From Lawyer to Programmer

The article states "law is perhaps the only field where being a pessimist is actually an advantage", but I actually find this is an attribute that programmers and lawyers share. In developing code, one is always trying to think of all the possible inputs and outputs includes the unintended corner cases in order to write robust code.<p>I would say the two professions are more alike than credit is given, and working as a programmer in a lawyer-heavy firm, I've often been told by those in the legal profession that programmers have the ability to think logically stepwise through law more clearly than others.

It's been just over 3 years since I last practiced law, and I just let my last state license go inactive. I couldn't be happier with how things have turned out. The job hunt can be frustrating, but after a few months, someone took a chance on me as a mobile developer, and now I've got 3 years experience in a decently hot field. The best part may be the people. There are jerks in every occupation, but nothing attracts and cultivates horrible personalities - bosses, co-workers, and especially clients - like a law office.

I quit law school because I could see it was going to be a misery.<p>(This is a less dramatic situation in Australia because law is an undergraduate degree in this country).<p>Nevertheless, I greatly value the habits of thought that law school taught. I find the legal way of thinking illuminates a lot of the work I do, and the practice in writing brief upon opinion upon statement upon tutorial paper is an education in itself.

Good for you. I'm in the middle of a similar career shift. I studied food science in college with bright-eyed dreams of entering food product development. Instead, I ended up a front-line supervisor at a factory and it was the most miserable experience. I knew I was good at programming and I was obsessed with it as a young kid, but it was never something that I felt was "cool" to study and none of my friends did anything like that. (Girls don't like computers, that stuff's for nerds! And I still felt like that in college, even at a heavily engineering school.)<p>It makes me really happy to see other women become programmers after other careers. We aren't alone!

What is a recommended accelerated developer program like hackbright but for everyone(not just women)?

I quit teaching very recently (I have a Masters in English) to pursue programming as well. In all careers you make a lot of mistakes, but with teaching, you only get another crack at the problem once a year. If you create a terrible lesson, you agonize about it, and you might not get it right the second time either.<p>Add to that the fact that schools are always really slow to change, requiring you to fight for anything remotely progressive (the school I was teaching in graded multiple choice entrance exams by hand); it's really easy to get sucked into the traditional educational model even if you don't believe in it; and teaching doesn't allow for the creativity I want in my life.<p>I suddenly realized that I wanted to be creating not evaluating — to be always learning and building on what <i>I</i> know. Programming does seem to offer that.

"I had considered only my ambition and values, without stopping to think in an honest, meaningful way about what would make me happy on a day-to-day basis"<p>Sad thing is, <i>most</i> people don't think about what makes them happy. They simply try to live up to societal norms &#38; expectations.<p>Here's one of my favorite quotes from John Lennon:<p>"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life."

I've often thought that legal reasoning and thinking computationally are very close kin, being the only two vocations with the job description of "logician" so to me this just sounds like a very reasonable lateral move—albeit, one with more challenges than most. I wish the OP luck... although I think excellent software engineering requires a healthy dose of pessimism too.<p>Sidenote: Charles Stross explores the intersection of computation and law (and many other ideas) in Accelerando (think, as the Singularity takes hold, sentient business plans with Turing complete articles of incorporation rule the ball of mostly dust that used to be the solar system). It's a free and enjoyable ebook:<p><a href="http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...</a>

Here's another one (not written by me): "My Story: From Lawyer to Ruby Hacker" <a href="http://coffeespoonsofcode.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/my-story-from-lawyer-to-ruby-hacker/" rel="nofollow">http://coffeespoonsofcode.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/my-story-...</a><p>It's always interesting to see these types of posts on HN. I disliked the whole 'law thing' so much that after graduating from law school and passing the bar, I never applied for a single legal job but instead went into tech (which has been my true passion since I was 9 years old). In my case, I learned that it's always a bad idea to live out someone else's dreams instead of your own. In other words: don't go to law school simply because your parents/spouse/etc want you to.

I'm a developer who has worked in law firms for over 10 years. There is an interesting overlapping career for legal/IT literate people - the Business Analyst. A good Business Analyst can analyze legal processes and recommend suitable IT solutions to help automate/streamline the legal workflow. One of the biggest problems law firms face is the disconnect between lawyers and technology. Anyone who can understand both will find a rewarding career in a Business Analyst position.

This is an interesting story, and as a hardware engineer looking to get into pure coding, I find it encouraging. That said, there's no shortage of online code-camps that are willing to accept your tuition. As my company isn't going to front the $5-10k that many schools want to charge, I'm more interested in hearing about the employment prospects/ROI that result from these schools.

The "Law School changes how you think" line seems to be a popular one, but I'm not sure I buy the premise that it's inherently different. Anyone know of studies done to compare neurological effects between fields of study? I wonder if she'll feel the same about coding after finishing hackbright.

One of my former colleagues shocked me when he revealed that he was a medical doctor but gave it up because he hated it. Instead, we hacked on software together. It's amazing how many different backgrounds there are in the field of programming (I went to uni to be an economist).

Hehe... Good luck in your new career, I hope it's a good fit. The last lawyer-turned-software-guy I met decided to go back after a couple of years!