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Serious question: how practical / realistic is it for a programmer at 30 to switch to a career in law?

• will_brown 13y ago
  Law is certainly not for everyone, and I believe the difficult journey to becoming a practicing attorney would only be compounded by accepting that challenge later in life rather than sooner. However, my experience in law school was that the best students (the majority of top 20% of our class) were all transitioning their careers later in life. This seemed counter-intuitive, because law school is difficult and time consuming enough to balance that with spouses, children and related expenses while simultaneously giving up your career (and income) to become a full-time student seemed insurmountable, but my experience is those individuals who took it upon themselves did it with grace. In terms of getting a law job, I believe a programmer turned lawyer would be in a better position because of their prior work experience than say a straight from college to law school graduate with no prior "real world" experience.