Hey, Brett, welcome to Permies!
As it happens, I am a lawyer, but I'm "stuck" for family/eldercare reasons in a jurisdiction that's a couple of thousand miles from the one where my law license applies. So I'm self-employed with a number of not-very-remunerative pursuits, practicing the fine
art of living cheap and spending little.
My professional specialty a dozen years ago or more was environmental law and natural resource law, though I tended to represent extractive industries because that's where the money was.
To address your question, I can see some interesting legal challenges for the
intentional community people (mostly surrounding novel
land ownership models and contractual sharing schemes) and some role for creative drafting of conservation easements that might make
permaculture land uses more economic, especially in jurisdictions with higher levels of land taxation. But honestly, I haven't seen much evidence of significant demand for permaculture-specific lawyering.
I went to law school from 1990 to 1993 and I still have student debt that's not paid off. Unless your "possible pathway" to the law will leave you debt-free at the end of it, I don't recommend it. The law is one of those professions that tends to drag people away from whatever cause or path
led them to law school; the economic pressures are such that if you aren't extremely strong-willed, seven years after law school you'll find yourself in a small office in a suburban strip mall or an urban tower, doing something you never imagined, for people you do not like, in a cause you aren't thrilled by, for a paycheck that only
seems generous before you subtract all the expenses of living an unsustainable urban or suburban lifestyle. I cannot recommend it. Moreover, I don't see a strong need for specifically permaculture-aware lawyers. All too often these days, any reasonable notion of sustainability has "no lawyers needed" build right into it.
That said, if you've got the right turn of mind law school is enormous fun. I found it to be three years of reading stories (every court case is a story) and arguing about those stories in
class (I love to argue). I'd say, don't let your love of
permaculture dissuade you from pursuing the law if being a lawyer seems fun to you.
Hope this helps!
