Is Corporate Law worth it?

alwaysamom
Sun, 23 Oct 2011 12:15:52 +0000

Yes, vacations and holidays will be interrupted with work calls and you will learn where the business center is at every hotel you ever visit. Your laptop will also become like an appendage. There may also be times when you have to cancel a vacation on short notice (oh, yeah, that goes over well with your family or other traveling companions) due to client needs.



Ahh, so true, Sally. I cannot recall a single vacation where there weren’t calls to and from my H’s office. Even back in the days when our children were very young and we were staying at an inn that didn’t have phones in the room. I can vividly picture my H out in the parking lot at a pay phone trying to balance folders of papers, etc. I don’t think it’s easy for students to imagine what the time commitment is like for lawyers who do this kind of work. We certainly didn’t have a good idea of what it would be like. So many New Year’s Eves where I ended up at parties alone because H was working on a year end deal. We only had to cancel a vacation on short notice once in his career, and I consider that to be lucky. There were several that we had to rearrange in advance because of deals cropping up but only once did we have to cancel within a few days of departure. Interestingly, that happened after he went in-house. The upper echelon of in-house lawyers work every bit as hard, and as long hours, as they do at large firms.

Having said all that, I’m not complaining. With those long hours and great responsibility, come interesting work, great financial rewards, and career satisfaction for many. There are many things we’ve been able to do that we wouldn’t have been able to had he chosen another path, not the least of which is to allow all of our children to finish their educations and start off on their careers unencumbered by student loans. Being in a position to contribute to our community and support our charitable foundations is another positive. There are definite negatives to such a career but I think that sometimes the positives can be overlooked.