Overrated Career: Attorney

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I've been a Canadian lawyer for 24 years, four years with a big firm and 19 years as a sole practioner, mostly doing small deals.
There are many reasons why being a lawyer is generally unsatisfying, but I think the main reasons are as follows:
1. You are typically up to your elbows in human stress, pain and/or greed. Most of what we do involves either people who have fallen into the soup, or people who regularly like to cause trouble. No one is really happy that they have to go to the lawyer.
2, At the end of your career, there is not much to show for your work but a warehouse/hard drive full of documents, which if you are lucky, no one will ever want to look at again. Typically, the only reason you go back is because something got screwed up. After thirty years, you won't be able to point to a building, farm, invention, novel, movie or company you built although you might brag that the person who did was a client. We are only facilitators, we don't actually DO anything. And consequently, at the end of the day, we don't matter much. QUICK: name five famous lawyers from history...
3. Your clients, with whom you spend most of your time, and whom you need to live, ultimately don't like you much. You cost them money. They may wield you like a gun in certain situations, but typically, the prefer to have as little to do with you as possible. In the event you screw up, they will sue you with their new lawyer. If they do become friends, that's a problem too, because then they want you to work for free, or they expect to own you (see in house counsel).
4. Everything is a competition with lawyers. Every interaction is a game of one-up-man-ship. They have to show they are smarter and better than you are. They will not cooperate, they will not yield a point, they will not admit you are right. To do so would be to yield some advantage and that must not happen. If you belong to a law firm, everybody else is a competitor for work and income or someone to get good work from or give crap work to. No one really trusts anyone. There is never a common goal.
5. There is absolutely no certainty in the law, yet clear answers are expected. Every law is by definition arbitrary and therefore subject to change, and they do change and get reinterpreted and so forth. So good luck ever staying completely current and expect to spend a lot of time either flying by the seat of your pants or endlessly researching things. And worrying about what you missed.
6. Once you are in, its really really hard to leave, because typically, you aren't qualified to do anything else.
7. Even for the top of the legal profession, the income is modest compared to your typical investment banker. But lawyers hang with those guys, and have to play the part, and live the lifestyle and that's why a lot of big firm partners die broke, with nice leased cars and huge lines of credit. The rest of the profession just get by for the most part.

Dave 4:04PM January 18, 2012

I went to a fourth tier law school and graduated at the 50th percentile. I was 75k in debt and set out on a legal career. I went to work for a big city District Attorneys office and I couldn't be happier. I'm not a bad lawyer and am gaining a fairly good reputation among the criminal law community. Once I decide I've had enough, I'll quit the DA's office and do defense work - most competent Defense Lawyers make 250k or better. I'll be honest, with all the doom and gloom on this board - I'm really glad I picked law and am genuinely happy as an attorney.

James of TX 10:58PM September 27, 2011

Being a lawyer entails endless boring work, constant deadlines, unpleasant people and an unjust system. I would not recommend the profession to anyone.

Dave of NY 11:11PM April 16, 2011

All I can say is wow! Why do u hate it so much?

Monni of NY 7:16PM March 09, 2011

Sorry, in my last comment, I put "payed" instead of "paid." I am exhausted and am not concentrating well today.

Art of VA 3:45PM March 02, 2011

And most of my work the last two years has been delivering pizza. Fortunately, I earned an academic scholarship that payed for 1/3 of the tuition at the tier 1 law school I attended. Unfortunately, intelligence is not the most important aspect of being a lawyer - salesmanship is. If you enjoy sales and talking a lot - you may enjoy the practice of law. I'm studying computer programming now.

Art of VA 3:43PM March 02, 2011

Any college student considering attending law school should read the preceding comments and, in light of the general gist of the comments, think long and hard about entering the practice of law. Unlike many of the previous posts, I don't feel like taking the time to draft a well-organized brief that has the perfect "flow" (after all, I am now looking for a new career). Thus, I've written this comment as a series of bullet points. Actually, it is a numbered list, but only an attorney would quibble with the lack of precision in my description.
1) Law school. Law school is a three year exercise in masochism that could really be shortened to two years. The first year is challenging, the second year boring, and the third year a grind. By the time you get to the third year, you understand enough about the law to begin the practice of law. After all, why does a student who intends to practice civil law need to understand criminal law (unless they become the criminal by inflating their billable hours once in practice....) Similarly, why did I (an attorney who worked in a large civil litigation firm for 15 years) need to study criminal law? With respect to the cost of law school, unless you have some financial support, expect to come out of law school with significant debt. I was lucky because my parents paid for it. My spouse, on the other hand, came out with $70,000 in debt. Fortunately we were able to pay it off fast by delaying having children and living frugally.
2) Practicing law. The practice of law is not romantic. It is not fun. It consists of long hours of boring work that you must perform because there is a (metaphorical) gun to your head to complete said work in a timely manner - and someone else, be it a client, a judge, or another attorney - always determines what constitutes "timely." It isn't necessarily true that you must work at a large firm to make a decent living, but it is true that there are a lot of starving sole practitioners in the world. It is true, however, that you WILL work long hours to earn that living. Anyone who says anything to the contrary is (a) experiencing complete and utter self denial; or (b) luckier than a lottery winner. Then there is the cold-blooded nature of private practice. The fact is, the people on top of the food chain want to stay there, and they can't stay there by letting people under them reap large financial rewards. The only way to get to the top of the food chain is to bring in business, and it is a rare breed that can do so. Finally, don't expect to be promoted on merit. Perhaps this is true in other industries (given human nature, it probably is), but expect to have the knuckle-dragging idiot in the next office get promoted above you because he/she kissed the right asses, was lucky enough to inherit clients, is related to a partner, or some other non-merit based consideration.
Having been trained to comply with word limitations, I finish with this: good luck.

Daniel Johnson of IN 12:48PM July 28, 2010