“It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour.” – Thomas Jefferson

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been reading Opinionistas, a blog written by a young female lawyer in NYC. In addition to her describing life as an indentured billable hour servant, replete with grueling hours and impossible workloads, she also describes colleagues sloughing off their youthful idealism as they struggle inside the pressure cooker environment of a major law firm. I particularly liked this entry – Casting That Stone. It’s about how some women seem to abandon their hard earned professional lives in pursuit of safe, boring, marriageable men. Opinionista wonders if women have evolved, if at all, during the past sixty years of feminist awareness.

But what I really like about this blog is that you get the sense the author is in the midst of a psychological struggle of her own. In her world of high priced graduate schools, expensed lunches, and status hungry sycophants; everyone is constantly comparing themselves to everybody else. Do I make enough money? Am I more successful? Why is she married and not me? Who’s got a corner office? Why did that associate get the deal? It can be a toxic soul eroding landscape that not everyone survives with decency intact.

Its obvious Opinionista has second thoughts about being a lawyer. Her ambivalence permeates the entire blog and you wonder what she’ll end up doing. Will she chuck her expensive law school degree? Or will she make whatever accommodations she needs to make within herself to remain a lawyer? It’s a process all professionals struggle with when they realize the career they’ve dreamed about since high school isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Well written and humorous – I recommend you check Opinionista out. The author does “question everything” but yields insights into a slice of life we might otherwise have never known about.

Go read!