The Aspiring Lawyer

First of all, I don’t know any other law students.  And, the only lawyers I know don’t have the same problem I have.

I am entering law school with house, a wife, and two children.

I need to have plan in place for the three years of law school, but especially the first year.  This means some very specific budgeting and planning for a drop in household income, a big one.

I am trying to adjust and accelerate some of my ventures to increase the passive revenue I receive.  Currently, my passive income is very low, just about non-existent.  Most of my income is coming to me through my consulting company I co-founded.  I expect to continue to do some consulting while in law school, but not at the same level as now.  The time I will be dedicating to consulting will be dropping about 75%.

I am trying to add onto this business, but it is not easy and is a bit time-consuming.  I am trying to add a division that provides virtual, or remote, accounting and bookkeeping.  I can outsource most of the actual labor to contractors and simply oversee and review the work of others.  There are costs and risk associated with this business model and I am reviewing them now.

I operate a couple online stores, a stand-alone website and an eBay store.  I haven’t really done much with the stand-alone site and am accelerating that portion of the venture.  The online stores operate on a drop-shipping model, although I do hold a small amount of inventory on an ongoing basis.

eBay fees really chip away at the profit margin and make it difficult to achieve large profit margins in this business model.  The standalone website has a much better chance of a larger profit margin since I would not need to increase prices to offset the eBay final value fees.

This is just another challenge on the road to becoming a lawyer.  I am sure that most, if not all, incoming students need to take the same steps and plan their finances out.  If you don’t have a solid budget and financial plan in place, law school could cause big problems.  Although you can get loans that will provide some living expenses, it is easier to live frugally now than have to live frugally due to debt payments later.

On top of these challenges, there is the actual academic challenge of law school.  That, I will get into later, in another post.