Emily, the Strategy & Change Consultant

So there’s this consultant at my office who has a law degree. She graduated with honors from UCLA undergrad and attended Duke for her J.D. /M.B.A. I tracked her down and had a forty five minute conversation with her.

She seems like a business type person, and speaking with her further confirmed my intuition. She studied political science in college, and upon graduation, joined Coopers & Lybrand Consulting (which, as you may or may not know, eventually merged with Price Waterhouse, and became Price Waterhouse Coopers. They were then bought up by IBM and joined IBM Business Consulting Services.) She had no idea what she wanted to do right after she graduated, so she got a job through a connection that her dad had.

She worked at Coopers for three years, and was awarded a special scholarship which allowed her to attend a graduate program for free. She applied and decided to go for a law/business degree at Duke. They only paid for two of the four required years, but what a deal! She said she chose a joint degree because she wanted options and she was still unsure about what she wanted to do with her life.

In my conversation with her, I also found out some other things. For example, she scored a 170+ on her LSAT. That is very impressive (I am always impressed by standardized test scores). She also spoke about how tough it was to work at law firms. That is the second time this week I’ve heard this from someone who has a law degree. I guess it kind of scares me because that is what I plan on doing after I graduate. I was always well aware of how much it would suck to work in a law firm; but I never heard about it firsthand from someone who had a law degree.

Finally, she spoke about how the law degree has helped her in her life. It’s not just about work, but about general things that you have to do. “A law degree will help most in heavily regulated industries.” Finance, government jobs, and consulting for the government were mentioned as examples.

I’ve really got to stop talking to business people about going to law school. I should start speaking to serious practitioners to gain a different perspective.