Is law unemployment over exaggerated?

[sakky]

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To many, the opportunity to lead troops in war is one of the greatest callings. How many other careers will you have that much responsibility when you are only 22? Because at 22, you better be a competent, sharp, and fast cat or else someone age 18 to 50 may pay for your mistake with his life. We’re not talking about some classroom academic debate, we’re talking about real life with very immediate and long term consequences. To most who are brave enough to take that challenge, the experience and the challenge are worth more than the pension.

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<p>I agree, but that only highlights the fact that you can’t judge careers via a simple, cold-blooded discounted cash flow and retirement fund calculation. </p>

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You could as a lawyer. But could you do that while working the hours that biglaw firms require?

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<p>But now you’re changing the terms of the debate. If you’re working in biglaw, then I think there is little dispute that you will be making vastly more money than the average policeman. </p>

<p>Now, if you then leave biglaw for a lower-paying and presumably lower-pressure job, then that’s when you could win a National Guard officer commission through OCS now that you have more free time. Granted, you can’t be too old, but if you’ve been working in biglaw for long enough to be too old to join the military, I have to believe that you’ve accumulated substantial savings from your high biglaw pay such that you won’t really need a military pension. </p>

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You might also have misunderstood what I meant by “double-dip”. It refers to a scenario where the state/municipality pays you your income while you are deployed and you’re also collecting from the Federal government. That’s “double-dipping”.
I just haven’t heard of many lawyers double-dipping as much as law enforcement officers.

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<p>Is that possible? I thought that (some) employers would top up your military pay so that while deployed, such that you would be making the same amount that you would be making if you had stayed at your regular job. But you won’t be receiving both your regular salary and a military salary. </p>

<p>But even if you can indeed double-dip, with state and municipality budgets in the sundered conditions that they are, it’s not clear that police officers who are serving military deployments will continue to be allowed to do so. After all, many private companies do not continue to pay any of the salaries of employees on military deployments. I suspect that one of the first reforms that any state/municipality would enact is to stop double-dipping (if that is indeed possible now) but instead only provide only top-ups.</p>