Two things before you read on:
- The events depicted in this blog are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental.
- “The mind of man can imagine nothing which has not really existed.” —Edgar Allan Poe
In 2006, when I was able to score 89% in my 12th boards, I was relieved. I could finally choose what I wanted to study and I chose the law. There was no second option for me. By June I had the choice of joining three top Universities in the country. I chose the one furthest away from home.
Being away from home, allowed me to discover the world from a totally different perspective. At home, I was conditioned how to see the world. Here, there was no one to tell me how to interpret what I saw. I could see sin and call it a saintly. I could see it rain and still walk like it was summer. What one can do with freedom is absolutely magical.
When I entered law school, I did not know what I would be doing. There really was no one to tell me. I was the only child and both my parents work in the R&D department of a private company. They had very few friends who could me termed as lawyers. So with the freedom I had suddenly come to earn, came the wrath of ignorance. In my search to know what I wanted to do with my life, I heard just one word: Corporate.
Everybody was doing corporate law. It was paradise and everybody wanted to go there. My older friends confessed they really knew nothing else. It’s what they’d been told and they were giving me the same advice. Everyone was talking about it and soon it was written all over the sky. The messiah had spoken to us. We all knew the holy offices. There was Amarchand, AZB and luthra. Some of us knew a few more names and we were considered to be rockstars.
After nearly five internships with different law firms, I knew this wasn’t my calling. Coming in at nine in the morning and sitting on a chair till eleven in the night was not why I chose to study the law. It was only after this that I realised that there were so many other avenues that I was yet to explore or even hear about.
It wasn’t just my picture that had broken. Even my seniors were having their pictures repainted. One had quit and joined a litigator. He had taken a pay cut of nearly eighty percent. It was for the better, he confided in me. Then there was an associate I knew from my first internship, who has now joined an international think tank. My cousin who had completed her law degree a few years before I joined, quit her corporate job in a company and started an NGO.
There are many successful corporate lawyers. And I know they love their work. However, it isn’t for everyone. The problem is that when we enter law school, we don’t hear anything other than joining a law firm. Some of us were luckier and got better advice. One of my friends got to know about opportunities for lawyers in international NGOs and interned with many of them from the beginning. Another did a corporate internship and then stuck to interning with lawyers.
Law Schools need to provide students with career counselors. Someone who can tell us about the wider opportunities that await us. We need to provide students with more exposure. One of the ways to do that would be invite speakers from varied backgrounds. Balanced career advice will help people choose a job profile which suits their interests rather than what is in fashion. The internship office often complains that there are too many applicants for the top law firms. Many settle for lesser and sometimes don’t intern because they don’t get into a firm.
It is easy to get lost in the crowd but ten years from now, I know we’ll regret the time we wasted not doing what we love. It’s time we took a wider look at the world.
See John2010’s other blogs:
8 disturbing signs that our elected representatives have forgotten us.
How comrade whistle blower lost his ethical virginity
The PM on legal education: What he said and did not say.
Dear Prudence: … Litigation is really interesting but …?
The 26/11 Judgement fails the maturity test and how we can still salvage justice.
Comments
". . . If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
. . .
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!"
Legal Dodo
I have mostly enjoyed myself for the last four years or so working in one of these top three law firms. The fact of the matter is, that interns are treated badly in law firms. They are asked to stupid things, rarely given the big picture - so its pointless to judge what corporate law firm life is like on the basis of such internships. Being a corporate lawyer can be challenging, and even fun at times.
So ur post made me feel gr8..ki atleast smeone is there who underrates the corp-mania...
:D