October 24, 2011

  • lawyercat

    I decided to be a lawyer when I was eleven, and the plan just kind of stuck, and here I am, 22 years later. It has always seemed to make sense, to some extent -- I like hypothetical situations, I like trying to figure out where the tipping point is between two different arguments, I like writing, I like editing. My parents said that when I was little and I would get in trouble, one of the first things I would do was to start trying to talk my way out of it, or to at least argue for a lighter punishment.

    On the other hand, after working as a practicing contracts lawyer for over three years now (before that, my work was more focused on research, writing, and editing), there are some things about the job that don't seem to be my thing, and the main part is negotiations. I like writing and editing and then obsessively re-editing to try to make a document exactly capture what we want it to do, it's a solitary pursuit, and I have control and the ability to predict how long it will take and how it will turn out, but once it's time for negotiations, I get really uncomfortable. Part of it is that negotiations always mean moving away from the ideal and towards something that sucks. That's what compromise and negotiating is all about, right? Giving up the perfect ____ in exchange for something that kind of sucks. And then there's the fact that in every other situation in my life, I only had to negotiate when I was in trouble: negotiating with my parents to lighten my punishment for some misdeed, negotiating with teachers to give me an A if I got at least a 97 on the final exam, and so on. Negotiations just trigger a Pavlovian panic instinct in me. If I have a call with outside counsel, or if I get an email with a new draft attached, no matter how smooth the relationship is, it still makes my shoulders hunch inwards and my heart tightens up a bit. I found it surprising when I mentioned this to a coworker, and found out that she is the opposite -- she prefers the negotiations and hates the drafting. 

    The other thing that concerns me about being a lawyer for too long is that it really seems to change my entire outlook on life. My job is to shave things down, sand off the corners, smooth things over, assume the worst, and try to get the most out of everything while giving the least. In real life, it bleeds over, so that I'm constantly looking at the world with a critical eye, wondering who is going to try to cut a corner or screw things up, calculating whether I can force someone else to bear the risk and take the blame, and considering everything as something that needs to be fixed. I've never been a particularly optimistic person, but I am not sure I was always quite so cynical and filled with contempt for every little aspect of life that isn't perfect.