For my information interview, I decided to interview my aunty, Tasha Rollins, who is a lawyer Tesch Law Offices, PC. I interviewed her this past weekend on Saturday, March 28, 2015. 
She started off with a B.A. in Sociology and a J.D. After she graduated from law school, she got a chance to clerk for the district court judge for two years. She was able to get a lot of experience right out of school and it was very prestigious work. The clerks are like the right hand man for the judge, so she got to experience going to the judge for decisions and writing down their opinions. Now she is an Associate Attorney at the Law Firm she works for in Park City. 
The educational background that would help in entering the law field would be graduating from an accredited law school and passing the bar exam, and thats just in order to practice law. In order to gain acceptance to an accredited law school, you have to have a bachelors degree and take the LSAT (Law School Admission Test). Your bachelor's can be in any field, but if you ever want to practice patent law you need a hard science undergrad (preferably in engineering, but at least a B.S.)
At Tasha's job, she works at a desk on a computer most of the day and reviews and responds to emails. She talks to clients on the phone and drafts pleading letters as well as demand letters. She works in an office with other attorneys and paralegals. She also meets with clients either at the office or go to court. 
Being a lawyer, she runs into many problems, especially with her clients. They can be very hard to deal with and with difficult clients comes unrealistic expectations or a lot of demands. Clients complain about their bill which can be annoying. Sometimes, new issues that clients come to her with can be very difficult to figure out what the best way to approach it is, especially when their isn't a lot of case law on that particular issue or related issues. Clients expect their lawyers to know everything and the law is too broad and changes too much for any one person to know everything, even in a certain field of law. 
With her job, she is a salary employee, which allows her to take any time off that she wants and pretty much work any hours that she wants, but at the end of each month, she is expected to reach a certain amount of billable hours, which is hard to do when she takes time off. She is expected to dress in business attire, or business casual throughout the week and to dress appropriately when she goes to court. Sometimes she can work from home if she doesn't have any client meetings or court scheduled. She also usually gets the evenings and weekends off. 
When asked what she finds most rewarding about her work, besides the money, she said that she enjoys going to court because it offers a nice change of pace and a break from her regular routine. She feels especially rewarded when the Judge rules in her favor or her client is pleased with the results. 
The salary for this field depends on a lot of different variables. If you are a government employee then your salary will be lower than if you work for a large corporation firm. How well you did in law school could also impact your starting salary and the type of law the firm specializes in. She said that generally though, the salary of a lawyer could range anywhere from $60k to $100k.
Because she just started with this job a couple of years ago, she hopes that in a few years she will be on her way to making partner at a firm or opening her own firm. In the long term sense, she may be exploring the option of becoming a judge. 
In this profession, a person must have good research and writing skills. They must be able to think on their feet and be professional all the time. If you go to court you also need the skill set of being good in speech and debate skills. 
With this career, the turn over can be high and experience leads to promotions. After a few years attorney generally seek to become partners at the firms they are with and have their name added to the firm. The last person who held her position was commuting from Salt Lake to Park City and was offered a position at a firm closer to home that practiced worker's compensation law, so he didn't have to deal with the billable hours. She is evaluated by the partner and gives her feedback periodically. She is also accountable to her clients for the quality of her work and they generally do not hesitate to let her know if they are not pleased with her work.  
Fortunately, she believes that the legal field is on an upswing from 2008, when it suffered after the market crashed. There are more positions opening up now. Becoming a lawyer is pretty straightforward as to what education you have to obtain and what you have to do (pass the bar) in order to practice the field. 
A law degree can open a lot of doors both in the legal field and in non-conversational positions. Aside from working as a government attorney or at a private law firm, you can work for universities, private businesses as in-house counsel, or in other HR and management-type positions. 
When there are openings in her career, they are advertised through the newspaper, internet, word-of-mouth, and through the personnel office. She still receives emails from her law school's career services department about new job postings. 
As advice to anyone trying to get into the law field, she says that they must do well in school. You have to have a good undergrad GPA and good score on the LSAT to get into a good law school. Going to a highly ranked law school helps open doors for positions after law school. A lot of third tier law schools have trouble placing their graduates and the graduates end up with a lot of law school debt and no job offerings that allow them to repay their student loans. She would also make sure that you REALLY want to be an attorney before going to law school because once you're in, you incur a lot of student debt fast (unless you have scholarships) and it's too late to change your mind at that point. A lot of people like the idea of being an attorney but once they get to law school, they realize how hard it is and how over sensationalized being an attorney really is. Law school is HARD! Keep that in mind.