Friday, October 05, 2007 8:53 AM
Blawg Book Highlighter #4: Should You Really Be a Lawyer?: The Guide to Smart Career Choices Before, During and After Law School
This is a continuation of last week's Blawg Book Highlighter #3, which focused on Nonlegal Careers for Lawyers, or what do you do if you have a law degree and either don't want to be a lawyer or can't find a job as a lawyer.
But what if you're still deciding whether or not to even go to law school? Is it the right thing for you? Will the time and money invested in it be worth it?
Well, that's where this week's featured book, Should You Really Be a Lawyer?: The Guide to Smart Career Choices Before, During and After Law School comes in.
The book's authors, Deborah Schneider and Gary Belsky, ought to know. Schneider, JD, is a former associate director for career development at the University of California Hastings College of Law, and is a consultant and lecturer about career decision-making and other career issues. Belsky, author of Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, and How to Correct Them, is an award-winning journalist who writes frequent about decision-making.
From the authors:
Too many otherwise intelligent individuals invest tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours in a post-graduate degree only to learn the high price of making a career decision without thinking through the consequences. In fact, too many law students wind up in jobs they dislike, and too many lawyers either remain unhappily trapped in practice or flee the profession without fully exploring their options, all because they fall victim to some very subtle and insidious decision-making traps. Our book draws on an innovative new field of decision-making psychology (called Behavioral Psychology) to demonstrate how you form judgements and make decisions. We believe it will help you make smarter career and life choices (and save you the ton of money your folks would have spent on law school).
The book has garnered 17 customer reviews on Amazon.com with an average customer review of 4 stars out of 5.
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Randy Richardson is an author, humorist, former journalist, and a lawyer. His fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of Chicago's storied Wrigley Field, won the Writers Marketing Association's “Fresh Voices” Book Award and the Illinois Woman's Press Association's Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest. He writes the Dad Libs column for SanityCentral.com and is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine. In his day job, he is an attorney for the Social Security Administration’s disability appeals branch. At night and during lunch breaks, he serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association (chicagowrites.org) and works on his second novel while a 4-year-old tugs on his legs. Visit his website at www.lostintheivy.com.
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