Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-06-05 20:45
SVClarinet09-
There are four things to think about: what it's like in music school and law school, and what it's like to be a musician and a lawyer. From personal experience, I can tell you that they're very different.
MUSIC SCHOOL
You obviously have a great love of music. You're obviously also really good. It may seem easy for you to be in the Governor's School and make all-state, but you're one of the very few to accomplish it.
Talent and love of music are the basics that every professional musician needs. Everyone who gets into a conservatory has them, and the conservatory takes this for granted. However, they're not enough to do well. You also need tremendous determination and single-mindedness. You need to be able to put yourself alone in a practice room and grind away until you have the instrument completely mastered. This is some of the hardest work you will every do. You'll also need to master areas of musical knowledge (history, theory) that you may not be particularly interested in. Also, you'll need to learn to play music that's unsympathetic to you (minimalist, serial, rap). In other words, there are areas of musical knowledge that you won't like or be interested in, and becoming a professional involves mastering these, too.
Finally, music school is highly competitive. You'll need to beat out other good people, who are anxious to take advantage of every opportunity, even when it means running over you to get there. You'll need to be a self-starter -- someone who creates opportunities to perform all the time. Nobody will do this for you.
LAW SCHOOL
You must come into law school with a strong love of language and the ability to think logically and in minute detail. In law school, you read similar cases and understand how they're different. It's like slicing a salami paper-thin. You need that sort of nit-picking mind.
And of course you need to be able to argue convincingly and think on your feet.
And you must be a really good writer. Perfect spelling and grammar are only the beginning. You must also write convincingly, in different styles for different audiences -- judges, other lawyers, clients.
Law school is competitive, though less so than a music conservatory. Everything you study can be understood by a good mind. It's just that there's so much of it. I had more fun in law school than in any other period of my life.
MUSIC PROFESSION
When you graduate from music school and set out to make a living, it's assumed that you have love and talent, and also that you have mastered the instrument. You'll also be in one of the most competitive environments that exist. It's no longer enough to be a good, or even very good player. You need to build a network of people who will hire you. This means, first of all, reliability. You must think twice before you take a vacation. If you do, the person next in line will step ahead of you, more or less permanently. You can't afford to be late to a rehearsal, even once. You can't show anger or frustration, even once. It's a zero-tolerance life. See http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=181955&t=181948, http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=111093&t=110976 and http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=57465&t=57430.
Finally, just as you need to learn subjects in conservatory that don't interest you, you'll need to take any work you can get, even if you don't like the music. That's the difference between being an amateur and a professional. The pro has to do it all.
LEGAL PROFESSION
When you start being a lawyer, the sorts of things you do in law school fade into the background. Making a living depends on attracting clients, who have no law school experience. Your job is not to show the client that you understand his/her legal problem, but that you understand the real-world problem. You ask occasional questions to bring out legally significant facts, but your main job is to show sympathy and confidence that you know how to bring about the result the client wants, always in the real world, and not in some mysterious legal universe.
Legal work is highly competitive, and many lawyers get by by being obnoxious, dishonest, and hitting below the belt. You need a hide as thick as an elephant and a rhinocerous combined.
Law firm work, like music, demands your whole life. I work in a large firm where to get by, you must put in 12 hours a day Monday through Friday and 6 hours a day on weekends.
Oh, yes, you can make a lot of money as a lawyer. But as an ordinary lawyer, it's a constant dogfight. As a high-class lawyer, it's a better, more courteous class of colleagues and clients, but a 24-hour-a-day grind.
The world won't give you a living, no matter what you do, and there's no job where you can do only the things you like, all the time. Enjoy it while you can. There are plenty of musicians who, on the whole, love their life, and plenty of lawyers too, but everything's a compromise once you get out of school.
Ken Shaw
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The Clarinet BBoard
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