<p>I'm interested in being a lawyer in the far future, but I've read many people here asking students who want to study law worrying questions like: for what reasons they want to be lawyers, what they think the job is like, or which parts of it sound attractive to them.
My question is, what is being a lawyer really about? Is there really no back-and-forth debate in this domain? Is it more about headache inducing paper work than thinking? Is the reality far from what's depicted in movies and TV shows like "Legally Blonde" or "The Practice" or "Boston Legal"? What does a lawyer concretely do on a daily basis?</p>
<p>There is no one thing that “being a lawyer is all about.” Law practice encompasses a lot of different “jobs” from litigation to negotiation to analysis. A real estate practitioner in a state where lawyers handle routine real estate sale closings is completely different from working as a public defender or a BigLaw associate.</p>
<p>One thing I an say for sure: the reality is far, far from what is depicted in movies and on TV.</p>
<p>Are you a lawyer? If so, do you like the job?
What do you think is the most ‘fun’ practice in law and what is the most boring?</p>
<p>Sorry, but this question seems extremely naive to me. It’s not a “job,” it’s a profession and there isn’t anything “fun” about it. It’s a way of life. As an advocate for your client, this way of life involves a constant intellectual challenge with surges of adrenelin (and fear) as you negotiate, battle, analyze, worry, and stress over whether you may have missed something. Celebrating a successful case or project is a momentary pleasure, since the next cases or projects are probably in a crisis mode at the same time. It equates to being a hamster in one of those running wheels.</p>
<p>As a way of life, it’s a one-man business. You have to market and continually update your skills, whether you’re selling them to a client, a corporate employer, a government or a law firm. Performance reviews are never-ending. You get a performance review from corporate employers, from clients who chose to stay or find other counsel, from Judges, from your peers, from rating agencies, etc. Every lawsuit, negotiation, patent application, transaction, or other project is another instance in which your performance is evaluated by everyone involved. </p>
<p>You will need to be better than anyone else, which means working harder and more carefully than the lawyer representing your opponent. You will do more paperwork than you ever imagined. You will read constantly. You will work into the night. You will work on weekends. Your schedule will be dictated by client needs, not by personal needs. Clients will seldom be satisfied. If you do a good job for them, they will complain about having to pay a lawyer for the result that they deserved anyway. If you lose, it will never be because the client had a bad case – it was because you were a bad lawyer. </p>
<p>Finding time for a family and friends will be difficult. You will find it hard to shut off being a professional and thinking as an adversary. Others may perceive you as argumentative and uninteresting, since sometimes all you will be able to think about will be your projects or cases. It’s a way of life.</p>
<p>You will seldom get any respect as a professional. You will find yourself hiding your profession on occasion. The perception is that all lawyers are rich (ha ha), arrogant, and/or sue-happy. Nearly everyone you will meet knows a lawyer or has a lawyer in the family. Few people think there’s any status or anything impressive about being a lawyer anymore. I find that even among lawyers, some of them deride the standards of professionalism that defined the profession when I entered it 35 years ago.</p>
<p>You may become one of the lawyers who rely on form files and referrals to eak out a living, losing any self-respect and the respect of your peers. You may become one of the lawyers who has substance abuse issues, or who is sanctioned or even disbarred for unprofessional or illegal conduct. It’s always been hard for me to imagine how someone who worked so hard to become a lawyer could throw it away for greed, carelessness or unprofessional conduct, but it happens every week somewhere in this country.</p>
<p>You may burn out. Being an advocate can be exciting in your 20s, challenging in your 30s, routine in your 40s, and tiring in your 50s. Constantly advocating can become exhausting in your 60s. </p>
<p>Of course, some of this will depend on how much introspection you do, whether you have had the opportunities and luck to be able to try to achieve some kind of work-life balance, whether your spouse picked up the slack for your family caused by your absences, and whether you have had the good fortunate to be at the upper end of the bell curve for compensation. There are countless personal factors that go into having a good life outside of the job.</p>
<p>Due to the glut of lawyers, fees and compensation continue to drop. There are few jobs. I tell prospective lawyers to look on Monster or other job boards and then envision the thousands of students who graduate from law schools each year. The bar examiners announced that 11,000 applicants took the NY bar this July alone. </p>
<p>I understand that smart liberal arts-right brained students may not have many employment options, and may feel that they will be the exception. It’s sad, self-delusion for the majority of them. </p>
<p>Just my perspective, of course.</p>
<p>well, that was cheery ;)</p>
<p>I like being a lawyer. And I do think it’s fun–at least, a lot of the time. It’s not always intellectually challenging (but sometimes is) and I have a very good work-life balance, if not a good salary compared to lawyers at big firms. I work with low-income clients, many of whom have mental illnesses. I feel proud of myself for being to explain complex issues to them in a sensitive way and helping them achieve their goals. </p>
<p>I don’t believe I need to be “better than anyone else,” since there’s enough work in my field to go around a bit and I primarily work on uncontested administrative hearings, so there’s no opposing counsel. I certainly do read and write a lot, and do lots of paperwork.<br>
My clients are frequently satisfied with my work and I’ve gotten the hugs, thank-you notes, and once flowers to prove it. And rarely they aren’t, and sometimes that’s ok too, as long as I did my best and informed them of everything up front so they weren’t unnecessarily surprised by a bad outcome.</p>
<p>I usually work around 45 hours a week, almost never on weekends. My clients only have my work number and my coworkers would not think to call me at home or while on vacation except for the most dire circumstances. I do think about work a lot. A LOT. My partner might sometimes be tired of hearing about it. People make lawyer jokes, but they also tell me they respect what I do and it must be rewarding.</p>
<p>I don’t have a ton saved for retirement and I don’t know how we’ll handle paying for day care, let alone college, when we have kids. The job market is terrible and law school is very expensive. But being a lawyer can be fun. What fun is, though, varies so much for different people that I couldn’t imagine saying what the most fun legal career would be. That’s like asking what’s the most tasty food…totally a matter of opinion.</p>
<p>@stacy - Social Security Disability? </p>
<p>I didn’t realize that mental illnesses really did exist until I started dealing with social security disability cases.</p>
<p>These are the clients who will go out and buy you cakes. I just got one a few months ago.</p>