I am a first-time poster, and I will apologize in advance for the length of this post. I have lurked for some time and get so much encouragement and motivation from reading this board! Anyway, I just had to finally register and reply to your post, because women going to law school when they also have/want a family is a subject I feel very passionate about.
Please, please, please think long and very hard about whether to go to law school and investigate it very carefully. I say this as a married mom of a 1 and 1/2 year old daughter who has been a practicing attorney for eight years now. Believe me, I really feel a lot of satisfaction out of having gotten my law degree and would never say that I regret having done it. That being the case, it feels somewhat hypocritcal to advise anyone not to do it themselves. However, while I don't know if I could ever tell someone "don't do it," I feel compelled to "tell it like it really is" to anyone contemplating law school, particularly other women. This is because I feel like our profession, particularly the men who still dominate it, tends to paint way too rosy a picture of life as a practicing attorney to those considering entering the field.
Life as a practicing attorney is VERY stressful. I truly cannot begin to describe the pressure and stress you will endure, and, unfortunately, you will eventually (out of necessity) just learn to live with it constantly and it will end up changing who you are at your core. You will turn into someone who needs a week away from the office to even begin to relax enough to really enjoy a vacation. Even someone currently in law school cannot begin to understand what it is really like. Law school and real life practice are completely different. Law practice is not at ALL glamourous. You will work your %*&! off, and only if you are lucky will you make good money doing it. It is a myth that all lawyers make a lot of money. I am one of the lucky ones who (finally) does make good money, but only after years of very hard work trying to "make it" in my field. You need to think about the countless hours you will spend away from your family trying to "make it" just so that you can succeed enough to pay off the school debt you will owe. I have countless friends who at this point are still not where they thought they would be financially, and I also have many, many female friends who are trapped, either by their school debt or the proverbial "golden handcuffs," and wish so badly they could quit so they could start putting their family first. While I personally have had a much easier time than many female attorneys I know balancing work and family, I still struggle with it on a daily basis.
The law is not like other fields where you go in, work your hours, and go home. You bring your work home with you all time time, literally and figuratively (as in not only working on weekends, but also developing chronic insomnia because you can't stop thinking about the jillion things that you're responsible for at work). You are completley at the mercy of the demands of your clients, the partners you work for and the courts. Please know I am not at all exaggerating. You have little to no control over your schedule until you are much farther along in your career path, and even then you are still at the mercy of the courts and the clients - just not the other partners anymore. I personally had to cancel a vacation just two weeks ago because of something that came up with work. They do not pay big money for nothing. You only make the big bucks by being extremely busy, working very hard and putting your job basically before everything else. Also, do not overestimate the money thing. Now that I make what I do, I am absolutely STUNNED how much gets taken away in taxes. Also, the lawyer lifestyle is not exactly suited to being "frugal." You can try your best (as I do), but, believe me, if you want to make the money, you will really need to focus on your job, thus, you will need a housekeeper, convenience foods - all the trappings of a "working mom" life that can cause you to feel like you really don't have much left over to show for all your hard work at the end of the month. Believe me, when you work that hard and spend that much time away from your kids, your time becomes your most precious commodity, and you will end up spending your hard-earned money to buy yourself some of it back. Then how far ahead are you really?
By the way, I live in a relatively small city in the middle of the country - so you are not hearing the perspective of a "big city" lawyer in a huge firm. While I do work in the biggest firm in my city, I certainly do not represent the extreme of the legal profession.
I am not kidding when I say that at least half the female attorneys I know are on psych meds to help them cope with their incredibly stressful existences. The stress of this profession really seems to affect women differently, in my opinion. I implore you to please talk personally to some real-life women attorneys and get their opinions before you make this choice. I am pretty confident that the feedback you get will mirror my own for the most part. You need to ask yourself why you want to go to law school and be a lawyer. I too felt like I wanted to be a lawyer "since I was a child." Believe me, that is not a good enough reason. You need to really investigate it from a factual perspective, and take the emotion of childhood dreams or the need for a sense of accomplishment as an adult out of the equation.
Well, I think I've been negative enough! Sorry, I really don't mean to be so poo-poo about your post. It's just that you've gotten a lot of cheerleading in response to your post, which is great and exactly what this board is for in terms of debt reduction, but not exactly helpful in my opinion for making this choice.
Good luck in whatever you decide!
