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Off-Topic: Are there other professions where "I want to help people" is a barrier to entry?
LSAT_Wrecker
Member ⭐
My wife and I were talking about her career during our evening dog walk. She has recently gotten a few nibbles from head hunters looking to steal her from her community outreach clinic and place her into a private practice setting. I asked her what she was thinking. She responded with, "the money would be a whole lot better but I wouldn't be able to help the population that I want to serve". The large majority of her patients are substance abuse mental health patients with low/no income.
I laughed and said that although I totally agree with how she feels, I apparently cannot say "I want to help out under-served populations" when admissions people ask me why I want to be lawyer. She said, "why not". I said, "I have no idea".
Why can't people want to be lawyers just to be able to help the less fortunate through the legal system? I have sat down with a local public defender and discussed his job at length. It sounds exactly like what I hope my career would look like.
Are there other professions in which feeling a call to service is seen as a less than desirable reason to enter?
Comments
Why would saying "I want to help under-served communities" be a barrier to becoming an attorney? If the field of law you want to practice in serves under-served communities, then that is a good reason to say you want to go to law school. I would understand that being super vague and saying "I want to help people," isn't the best idea, but if you have a specific goal in mind I dont see the problem. Was this advice you got from an admissions advisor?
I wrote a Why X essay for a school which I was a reverse splitter for and I was accepted. I wrote about what I could contribute to an employment law clinic and a trans* legal clinic, in which I mentioned wanting to help women in the workplace and trans* people. I didnt even mention which field of law I want to ultimately practice and the two clinics are in diff fields of law.
@"surfy surf" , I will admit, I think the negative reactions I am reading / hearing from different media are to the generalized statement of "I want to help" vs the specific "I want to be a public defender and specialize / work in a mental health / drug treatment court setting".
It just seems strange that either answer would be a negative.
I don't think wanting to help people is a barrier to enter the legal field. If anything chasing money is more of a barrier to entry, as most of the BigLaw jobs go to T14 graduates and high ranking students from T1 schools. Being a lawyer positions an individual to serve individuals in an unique way, as we saw with volunteer attournies in airports. There are other jobs that also involve helping other's but choosing a legal path to do so isn't necessarily bad as long as too much debt isn't involved.
I'll take a stab at why the reaction to someone's motivation for going into law being "I want to help people" might be negative.
First of all, the debt from law school is often crushing. The pay from the "I want to help people" jobs (mostly public interest and public defender jobs) is pretty small. This leads to people worrying that you are not choosing a financially sound method to help people. If this is true, you either end up helping people while miserably indebted or more likely are drawn off path by the promise of getting out of debt quickly through big law. Maybe you maje it back to helping after getting out of debt, but maybe not.
The other thing is that public interest jobs are often fairly competitive(especially when they satisfy the PSLF requirements which most good ones will). They may want to see past experience and demonstrated interest in a way that big firms don't really demand. They also don't have the easy(in the Top 14) hiring process of simply getting median or higher grades and then wisely using your bids at OCI. This means that if you can't land your do-gooder job, it is easy to become unemployed along with whatever debt you have. And by then it is too late for Big Law. Because of this most people end up caving and doing Big Law right from the start if they can. It's hard to wean yourself off that kind of cash.
If you can limit your debt, the pressure for the security of Big Law in getting a job through OCI is still high, but at least you don't have to worry about paying back a mountain of debt too. This means that if it takes longer to secure a public interest job, that will be okay. This is what I'm trying to do. I'm a KJD(kindergarden to JD without a break) without a ton of public interest experience though so am still considering chickening out into the safety of Big Law with an eye towards getting out as soon as I can secure a public interest job. If you are not in the position to have this Big Law temptation due to being at a lower ranked school is the lack of choice actually better?
So people might be negative towards wanting to go into law to help people because there are lots of ways to help people and it may seem that law is a particularly onerous one financially. They might be skeptical because a large portion of 0-Ls plan to do this, but then end up switching to Big Law (either because of the near certainty of getting a job in Big Law through OCI with good grades in the Top 14 or the need to pay their way out of debt). Finally, they might be skeptical because those with more specific interests are likely to be the ones who actually secure public interest jobs.
I think the questions you really want to be able to answer for the sake of admissions, but also for your own sanity are "What specific job do I want that will help people and why do I want that job" and additionally "why do I want to help people through law rather than one of the many other options available to me?"
I think you might be able to get at this through a lot of jobs. But let's take the public defender case as an example. You talked with a public defender and after finding out the kind of work he does providing a legal defense of ten ending in plea deals to lots of people who criminal or not deserve better representation than our society tends to give them. You saw him as an admirable person doing something noble that needed doing. Beyond that, you thought that it was suited to your talents and your interests, that something about the adversarial system brings out the best in you and that you like the idea of meeting a high volume of people at some of the most stressful times in their lives and helping to make a difference by preventing them from being dealt with too harshly by prosecutors throwing the book against overworked public defenders. You felt that this was the first time in your life where you had seen a real life version of Sisyphus pushing his rock up the mountain and been impressed not by the futility of the task, but by the grandeur of the human spirit and the public defender's unending craving to serve justice... Yada yada. The reason doesn't have to be good just compelling that you have a special bond to this job. Whatever it is should convince you.
Further you not only admired this public defender, but think that you would be good at what he does. You think this because you have the following qualities which make you great not just for law, but for this specific task...(Maybe you are good at holding many stories and classes work in your mind at once and are confident the same will be true for cases. Maybe you are good at or especially understanding of when a cause is most likely lost and it is a good idea to negotiate to avoid a worst case outcome in court.)
The easy part is going to be convincing the law school. The hard part will be convincing yourself. I usually think I'm pretty crafty at convincing myself of things, but I'm still wavering at the thought of turning down a simple straightforward route to a job in Big Law for an uncertain shot at serving the public interest.
@"Seeking Perfection" Thanks for the thoughtful / thorough response. It actually caused an "ah-ha, that's it!" personal statement moment as I contemplated it during my morning workout.
As it turns out, I have absolutely no issues convincing myself that I want to work in public defense / interest. I specifically sought out the PD referenced earlier because I think that's what I want to do, not because I wanted to see what law in general looks like. As a guy in my mid-40's with 25 years of military service on my resume, I have a good idea of what a call to help others feels like. While some folks see the law through the Sisyphus lens that you mentioned in your post, I view the law (and life in general) through "The Story of the Starfish" lens. Not attributing either philosophy to you, just indicating where I fall on the spectrum.
As far as Big Law vs PI, I will return to my current gig as a stay-at-home dad before I work Big Law. I've already done the never-see-your-family, work until you fall asleep gig and when I retired from it, I promised my wife and children never to do that again. No amount of money will make me miss more of my children's lives (Try not meeting your youngest daughter until she's 6 months old and living on the other side of the planet from her for 2 entire years, it changes your perspective on career priorities).
Anywho, thanks again for your response. It was very insightful and helpful to me.
I am in no way a seasoned LS applicant, still being early in this game, but I'm also a later-in-life applicant coming to this with the same desire to serve under-served communities through law. I have also seen all the warnings about not explicitly stating that you want to "help people" and I think these responses do touch on a lot of the reasons why, particularly with regard to debt vs. future salary... however I am beginning to realize that much of this advice doesn't necessarily apply to me or perhaps others applying post-40 years old. Unlike those at the start of their careers and just post under-grad, we have a perspective that is unique and "seasoned." We are more established in our homes, families, commitments (mortgages!) and less able to be impulsive about the commitment and equation a law degree/career entails, and therefore much less likely to naively write a PS over-emphasizing helping people in a way that sounds un-informed or simplistic (or worse, insincere). I also hope I'm not offending anyone, since the community here on 7Sage also doesn't sound like the folks those warnings are meant for... I find 7Sagers of all ages here to be thoughtful and wise beyond their years. But again, as I get further along in this process, I am starting to filter out some of the standard law applicant advice that I honestly don't think necessarily applies to those of us future OWL's. And for the record, my PS doesn't really mention my desire to help others at this point, though it is tricky to weave it in somehow, knowing that there is this unwritten "don't" attached to it.
Also, to answer your actual question - no! not that I've ever heard anyway (call to service being a negative)...
It sounds like you have your priorities perfectly in check!
I mostly mentioned Big Law because it is so dominant in terms of sort of determining how law schools, applicants, and many law students think about law school.
That said I think whatever the job is exactly which you find to help people within law you'll probably be set up pretty well to help people and get a job. I assume you probably get some help from the millitary as far as law school is concerned which could help your debt. Further, a lot of the jobs in the public interest may either actively prefer people with military experience, admire it as a form of service, or both. So because of your experience and confidence at saying know to big law you might dodge a lot of the pressures which make people skeptical of the generic law school is to help people claim.
I didn't mean the Sysyphus thing in a negative way, but as a metaphor it is a little too focussed on the actor or lawyer in this case for me. I like the focus of the story of the starfish on the person/creature being helped. That said I'm maybe a little more ambitious with it in the sense that I think to really be comfortable I would have to see my actions as being part of an overall effort to help all the starfish or people who were affected.
I'm glad my nightly rambling provoked a personal statement breakthrough!
I wrote my essays about wanting to help underprivileged persons. That was more or less the main point of my PS, DS, and Yale 250, albeit through different lenses and with lots more than just that. Still.
The thing is, certain schools are bound to consider certain candidates disingenuous in their civil pursuits. Lots of people are, to be fair. Lots of people write all about how much they want to serve the public interest, and then they blow it off completely for the money. Schools don't want applicants to start seeing that 'story' as a free pass to admission. Your story needs to be convincing. If you have a little bit of a background with public interest, that will help too.
I mostly hear "I want to serve" as being a negative when it involves kids fresh out of college. Like, they went on a trip to South America, had some emotional moments with some poor kids over a week, and that spawned what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Those seem to get the massive face-palm reactions, and is cited in many places as what NOT to do.
I'm in my 30's now, having suffered wage and employment violations that harmed me in my 20's. My perspectives are likely entirely different than a fresh kid who knows about the subject, but has never experienced it. Age does provide some insight via experience, and maybe sometimes a little more logical thinking when it comes to big decisions like school debt, because we've had some experience with debts by now.
I have read in many places that schools have been digging the "non-traditional" applicants for what they can bring to the school. It makes sense, because we tend to have experiences that offer new perspectives that your traditional student is just not going to have yet. It's a great thing when you have another way to help people relate to the lessons and learn from others.
So, if you have lived your life and experienced real reasons that urged you into a direction of helping people, and you have an idea what that job entails and what it pays vs your debts, I see absolutely nothing wrong with this being your reason, and I applaud you for it. I can't see a college faulting you for genuinely wanting to help people, and backing that up with your life experiences in trying to help people. The hard part is formulating why law is the path to helping people in the way you're wanting to. Good luck with that. I'm still trying to piece together my own essays. I don't want to come off as a warrior for justice when I'm not. I want to look into employment law, but I'm not married to the idea. I envy you folks who know exactly what you want to do.
yea
It's not a negative, but you need a focus--a specific population to write about, maybe, and direct examples of community issues and ideas for your participation in solutions.
When I spoke to an admissions person at a law fair, the general consensus was that the "I want to help people" isn't a barrier for it's inherent statement. It's a barrier because apparently all the other applicants say the same thing and it eventually becomes regurgitated bs. Especially, as @xadrianas6x mentioned, when it comes to people who have a very naive understanding of what it means to help people.
When I heard that at the law fair, my PS changed from "I want to help marginalized groups" to "I specifically became inspired by this particular group that is affected by X Y Z and that is why I am seeking a dual JD/Masters in Environmental Studies so that I can confront these problems in the most comprehensive way possible." I was fine with keeping that in my PS because my entire undergraduate degree was dedicated to helping struggling individuals and most of my extracurricular and leadership experience revolved around serving others. However, for others who just say they want to 'help people' (i.e. 'save the world' mentality), it can come off as naive/corny/disingenuous.
It kind of puts you in a tough spot because some people genuinely do want to help others and that's why they seek the career. However, the people who are in it for the money, status etc aren't usually going to write that down either... so they end up also saying they want to 'help people.' i.e. one of my friends wrote her PS on backpacking to China and seeing poor people and deciding it made her angry so she wanted to help in any way she could. But now she's doing big law with a massive corporation (that supports sweatshops in China) and she's making tons of $$.
So imo to admissions people, sometimes it can come off as bs.