<p>I'm interested in law but as i research more and more one of the main things deterring me is all the talk of lawyers being miserable? Obviously law isn't the easiest profession, but how much of this stuff about lawyers working "dehumanizingly" long hours and hating their job/lives is actually true?</p>
<p>MyH is a lawyer, doesn’t hate his life. Sometimes he likes the law other times not. It’s like any other profession. He makes a good living,but chose not to work in a big city law firm because he wanted a family life. It is what you make it. I wouldn’t be suprised if my D followed in his footsteps.</p>
<p>Actually makes a great living…</p>
<p>hmm, yes, having a family life is a major priority. Is he able to fufill all his fatherly duties and such?</p>
<p>If you are serious, he is very involved in his children’s lives, no absentee.</p>
<p>no joke here, what type of lawyer is he exactly and how significant of a difference is his pay from a city lawyer?</p>
<p>My friends in the legal profession seem content with their professonal and personal lives. We all live in a small town, no “Big Law” pressures.</p>
<p>Lawyers have the highest rate of alcoholism of any profession in the country. I read that within the past year.</p>
<p>H practices in a specialized area of law, primarily an administrative law practice. He paid his dues over the years, and currently is paid a significant salary/bonus…probably equivalent to a big city lawyer/partner, although in a small firm practice.</p>
<p>BTW although he enjoys his beer he is far from an alcoholic, and his lawyer friends are not either.</p>
<p>cool, cool, what are his hours? (sorry about the bombardment of questions, the insight is appreciated.)</p>
<p>You might want to read this article from the American Bar Assoc.</p>
<p>[ABA</a> Division for Bar Services: Bar Leader Magazine](<a href=“http://www.abanet.org/barserv/22-6dev.html]ABA”>http://www.abanet.org/barserv/22-6dev.html)</p>
<p>My husband is a Deputy District Attorney in southern California. He loves his job, rarely works even 40 hours a week unless he’s in trial and makes about 170K/year with up to 7 weeks of leave per year and full retirement and benefits. He’s always been available to take the kids to sports and other activities and is a very happy person.</p>
<p>Always remember, the law is a very broad profession with all types of “specialities”. It is not for everyone but if you find your niche, you can be very happy.</p>
<p>bottom line if you want to be a lawyer go for it. do what you are intrested in. IMO there are happy/unhappy in every profession. That’s just life.</p>
<p>If you Google such things as " suicide rate by occupation," or “alcoholism rates by occupation,” you’ll come across claims that either physicians, or lawyers, or police officers, variously, have the highest rates of depression, suicide, or alcoholism abuse. The claims are contradictory, and the data behind them seems sketchy. The claim about lawyers and alcoholism, for example, if they’re sourced at all, usually point back to a single survey done in the State of Washington in 1991. </p>
<p>On the surface, these claims are reminiscent of claims that a particular college has the highest suicide rate, usually based on nothing more than urban legend. There appears to be something of a macho desire to claim that the demands of one’s academic program, or the demands a profession places on its practitioners, are uniquely high.</p>
<p>The people I work with in my in-house legal department are surveyed once a year, and report high professional satisfaction. This comports with my own experiences, and matches anecdotally with my observations of my colleagues. I’ve worked other places where there was less general satisfaction, which I’m more inclined to attribute to poor management than anything intrinsic to the legal profession.</p>
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<p>Really? That’s almost as much as AG Jerry Brown makes, and he’s the head attorney for the entire state of California. It’s also more than the AG of any other state. I also doubt that Brown or any other AG gets 7 weeks of paid vacation. </p>
<p>[LegalNewsline</a> | Brown, King highest paid AGs](<a href=“Brown, King highest paid AGs | Legal Newsline”>Brown, King highest paid AGs | Legal Newsline)</p>
<p>Prosecutors in most locales make relatively little and some major areas pay barely enough to live on - and top jobs are often elected, which turns the ambitious into politicians. It’s great training but it’s become less attractive in this era as a long-term career. </p>
<p>A great life is working as a federal ADA, and then you need to make cash and go into a firm. As a fed, you have the government’s resources, great cases and lots of trials. </p>
<p>Some of the real issues for most people are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Time keeping. It’s stressful to tie every activity in your life to tracking how much time you spend on each task. Some people truly hate it. Some of your clients hate it and take it out on you.</li>
<li>Much work is mind numbing and the learning curve is steep. Try reading bond offerings for a living or doing a set of complex documents for a secured commercial line of credit. The first times are difficult and then it becomes easier but also more boring. Thing is, bond offerings, etc. pay well and employ (until now) large numbers of people so a lot of lawyers read long complex documents and do due diligence reviews of back-up material. If a large loan covers a bunch of collateral, people have read all the documents and written or dictated summaries that have also been reviewed. You’re paid to catch things, especially hidden things, so this is what you do.</li>
<li>If you litigate commercially, you rarely if ever go to court other than for the occasional motion. You process a lot of paper and I mean a lot of paper. </li>
<li>When your clients need you, you have to alter your life. A deal needs to close by the end of the year? You’re working. A client is looking at a company to buy and needs everything - and I mean everything - examined ASAP and it’s now Thursday, so you’re working the entire weekend. The client may be working too - or may be at the beach.</li>
</ol>
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<p>Bloody hell, that’s where all that tax money went. Anyways, I thought DA’s and PD’s never earned more than $100k a year. I figured a supreme court justice makes about $220k a year, no way anyone working in the judiciary (which I guess includes DA’s and PD’s), local, state or federal, would make more than that.</p>
<p>I’m not making these numbers up, they are public record. Just go to the websites of the various counties and research the job postings. He’s a senior trial lawyer, one level below management. I’m not going to mention which county in so cal he works for but there aren’t that many so you can figure it out. </p>
<p>Obviously he didn’t start at that pay level 15 years ago but even entry level DAs make about 70K per year. You have to remember the cost of living out here is much higher than almost anywhere else in the country. </p>
<p>As for the 7 weeks, that is combined sick leave and vacation, the county doesn’t distinguish between the two, it’s all just “leave”.</p>
<p>As for the “federal ADA” or more commonly called US Attorneys, they make less than the county DAs do, at least out here. Also they often don’t make careers of it, using their “prestigous title of Assistant US Attorney” to land high paying jobs in the private sector.</p>
<p>The bottom line and the point I was trying to make in relation to the OPs question, definitely not all lawyers hate their jobs. My husband and basically everyone he works with seem to really enjoy what they do.</p>
<p>Do lawyers hate their lives?</p>
<p>Some do, some don’t, same as any profession.</p>
<p>I know someone that stocks shelves at Walmart at night and hates life.</p>
<p>I know someone that makes on average $50 an hour doing consulting work for boiler controls, he really hates his life.</p>
<p>I know someone who has worked at the same deli shop for over 15 years and she loves her life, even making $9.75 an hour.</p>
<p>I know someone wh retired from the Navy, and works at the fitness center on base, he went from being a senior enlisted to a lowly person checking out basketballs and towels, yet he loves it and enjoys everyday.</p>
<p>There is more to loving or hating a job then just the job itself. Some people just were not meant to be lawyers whether they are good at it or not, some are but in the wrong field, others love it, fits them perfectly.</p>