How Fantasy Novels Led Me To Law School

I’m a first year law student, and I can tell you that people go to law school for a lot of different reasons. Some individuals want to vigorously prosecute or defend people accused of committing crimes. Others have been told that they’re good at arguing and should become a lawyer. Some people are interested in carefully studying the law while others can’t wait to get out of school and start practicing. I even met one person in my class who wants to go into voice acting and music production and has no intention of becoming a practicing lawyer. There are so many different things that people want to accomplish through law school.

My journey to law school may not be unique, but it’s not one that I’ve heard from my classmates or attorneys. I thought I would share my story so that people can see that there isn’t one correct reason for going to law school. Maybe, like me, you’ve never really thought about going to law school before. You think it’s this stuffy, ultracompetitive place filled with people who like to talk over one another (well, maybe that last part is mildly true). But then, somehow, you realize that there is something that you want to do or learn in life and that law school actually might help you on that path. It isn’t the ultimate destination, but it is certainly a helpful step on so many different pathways.

So why did I ultimately decide to go to law school?

When I was in third grade, I read Harry Potter for the first time and fell in love with fantasy. To this day, I enjoy immersing myself in new worlds filled with magic and all sorts of impossible circumstances. I also write stories of my own. The first story I can remember writing was about a crocodile who struggled to fit in with his classmates because he grew up speaking a different language. Since then, I have written a story about a mouse living in a laboratory, a drama about a protagonist who learns that they are nonbinary, and now I am trying to publish a novel about a human and a dragon who explore the post-apocalyptic landscape. Along the way, they do their best to learn about the past and the ways in which communities were torn apart, and how they can be brought together again (You can listen to this story and my friends and I workshopping it on our podcast, “Determination, Deliberation, and Dragons”).

In third grade, I thought I was just having fun exploring worlds that were so unlike the one I live in. Now, I realize that what drew me to fantasy was its ability to highlight injustices, problems, solutions, hopes, and experiences that do exist in our world. My stories weren’t purely fantastical, but were ways for me to think about how my brother was treated in an English-speaking school when he only knew Greek, the insensitive treatment of the mice in the cancer research lab I worked at, the restrictiveness of gender norms, and finally, the importance of meeting people from different places and backgrounds. Fantasy can lead us to confront the injustices we see in our world and helps us to imagine who we want to be. Fantasy helped me realize that I don’t want to just read and write about the things I care about. I want to put my reading, writing skills, energy, and creativity towards something practical. This is why I want to be a lawyer.

Perhaps this sounds like a bit of a stretch. How many lawyers were led to their profession by Harry Potter? The law deals in fact, not magic. But for me, fantasy was inseparable from the real world. My high school physics teacher always told us that if we wanted to understand a theory, we had to bring it to its extremes. For me, fantasy is a way to lay out the problems in our world to their extremes, revealing various injustices that might otherwise go unnoticed. It helps us imagine what the world might be like if we worked to make certain things better. In my case, I’ve always cared about the environment. I’ve hiked most of the 46 tallest mountains in the Adirondacks, and I’ve taken plenty of earth science courses and used my technical knowledge to create educational programs about water quality and the impacts of nitrogen and phosphorous on marine ecosystems. Protecting the environment has always been important to me, but the way in which I think about environmental protection and the problems that I care most strongly about are influenced by fantasy and the stories I read and write.

One example that comes to mind is The Stone Gods by Jeannette Winterson. It tells three stories of what might be Earth. Rather than fight climate change or move society towards a more sustainable future, the civilizations in the novel decide to colonize a new planet which then falls prey to the same problems as on the original planet. Problems are brought to their extremes as the author poses the classic problem of the consequences of evading a looming crisis. The book isn’t a guide to the specifics of that question, but its power is that it introduces that question and lets us use our imagination as we think through the possibilities, paired with data from scientists of course. I have certainly been pushed to think through my current actions and attitudes toward the environment. Books like The Stone Gods have led me to become more invested in taking care of the environment than I otherwise would have been.

I do not think I would have studied earth science or geography if not for these fantasy books that made me more interested in understanding how the world works. My interest in the law is similarly built on the imaginative possibilities of fantasy novels. As I continue to read and my sense of what is possible develops, I want to be able to bring this creativity and hope to the law and use it to help others. Fantasy allows us the space to imagine a just future, but as a lawyer, I’ll have more power to try to make that a reality.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Consider checking out my podcast, “Determination, Deliberation, and Dragons.” My friends and I workshop original stories, analyze books and films, and interview authors and other creative people.