The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Corporate Lawyer

Hi--good to see you--don't mind the mess, let me move that... this office is so small, here, let me open a window, it's kind of stale in here...I shouldn't had chili for lunch, if you know...oh, okay. So you wanna be what? A corporate lawyer--really? A pretty girl like you? You could be like a model or something... okay. Here goes:

You'll do an undergraduate degree in Political Science, or Economics--actually, you look like an honours English girl--maybe with a minor in the classics. Your profs--the ones who aren't gay--will hit on you, and you'll get good grades because you're smart and you don't mind who knows it. You'll write the LSAT in 3rd year, but your boyfriend will have broken up with you the night before and you'll bomb--so you'll pay to do it again later.

This time you do well, and combined with your grades and some killer references from your profs, you get offered a chance to go to some of the top law schools in the country. Eventually you choose Queens--it's in Ontario, and that's where you want to eventually practice.

You have no life in law school, and when you do have any spare time you have to do volunteer work at a legal aid clinic telling drunks how to get off impaired charges and worse--you hate them all, and discover the hard way that you need to get an unlisted phone number. Eventually the hellish grind pays off and you're offered a position articling at a top Bay Street firm. You get invited on more lunches with partners than most articling students, but you convince yourself it's not because of how you look. One balding, paunchy would-be Romeo after another invites you along to weekend legal conferences, or to go interview witnesses with him an Atlanta, or New Orleans... eventually, after tiring of fending off the advances of these creeps who think their money and power make them desirable, you quite accepting trips and start coming in early to avoid running into them.

The stress of the job, the pace and the harassment begins to take its toll. You develop a variety of minor ailments, and start taking diet pills to keep yourself alert. Eventually you finish the year and are offered an entry position at the firm. You take it. Your fellow articling students are convinced you slept your way into the position, and don't make a secret of it.

Three years later you marry a guy who works as a graphic designer--you tell yourself you don't care if he earns 1/3 of what you do. Two years later, just as you're about to be offered an associate's position, you get pregnant. Artist boy is just "breaking through" to a new level with his career, so you agree to take mat. leave. It destroys your chance of a promotion, and your staff begin calling you "mommy", and other lawyer's eyes glaze over when you talk about your kid and show them baby pictures and you can't find a good babysitter for the times you have to work late to rebuild your career...

Your husband resents the time you're devoting to work and starts teaching an evening art class where he meets a 19 year old who dotes on his every word... In divorce court the colleague you trusted to protect your interests blows it, reminding you on the way out of the court you once turned down his offer of a weekend conference--the result is that 1/2 your income is going to your deadbeat ex husband, who gets primary custody of your child because you are "excessively devoted to your job".

You begin having anxiety attacks and one day one of the partners finds you in a break room weeping... They send you to a shrink the company has on retainer, and quietly arrange to have you transferred to Calgary, where you finish your career representing various cattlemen and land developers in their petty battles over property rights that involve the smell of manure devaluing prime real estate developments. Your child thinks you cold and unfeeling, but manages to call you everytime a cash handout is needed. You never remarry, but drift through a series of unsatisfying relationships.

So, if you come back tomorrow I could get you some brochures about law schools. No? okay--do you need a ride home?