Don’t worry if I haven’t responded to your e-mail yet. Tete-a-tetes will be scheduled as time permits, and your time will come!

I just wanted to respond to the most common inquiry I received, which went something like this:

“Vishnu! You complete me. I’m going to write you e-mails everyday like in that movie based on the novel ‘The Notebook,’ and it doesn’t matter when you don’t reply because I’ll just assume that your mother is intercepting them and that you’ll read them someday and come find me and love me forever.

“I cut out your picture from the paper, blew it up to life-size and put it on Roger Federer’s body because, from what I hear, you two have the same body type. I then pasted it to my ceiling and the inside of my eyelids.

“I just have one question for you: Should I go to law school? On the one hand, it’ll make me more like you, which is AWESOME. At the same time, I hear it’s kind of a horrible experience and that being a lawyer is mostly unsatisfying. Please help me!”

First off, you’re right, Roger and I do look a lot alike. A lot.

As to your law school anxieties, help you I will. Based on my time here at the Law School, I’d say that the spectrum of rationales that brought people here has two ends: on the one side you have dreamers who’ve always wanted to be lawyers, and on the other you have roamers who really didn’t have anywhere else to go. Some people who end up in law school are neither or both of these — many seem to just have $180,000 burning a hole in their garter — but I think that addressing the promise and potential pitfalls of each individually is worthwhile.

1. The dreamer: So, you brought assault charges against the OBGYN who spanked you after delivery, eh? First words out of your mouth were ‘MPC S211.3’? Kudos. Nothing wrong with personal motivation.

The potential downfall of being a dreamer is that, unlike doctors and computer programmers, kids dreaming of becoming lawyers have very little idea what it is that most lawyers actually do. As some of you may already know, very few lawyers spend any significant time arguing in front of a jury; the majority of their efforts are devoted to the infinitely more humble tasks of researching case law and writing briefs. Some of you might enjoy finding yourself in bed with Westlaw (or its arch-nemesis and scorned lover LexisNexis), but the connection to whatever the dreamer imagined a lawyer’s life to be is minimal.

2. The roamer: So, you took the LSAT, you did pretty well, and you have a pretty stellar GPA. To top it off, you triple-majored in philosophy, classics and women’s studies, and there’s really nothing else that you can occupy yourself with (other than becoming an I-banker or consultant, which the very thought of doing abhors your liberal sensibilities).

Well, the downside of being a roamer in law school is that, if you’re not really sure why you’re here, it’s all the more difficult to motivate yourself through the tough times. Granted, after law school you’ll be able to find yourself a lucrative career that is at least sometimes intellectually challenging, but is money alone enough for you to work 20-hour days? Might you be misdirecting the amazing talents that you’ve been given and cheating yourself in the process by spending the majority of your energy on M&As?

Look, whether you’re a dreamer or a roamer, law school is hard: you’re probably going to get worse grades than ever before, the students can be really competitive, tuition is ridiculous and it is really easy to become yet another cog in the legal-industrial complex. There really is no right decision to make. Unless, that is, you come to law school to meet people like me, in which case, I should warn you, I’m kind of a rare find (which is probably a good thing).

If Vishnu hasn’t yet shaken your law school aspirations, please contact him at vishnus@stanford.edu.