Why are lawyers miserable: want a list? - Times Online

Why are lawyers mis­er­able: want a list? — Times Online:

1. the dehu­man­is­ing hours.
2. the yawn­ing gap between their intel­li­gence and the mind-​​numbing nature of their work. At least if you flipped burg­ers for a liv­ing you’d have the sat­is­fac­tion of giv­ing peo­ple momen­tary pleasure.
3. the yawn­ing gap between the ideals of those enter­ing the pro­fes­sion and the real­ity. Some go into law because they dream of fight­ing injus­tice, but dis­cover on enter­ing that most of what lawyers do ben­e­fits big business.
4. the cumu­la­tively low­er­ing nature of the work. We all end up being shaped by our careers. Being a good lawyer involves assum­ing that peo­ple will do the most awful things and that treach­ery is to be expected.
5. the vor­tex of hatred that envelops them entirely.
6. the self-​​inflicted nature of their suffering.

Looking back over this list, I realise lit­tle of it is going to elicit much sym­pa­thy. Somehow, I can’t see the Red Cross divert­ing resources away from Darfur to come to the res­cue of pro­fes­sion­als earn­ing £1,000 an hour.

But human mis­ery isn’t rel­a­tive, and I can’t help think­ing these prob­lems could be solved. All City firms need to do is take a moment or two to take a good look at them­selves. But that must be dif­fi­cult when time is (so much) money.

All of these points apply to U.S.-based lawyers, too, of course, per­haps even more than in the U.K. However, I think it is pos­si­ble (I hope it is) to be happy as a lawyer, although per­haps it means giv­ing up the lucra­tive and pres­ti­gious jobs with the big firms… (once the loans are paid off!) I cer­tainly know that as an indi­vid­ual, I will have to take this route.

Personally, although per­haps this is unlikely, I think the big firms would do well to try to improve their lawyer’s hap­pi­ness, instead of churn­ing through them quickly (as they repor­tadly do). Issues such as work-​​life bal­ance are more and more crit­i­cal for U.S. work­ers these days, includ­ing lawyers. While cen­ters such as the Center for WorkLife Law in San Francisco try to advo­cate for these issues, change is slow in the legal profession.

I sup­pose I can always go back to being a soft­ware developer.

(Via Slaw​.com, Rob Hyndman, and the WSJ Law Blog.)