‘So why exactly did you opt for a career in law?’ is a question that has been haunting me for the past three years in law school, maybe not that frequently nowadays but still this question baffles me and my minds keep gliding around it even after I deliver a humorous answer to the interrogator. I am a prospective first-generation lawyer who had science in senior secondary. There is no lawyer, judge or anyone anyhow related to law in my immediate family, extended family and I believe not even in my clan (no pun intended). So, under the above-stated circumstances, this question becomes the personal favorite of everyone and is fired straightaway. It was my Achilles heel in my initial days in law school and will have to sadly admit it still is.
Initially, when we join law school we are frequently ambushed with a variety of questions that in their gist have just one query – ‘why law?’ Well, let me make one thing very clear beforehand that telling truth was never an option in my case so I decided that there should be some smart ass answer to this query because that’s what good lawyers are supposed to do. The truth could not be told because in all probability it would start with ‘I could not be a…… hence, law’ and if I’m not mistaken this tragedy is shared by many of my fellow law students. Is that how an answer to such question supposed to be given? Saying that ‘I wanted to be a lawman’ would be the biggest lie on the god’s green earth as I like most of the people was not as lucky as Friedrich Kekule who saw the structure of Benzene in his dream. My intuition never hinted that law was my calling neither over beloved education system helped in sorting things out, all I could conclude was that science was not my thing.
Students dejected by Science look for other openings and often land in law school, the admission test also being very credulous. Well here is your answer to the question of how I got here. But, that sounds like a sob story of a looser and I’m never telling anyone the legend of my incompetence, so I give most stupid answers to this question because I have not been able to find any ‘smart ass’ reply to the question. This failure actually forced me to think that maybe law students are actually not as good as engineering/ medical counterparts, that we are not good enough to write codes, make machines, treat people, develop apps but somehow, can still be trusted with social order, justice, can toy around with the life of a death convict, client’s complete business, his property, his house, his monies. That although we are not good enough to understand Pythagoras, Newton, and Einstein but still prudent enough to grasp the philosophy of Bentham, Hobbs or Blackstone. Maybe this is right maybe not but this is what our system postulates in my opinion.
The truth is that the union of law and mine was not a love marriage, no sir! It was arranged by my destiny. Like many others, I took law after I realized that engineering was not my calling, but I often muse on how could we have chosen law in the first place and not as an option of last resort? What could have been different, we were never told or taught about law in school, I was completely oblivious that someone can actually make a career in law without a background (to me it was kind of business). All we could see was a race where the brightest took science stream and not even the losers ever talked about law unless it was their hereditary profession. Many of us love to reason, common sense being their forte but just cannot fit in anything, can we? Not everyone is interested in proving a derivation that has already been proved at the very least a million times already. But no alternative exists or so it is shown and life becomes a multiple choice question with no ‘none of the above’ option. We are made to believe that maybe thinking out of the box, making theories, arguments, reasons of your own is a stupid idea unless it is same as the answer given in the book and this is how the world works.
When I rubbed shoulder with law (accidentally but luckily) everything changed for better like for many of ‘ill-suited’ us. Confidence skyrocketed, mind started resonating at the perfect frequency and views became more complex. Actually, the problem is not in us, the problem is not in law and it is not an inferior discipline at all (if you don’t believe me try Jurisprudence). The problem is with the system that never introduced us to this stream of ‘social engineering’ while we were making our career choices. Biology, Mathematics, Political Science, Accounts, Economics all these jewels are embedded in the curriculum of schools but not law. I cannot understand why law is not taught at the elementary level so that students can make an informed choice. This is also one of the biggest reason because of which law is also suffering and lagging behind as a profession. It never gets its share of intelligentsia it deserves in this country and all we have is rampant nepotism and incompetence in the profession at present. In other countries, only the brightest opt for law as a career but that is not the case in our beloved country and nation is paying its price for this misdemeanor.
I am pleased that I’m a law student but I just wish that this union had taken place by choice rather by accident. Law has too much to offer but it never gets the opportunity to show off its peculiarities. The system has failed this profession in every possible way by depriving it of the vital nutrients of best quality aspirants who in absence of any fitting choice chose any other stream totally oblivious that they were tailor made for something far better. Law always gets the leftover after the cream is separated. I just wish that I could answer to everyone posing above mentioned question by stating that I choose law because it gives me an opportunity to work for public good, reputation (vakeel sahab), ever-flowing stream of money and last but not the least it appreciates the most my quality of reasoning.
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