These 3 questions changed my mind about going to law school

This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Ryan Swann, 45, Vanguard’s chief data analytics officer. As law school applications surgeSwann shared how he weighed the decision to go to law school — and why he opted for an MBA instead. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to lean in and raise my hand for the hard things, even if I didn’t know how I would do it.

I was in the Marines while I was in undergrad and 9/11 happened, so I did a tour in Iraq. When I left the military, I entered the public sector and started working for the Department of the Treasury in 2006. In 2008, the financial crisis happened, and I raised my hand to be on the Tiger team, without knowledge about finance or economics.

To this day, the best advice I’ve received is to keep challenging yourself and never stop learning — and that’s what I did.

I had a great experience at the Treasury, and that told me a whole lot about markets that I didn’t know, and I was really intrigued by it. I ended up getting an MBA from Wharton in 2017 and a Master’s in public administration at Harvard in 2019 — but that wasn’t what I originally had in mind.

When I was around 30 years old, I had plans to go to law school. As a believer in life-long learning, I originally wanted to go to law school because I saw how smart data-driven policy could have a meaningful impact.

I took the LSAT, got a great score, and was going to the best law school I could get into. My mentor at the time was a great corporate lawyer, and I went to him to ask for a recommendation. His response blew my mind.

3 questions changed my trajectory

My mentor told me he would write my recommendation, but that nothing about me told him I liked law. Then, he asked me three questions that fundamentally changed my life.

The first question was: What is it that you want to accomplish?

The second question was: What about law is going to help you accomplish that?

The third question was: When you look up in five or 10 years, where do you want to be?

The three prompts made me question why we do the things we do, and whether we’re just chasing something or actually have a passion we want to learn about. That’s how I came back to business school — I had to do the self-reflection to ask myself, what do I need?

It helped me realize that there are multiple ways to achieve my goal. It also helped me uncover some benefits that law school didn’t afford at the time, like going deep on venture capital. As I dug deeper by talking to lawyers and business executives, I realized that I could create value for society in a variety of ways.

The process made me realize that while I’m a public servant at heart, I think like an innovator and entrepreneur. I saw I could expand on my tech background by applying advanced analytics in the business context to create value at large enterprises, startups, and non-profits — which I am doing today.

In my role as chief data analytics officer at Vanguard, I get to apply what I learned from grad school to help drive responsible innovation and deliver meaningful outcomes for our clients. It’s the perfect intersection of purpose, data, and leadership.

Keep learning, even if it’s not in grad school

I would encourage anyone thinking about going to grad school to step back and ask themselves what they are trying to solve and where they see themselves in five to 10 years. Have you talked to the people who are doing what you want to do? Use all that information to make an informed decision.

Sometimes, people look at master’s or business schools and say, “Oh, I need to do that to get there.” But do you really? Have you actually gone and talked about it with someone?

You can learn a lot in places where it’s not a full master’s. You can get a certificate or maybe enroll in a leadership program. Today, information is at your fingertips. You can use generative AI, you can use YouTube, you can use all of these resources to learn things that used to take years of training.

There are a lot of things that you can do. So you should be considerate about where you spend your time, resourcesand money to do that. But either way, you should never stop learning. Use the tools, people, and technology available to you to help you grow and develop.

No matter what path you take, you’re going to zigzag your way to success. Success is never a straight line.