A growing proportion of American lawyers spend their time not in law firms, but in corporations, government organizations, or non-profit organizations helping to make business and public policy decisions informed by their legal training. There is not only room for you in the legal profession, there are multiple examples of how you can be successful and happy using any of these skills. And part of why we are here as faculty and staff is to help you learn about the law and also to help you learn about yourselves, so that you can understand how best to fit your own unique strengths and weaknesses as human beings within all the different opportunities which the profession offers you. Now, there is another thing to be said about the legal profession. It is a powerful profession.
Lawyers have real power.
They have real power because of two aspects of the Anglo-American legal tradition. One is its adversarial nature and the other is the common law tradition. The adversarial tradition gives you as a lawyer power because it means that every time a court decides a case and every time a court adopts a new legal theory, it does not come from judge, but rather, it comes from the lawyer. The creativity in legal doctrine comes from you when you represent a client or write a brief or file a complaint. Indeed every time that you write a complaint or write a brief you are making law and exercising power.