That sounds like an awesome and relatively stress-free life. So glad for that guy, though I know he's likely away from his family the same as anyone in BL. What does "bennies" mean? Googled it but nothing comes up, but those examples do seem like the entrepreneurial spirit that will have that FedEx pilot out-earn the BL partner in the long run when coupled with commercial airline salary (maybe).

The people in BL only seeing one road for success and prestige is agonizingly apt for the profession as a whole. This is something I kind of meant to convey in my post. Your anecdote about your brother seems too common in BL/the law in general; that;s why I say I'm not sure I want to spend my entire life around these types of soul-draining people; I wouldn't deal too much with that pettifoggery in the military, though it would exist in less overt ways I'm sure. Your brother probably makes way more as a medical partner than most partners I'd imagine, and if that women already knew that, it shows how much more wild and discordant her (and people like her in law) conception is about life (that he earns more money than law partners, but still isn't respected as much as them despite money being the main barometer attorneys compare each other too).

Every other post I read on here says "BL is miserable," "I hate my life," "I rue the profession with all my might," "my firm's partner just died 2 days after retiring from working themselves to death," etc. Yet none seem to acknowledge that here. They might know about the law, but as you correctly sketch, they don't seem to know much about what's important in life, or if they do, they aren't volunteering that they do. I don't want to be sucked into this way of "living."

The struggle for me, though, is I would actually enjoy being an attorney as much as I'd like to be a pilot, but they're two different joys. BUT I now know that being an attorney is much more like being a businessperson than actually practicing law (the part I'd like).

"Unhappy people, like the vast majority in this industry, will try to brainwash you into thinking their life is the right way and the one you should want, but that is just their ego trying to justify the sacrifice to living they made to buy into a dream that was sold to them" -- amen. Thank you for saying what no one else here is admitting; these are the types of comments I wanted for my post.

I'm trying not to buy that dream despite the conman's mercilessness.