As Larry Bodine has recently pointed out, a lot of lawyers-to-be don’t care about making partner anymore.  For a more up-close look at this phenomenon, read this post from a first-year Indiana University law student:

I’ve found that I’m actually rather happy spending time with people that I like and who like me back, and that friends and family are way more important to me than any traditional notion of success in the legal world. To put it differently, I think it’s fair to say that I want to be a successful person first, and a successful lawyer second.

I think that I now see success in my career as something different than I did when I came to law school. I don’t want to work 80 hours a week and see the people I care about in the few hours in between; I want to work with people who are nice and well balanced and in an environment I like and still have time to have a life outside of my job. Whatever that entails, it’s what I’m interested in, and I think this post from Anonymous Law Student has a lot of insight and really gets to the heart of what matters to me in life these days.

The time is coming where money won’t be the motivator for young lawyers to take your firm’s offer that it used to be.  You’ve been warned.