got a 177, which is okay but not spectacular. His GPA is solid. I told him his kid should take a couple of years off, get a real job, figure out what his passions are before he leaps into a career that may not be for him. "Hogwash," the client said. "He's not going to waste two years 'finding himself.' He's going to go to law school now so he doesn't fall behind." "Fall behind who?" I asked. "His peers. They're going to be starting their careers, and he's going to be searching for his passion? That's ridiculous. Let him get the law degree, put in some years at a firm, and then he'll figure out what he wants to do." "By that time he'll be too invested in this life to do anything else." "Exactly. This is what I want for him. It's a good life, isn't it? The amount we pay you guys, I know you're doing real well for yourself. And you play a mean game of golf." "But I'm miserable, and I never see my family." What? We'd had a few drinks. So I let my guard down. "And you think I'm happy?" he said. "I work all week too, and I never see my family either. Running a business isn't easy. You lawyers don't have a monopoly on misery. Who's happy? No one in business, no one who I used to work in consulting with, my I-bankers are on Prozac, my CFO just had a nervous breakdown, no one's happy. So let my kid be a lawyer and at least make some easy money." "Isn't it a little pathetic, though? Shouldn't we want more than the best of the worst? Shouldn't we want our kids to find something that makes them happy?" "Not happier than me. That would make me feel like a failure. And who's happy anyway? Life's not a happy place. You think starving artists are happy? Unemployed musicians? Struggling writers? At least we can afford fancy things and good meals. It's fancy things that keep me going most days anyway. My car, my house, my big-screen TV. You gonna eat those fries?"