The day I quit from law school is the day I won my life back. You see I’ve been a consistent honors student ever since pre-school until my days in college. I was a solicitor after I graduated and decided to pursue my studies in the law to become a barrister.
My whole life was ahead of me. I could see myself being called up by important people asking for legal advice, given special treatment wherever I may go, and most of all, earn a hefty paycheck every time I win a case. Who knows? I may have even been elected to Parliament.
Nevertheless, I cut my dream short the moment we talked about car accident claims in class. We talked about this case, the name of which I refuse to divulge, in which the person who was injured by a rushing van lost his car accident claims. As I found out, since he was the one who was technically at fault since he was crossing the road not at the pedestrian lane or by looking carefully at the road, he did not merit the compensation he was asking for. The person who injured him, who happened to be quite an obnoxious man, even had the gall to demand him afterward, arguing that being demanded a claim against was “emotionally traumatic.”
That was the time I knew I was not fit to be a barrister. This is not because I am squeamish at all. I have three pet tarantulas and I recently bought a new bulldog. Rather, my problem was with the legal interpretation which our justice system takes for granted. Apparently, in the positivist tradition, the tradition which largely dominated our country’s jurisprudence, the law must be followed to the letter, except in extreme cases.
The one which shocked me was not one of those cases. Thus, the injured person not being given a break by our lawyers, he had to suffer a legal defeat in addition to his physical pain. What bothers me about this is that it appears as though our legal system has lost touch with morality, as if we could dispense with the ideas of good and evil, so long as we obey the law literally. Moreover, it also seemed to me that our justice system has forgotten that the law is supposed to harmonize relations in society. This is not at all what I think it does.
So I left law school and started studying medicine. My parents, who are paying or my tuition, are not at all too happy about my change of heart. But I know deep inside, they love me too much to ever bear a grudge.
My whole life was ahead of me. I could see myself being called up by important people asking for legal advice, given special treatment wherever I may go, and most of all, earn a hefty paycheck every time I win a case. Who knows? I may have even been elected to Parliament.
Nevertheless, I cut my dream short the moment we talked about car accident claims in class. We talked about this case, the name of which I refuse to divulge, in which the person who was injured by a rushing van lost his car accident claims. As I found out, since he was the one who was technically at fault since he was crossing the road not at the pedestrian lane or by looking carefully at the road, he did not merit the compensation he was asking for. The person who injured him, who happened to be quite an obnoxious man, even had the gall to demand him afterward, arguing that being demanded a claim against was “emotionally traumatic.”
That was the time I knew I was not fit to be a barrister. This is not because I am squeamish at all. I have three pet tarantulas and I recently bought a new bulldog. Rather, my problem was with the legal interpretation which our justice system takes for granted. Apparently, in the positivist tradition, the tradition which largely dominated our country’s jurisprudence, the law must be followed to the letter, except in extreme cases.
The one which shocked me was not one of those cases. Thus, the injured person not being given a break by our lawyers, he had to suffer a legal defeat in addition to his physical pain. What bothers me about this is that it appears as though our legal system has lost touch with morality, as if we could dispense with the ideas of good and evil, so long as we obey the law literally. Moreover, it also seemed to me that our justice system has forgotten that the law is supposed to harmonize relations in society. This is not at all what I think it does.
So I left law school and started studying medicine. My parents, who are paying or my tuition, are not at all too happy about my change of heart. But I know deep inside, they love me too much to ever bear a grudge.
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