Unfortunately I’m not sure I have great answers to this question given my lack of knowledge about the Australian law ecosystem. I would defer more heavily to those who, like Michael, know much more about that.
As Michael pointed out, law is not very well tailored to policy careers generally in the sense that it both teaches you much more than you need to know for policy in some areas (e.g., the minutiae of contract law) and much less in others (e.g., how to analyze proposed policy changes, economic/fiscal policy). However, it’s also true that, for whatever reason, lawyers tend to be very overrepresented in lawmaking AFAICT.
Nevertheless, the prudent assumption in pursuing a law degree would be that you will be doing traditional lawyering for a while (maybe at least a decade) before being able to branch out into areas like policy or politics. This is the modal career path for lawyers and so you should assume it would be yours, too. For commercial law, this can entail grueling hours—you should be very clear-eyed about that. Opportunities within government can be both more livable and higher leverage, while still prestigious and good career experience (at the cost, of course, of lower pay).
Lesser quantitative skills are certainly more common among lawyers, though in many areas of law (e.g., tax, securities) they are important. It’s also true that philosophers tend to do well in law due to similar skill requirements. So overall, I tend to agree that law is the better option here (as opposed only to an MPP). However, I’d only pursue the law degree if you’re comfortable working as a lawyer in some capacity for a while, before pursuing things like policy or politics.
Hey Cullen, I’m a bit confused about why you should assume that you would do traditional lawyering for so long. The fact it’s the modal path could just mean most law-schoolers want to be lawyers—which seems probably true. So maybe if you want to do policy, you can jump in straight away.
Fair points. My impression is that it’s actually just hard to get into those lines of work without substantial experience. US law school is also just structured to make getting traditional law jobs much easier than policy jobs. I also think it’s often prudent to model oneself as the median person in the reference class, even if there’s good reason to think that one is not. Finally, empirically, most EAs that I knew in law school did in fact end up working as traditional lawyers.
Idk about Australia but in America politics is patronage-based and you’re not getting a political job without connections. You might get lucky and have those connections right out of school, through professors, work on a campaign, etc., or you might not. And if your boss leaves office you’re probably out of a job. So a lot depends on how long it takes you to get connections that have a job opening you want. Also, if you’re not in DC, your state capital, or some other policy hub (i.e. major cities where federal agencies have regional offices), your only route into policy may be running for office yourself, which requires being established in your community.
There is the civil service in theory but even that is political, just in a different way. You won’t get a civil service job without experience, and getting experience requires connections. But it’s less about having helped your Congressman get elected and more about knowing the DA’s cousin so you can get a job as an Assistant DA and then go to work as a fed in 5 years once you have the experience.
One thing that I would like to do more research on is the question of how valuable legal research and legal policy work is overall, in comparison to the work done by generalists. 80K hours seem somewhat pessimistic about law, so reading your more optimistic perspective (and things like the Legal Priorities Project) is really fascinating to me. It’s really hard to know whether one could do more good doing either, A: improving policy as a generalist in The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, The Australian Department of Defence (etc), or B: focusing specifically on law, in The Attorney General’s Department, The Australian Law Reform Commission (etc). Of course, even if A is better (though I’m not saying it is), doing A poorly is obviously much worse than doing B well. Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if many non-entry level policy positions are really competitive, and thus I might be ‘capped’ as a generalist in a way that I would not be if I focused on law. It would also be bad if I managed to reach an influential generalist position through charisma (or whatever) and ended up taking up a spot that ought to have been filled by someone who was quantitatively talented.
I found your point about traditional lawyering for a while really interesting. I actually think I might enjoy being a lawyer more than being a policy advisor (though it’s hard to be sure), based on the research I’ve done thus far. What worries me is whether I could be a traditional lawyer with a clear conscience. 80K has several articles that (whether correctly or not) heavily emphasize the amount of good one can do as a generalist in the public service. On the other hand, it’s very possible that those articles don’t really apply to me, given the (perhaps atypical) gap between my verbal and quantitative aptitude. I get the general sense that it might be better for me to excel as a lawyer rather than scrape by as a generalist, because doing a great job allows one to rise to more influential positions, and earn more money (which I could donate to orgs like EA). It could also be the case that being a lawyer for a while might eventually lead to a role which I would have been unable to get if I had started as a generalist, in which case not having a direct impact for an extended period might ultimately be worthwhile.
Unfortunately I’m not sure I have great answers to this question given my lack of knowledge about the Australian law ecosystem. I would defer more heavily to those who, like Michael, know much more about that.
As Michael pointed out, law is not very well tailored to policy careers generally in the sense that it both teaches you much more than you need to know for policy in some areas (e.g., the minutiae of contract law) and much less in others (e.g., how to analyze proposed policy changes, economic/fiscal policy). However, it’s also true that, for whatever reason, lawyers tend to be very overrepresented in lawmaking AFAICT.
Nevertheless, the prudent assumption in pursuing a law degree would be that you will be doing traditional lawyering for a while (maybe at least a decade) before being able to branch out into areas like policy or politics. This is the modal career path for lawyers and so you should assume it would be yours, too. For commercial law, this can entail grueling hours—you should be very clear-eyed about that. Opportunities within government can be both more livable and higher leverage, while still prestigious and good career experience (at the cost, of course, of lower pay).
Lesser quantitative skills are certainly more common among lawyers, though in many areas of law (e.g., tax, securities) they are important. It’s also true that philosophers tend to do well in law due to similar skill requirements. So overall, I tend to agree that law is the better option here (as opposed only to an MPP). However, I’d only pursue the law degree if you’re comfortable working as a lawyer in some capacity for a while, before pursuing things like policy or politics.
Hope this helps!
Hey Cullen, I’m a bit confused about why you should assume that you would do traditional lawyering for so long. The fact it’s the modal path could just mean most law-schoolers want to be lawyers—which seems probably true. So maybe if you want to do policy, you can jump in straight away.
Fair points. My impression is that it’s actually just hard to get into those lines of work without substantial experience. US law school is also just structured to make getting traditional law jobs much easier than policy jobs. I also think it’s often prudent to model oneself as the median person in the reference class, even if there’s good reason to think that one is not. Finally, empirically, most EAs that I knew in law school did in fact end up working as traditional lawyers.
Thanks for the clarification!
Idk about Australia but in America politics is patronage-based and you’re not getting a political job without connections. You might get lucky and have those connections right out of school, through professors, work on a campaign, etc., or you might not. And if your boss leaves office you’re probably out of a job. So a lot depends on how long it takes you to get connections that have a job opening you want. Also, if you’re not in DC, your state capital, or some other policy hub (i.e. major cities where federal agencies have regional offices), your only route into policy may be running for office yourself, which requires being established in your community.
There is the civil service in theory but even that is political, just in a different way. You won’t get a civil service job without experience, and getting experience requires connections. But it’s less about having helped your Congressman get elected and more about knowing the DA’s cousin so you can get a job as an Assistant DA and then go to work as a fed in 5 years once you have the experience.
Thanks a lot for your response, Cullen!
One thing that I would like to do more research on is the question of how valuable legal research and legal policy work is overall, in comparison to the work done by generalists.
80K hours seem somewhat pessimistic about law, so reading your more optimistic perspective (and things like the Legal Priorities Project) is really fascinating to me. It’s really hard to know whether one could do more good doing either, A: improving policy as a generalist in The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, The Australian Department of Defence (etc), or B: focusing specifically on law, in The Attorney General’s Department, The Australian Law Reform Commission (etc). Of course, even if A is better (though I’m not saying it is), doing A poorly is obviously much worse than doing B well. Honestly, I’m starting to wonder if many non-entry level policy positions are really competitive, and thus I might be ‘capped’ as a generalist in a way that I would not be if I focused on law. It would also be bad if I managed to reach an influential generalist position through charisma (or whatever) and ended up taking up a spot that ought to have been filled by someone who was quantitatively talented.
I found your point about traditional lawyering for a while really interesting. I actually think I might enjoy being a lawyer more than being a policy advisor (though it’s hard to be sure), based on the research I’ve done thus far. What worries me is whether I could be a traditional lawyer with a clear conscience. 80K has several articles that (whether correctly or not) heavily emphasize the amount of good one can do as a generalist in the public service. On the other hand, it’s very possible that those articles don’t really apply to me, given the (perhaps atypical) gap between my verbal and quantitative aptitude. I get the general sense that it might be better for me to excel as a lawyer rather than scrape by as a generalist, because doing a great job allows one to rise to more influential positions, and earn more money (which I could donate to orgs like EA). It could also be the case that being a lawyer for a while might eventually lead to a role which I would have been unable to get if I had started as a generalist, in which case not having a direct impact for an extended period might ultimately be worthwhile.