You're a lawyer!

By Shannon

"Jim's kinda hot.  Why don't you go for him?"  The text message from a fellow prosecutor read.  She was at a conference with Jim and they'd known each other for years.  It was night, so I knew they would be where all good cops and prosecutors are at night during a conference - a bar.  "Are you drunk?  He's married," I replied.  She sent a few more to me and I suddenly recognized the game.  I had a feeling he was sitting next to her and feeling me out to see if I'd be willing to embark on an affair.  My hunch was confirmed when she wrote, "You're awesome!  We're just messing with you."  Typical answer when you discover someone is not interested in you.  I wrote back and said, "Ask Jim why he hasn't helped me find a non-slutty single man."  Jim responded:  "Guys are intimidated by your job, but a real man wouldn't be.  A real man would appreciate you, but I don't know any who are single."  Isn't that always the case?  I actually had a secretary tell me that if my friends and I wanted men, we shouldn't have become lawyers.

Ann and I have bemoaned on this blog the lack of men interested in female lawyers.  The majority (like 90%) of my female lawyer friends and colleagues are single.  Men say they want smart girls and they may, but they don't want lawyers.  The men who do ask us out pick fights and argue with us on the first date (and second if we have a lapse in judgment and agree to another one).  They seem to think fighting turns us on or shows us that they're as smart as we are.  In truth it usually shows us how ignorant they are.  In reality most female lawyers HATE fighting.  The bit we do for a living is more than enough.  Other men won't fight, but they will harp on our title as in: 

"Well of course you would say that - you're a lawyer!" 

OR 

"Of course you like that movie - you're a lawyer!" 

OR 

"Of course you like to eat bottom-feeding scavengers - you're a lawyer!" 

If only we'd known what it would do to our social life, would we have still chosen law school?

Yet as Ann and I recently talked about the situation, we had an epiphany.  As Ann recounted all the fun and travel she'd had in her 20s in lieu of settling down, I thought of all the fun I'd had too.  Originally it started as a comparison of the frivolous things we'd wasted time doing instead of doing "important" things like raising babies and loving a man, but then it changed.  I couldn't help but think that I would not have traded my life, my experiences, or my education for an earlier start on "what really matters."  Life has favored me and many of my female lawyer friends with a kind of trifurcation.  When a family and love comes our way we will have had a fun, immature life in which we got to sow a lot of oats AND we will have had a mature life of fun, travel and cultural experiences on our own dime and on our own terms THEN we will get to participate in "what really matters." 

Though we tend to look with jealousy at those women who "have it all" I wonder: 

Would any of us REALLY have chosen to do it any differently?