Transcript
I'm currently 58 years old and had been in the IT industry for over 33 years. Currently, the market for experienced IT talent of my vintage is weak at best, which is motivating me to consider a career change to the law. Unfortunately, student loan obligations would make that impossible.
Although I did not take a career path from the law, my interest has never subsided and has been an influential part of my life. So a career in the law would be a logical choice for me. On the practical side, if I attend a law school now, it'd be 59. After completion of the JD and bar, I would potentially be as old as 64.
Since you were directly involved in attorney search and placement, I believe it would be an excellent research advisor for practical bias to my employability as a new lawyer at eight 64. I value your time and expertise too much to take it for granted casually. What difficulties would I be facing if I ended up practicing law at my age?
Well, the first difficulty is that a lot of firms have a mandatory retirement age of 65. You really wouldn't have very much time to get going. But at the same time, many attorneys I know, I've seen them continue practicing well into their eighties and even their nineties.
So coming out of 64, it still gives you a quarter-century of practicing law. And even at that, you could still be practicing after 90. I once hired an attorney that was in his mid-nineties, which was actually a very good situation because he didn't charge a lot of money because she was so tired, he didn't want to bill a lot of hours, but he was still working.
But the point is that you can practice law for a long time, but you're going to have a hard time getting hired, in most places at 64. The other thing is that while the mind typically doesn't go in most people until they get much older, working in law is unnecessarily. For many people it's not the most pleasant thing, because there's all sorts of deadlines, depending on whatever practice here and you do.
There's a lot of clients who will try to take advantage of you. If you're in a law firm, you'll have to work long hours. And I'm just not sure that's something that someone at the age of 64 would want to do. And, there's also a learning curve. You don't really learn how to do most practice areas until you've been practicing for at least five years.
You're going to need to get to be somewhere around the age of 70 before you even know what you're doing. And if you still want to be practicing, in your seventies, so it's up to you. But I would think, that would be a very hard to stomach.
But if you want to practice, of course at that age, you're welcome to. It was just my advice.
