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Comment by tasty_freeze | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how this is great advice. You might as well say: if you can, go to med school so that when you have to deal with the medical establishment, you know how it works. Spend years as a carpenters apprentice so when you buy a house you will be able to recognize the quality/problems it has. etc

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It’s because (according to this thinking), a legal background combines well with almost anything else you end up doing as long as terms, contracts, long documents and regulations are unavoidable. Other fields are also useful, and the rigor from studying, e.g., medicine, may be useful for the discipline it instills, but aren’t as ubiquitous and scary to laypersons as law.

It’s why you see a lot of COOs and CEOs with some legal background or at least familiarity.

> It’s why you see a lot of COOs and CEOs with some legal background or at least familiarity.

An alternative hypothesis based on people I know - traditionally, smart/middle-to-high class people pick between medicine, law, and finance, with law school being the default. Then many of these people realize they don't like practicing law so they transition into something else.

That’s reasonable. I think law’s especially well suited to that, too, because the lawyer job market is in tatters compared to medicine right now (no idea about finance.) The comparative advantage of using the degree to complement another field can be worth more than actually practicing.

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