I might not be qualified to address this, since I am not a priest. But I’ll give it a try.
The big thing is whether one feels called to the priesthood. As far back as I can remember, there was never a day when I thought I ought to be a priest. Even as a little boy, I knew I was called to have a wife and family, and at no time did that ever change. I have nothing negative to say about those who do have vocations. I think that is the greatest gift a man can have. But if you have thought at all that you do, you ought not to give it up lightly.
There is no way to compare the life of a priest and that of a lawyer. The priest is on one side of things. He has a single devotion to God and His people. There is a great clarity in that; a certitude, notwithstanding the doubts that might sometimes assail him. Lawyers, on the other hand (and I’m not condemning that life either) live in a world of unclarity, compromise and almost daily challenges to morality. It is precisely the lawyer’s function to be “half-committed” to his client. Never can a lawyer truly identify with his client or he is likely to lose his client’s cause. It is the lawyer’s function, as well, to “create reality”. Rarely does a lawyer really know the full reality of his client’s point of view, but it is his job to make that point of view the only one to which reality is attributed.
One of my favorite quotes (actually attributed to policemen, but equally applicable to lawyers) goes like this:
“the (lawyer) stands lightly in the present moment; at the same time both committed and detached; like a true Christian or a philosopher of old; who knows this world to be no home, but a wilderness.” A truly seasoned lawyer, who has “been through the wars” will admit the truth of that statement every time. A lawyer realizes, many times, that he has presented a “reality” that cannot truly be the reality. And yet, it is his job to present it; however little he might believe in it (unless he totally knows it’s false…which is another subject) And so, a lawyer ends up thinking of reality in a way different from others, and does think of the world as a wilderness, in which the human drama must, of necessity, be taken as a stage play.
A priest, on the other hand, is fully committed to a reality that is outside what the “client” thinks about it or wants to be true. I am sure priests witness things even worse than those lawyers routinely witness. Yet the priest is impelled to love the perpetrator; something lawyers cannot permit themselves to do, at least until after the “case” is over. The lawyer, remember, must remain both committed and detached. The priest may love a sinful person, but he is never required to present sinfulness as virtue. He never has to get his mind into a state of half-belief. I suspect most priests are far less cynical than are most lawyers.
That’s the best comparison I can draw, faulty though it surely is. Having said it, I repeat that I am not putting lawyers down, though it might seem so. I believe lawyers can be holy. But it is a different kind of holiness, and one that never quite seems so. Ultimately, a lawyer must learn to embrace his doubts. One of my favorite lines is the first line of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” : “In the middle of life’s road, I found myself in a dark wood, where the direct way was hidden from me…” A lawyer must learn to love the dark wood, and most good lawyers eventually do. A priest always knows the direct way.
We need good lawyers to defend the poor, defend the Church against attacks, like pro-life people being prosecuted under racketeering laws! I’m sure there are priests who are lawyers, and lawyers who became priests! 
