Don't be a lawyer

Origin

‘Don’t Be a Lawyer’ is a song from the CW musical comedy-drama Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It appears in season 4, episode 3, ‘I’m on My Own Path’, broadcast on October 26th, 2018, sung by Jim — played by Burl Moseley — to talk someone out of going to law school.

The lyric simply lists what the job is actually like: endless hours, the emotional labour of carrying other people’s disputes, student debt, and days spent reviewing documents rather than delivering the courtroom speeches television had promised. The song was written by Rachel Bloom, Jack Dolgen and Adam Schlesinger.

Spread

What carried it out of the show was the legal profession itself. Soon after broadcast the American legal trade outlet Above the Law covered it as a hilarious new song cautioning people off the career, and law students and practising lawyers began sharing it on the grounds that it was documentary rather than parody. Career-change sites run by former attorneys quoted it too.

From there it spread on Twitter and Instagram, a single line at a time, attached to whatever the poster was going through. Because the source is a musical number, clip and audio travel together; eventually people who had never seen the show used the title phrase on its own, as an idiom.

Usage

A half-joking attempt to dissuade someone considering a legal career
Self-deprecation from any overworked professional
Swapped as ‘Don’t be a ___’ with the occupation changed

It matters that this is not actually contempt for lawyers. It reads as self-deprecation among people who know the job from inside, so an outsider wielding it aggressively loses the original tone entirely.