Any attorneys here a Myers Briggs INFP?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Son took a free, online Myers Briggs test and came back as an INFP. (description: [Portrait</a> of an INFP](<a href=“http://www.personalitypage.com/INFP.html]Portrait”>Portrait of an INFP)) As his mother, I can say confidently that it’s an accurate assessment.</p>

<p>Separately, and not surprisingly, he often expresses an interest in the career fields that fit the INFP profile. (Descriptions here: [Careers</a> for INFP Personality Types](<a href=“http://www.personalitypage.com/INFP_car.html]Careers”>INFP careers))</p>

<p>Further, his best academic performance comes in the INFP-type of class. So, at this point (end of 10th grade) we have a pretty good idea of what direction he’s heading…or at a minimum what to rule out. </p>

<p>Here’s what puzzles me…Even with his deeply held beliefs of right v. wrong, excellent writing skills, and a compulsion to help people, he has dismissed all talk about becoming an attorney. He says he “doesn’t want to sue people or deal with criminals.” (He’s interested in being a psychologist, translator/interpreter, or CIA agent.)</p>

<p>OK. Fine. They’re all wonderful, too. But, he’s obviously got an incomplete understanding of what lawyers can do. Don’t worry. We’re certainly not going to push it. In fact, we’ve actually dropped the subject. But now I want to know for my own edification. </p>

<p>Can INFPs be happy as attorneys? Not the “suing” type. Not public defenders or prosecutors. But maybe corporate counsel to a charity. Or mediator for the school hearings. Anything for a goody-two-shoes?</p>

<p>I’d appreciate any insight from the lawyers here. Thanks.</p>

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<p>I suppose a lawyer would be interested in distinguishing genuine, verified science from pseudoscience. Reasoning based on evidence is important in law practice. </p>

<p>See </p>

<p>[Myers-Briggs</a> Type Indicator](<a href=“http://skepdic.com/myersb.html]Myers-Briggs”>Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com) </p>

<p>and </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf[/url]”>http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>for critiques of the Myers Briggs questionnaires. </p>

<p>And see </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/House-Cards-Robyn-Dawes/dp/0684830914/[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/House-Cards-Robyn-Dawes/dp/0684830914/&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>and </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Miseducate-Misunderstand/dp/0743280725/[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Personality-Testing-Miseducate-Misunderstand/dp/0743280725/&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>for book-length discussions of the subject.</p>

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<p>Someone recently posted a link to idealist.org which has a nice section of jobs working for non-profit agencies. Lots of nice job ideas for someone like him

.<br>
You could to the site and select Education Level = JD and see jobs that are open right now for a lawyer who wants to help people. </p>

<p>I have never met a lawyer who had a job like this, but clearly lawyers like this are needed. </p>

<p>I did know one lawyer who wanted to help people but that lawyer went back to school for seminary and became a minister. :-)</p>

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<p>I don’t think there’s any necessary correlation between a personality type and a profession.</p>

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<p>Oh, geez. I’m sorry. I forgot to include the disclaimer. Here it is:</p>

<p>I KNOW the Myers Briggs has its flaws, doubters, and critics.<br>
I KNOW no single test can pick a career for someone.<br>
I KNOW Myers Briggs is pop psychology. </p>

<p>OK? Now, back to the question. </p>

<p>Are there any INFP lawyers here? </p>

<p>Or, put another way, are there any pop psychologists here who can address the potential match between and INFP and a career in law?</p>

<p>Thank you.</p>

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</p>

<p>Thank you.</p>

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<p>My wife, who has a huge staff, is very fond of Myers-Briggs as a consciousness-raising tool to help people work together in teams (and to understand the capabilities of her staff). She even sometimes peeks at peoples’ M-B assessments to try to insure a balance of approaches within teams and offices. (Except, having created an organization in her own image, I think there are only 3 Ps in the office out of about 200 people.) But I think even she would recoil absolutely from assigning this or that profession to a particular M-B array on that basis alone.</p>

<p>I know attorneys with just about every M-B array possible. The M-B type may affect what they do and how they do it, but there’s nothing about the type itself that says “attorney” or “firefighter”.</p>

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</p>

<p>OK. Good. Now, this can be helpful. </p>

<p>When you think of the INFP attorneys you know, would you say they’re happy with their career choice? What type of law do they practice?</p>

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<p>As an INFP college student secretly dreading law school, I’m very interested in this thread!</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p><em>boggle</em><br>
Really? Ever met an engineer? Or an actor?</p>

<p>I don’t know about “necessary” but I see a pretty good correlation between personalities and occupational choices.</p>

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<p>Not Meyers-Briggs personality types. I’ll bet there are engineers in all of 'em. Actors, too. You think Cate Blanchett and Seth Rogen have the same personality type?</p>

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<p>kal7…if you are dreading law school, why are you thinking of going? The people I know least happy w/law school or the practice of law are those who did not want to really go in the first place.</p>

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<p>DougBetsy, I don’t know if this helps, I am not an attorney, however, my profession has some cross overs with the skill sets and very basic or even native core competencies attorneys may have (in fact many of my clients are attorneys), and, my MB profile is pretty close to your son’s. To give you an example, my idea of a fun Saturday night is to be curled up all alone with a terrific book. </p>

<p>Years ago, I expressed great dismay to the industrial psychologist who administered the test and told me the results: I was clearly mismatched for my profession, and obviously would be needing to seek a totally different career path. I was very upset and disappointed because I didn’t WANT a different career path; I wanted to be exactly where I was.</p>

<p>Not to worry, she told me; her husband had a profile exactly like mine, and we were in the same profession. </p>

<p>She encouraged me to stay put and keep my plans in place. I am very, very successful - beyond all my greatest and best hopes for my career. I am still very much a “misfit” in my profession: speaking in front of large groups, for example, wears me out completely. I am very nervous, and I “over prepare” - I get almost to the point of serious stage fright - until I take the the podium, and suddenly, two sentences into my speech I am perfectly comfortable and very, very happy. I stress just as much over meetings with two or three people, depending on who they are. </p>

<p>There are probably a hundred other examples of how I get the square to fit inside the circle - bottom line, if your son wants to be an attorney, he will do just fine, no matter what MB or any other test says. Also, the law is going to be a very, very fascinating, changing field in certain market spaces in the coming 10, 20 years - considering things like the chain of commerce in cyberspace, changing law enforcement issues and challenges, etc. It’s going to be a very, very exciting, evolving place to be, and there will be many, many perfect fits for INFPs it seems.</p>

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<p>One robin doesn’t make it spring, and I have no reason to believe that Ms. Blanchett and Mr. Rogen are not both extroverted, attention-seekers who live every day with the passionate desire to be a little better known and a little more loved the next day. I don’t know what their MB letters are though.</p>

<p>As for engineers, do you know how to spot an extroverted engineer? He stares at *your *shoes while he talks.</p>

<p>It’s not about a psych test score determining someone’s destiny, it’s about people who approach life certain ways drifting into certain careers in which they can excel. For a Blanchett/Rogen sort of example, I was a mediocre software developer because once I figured out how to solve a problem, doing the last 5% of the work it took to make code run fast and reliably bored me to tears. I ended up in product management because I get to do the fun part – imagining projects – without having to do all that boring coding and testing. </p>

<p>This isn’t a hill I want to die on, and I have no particular affection for the MB stuff. It was kind of a religion 10 or 15 years ago and it got old fast. A cow orker of mine even joined an “ISTJ” club, where they got together and didn’t talk to each other (and I am NOT making that up). The comment that there is no correlation between personality type and occupation was what startled me. I suppose if I’d thought about a little longer I would have realized that you might have meant, “There is no correlation between MB score and chosen occupations.” If that’s what you meant, it’s all yours. I don’t have any evidence one way or another, so your guess is as good as anyone else’s.</p>

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<p>Thank you, latetoschool. That’s the kind of perspective I’m seeking.</p>

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<p>Having met William Kunstler on numerous occasions I would say he differed from most attorneys I have met.</p>

<p>I think interest, involvement and commitment are the best predictors. I know in my profession, academics, college Engish teaching, there are colleagues who teach grammar in every writing session.</p>

<p>I have never given a grammar session, although I do correct each error in their writings.</p>

<p>My classes are about interpretation and using writing as a vehicle of communication, not following rules. Imagine that.</p>

<p>My department often pits the form vs. content people against each other, and they have very different personalities.</p>

<p>I say, “How can you tell the dancer from the dance,” and won’t engage in these debates.</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure the students benefit from all these approaches, and different students find different approaches more congenial.</p>

<p>I do invite the grammar mavens to drop my class, but to date no one has taken me up on it.</p>

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<p>WashDad – I DID mean Myers-Briggs types, not “personality types” in general. And the I/E pairing on Myers-Briggs does not correspond to what we usually mean by “introverted” and “extroverted”. I am prepared to believe that there are more Is among engineers and Es among actors, I suppose, but as I understand the M-B categories, I suspect there are lots of engineers who work best in teams and strive to meet external demands, and lots of actors who are responding to their own inner drive more than anything else.</p>

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<p>DB: I am an attorney with INTJ MB, but the T & J are both just barely across the line from F and P. I don’t see any reason for excluding law as a career. As for the comment: “doesn’t want to sue people or deal with criminals”, please explain to your son that a career in law is very broad and does not have to include ambulance chasing or criminal prosecutions. I sue no one and have no contact with criminals whatsoever.
As for the validity of the MB, I think the first letter is the most telling. But not about what career you should enter. It helps us understand how we deal with others and how we recharge. I did not take the test until I was older, but it still was illuminating.</p>

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<p>DB, If your son is a rising 11th grader he has at least 5 years between now and law school, or even more as it’s the norm for aspiring law students to take a break after their undergrad degree. A law degree has become almost as common as an MBA as an all purpose career booster, in just about any field. </p>

<p>A random listing of lawyers I know who don’t work in traditional law firms:
*The American Ambassador in the country where I live, a career diplomat
*The principal partner in the architecture firm where my son works
*The China based consumer products consultant who interviewed me the other day.
*The chief executive of a remotely located mining company in West Papua</p>

<p>In other words, it’s common to bring the knowledge and skill sets that the study of law offers into play in a wide range of professions. The individual profession suits the person’s personality, and the law degree is an adjunct, a useful intensifier. </p>

<p>Government agencies and NGO’s are crawling with lawyers and every corporation has a handful. There are specialites like arts lawyers, pharmaceutical lawyers, sports lawyers, environmental lawyers. The law touches every aspect of human existance and therefore the need for a lawyer arises. Law, like love, as Auden wrote is everywhere.</p>

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<p>I’m an INFJ (but only moderately J) and am currently in law school. I’ve worked in public interest law and at a big firm and enjoyed them both. So it can be done! </p>

<p>But I don’t see what benefit is served by trying to convince a 15-year-old of a career option (on average, 15-year-olds are pretty hard to convince of anything, let alone something future-oriented!). Let the poor kid have whatever dreams of a career path he wants–he’s probably at least 6 years away from his first job anyway, and his personality and skills may develop and change over that time.</p>