Excellent piece. Entirely opposite to my experience, but then I am a barrister in England & Wales (and a bunch more places if I fill in a forn) so my experience and practce are different.
I am beyond middle age. I am "aging out" of the barrister game, as it were and I find it heart-breaking. I love it. You don't, so good for you. It takes balls. A good man knows when to pull the trigger. Your family will benefit to no end is my prediction.
Thank you and I’m glad you’ve enjoyed your career. In the UK, barristers and solicitors do different things, whereas the functions are combined in the U.S., right?
Yes, exactly. Except the lines are blurred a bit. In terms of crime, the solicitor represents you in the police interview, likely in the lower court at first instance where your case gets allocated to the lower or higher court. Generally speaking, if it stays in the Magistrates' Court you'll have a solicitor or a new barrister doing the advocacy at trial (unless it's privately paid then we old people do that). Everything else used to be barristers only in Court, solicitors do the finding out what the client's version of events may be, corresponding with the court, choosing the barrister, and all that. Barristers advise along the way, in writing and in conference with the clients. Barristers have two clients: the defendant / lay client in civil matters and the solicitor.
You all do that in the same firm. Bet you have girls and boys who only do the court advocacy and others who only do the real work. Same system, different "framing."
Macho as it may sound, we barrister girls and boys are the people who get your case on Tuesday night, start the trial on Wednesday and win when the case can be won.
Interesting. I still don’t quite follow, but I like the idea of dividing the tasks. In your experience, does it keep things from becoming overwhelming?
No. Best case scenario, I have to check / verify everything given to me. Worst case, solicitor does no work at all. Prison happens. That cannot be any one's fault but mine so I have to ensure I cannot be at fault. I cannot blame the solicitor because I will be told I ought to have withdrawn due to inadequacy of brief. Oh, and also that's the career over because who would send me work after doing that?
Getting a not-guilty verdict never ever gets old. Worse than crack. One keeps chasing after it.
I would not ever be able to do what you did. People are rather more blasé about going to prison than they are about losing money. On a commercial scale? Insanity. Rapists going to prison after a fair trial is my biggest loss (& contribution to society). Losing thousands of people their pensions, jobs, companies is dangerous work. You are well out of it.
Good points about the difference between civil and criminal litigation. People do go bonkers over money because a lot of contract disputes or what have you involve two entirely legitimate points of view, but SOMEONE has to lose. In criminal cases, it's not like the defendant didn't do something--my understanding is that USUALLY a criminal trial involves how much to punish someone, not that they're as innocent as newborn babes.
The conviction rate, after trial, is in the 70%+ range in the Crown Court. Thankfully, I only find out my client did it when the jury says guilty. The rest plead. Worst thing ever? Getting the idea of "innocence" in my head. Hasn't happened for years, thank God, but that's nerve shredding.
Overworked, dishonest, incompetent, or all three . . . damn man that applies to many professions!
Regarding regret, I’m almost certain life would have turned out better had I either not gone to law school, or had just dropped out. There were other things I wanted to go to school for that might not have been as “high status,” for what that matters, but I would’ve probably excelled in because I cared about them instead of stagnating in a field I do not care about for 15 years. I live with this regret every day. I’m in my 40s and feel like I’m in the same plane I was in my 20s, just with more stress, responsibility, and debt.
"I read every cited case.6 Do you want to know what I found? I found that many did not stand for the proposition cited in support of a legal point. I also found that many stood for the opposite point."
Yep. I have won motions this way. Betting that the other guy is lazy or stupid is no way to go through life, son.
I've been at this for 30 years, and I don't dislike it as much as you do. It has supported my family, which is the floor under my discontent. It is not about me. So if I don't like it, so what? But if someone doesn't have that, it is harder.
The stress and worry and scrupulous care about what you say or write, all the time, is wearying. And even being on the other side, listening to the other guy and reading what he writes, waiting for one misstep so you can pounce on him, is wearying.
The best thing is when you can get paid to help someone get out of a jam. That happens from time to time.
But, yes, this article is all true and any disagreement is a matter of nuance not substance.
It’s good that you can tolerate the profession. I have tried to do so for a long time, but the inescapable conclusion is that law school was a mistake for me and I am not the type who excels at law. I don’t have the brain for it and I don’t have the temperament, or the interest. I cannot help but wonder how my life would have turned out had I not gone to law school nearly twenty years ago now, and it drives me mad if I dwell on it for too long. All those wasted years with literally nothing to show for them.
Regarding case citations, I’m glad I’m not the only one who has experienced this phenomenon. It’s scary. Are lawyers just lazy?
Once when I was working as a clerk on the trading floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, maybe February of 1987, the trader I worked for tried to place an order and the broker filled it wrong, and there was a shouting match about it, but the broker was a fixture there and my boss was not, so what should have been a winning trade was a shit sandwich. Life in the big city. I suppose somehow it was my fault. It always is, right? He turned to me and said "You cannot ever trust these guys, they are overworked, incompetent, or dishonest, and frequently all three." Same applies to lawyers.
No point in worrying about the time you were a lawyer. How do you know you would have made better decisions if you did something else? You change one fact about the past in a hypothetical, they all change. Maybe you would have stepped in front of a truck. Who knows? Water under the bridge. Play the cards you are holding. Everything else is illusory. Regret is a waste of time and energy. What already happened is a sunk cost. Forget it.
(If you are a Catholic you can pray, "Lord, I add to your Holy Cross, for the salvation of souls, all of my regrets, sadness, and disappointments, and all suffering and unhappiness and indignity from my legal career, and I ask you in your infinite kindness and mercy to give me light and strength to make good use of the remaining time in this life you have so kindly granted me. Your most holy will be done. Amen." Then, move on.)
Yes, yes, yes… Fellow disgruntled attorney, and fellow victim of first semester Civil Procedure, which I barely skated by in. My legal career was a total waste. I wound up working mostly as a glorified paralegal in compliance departments for girlbosses at meat grinding woke corporations, then I dabbled in sales where I made the same money but with new pressures. I was laid off from my most recent gig and had to take a night job as a waiter and, oddly, it’s more satisfying work. No boss breathing down your neck. Connection with real humans. Embrace your true personality rather than wearing a corporate mask. Just not the same money.
I also waited tables for a time while working as a lawyer (because the pay is not good) and I looked forward to that far more than my day job. You’re right: you get to interest with people. For some of us, we enjoy that.
I made next to nothing at my first law job outside of law school. I knew dudes who made 3x what I made right out of undergrad. It certainly makes a fellow question his path in life.
I'm not a lawyer, but I can relate to how you feel when I resigned from the TSA after 5 years on the job (nowhere near as long as your time as a lawyer, but it was the longest job I've held, and the only "real job"). There was that feeling of "wow, it's finally over", though you know it's a long time coming. And now I can finally focus myself on bigger and better things. And while I can't say I've made the best of my post-TSA years (it's been about 4 years now), I don't regret stepping away.
Congratulations on the move from your current job! Despite all your challenges, you will find the better parts of your legal training and experience to be beneficial to you and yours in future employment.
Weird tangent: Did you know that the "What, Me Worry?" tagline and the character of "Alfred E. Neuman" were part of an old advertisement for 'painless dentistry' before he was taken over by Mad Magazine? You apparently pulled your lawyer tooth. Feeling better?
All the best to you in all your future endeavors, young man!
I was confused when you said being a lawyer doesn't pay well, but then I saw that you entered law school three years after me...meaning you graduated in 2010 which was the absolute low point for hiring and pay for new lawyers. It took a couple years for the great recession to hit, but I recall that was the only year my firm considered not making permanent offers to associates.
It certainly has paid well the past few years...I'm not sure what type of law you did and where, but in my fly over state, new associate salaries skyrocketed the past few years. The pay is IMO the best thing about the job...I am certain I could not find another job that paid me remotely as much. I now pay several times more each year in income taxes than the total amount I made in the years I was working before law school (not complaining...the high taxes go with the high income).
I definitely hated the job the first decade or so. I found it became MUCH more enjoyable after becoming a partner and getting to the point where you are the one solely dealing with your clients and making decisions, not working for someone else's clients or another lawyer (and also no longer having to hit minimum billable requirements, though if anything I work even more now). I used to find 9 out of 10 days miserable, depressing, and stressful. Now I'd say only 1 out of 10 days is like that.
But I don't litigate. I definitely don't understand the litigators...they seem to ENJOY constantly being in battle mode every day, where the battle is money and not physical. I mostly do deals, where no one is trying to destroy the other side, just possibly get one over on them, and matters often end with everyone saying "congratulations, break out the champagne", not whatever litigants say to each other at the end of a case. I think that makes a huge difference, because I'm not dealing with hostility every day.
You didn't mention what I think is the worst part (other than the obvious, which is having to track all of your time): that you often can't stand your clients. Ranging from reasons between that they're just idiots or jerks or unreasonable to that you think they are actually borderline criminals and cheats. And yet you have to be on their side regardless. I DO like some of my clients, but sadly I cant say it's a majority. And when they're insistent on doing the dumbest or most counter-productive thing ever, despite your advice, you have to do it anyway. And then you don't get to say "I told you so" when it ends up blowing up in their face exactly like you told them it would, be cause clients don't pay lawyers to tell them how dumb they are.
One thing I was surprised to learn is that a lot of the crazy behavior that people blame on lawyers is not actually their fault. It's their clients. Easily 80% of my job is telling my clients why they should NOT do the thing they want to do, or why the aggressive action they want to take isn't going to end up in a good result. Sometimes if you tell them that too much, they just go find another lawyer who will tell them that the illegal, risky, and ineffective thing they want to do is okay. Though when that happens is usually a relief.
I did indeed graduate at the worst time ever: 2009. And I’m in the northeast where lawyers are a dime a ten dozen and law schools proliferate like weeds. To be fair, I made some poor decisions looking to work in areas of law that didn’t pan out and turned down one job offer in particular I should have leapt at, even though it was in an area I wasn’t too keen on (litigation). Naturally, I ended up in litigation, but a low-status kind . . . earning $38K out of law school. It was literally the only job I could get after 10 months of looking. It’s gotten better, salary wise, since then, but I’ve never made enough to make having gone to law school worth it. Biggest mistake of my life, hands down. And I’ve made plenty of mistakes.
What I did for the last 9 years was better, but it still involved overwork and litigation. I’m so much happier out of it, though I’m still always looking for other opportunities, as one does. Still, as much as I hated being a lawyer, my identity is still bound up in it and I still FEEL like a lawyer, which pisses me off and scares me in equal measure. Will this feeling ever go away? We’ll see.
I am always happy to read about people who enjoy and are doing well in the business though. Good for you!
“Bringing back dueling or some other sort of controlled violence for solving disputes might make society less litigious and better behaved. “ Andrew Jackson’s mother told him “Andy, the law is for property matters. Anything else, you take care of them things yourself”
I'm a businessman, not a lawyer, but I've wondered before how far I could have gone down the conservative judge path, with the understanding that there is an undersupply of conservatives with the credentials to become elite judges relative to how many appointments Republicans get to make.
I didn't take the LSAT but I've obliterated every standardized test in my life, for college went to a 2nd-tier elite school, makes me wonder if I could have gotten into an elite law school, and from there gone down the path to make it onto some shortlists for Republican Federal judge appointments.
There is no part of me that would want to be a lawyer for any other reason. As you observe, in the business world, a lawyer is just there to help the people who conduct the real analysis and make the real decisions cover their behinds. Doesn't seem fun in the least.
You probably could have, but your talents are better served by being in business.
I do agree that the not-evil side has a human capital issue. We generally don’t have the family connections and money needed to get into these elites schools and firms and therefore become judges in high courts, so if good people do want to get into the business, I support them even if I strenuously disagree. It’s a necessary evil.
But practically speaking, I did not find being a middleman enjoyable or fulfilling at all. You told someone which boxes to check. Wow, what an accomplishment.
Thank you for the insider look into the legal profession. And for the opportunity to access your comments section where there where so many more insights to be gained.
I really liked that you went to great effort to describe the details that explained how differently we on the outside see what is actually happening. I was one of those that were told frequently in reference to the debate thing: ‘you should be a lawyer’. Thankfully I never did become a lawyer because I see from my friends who did that it is not quite like I imagined.
My wish for you is that perhaps one day it shall all come full circle for you and even the lawyer years will inspire deep gratitude (perhaps after the debt is paid :-)
Susanna, thanks for reading and for the comment and for the kind words.
It's one of those professions where the popular assumptions about it have little to no bearing on what it's actually like. Television shows have done much to brainwash people, for lack of a better word, about the practice of law. Way more lawyers than anyone imagines work in low-pay, low-status, high-stress jobs with little to no room for advancement. Add it to the fact that, to be good at the job's big money making sectors, you do kind of need to be an amoral (or immoral) sociopath. If you make it rain, you can get away with all kinds of bad behavior, because the firm needs you. Just an awful, toxic enviroinment.
By the way, having read your pieces here on the interweb and, most importantly, not knowing you at all, I can say with absolute certainty that you have made the right decision. My daughter went for the top-level stuff like you do and didn't make it - happiest days of my life. It's horrible. I was a solicitor - not a commercial one but I knew lots of them - for a decade and no, it's not a life. Good man, good family man - you got out. Well done.
Thanks. It only took 15 years, and I made a lateral move, but at least I’m not doing legal stuff anymore. I hated every second of it. That’s no way to go through life. It changes your personality, and not in a good way. I used to be super self-confident and optimistic but that was a different person in a different era. Now I’m unsure and always worrying I made a mistake. Very risk averse. My life went downhill the second I went to law school. I wish I’d got rejected from all of them.
Thanks for the window into the legal profession. I have been particularly critical of lawyers,attorneys,shysters and ambulance chasers. But I also realize things are that way in any profession. My dig is you need a lawyer for practically everything. It’s just our system. Then you go to a judge and he’s a lawyer. He interprets the law made by lawmakers. When our lawmakers are also lawyers, to me that is a conflict of interest. It’s owning the system. I don’t hate lawyers, I even like some of them. My grandpa was a circuit court judge in Saratoga, NY. It’s just it comes down to ethics if our justice system is to work. Ethics has been sorely lacking for quite some time. Not just in the legal profession either. Nothing gets me pissed off more than the statement. “It’s just bidness” except for maybe “It’s just bidness” in the context of the Medical profession.
I enjoyed the article and the perspective. Thanks. 👍
Maybe somebody will write an article like this from a media perspective. Seeing as how most “journalists” are really operatives and also attorneys
Good points. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that our system has been set up by lawyers to keep legal professionals employed. Everything is legalistic and it’s ruining what should be basic human relations.
Congress is almost all lawyers. That should tell you a lot. Lots of people use law school as a platform for politics. These are what I consider the problem, because they’re clever—not smart!—and use trickery and technicalities to get what they want done to society, usually heedless of and insulated from its effects. Not my kind of people. Shakespeare might have written Dick the Butcher’s famous line in jest, but I agree with it wholeheartedly.
This piece reminds me of the advice I got from my long-suffering lawyer uncle when I was considering law school. I was one of those naifs more interested in "knowing the law" than practicing it, and my uncle certainly set me straight on that. Still, I'd put my law school applications together and the day before I was going to submit I thank my lucky stars to have gotten a job offer and off that track in life.
Welcome to the world of JD, but not practicing law! I had the foresight to never practice law after getting my JD, and have been so much better for it. My status did plummet, but I was already married at that point to a wife who accepted my decision, so I felt like status was pointless. I predict you will be much happier!
The status aspect is strange. People who aren’t lawyers get more hung up about it than lawyers do. To me, calling myself a lawyer was never high status and was more of a black mark.
So what did you do with your JD? Because I’ve found that having a JD opens up zero doors.
Very true. My mother took it the hardest. She still introduces me as her son that graduated from X Law School rather than my actual job.
I’m an HR Manager, the JD really helped me get the job, though it certainly was more expensive than an MBA that would have accomplished the same thing. Warning, HR has almost the same list of negatives as being a lawyer. The two main pros are the Hours and that you are not at the bottom of the shit hill. You are close to the bottom, but have the option of rolling the shit even further down the hill to Legal, and blaming them for the problems. You also can tell management their idea is a bad one, even if it’s legal, which is a huge perk imo.
Excellent piece. Entirely opposite to my experience, but then I am a barrister in England & Wales (and a bunch more places if I fill in a forn) so my experience and practce are different.
I am beyond middle age. I am "aging out" of the barrister game, as it were and I find it heart-breaking. I love it. You don't, so good for you. It takes balls. A good man knows when to pull the trigger. Your family will benefit to no end is my prediction.
Well done & God bless.
Thank you and I’m glad you’ve enjoyed your career. In the UK, barristers and solicitors do different things, whereas the functions are combined in the U.S., right?
Yes, exactly. Except the lines are blurred a bit. In terms of crime, the solicitor represents you in the police interview, likely in the lower court at first instance where your case gets allocated to the lower or higher court. Generally speaking, if it stays in the Magistrates' Court you'll have a solicitor or a new barrister doing the advocacy at trial (unless it's privately paid then we old people do that). Everything else used to be barristers only in Court, solicitors do the finding out what the client's version of events may be, corresponding with the court, choosing the barrister, and all that. Barristers advise along the way, in writing and in conference with the clients. Barristers have two clients: the defendant / lay client in civil matters and the solicitor.
You all do that in the same firm. Bet you have girls and boys who only do the court advocacy and others who only do the real work. Same system, different "framing."
Macho as it may sound, we barrister girls and boys are the people who get your case on Tuesday night, start the trial on Wednesday and win when the case can be won.
Interesting. I still don’t quite follow, but I like the idea of dividing the tasks. In your experience, does it keep things from becoming overwhelming?
No. Best case scenario, I have to check / verify everything given to me. Worst case, solicitor does no work at all. Prison happens. That cannot be any one's fault but mine so I have to ensure I cannot be at fault. I cannot blame the solicitor because I will be told I ought to have withdrawn due to inadequacy of brief. Oh, and also that's the career over because who would send me work after doing that?
Getting a not-guilty verdict never ever gets old. Worse than crack. One keeps chasing after it.
I would not ever be able to do what you did. People are rather more blasé about going to prison than they are about losing money. On a commercial scale? Insanity. Rapists going to prison after a fair trial is my biggest loss (& contribution to society). Losing thousands of people their pensions, jobs, companies is dangerous work. You are well out of it.
Good points about the difference between civil and criminal litigation. People do go bonkers over money because a lot of contract disputes or what have you involve two entirely legitimate points of view, but SOMEONE has to lose. In criminal cases, it's not like the defendant didn't do something--my understanding is that USUALLY a criminal trial involves how much to punish someone, not that they're as innocent as newborn babes.
The conviction rate, after trial, is in the 70%+ range in the Crown Court. Thankfully, I only find out my client did it when the jury says guilty. The rest plead. Worst thing ever? Getting the idea of "innocence" in my head. Hasn't happened for years, thank God, but that's nerve shredding.
Overworked, dishonest, incompetent, or all three . . . damn man that applies to many professions!
Regarding regret, I’m almost certain life would have turned out better had I either not gone to law school, or had just dropped out. There were other things I wanted to go to school for that might not have been as “high status,” for what that matters, but I would’ve probably excelled in because I cared about them instead of stagnating in a field I do not care about for 15 years. I live with this regret every day. I’m in my 40s and feel like I’m in the same plane I was in my 20s, just with more stress, responsibility, and debt.
"I read every cited case.6 Do you want to know what I found? I found that many did not stand for the proposition cited in support of a legal point. I also found that many stood for the opposite point."
Yep. I have won motions this way. Betting that the other guy is lazy or stupid is no way to go through life, son.
I've been at this for 30 years, and I don't dislike it as much as you do. It has supported my family, which is the floor under my discontent. It is not about me. So if I don't like it, so what? But if someone doesn't have that, it is harder.
The stress and worry and scrupulous care about what you say or write, all the time, is wearying. And even being on the other side, listening to the other guy and reading what he writes, waiting for one misstep so you can pounce on him, is wearying.
The best thing is when you can get paid to help someone get out of a jam. That happens from time to time.
But, yes, this article is all true and any disagreement is a matter of nuance not substance.
It’s good that you can tolerate the profession. I have tried to do so for a long time, but the inescapable conclusion is that law school was a mistake for me and I am not the type who excels at law. I don’t have the brain for it and I don’t have the temperament, or the interest. I cannot help but wonder how my life would have turned out had I not gone to law school nearly twenty years ago now, and it drives me mad if I dwell on it for too long. All those wasted years with literally nothing to show for them.
Regarding case citations, I’m glad I’m not the only one who has experienced this phenomenon. It’s scary. Are lawyers just lazy?
Once when I was working as a clerk on the trading floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, maybe February of 1987, the trader I worked for tried to place an order and the broker filled it wrong, and there was a shouting match about it, but the broker was a fixture there and my boss was not, so what should have been a winning trade was a shit sandwich. Life in the big city. I suppose somehow it was my fault. It always is, right? He turned to me and said "You cannot ever trust these guys, they are overworked, incompetent, or dishonest, and frequently all three." Same applies to lawyers.
No point in worrying about the time you were a lawyer. How do you know you would have made better decisions if you did something else? You change one fact about the past in a hypothetical, they all change. Maybe you would have stepped in front of a truck. Who knows? Water under the bridge. Play the cards you are holding. Everything else is illusory. Regret is a waste of time and energy. What already happened is a sunk cost. Forget it.
(If you are a Catholic you can pray, "Lord, I add to your Holy Cross, for the salvation of souls, all of my regrets, sadness, and disappointments, and all suffering and unhappiness and indignity from my legal career, and I ask you in your infinite kindness and mercy to give me light and strength to make good use of the remaining time in this life you have so kindly granted me. Your most holy will be done. Amen." Then, move on.)
Yes, yes, yes… Fellow disgruntled attorney, and fellow victim of first semester Civil Procedure, which I barely skated by in. My legal career was a total waste. I wound up working mostly as a glorified paralegal in compliance departments for girlbosses at meat grinding woke corporations, then I dabbled in sales where I made the same money but with new pressures. I was laid off from my most recent gig and had to take a night job as a waiter and, oddly, it’s more satisfying work. No boss breathing down your neck. Connection with real humans. Embrace your true personality rather than wearing a corporate mask. Just not the same money.
I also waited tables for a time while working as a lawyer (because the pay is not good) and I looked forward to that far more than my day job. You’re right: you get to interest with people. For some of us, we enjoy that.
I made next to nothing at my first law job outside of law school. I knew dudes who made 3x what I made right out of undergrad. It certainly makes a fellow question his path in life.
I'm not a lawyer, but I can relate to how you feel when I resigned from the TSA after 5 years on the job (nowhere near as long as your time as a lawyer, but it was the longest job I've held, and the only "real job"). There was that feeling of "wow, it's finally over", though you know it's a long time coming. And now I can finally focus myself on bigger and better things. And while I can't say I've made the best of my post-TSA years (it's been about 4 years now), I don't regret stepping away.
Few things feel as good as moving on when the time is right, do they?
Also: TSA. Yikes.
Congratulations on the move from your current job! Despite all your challenges, you will find the better parts of your legal training and experience to be beneficial to you and yours in future employment.
Weird tangent: Did you know that the "What, Me Worry?" tagline and the character of "Alfred E. Neuman" were part of an old advertisement for 'painless dentistry' before he was taken over by Mad Magazine? You apparently pulled your lawyer tooth. Feeling better?
All the best to you in all your future endeavors, young man!
Thank you!
I did not know that about “What, Me Worry?” And I do feel better!
I was confused when you said being a lawyer doesn't pay well, but then I saw that you entered law school three years after me...meaning you graduated in 2010 which was the absolute low point for hiring and pay for new lawyers. It took a couple years for the great recession to hit, but I recall that was the only year my firm considered not making permanent offers to associates.
It certainly has paid well the past few years...I'm not sure what type of law you did and where, but in my fly over state, new associate salaries skyrocketed the past few years. The pay is IMO the best thing about the job...I am certain I could not find another job that paid me remotely as much. I now pay several times more each year in income taxes than the total amount I made in the years I was working before law school (not complaining...the high taxes go with the high income).
I definitely hated the job the first decade or so. I found it became MUCH more enjoyable after becoming a partner and getting to the point where you are the one solely dealing with your clients and making decisions, not working for someone else's clients or another lawyer (and also no longer having to hit minimum billable requirements, though if anything I work even more now). I used to find 9 out of 10 days miserable, depressing, and stressful. Now I'd say only 1 out of 10 days is like that.
But I don't litigate. I definitely don't understand the litigators...they seem to ENJOY constantly being in battle mode every day, where the battle is money and not physical. I mostly do deals, where no one is trying to destroy the other side, just possibly get one over on them, and matters often end with everyone saying "congratulations, break out the champagne", not whatever litigants say to each other at the end of a case. I think that makes a huge difference, because I'm not dealing with hostility every day.
You didn't mention what I think is the worst part (other than the obvious, which is having to track all of your time): that you often can't stand your clients. Ranging from reasons between that they're just idiots or jerks or unreasonable to that you think they are actually borderline criminals and cheats. And yet you have to be on their side regardless. I DO like some of my clients, but sadly I cant say it's a majority. And when they're insistent on doing the dumbest or most counter-productive thing ever, despite your advice, you have to do it anyway. And then you don't get to say "I told you so" when it ends up blowing up in their face exactly like you told them it would, be cause clients don't pay lawyers to tell them how dumb they are.
One thing I was surprised to learn is that a lot of the crazy behavior that people blame on lawyers is not actually their fault. It's their clients. Easily 80% of my job is telling my clients why they should NOT do the thing they want to do, or why the aggressive action they want to take isn't going to end up in a good result. Sometimes if you tell them that too much, they just go find another lawyer who will tell them that the illegal, risky, and ineffective thing they want to do is okay. Though when that happens is usually a relief.
Thanks for the comment!
I did indeed graduate at the worst time ever: 2009. And I’m in the northeast where lawyers are a dime a ten dozen and law schools proliferate like weeds. To be fair, I made some poor decisions looking to work in areas of law that didn’t pan out and turned down one job offer in particular I should have leapt at, even though it was in an area I wasn’t too keen on (litigation). Naturally, I ended up in litigation, but a low-status kind . . . earning $38K out of law school. It was literally the only job I could get after 10 months of looking. It’s gotten better, salary wise, since then, but I’ve never made enough to make having gone to law school worth it. Biggest mistake of my life, hands down. And I’ve made plenty of mistakes.
What I did for the last 9 years was better, but it still involved overwork and litigation. I’m so much happier out of it, though I’m still always looking for other opportunities, as one does. Still, as much as I hated being a lawyer, my identity is still bound up in it and I still FEEL like a lawyer, which pisses me off and scares me in equal measure. Will this feeling ever go away? We’ll see.
I am always happy to read about people who enjoy and are doing well in the business though. Good for you!
“Bringing back dueling or some other sort of controlled violence for solving disputes might make society less litigious and better behaved. “ Andrew Jackson’s mother told him “Andy, the law is for property matters. Anything else, you take care of them things yourself”
I like the sound of that lady.
Amazing work. I'm in the midst of a change of trajectory after 15 years as well. This post is precious fuel.
Good for you man and all the best to you!
I'm a businessman, not a lawyer, but I've wondered before how far I could have gone down the conservative judge path, with the understanding that there is an undersupply of conservatives with the credentials to become elite judges relative to how many appointments Republicans get to make.
I didn't take the LSAT but I've obliterated every standardized test in my life, for college went to a 2nd-tier elite school, makes me wonder if I could have gotten into an elite law school, and from there gone down the path to make it onto some shortlists for Republican Federal judge appointments.
There is no part of me that would want to be a lawyer for any other reason. As you observe, in the business world, a lawyer is just there to help the people who conduct the real analysis and make the real decisions cover their behinds. Doesn't seem fun in the least.
You probably could have, but your talents are better served by being in business.
I do agree that the not-evil side has a human capital issue. We generally don’t have the family connections and money needed to get into these elites schools and firms and therefore become judges in high courts, so if good people do want to get into the business, I support them even if I strenuously disagree. It’s a necessary evil.
But practically speaking, I did not find being a middleman enjoyable or fulfilling at all. You told someone which boxes to check. Wow, what an accomplishment.
Thank you for the insider look into the legal profession. And for the opportunity to access your comments section where there where so many more insights to be gained.
I really liked that you went to great effort to describe the details that explained how differently we on the outside see what is actually happening. I was one of those that were told frequently in reference to the debate thing: ‘you should be a lawyer’. Thankfully I never did become a lawyer because I see from my friends who did that it is not quite like I imagined.
My wish for you is that perhaps one day it shall all come full circle for you and even the lawyer years will inspire deep gratitude (perhaps after the debt is paid :-)
Thank you.
Susanna, thanks for reading and for the comment and for the kind words.
It's one of those professions where the popular assumptions about it have little to no bearing on what it's actually like. Television shows have done much to brainwash people, for lack of a better word, about the practice of law. Way more lawyers than anyone imagines work in low-pay, low-status, high-stress jobs with little to no room for advancement. Add it to the fact that, to be good at the job's big money making sectors, you do kind of need to be an amoral (or immoral) sociopath. If you make it rain, you can get away with all kinds of bad behavior, because the firm needs you. Just an awful, toxic enviroinment.
I'm glad that you never went to law school.
By the way, having read your pieces here on the interweb and, most importantly, not knowing you at all, I can say with absolute certainty that you have made the right decision. My daughter went for the top-level stuff like you do and didn't make it - happiest days of my life. It's horrible. I was a solicitor - not a commercial one but I knew lots of them - for a decade and no, it's not a life. Good man, good family man - you got out. Well done.
Thanks. It only took 15 years, and I made a lateral move, but at least I’m not doing legal stuff anymore. I hated every second of it. That’s no way to go through life. It changes your personality, and not in a good way. I used to be super self-confident and optimistic but that was a different person in a different era. Now I’m unsure and always worrying I made a mistake. Very risk averse. My life went downhill the second I went to law school. I wish I’d got rejected from all of them.
Thanks for the window into the legal profession. I have been particularly critical of lawyers,attorneys,shysters and ambulance chasers. But I also realize things are that way in any profession. My dig is you need a lawyer for practically everything. It’s just our system. Then you go to a judge and he’s a lawyer. He interprets the law made by lawmakers. When our lawmakers are also lawyers, to me that is a conflict of interest. It’s owning the system. I don’t hate lawyers, I even like some of them. My grandpa was a circuit court judge in Saratoga, NY. It’s just it comes down to ethics if our justice system is to work. Ethics has been sorely lacking for quite some time. Not just in the legal profession either. Nothing gets me pissed off more than the statement. “It’s just bidness” except for maybe “It’s just bidness” in the context of the Medical profession.
I enjoyed the article and the perspective. Thanks. 👍
Maybe somebody will write an article like this from a media perspective. Seeing as how most “journalists” are really operatives and also attorneys
Good points. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that our system has been set up by lawyers to keep legal professionals employed. Everything is legalistic and it’s ruining what should be basic human relations.
Congress is almost all lawyers. That should tell you a lot. Lots of people use law school as a platform for politics. These are what I consider the problem, because they’re clever—not smart!—and use trickery and technicalities to get what they want done to society, usually heedless of and insulated from its effects. Not my kind of people. Shakespeare might have written Dick the Butcher’s famous line in jest, but I agree with it wholeheartedly.
😄 thank you.
Agreed
This piece reminds me of the advice I got from my long-suffering lawyer uncle when I was considering law school. I was one of those naifs more interested in "knowing the law" than practicing it, and my uncle certainly set me straight on that. Still, I'd put my law school applications together and the day before I was going to submit I thank my lucky stars to have gotten a job offer and off that track in life.
I’m happy for you that God intervened and you didn’t end up going to law school!
After years in litigation I am moving in-house for the very reasons described here.
In-house! That’s the dream, right?
Welcome to the world of JD, but not practicing law! I had the foresight to never practice law after getting my JD, and have been so much better for it. My status did plummet, but I was already married at that point to a wife who accepted my decision, so I felt like status was pointless. I predict you will be much happier!
The status aspect is strange. People who aren’t lawyers get more hung up about it than lawyers do. To me, calling myself a lawyer was never high status and was more of a black mark.
So what did you do with your JD? Because I’ve found that having a JD opens up zero doors.
Very true. My mother took it the hardest. She still introduces me as her son that graduated from X Law School rather than my actual job.
I’m an HR Manager, the JD really helped me get the job, though it certainly was more expensive than an MBA that would have accomplished the same thing. Warning, HR has almost the same list of negatives as being a lawyer. The two main pros are the Hours and that you are not at the bottom of the shit hill. You are close to the bottom, but have the option of rolling the shit even further down the hill to Legal, and blaming them for the problems. You also can tell management their idea is a bad one, even if it’s legal, which is a huge perk imo.
HR huh…that must be an interesting profession.