april 2026

lawyering 💼 and cheffing 🥘

May 15, 2026

Hello and welcome. I hope you’re having a great start to the summer.

Check out my backflip on grass.

follow up to law school

About two and a half years ago, I started thinking about applying to law school, then applied. About two years ago, I got rejected .

Writing about that rejection, I said:

At the end of the day, I want to choose whether I go to law school, not the admissions committee.

To make that choice, I would need to get accepted. But I did not apply again. The following is a reflection on why.

reason 1: busy and lazy

Obvious and self-explanatory. Despite mostly enjoying the application process, I do have a full-time job, commitments after work, etc.

reason 2: practicality

As awful as it sounds, it’s not quite practical for me to pay to go to law school for three years without wanting to become a lawyer. I didn’t see myself practicing law when I first applied, and my desire hasn’t really grown since.

I was (and still am) interested in the law school part. What comes afterwards looks daunting. Building a career as a lawyer means articling, billable hours, passing the bar and working your way up in a firm. It seems that a central tenet is “paying your dues” which I have a hard time stomaching.

That’s not to say it wouldn’t be rewarding. There’s abundant history associated with the practice of law - that’s a big part of why I started considering it. And I’m sure being surrounded by ambitious law students pursuing a similar goal would indoctrinate me to some degree. It would also be cool to say I’m a software engineer who went to law school.

But looking at it from the outside, it’s hard to justify - especially since I already have a good job.

reason 3: LLMs

Speaking of, I’ve slowly become more aware of which jobs seem resilient to generative AI. My rough theory is the more reading and writing is involved, the less resilient the job is. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of that involved in lawyering - at least at the junior level.

Importantly, I don’t think that new grads at law firms will be rendered useless, or that law school will be reduced to an exercise in prompting. I’m just assuming that things will not remain the same. LLMs are very good at reading and writing English.

I also think it’s possible that LLMs simply remove the monotony, leaving more time for the interesting work. I’m sure that companies like Harvey have coherent, unified theories on how humans will fit into this new picture.

Regardless, the prevalence of LLMs will change how law works, and I’m not sure I feel confident about where I would end up when the dust settles.

reason 4: culinary school

One job I think is resilient to AI is being a chef. Even though there are countless recipes and cooking shows online, ChatGPT can’t cook food. That’s a job for robots - an industry that I’m confident will move much slower.

After all, I’m not going to give my robot a knife and stove. It doesn’t even have taste buds!!

Perhaps more importantly, there’s something distinctly human about cooking. I think it strikes the right balance of creativity and fine motor skills. Especially when you’re cooking for people you care about. It seems that all the people in my life whom I care about, I want to cook for.

It’s mostly for that reason that my interest has shifted from law school to culinary school.

I struggle with the practicality of this obviously. I want to go to culinary school so I’m better at cooking for my friends and family. The idea of being employed as a cook is still quite foreign - similar to the idea of being employed as a lawyer.

At least culinary school is cheaper.

a dichotomy

Shifting from LSAT logic puzzles to making mayonnaise from scratch feels like an interesting dichotomy. Logic vs emotion. Coolness vs warmth. It’s cool and logical in a lawyer’s office; it’s hot and emotional in a kitchen.

It’s interesting to consider how my own perception of the world has informed this shift. Cooking is certainly less political than law. Some lawyers get elected and change the rules and principles we live by. Some cooks do that too, but it’s less common. Cooks feel like outcasts - lawyers feel like valedictorians.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

Related to the above, I read Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (a cookbook) which I highly recommend. Here are some tips I gleaned:

you almost always want a sizzle when you put something in the pan
acid balances, salt enhances
fruits that get more sun while growing taste sweeter!
acid toughens things up (prevents softening/oxidizing)
baking soda makes things more tender (opposite of acid)
sauces are usually the source of acid in a meal
water expands when frozen (relevant for freezing produce)
simmering > boiling in most cases
emulsions are anything creamy
- one egg yolk (the emulsifier) can hold 3/4 cups of oil
butter is a very stable emulsion of fat + water + milk solids
- melting butter breaks the emulsion
oil > butter for cakes
the word crispy sells more food than almost any other adjective
drier ingredients leads to better browning
less stirring means more browning