Lawyers 'feel' lack of prestige in profession : New York Times
The biggest lesson I learned in 17 years of practicing law was that you couldn't separate who you are and what you stood for as a person with who you were and what you did as a lawyer. If the two didn't mesh, it meant for a big psychological drag. The symptoms of this drag: 'wondering if this was all the law was about?' and at times, worse, 'depression.'
In this mornings New York Times Alex Williams writes about the struggles of our legal profession and its fall from grace along with another noble profession, being a doctor. It's the latest in what seems to be onslaught of press and Internet discussion about lawyers being unhappy with their work. Money's not enough.
The pay is still good (sometimes very good), and the in-laws aren't exactly complaining. Still, something is missing, say many doctors, lawyers and career experts: the old sense of purpose, of respect, of living at the center of American society and embodying its definition of 'success.'..... ...[M]any doctors and lawyers still find the higher calling of their profession -- helping people -- as well as the prestige and money, worth the hard work. And the stars in either field are still that: commanding the handsome compensation and social cachet. But to others, the daily trudge serves as a constant reminder that the entrepreneur's autonomy simply can't be found in law or medicine.
How bad is it? Per the Times' Williams:
- Forty-four percent of lawyers recently surveyed by the American Bar Association said they would not recommend the profession to a young person.
- Law firms lose, on average, nearly a fifth of their associates in any given year.
- 20 percent of lawyers will suffer depression at some point in their careers.
- Law school applicants dropped to 83,500 in 2006 from 98,700 in 2004--representing a 6.7 percent drop between 2006 and 2005, on top of the 5.2 percent slip the previous year.
- As firms demand ever more billable hours, lawyers find less time for pro bono work -- the very thing that once gave them a sense of higher calling.
I'm not an expert, I just lived it. But I agree with Richard Florida, the author of 'The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life,' who told Williams 'There used to be this idea of having a separate work self and home self. Now they just want to be themselves. It's almost as if they're interviewing places to see if they fit them.'
If you're struggling as a lawyer, find something you love doing. Do work you'll find personally and professionally rewarding. May hurt in the pocketbook in the short term, but it's worth it.
Related post
Other takes on this NY Times article
- NYTimes Dissects Lawyer Unhappiness with a Note on Following Your Dreams from Vicoria Pynchon
- You Are Not How Much You Make from Samuel Bradley
- How the professions of law and medicine are changing from Marcia Oddi
- The Not So Cool Anymore Professions from Richard Florida
- A Plague On You, New York Times! from Jones Day's Beck and Herman
- The Prestige Factor: Have Lawyers Lost Their Status? from Peter Lattman
- More on Unhappy Lawyers from Carolyn Elefant
- Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief from JudiPhilly
If any of my children announced that they wanted to become lawyers, I'd disown them!
"How bad is it?"
That's it? That's as bad as it gets? Some of those points I can't speak to since they weak on their face. As to point 2, 20% will suffer from depression, how does that relate to the national average? 20% seems like a more than reasonable number.
To my mind, a larger study needs to be done on the effects the loss of our manufacturing base has on the citizens as a whole. The aforementioned prestige of the legal profession along with the decrease in manufacturing jobs would, on its face, seem to cause a rise in the number of lawyers.
As a returning student in pre-law, I've spoken to many 18-22yr olds who want to go to law school. Most are incapable of articulating why they want to go into the profession. That isn't to say they won't become good attorneys, but in my opinion it might be an indicator of how happy they will be with their choice down the road.
Even so, so what? I'd be willing to bet there are more people in service sector jobs who are telling their kids to stay in school.
I had always resented nasty lawyer jokes. My dad had been an attorney who wound up getting suspended and never went back into practice, and I am glad. He never really fit in.
Now at almost 90 years of age, he still argues against my statements that most lawyers and judges are corrupt. I do not have the heart to set him straight. I keep my anger hidden. I don't want to tell him that the lawyer who the court appointed to protect my mother from guardianship, actually lied and told the court that my mother consented to a guardian, when she didn’t. I can’t tell him that even though the statute says he must, the lawyer never fought for her wishes to come back home and die surrounded by people she knows and loves and who love her. I can not bring myself to tell him that the lawyers drained my mother’s entire estate and that they are going to sell her car and then probably the house so that she will be “medicaid eligible”. I keep it secret so he won’t become fearful that this might happen to him. No elderly person is safe.
So I live every day with heartache and and fear. I wonder what I will say when the inevitable moment comes when she runs out of money and the court appointed “counsel” puts her in a nursing home where, more than likely, she will be drugged to death.
Maybe a few of those lawyers who “find something missing” in their profession might find fulfilment in honesty and integrity by insisting that lawyers and judges have accountability. Wouldn’t that make for a better world.
Annie McKenna
2008