The Gazette has a regular feature on ‘Lawyer in the News’, interviewing a solicitor whose client’s case has hit the headlines.
The part which intrigues me is ‘Why become a lawyer?’, which is nearly always asked.
If you look at the answers over an extended period, certain patterns emerge.
First, there is the influence of parents or family circumstances:
‘My father told me that the way I approached problems meant I would enjoy being a lawyer, and encouraged me to make a career of it. He was right.’
‘My parents were refugees, and when I saw how they had to struggle for their dignity and place in society, I decided to become a lawyer to help people like them.’
‘My mother had an aunt who was a lawyer, and I had a placement with her for a week when I was a teenager, and became hooked.’
A variation on this is the inspiring teacher who saw a certain potential and temperament, and steered a student towards the law.
The next motivation, partly also reflected above, is to help people:
‘I wanted to do something with my life which would help people with their problems.’
‘I was so incensed growing up by the way that politicians ignored the environment that I decided to become a lawyer to do something about it.’
The final general motivation is to work in an area with intellectual challenge. This is frequently mentioned.
Surprisingly, no-one says that they went into law to make money. Now, I know that there are sections of the law – legal aid in particular – where that would be a laughable ambition. But we also know that there is serious money to be made in the City, and elsewhere in certain areas of practice. There must be people, maybe many, who have gone into the law for that reason.
Attached to this is the prestige which attaches to the title of lawyer. I know some will say that much of that has gone with the passing of the age of deference. But being a lawyer still carries weight. Yet I suppose it is not a reason anyone wants to see printed about themselves in the Gazette.
If I look at the four motivating factors listed (family, do-goodism, intellectual challenge, money and prestige), I can see that all four have played parts in my career. I use myself an example not because I am of any interest, but because I am only the example to hand about whom I can speak with certainty. And my conclusion is that the four are shuffled about, turned upside down and re-emphasised, like a kaleidoscope which has been shaken about, to explain each person’s decisions.
So family certainly played a part in my decision, but not in the expected way. It was not inspiration but authority (or authoritarianism) which caused me to study law. My mother said: ‘I am telling you that you will get a proper qualification. We are paying, and we will not accept something airy-fairy.’
My family circumstances might have dictated a burning desire to become a lawyer in someone else: my parents were refugees, and we lived in a country which could hardly have been more unjust if it tried (a British colony). But I did not want to become a lawyer. Yet a combination of parental influence and prestige in the title dictated otherwise.
As a result, the law was a dead object during my studies. I passed well enough, but it meant nothing.
This changed when, after qualification as a solicitor, I decided to follow my heart and indulge in some do-goodism. I joined the Citizens Advice Bureaux as a paid advisor and then as a community lawyer. (They dropped the Bureaux from their title in 2003, well after I had left.)
Suddenly the law came alive. I saw the point of those tedious studies on the law of negligence when helping people who had tripped over a loose paving stone in the street, and those tedious studies on the law of contract when advising people who had bought a faulty washing machine. I loved it. Do-goodism gave my career a meaning.
I then moved into legal policy and ethics, working for bars (I mean professional associations of lawyers, not the cocktail variety). Suddenly, intellectual challenge took central place. For instance: what is the role of the lawyer when public interest goes one way, say in the area of climate or the environment, but the wishes of the client go in another lawful direction?
This intellectual challenge has sustained me ever since.
I suspect that every lawyer has a story to tell around how the four motivating factors influenced their own career path. And if there are motivating factors beyond those four, they have not yet appeared in any Gazette answers I have read.
Jonathan Goldsmith is Law Society Council member for EU & International, chair of the Law Society’s Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of its board. All views expressed are personal and are not made in his capacity as a Law Society Council member, nor on behalf of the Law Society
No comments yet