Remember when they say, good things come in the most unlikely of situations? Well, for me this was sort of true. Before I delve into answering this - "my journey as a law student into tech", I need to give a little bit of background information.
From my Part 1 days as a Law student from Obafemi Awolowo University, I always knew that the conventional "lawyering" was not for me, I mean, the litigation part (going to court and screaming, My Lord, your humble servant. My Lord, May I?, lol). It was something I had no doubts about. I liked the idea of Corporate Law instead, though I had little to no idea what it entails, this was around 2018 - 19.
2019, I began to hear all the buzz about Technologies(like Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, etc.) This same year, I was already taking some courses on Ethical Hacking. Though, I have not finished the course yet, but I know when the urge comes again, I would start hacking away and become unstoppable.
Fast forward to early 2020, I got a remote internship with the INDIAN SOCIETY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND LAW. This was IT! My eyes were opened to a lot of possibilities. There were reports, position statements, papers, and product-based solutions all on Artificial Intelligence already. I got to know more about AI and areas where it could be applied. I loved the idea of AI (my new found love, btw) and Law so I began to read more and ask a lot of questions.
I came across a lot of articles on applications of AI and I began to read up on them. Here is the thing, I thought that for me to be able to do anything tech coming from a non-technical background, I should be able to code, that it will give me an edge while applying for jobs in tech. So, I started learning how to code with Python as it was more suitable for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. It was not easy at and still is not a piece of cake, I had a lot of questions with little to no answers but I am grateful that I have some people now who I can go meet if I have any questions.
But, funny enough, about a month or two into learning how to code, I stumbled across an article that read "one does not need to learn how to code as a Law student or lawyer into tech."
Reading this as well as asking questions, I did not care a bit. In fact, I was surprisingly indifferent because I knew that come what may, I was going to continue learning to code.
Why you may ask?
- Well, the first and most important reason: THERE IS MONEY IN TECH! I love making money and getting the bags in dollars preferably, so continuing to learn to code was not such a bad idea.
- Gradually, I loved coding more. Seeing something come to life because of some lines of code was mind-blowing for me. Here, I could write lines of code, and voila, something has been built! I could create a bot or an app, automate tasks, build a website from scratch, and all sorts. It was fascinating, so I kept on.
- I always wanted to have a skill! High-income skills are very important in this time and age, so why not coding?
There have been a lot of downs and few exciting moments like when I contributed to my first open-source project, but I hope to see this to the end. Yes, I still have a lot of doubts but las las, things will fall in place.
Cheers to many more exciting moments.