Sometimes I ask myself whether becoming a lawyer was a great decision. I bill a lot of hours and work all the time, but sometimes the work is interesting enough that I really enjoy it. Often it's just tedious. If you set your mind to it, I'm sure you could go to law school. I loved law school...miss it every day. The question is whether you really want to do what the associates at your firm do on a daily basis.
It's true that you can do law office study in lieu of law school in Virginia, but very few people actually take this path. They also tend to not do so well on the bar exam. The traditional law school path is the easiest to being admitted to the bar. It's also nice that there are so many law schools in the DC area: Georgetown, GWU, GMU, American, Catholic, UDC, etc.