Most people come to law school to become lawyers but there are many alternatives to the JD career path. One of our most used resources in the library is What can you do with a law degree? : a lawyer's guide to career alternatives inside, outside & around the law found at KF 297. A875. This post is about a specific alternative, law librarianship.
I admit I am a law librarian, and as such I'm biased, but these jobs really are an excellent alternative career for many. I will list a few of the general benefits
- Generally very static hours, which is excellent for the family centric
- No need to worry about being able to move from state to state and having to keep taking new bar exams (some jobs don't even require the bar license)
- No clients, while we do have students who are somewhat client like they rarely come with the emotion and perspective loss (think jail time, loss of child custody, bankruptcy) for practicing
- No 3 a.m. calls - if you have not practiced you probably don't understand that your clients will call you at ANY TIME since they have paid you to be their lawyer
- Generally work in a larger institution that worries about insurance, vacation, etc. - I know that many like to be independent figure out these decisions on their own but others take comfort of being part of the larger group which can spread risk and lower administrative costs
I have dozens more reasons but if you are interested I'm sure that any of our law librarians would be more than willing to talk with you about what the job consist of on a daily basis. Additionally, here are a couple of links for investigation on your own American Association of Law Librarians and Southeastern Chapter of AALL.
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