Many people who are raised watching tv and movies often cite the portrayals of lawyers they see as reasons they want to get into the profession themselves. Many jobs are glamorised in popular media and focus on the most interesting parts of the profession but ignore the more mundane aspects that most people aren’t interested in, and this is no different when it comes to legal practitioners.
While there is obviously an element of truth to on-screen portrayals of lawyers, they are far from accurate to what the reality of being one is. While it’s fine for people to be inspired by media to enter the legal field, they should understand that what they saw was a romanticization and that there is much more to it than that.
If you want to become the best family lawyer in Sydney – great! It can prove to be a rewarding and stable career with a lot of room for advancement, but you need to be sure you are doing it for the right reasons. If you go into the legal world expecting the lifestyle of a tv solicitor, you are going to be sorely disappointed.
The following will look at the most common myths about working as a lawyer.
It’s exciting and dramatic
The most common misconception people have about lawyers is that they are running around between high-profile court cases giving stirring speeches about justice and the pursuit of happiness. While there are certainly going to be highlighted in your career as a solicitor and a few “dramatic” courtroom moments, most of your work is going to be behind a desk doing research or engaging in negotiations.
Even when legal tv and movies are based on real-life legal cases, they will necessarily skip through the boring bits and focus on the highlights. They will also often condense the timeframe of the case, showing lots of events happing in quick succession that actually occurred over weeks, months, and years.
Also, lawyers are discouraged from being loud or belligerent in court, so you can’t really do the kind of performance you see on-screen. Most of the time, you will be calmly citing facts and laying out a reasoned argument without using any emotional or leading language.
It’s going to make you rich
There’s no doubt that lawyers can make a good living, but it’s silly to assume that you are going to become mega-rich very easily. The highest-paid lawyers have decades of experience and have had to work many cases before they could ever claim to be wealthy.
Like any industry, the wealth of individual solicitors can vary greatly, and some will get luckier than others. Don’t make the mistake of automatically assuming that all solicitors are rich and get into the industry for the wrong reasons.
You’re going to be an expert at everything
The truth about lawyers is that while they are very intelligent, they aren’t capable of being experts in every area of law simultaneously. The vast majority of solicitors will focus on one or two key areas of practise and master them over the course of their career so that they are hired as often as possible for that kind of work.
Any solicitor who says they are good at everything probably isn’t very good at all.
Also, many people assume that lawyers work alone, but this is not always true. They will often collaborate with other experts and employ the services of assistants and researchers to help them if the case they are working on is very complex.
There you have it, a few of the most common misconceptions about working as a lawyer.