<p>Re post #2: Nonsense. There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who hold law degrees but do not practice law. </p>
<p>Some common alternative career paths for lawyers: entrepreneur, manager, labor negotiator, mediator/alternative dispute resolution specialist, arbitrator, administrator of not-for-profit organization, legislative/policy analyst, political strategist/analyst/politician, financial analyst, financial consultant, management consultant, legal educator, law librarian, law school administrator, legal researcher/writer/editor/publisher, court administrator, regulatory agency staff, regulatory adviser/compliance officer/manager, trust & estate planner, financial planner, real estate investor/manager, hospital/health care organization administrator, foundation grant officer, event planner, law school career services officer, bar association staff/manager, sports/entertainment agent, legal headhunter, lobbyist/government relations specialist, legal journalist/correspondent/commentator, law enforcement officer (in particular, many FBI agents hold law degrees but do not practice law), criminal justice educator.</p>
<p>Some of these jobs require a law degree but do not involve the practice of law; for others a law degree is not required but substantive legal knowledge or skills acquired in law school or law practice are important or can give the lawyer a competitive edge. Rarely, if ever, will a law degree operate as a barrier to entry or a limitation to advancement in fields like these.</p>
<p>Some less common non-lawyer jobs held by lawyers or people trained in the law:
- baseball manager/general manager (Tony LaRussa, Branch Rickey, Hughie Jennings, Miller Huggins)
- baseball commissioner (Kennesaw Mountain Landis, Fay Vincent)
- football coach (Vince Lombardi, Mike Leach late of Texas Tech)
- actor/comedian (John Cleese, Raul Julia, Paul Robeson, Fred Thompson, William Sanderson, Demitri Martin)
- movie director (Otto Preminger, Frederick Wiseman, Federico Fellini)
- film critic (Michael Medved)
- TV/radio talk show host/commentator (Jerry Springer, Ann Coulter, Larry Elder, Geraldo Rivera)
- wine expert (Robert Parker)
- crossword puzzle creator (Will Shortz of the NY Times)
- sports announcer/analyst (Howard Cosell, Jay Bilas, Steve Young, Dick Button)
- novelist (beyond the obvious Scott Turow/John Grisham/Erle Stanley Gardner types, you have, e.g., Sir Walter Scott, Henry Fielding, John Galsworthy, Louis Auchincloss, Goethe, Edward Bellamy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alexander McCall Smith, romance novelist Hailey North)
- poet (Archibald MacLeish, Wallace Stevens, William Cullen Bryant)
- playwright (Federico Garcia Lorca, Elmer Rice, Pierre Marivaux, Tristan Bernard, William S. Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan)
- screenwriter (Ben Hur, much of the Star Trek series, The Paper Chase, and such popular TV shows as Ally McBeal, The Practice, and Street Legal were all written by lawyers or people with legal training)
- televangelist (Pat Robertson)
- artist (Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky)
- cartoonist (Greg Howard, creator of “Sally Forth”)
- composer/musician (Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, Oscar Hammerstein, Igor Stravinsky, Paul Simon, Ruben Blades, Paul Robeson, Francis Scott Key, Julio Iglesias, Andrea Bocelli)
- restaurant critic (Nina & Tim Zagat)
- restaurateur (Colonel Sanders and the founders of California Pizza Kitchen among many)
- labor leader (James P. Hoffa)
- President of the United States (Barack Obama and 25 others)
- President of another nation (Nelson Mandela among many others)
- leader of an independence movement (Mohandas Ghandi)
- monarch (Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands)</p>
<p>Sky’s the limit.</p>