Being an INTP lawyer seems like a pain in the Ass, now I'm not sure what to do.

[Drvladivostok]

So I'm graduating from Law School this Year, the current plan is that I'm going to take an internship for a few years, get a license, and work full time as a lawyer, the problem seem to be that I'm starting to see some compatibility issues.

I've done internship twice in a prominent law firm, and from what I've gathered the Profession itself has a tendency toward high use of Te, three of the most successful lawyers I've talked to are ESTJs (By that I meant in the context of Financial gains), lawyering is 90% Paperwork, 5% Dealing with bureaucracy, 4% Court or Extrajudicial litigation, 1% talking to clients, or should I say honest lawyering is, the paperwork and Litigation parts are quite stimulating actually, exploring new legal cases and legal research are actually pretty tolerable as long as you have the materials, however the first signs of incompatibility emerge from the discrepancy from the normative and practical legal procedure, if we lived in a perfect world we wouldn't need lawyers, and how we run our legal institutions is certainly imperfect partly from institutional flaw, partly from human nature, judges aren't persuaded by reason as much as they are by emotions, legal bureaucracy is so inefficient and pain to maneuver in (At least where I'm from) that if it were run like a private company the entire legal system would get eradicated like a non-productive marketing division.

That of itself is quite tolerable, considering my upcoming wage, However it's the 'back-door' side of legal practice is what gets me, appeasing judges, making under the desk deal with clients, bribes, taking shortcuts through the bureaucracy, etc, etc, don't even get me started on the clients. In conclusion it seems like a corporate lawyer might not necessarily be the most suited for my temperament.

The initial choice to pick this carrier stems from process of eliminations (And the pay), Lawyers seem to be the most intuitive and stimulating legal professions, Notary is boring (I'd know my grandpa was one), I'd rather shoot myself than be a bureaucrat, law enforcement is a no-no, if I eliminate lawyer then I'd be a NEET, a simply unacceptable future. I initially had plans to take legal carriers in specific areas of law that are more stimulating and are more aligned with my interest like Intellectual property, but in a law firm you don't exactly get to pick the cases that are handed to you by your boss, which I suspect has anger issues and narcissistic personality disorder, I've seen him reduce his staff to tears, not that our clients are anything better.

 

[birdsnestfern]

What about something like property law, can live in a cushy place in the world and cater to money and you look good doing it too. Congratulations on being almost finished!

 

[Puffy]

There are more options than NEET or Law. If you find that law isn't for you, you can always change careers.

By the time I was 29 I had work experience in: as bar staff, as a party clown, in customer services, teaching as a post-grad, office administration, gardening & removals, software engineering and qualitative research. Even then I've been changing field since I was 30.

My point being your 20s is for exploration and working yourself out. You don't have to be pinned down into a career for life just because that's what you studied at university. I'd suggest working in Law for a few years for financial stability while you work out what you want. I'm sure Law is financially lucrative enough that once you know what you want to do that you'll be able to afford to transition easily.

 

[Hadoblado]

Don't make career decisions based on MBTI. It's a good tool for opening the door to self-awareness, but it simply does not have the predictive ability required to help you make these decisions. Trust your own experience over it.

Puffy is right. Your degree helps you land the start of a career, you then leverage your experience in that career to calibrate your direction. Most people don't end up where they expect, and the skills you learned during your degree are generalisable.

 

[Rook]

man i wouldnt wanna be a corporate lawyer. being a criminal or civil lawyer does has its appeal to me i guess, i mean, should be interesting. anything corporate seems like a soulsuck 2 me, but 2 each their own.

and birdnest has a pretty good idea re: property law or whatevs, the ideal of having your own practice and only dealing with a few lucrative clients does seem more sure and set a life.

idk tho most of what i know bout lawyering comes from better call saul, the closest ive been to a lawyer is talking to a pothead ...think he and his siter were orphans/adopted?... in high school who wanted to become a lawyer to protect ppl from the man, don't know what happened to him : p

 

[Rook]

and i despise paperwork. if lawyering was more of an oratary judgment thing like some parts of world had throughout history i would be way more into it, then half or more of my time wouldnt be spent fiddling with flattened pieces of dead trees(or computer files i guess, not sure how these thibgs work these days everywhere).

 

[birdsnestfern]

Oy, a girl I grew up but didn't know that well her career was being an attorney for PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) (Environmental Law). Remember all those fires in California, they were set off by PG&E electrical failures that burned entire cities down on the West coast multiple times. Imagine the law suits of all the lost homes. That would have to be a nightmare, agree about the Corporate lawyer being impossible in many instances, but she seems to be flourishing.

 

[Drvladivostok]

and i despise paperwork. if lawyering was more of an oratary judgment thing like some parts of world had throughout history i would be way more into it, then half or more of my time wouldnt be spent fiddling with flattened pieces of dead trees(or computer files i guess, not sure how these thibgs work these days everywhere).

If you despise paperwork Law is probably not for you, the only reason I tolerate this is because I wasn't responsible for typing all the paperwork just proof reading them (That might change when I have to actually work), lawyers also work like dogs, Ive never met more workaholics than on a law firm, chased by unreasonable deadline by Beuracracy and constant paranoid clients. The first night on my second internship my boss asked me to sleep on the office like the other employee because we had so much paperwork (I'm pretty sure an employee would sue him in an employment court if they had nothing to lose).

My boss literally sleeps on the Floor of his office to work (This is like a really rich guy who owns a law form btw).

Property law Is actually a really good option, but when you're only a Junior associate you barely have any chance ro pick your poison, you have to tolerate the spare case your boss throws at you and learn the practice coincidingly.

 

[Rook]

ugh ill burn the place down tbh. good luck out there -.-

 

[onesteptwostep]

Iirc if you live in Singapore and have a law degree, maybe studying trade law might be something that's worthwhile. I would try and find something interesting within your field before even thinking about changing careers.

 

[Drvladivostok]

Iirc if you live in Singapore and have a law degree, maybe studying trade law might be something that's worthwhile. I would try and find something interesting within your field before even thinking about changing careers.

I live in Indonesia and I'm not going to change career, I think I'll try to focus on IP law and Civil Litigations, those are pretty fun, I've had civil litigations experiences before and they were quite positive.

 

[onesteptwostep]

Iirc if you live in Singapore and have a law degree, maybe studying trade law might be something that's worthwhile. I would try and find something interesting within your field before even thinking about changing careers.

I live in Indonesia and I'm not going to change career, I think I'll try to focus on IP law and Civil Litigations, those are pretty fun, I've had civil litigations experiences before and they were quite positive.

I would encourage you to stay in a field for at least 2 years before attempting to change anything. I'm not entirely educated on what the cultural and societial life in Indonesia is like (I have several friends from Jakarta) but I hope things work in your favor.

I'm sure with your English proficency and with your field of work, you'd go a long way.

 

[scorpiomover]

So I'm graduating from Law School this Year, the current plan is that I'm going to take an internship for a few years, get a license, and work full time as a lawyer, the problem seem to be that I'm starting to see some compatibility issues.

I've done internship twice in a prominent law firm, and from what I've gathered the Profession itself has a tendency toward high use of Te,

Ti requires a lot of sustained mental effort. As Edison pointed out, there's no shortage of things that people will do to avoid sustained thinking. So high-quality Ti is very rare.

lawyering is 90% Paperwork, 5% Dealing with bureaucracy, 4% Court or Extrajudicial litigation, 1% talking to clients,

Same for programming, in that 90% of it is about crossing the Ts and dotting the Is.

or should I say honest lawyering is, the paperwork and Litigation parts are quite stimulating actually, exploring new legal cases and legal research are actually pretty tolerable as long as you have the materials,

In that case, become a clutch guy, i.e. develop niche skills.

1) Pick the subjects that interest you.
2) Out of them, pick the areas which are (occasionally) vital to the law firm, and vital to their clients.
3) Out of them, pick the areas that most of your colleagues would avoid like the plague.

Since they're mostly Te-users, picking high Ti stuff would send them running, while that's exactly the stuff you'd enjoy. So you want to stufy high Ti legal cases, things like complicated tax cases, or cases of complicated IP, or anything extremely technical and scientific that would require a lot of learning to be able to handle the case.

Learn about stuff like that, until you're the resident expert in the office on those things.

Then with those skills, you'll be highly in demand (#2), while people with your skills would be short in supply (#3). Guaranteed that every law firm will do anything to hold on to you, AND they'll be things you enjoy (#1).