Haven't been around these parts in awhile, good to see some old hands posting still.
If you have an entrepreneurial nature, are not extremely introverted, and willing to do a little smiling and dialing/targeted Email, a legal practice is one of the best small businesses to start... once the opportunity cost is overcome. This is because of a relatively high barrier to entry and 99% of lawyers being crap at sales and networking. It is a great business to bootstrap up because technology allows you to do it yourself with very little startup costs.
For example, I do lots of IT legal work these days with moderate tech background in software and hardware. In any middling city or larger, there are hundreds of IT businesses in the 1-5 mill revenue range who need a general counsel on call but don't have enough work or spare $$ for a fulltime GC. I can do this from anywhere, and am currently negotiating a big chunk of referred work from a new prospective IT client I haven't met and may never meet in person. So you can do the work from anywhere you have a few tech office basics... that every business hotel has these days.
Caveats. The BIG one is that 99% of legal practice, even litigation, is not "public speaking," but rather reading the same stacks and stacks and stacks of documents over and over and over again. Repetitive enough? Good, let it sink in. The law is mostly huge amounts of text, and if that turns you off, steer way clear. If you have very high reading comprehension on standardized tests, 90% or higher, this is surmountable. If not, it will drive you insane.
The other BIG caveat is law school will teach you less than nothing about being a competent, effective business lawyer. Law schools are heavily weighted toward litigation and outlier fact patterns/gotchas. So getting the degree and license is just the start of your training, which can be at some kind of firm or self-taught via the net... but this is a bit tough to do without some oversight from experienced practitioners.
Final caveat is opportunity cost. The time and money spent on a law degree are immense in that department. Would recommend another career path to most people considering it due to this alone. Best wishes with your career!
