The Vine: April 4, 2001
In response to the part of D.J.’s dilemma that deals with the “big money versus helping the little guy” law-school problem:
I am a recent law-school graduate and current first-year associate at a somewhat large Manhattan firm. I too struggled throughout law school with the problem of whether to make the big bucks or work for peanuts doing noble work. Luckily, I found a practice area where I could do both. It’s called public finance. Basically, as a private attorney, I work with state and local governments to finance low-income housing, hospitals, roads, educational facilities, student loans, power plants, airports, or anything else. The money is not as big as at the super-corporate firms, but it’s still bigger than any 25-year-old should be making. My point is that it is possible, if you look, to find a legal career that pays the bills without bankrupting your conscience. However, you do have to search it out, because it’s not always evident.
Please note that I am in no way suggesting that DJ go to law school just to have something to do. I am just stating that if law is something that interests him/her, the profession doesn’t require a choice between moral and financial poverty.
Gobo
Dear Gobo,
Thanks for the perspective. Enough people go to law school for bad reasons; it would be a shame if people didn’t go for good ones.
Hi Sarah —
I was interested in the responses to Utterly Confused. I guess my question, though, lies with your original response. Do you think you would have made the same response if the two people were married? See, that’s what I’m going through — I have exactly the same feelings as Utterly, but I’m married. For the second time. And the same thing happened the first time. (Happily there are no children involved in any of this.) So I’ve been looking through websites and other advice columns for some kind of guidance, and most all of them seem to make, overtly or otherwise, a strong distinction between married and unmarried. The married people are supposed to get counseling and read books and do all kinds of stuff, but the unmarried are much more likely to be told they can just walk away. I’m not saying that’s specifically what you told Utterly, but since everything you said to Utterly more or less applies to me, I would like to know if your opinion stays the same for marrieds.
Utterly II
Dear Deuce,
I think that we draw a distinction between marrieds and unmarrieds here because, for lack of a better way to put it, “just walking away” is a way bigger pain in the ass for marrieds. Divorce lawyers, division of property, who gets the engagement ring…it’s a far more Byzantine and tangled process to get out of a marriage than it is to back away from an “unofficialized” relationship.
That’s certainly not to say that couples in serious relationships who haven’t gotten married shouldn’t go to couples counseling and read books and so on, as a way of trying to work things out. But the stakes aren’t as high, and sometimes it’s easier just to shrug and walk away. I know that some proponents of marriage think that that’s a bad thing for The Fabric Of Our Society — that romantic relationships can dissolve so quickly that way. But it’s not always a bad thing.
And if this is your second marriage in which you’ve lost the plot…well, maybe you should get counseling on your own and figure out what’s going on, why you keep repeating this pattern.
Tags: boys (and girls) workplace
