On a somber note, some of you may have read about the recent death of Mary Darmer, a popular 47-year-old Chapman Law School professor.  She was a Princeton University and Columbia Law School graduate, and had been teaching at Chapman since 2000.  She fell from a 6-story parking structure, and her death has been ruled a suicide.  For more details, you can go to http://www.ocregister.com/news/law-341323-darmer-university.html.

While I did not know Professor Darmer or the facts surrounding her apparent decision to take her life, her death reminded me of a former law school classmate of mine who also took his life several years ago.  In my classmate’s case, it was due largely to stress from work.  These tragic events are a reminder of the importance of thinking through what one wants to do with one’s working life.

Of course, it is hard to know what is best until you start doing it, but we can make thoughtful decisions about it.  Work tends to be an important part of one’s life once you start a career – both in terms of the number of hours of your day spent doing it and the emotional effect it has on your life.

Whether you choose to go to law school or not, remember to take the time necessary to make the choice that is best for you.  For more thoughts on the issue, you may want to review my prior posts on whether or not to go to law school – or feel free to shoot me an email.

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Feel fee to take a look by clicking above – a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea…

Unless you have been living in a cave for the last several years, you know the economy has been a challenge.  In particular, unemployment has been a serious problem throughout the nation.  This has an effect on law jobs as well.  On the positive side, things clearly seem to be improving.  A recent article demonstrated that there were more new people hired last month than there has been in almost six years (excluding April and May 2010, when there was an unusual spike in hiring due to short-term jobs created for the census).

It seems reasonable to believe that the legal market for new attorneys will be improving as well.  The economy certainly isn’t back to where it was in its heyday, but a meaningful turn in the right direction is positive news for future lawyers.  (Of course, whether we really need more lawyers is a different question altogether!)

As I have mentioned many times, I believe the decision of whether to go to law school should be based primarily upon one’s desire to practice law.  The economy is impossible to predict, other than knowing it will have ups and downs.  One’s own personal feelings about the type of career one wants does not require a crystal ball, however.  Think about the type of work lawyers do and other relevant aspects of the profession, compare it to other choices you may be considering, and decide if the practice of law sounds like a good fit for you!

There’s an old saying in the real estate market that “all real estate is local.”  The idea is that there may be nationwide trends, but one has to examine the local market to get a true sense of how real estate is doing in that area.  For instance, real estate in Santa Ana, California may be experiencing much better or worse sales activity and growth than Detroit, Michigan.

The same holds true with the legal market.  Read the rest of this entry »