Legal Marketing & PR

Lawyers not happy being lawyers?

By Michael

I was catching up on some reading today.  I came across a  survey in the October ABA Journal which indicated that only 55% of lawyers answered that they were satisfied with their career.  And, that number is actually skewed up because of the respondents that had been practicing for 10 years or more, 60% of those reported career satisfaction.  If you analyze the remaining respondents (those practicing under 10 years) then about 47% reported career satisfaction. Less than half!  Is that not an alarming statistic?  Furthermore, only 44% of all respondents stated that they would recommend a legal career to a young person.

So, what is that cause of all of this dissatisfaction in the profession?  I don’t have the answer, but it is a question that intrigues me.  The general subject of this blog is marketing and practice management for solo and small firm lawyers.  But, if you’ve read the About page, then you know that the original impetus for this blog was to answer the specific questions of What is the perfect law practice?, and How do you create it?

We can obviously conclude from the aforementioned survey that the vast majority of lawyers have not created what they consider to be “perfect practices.”  I can’t help but think that some of that dissatisfaction demonstrated in the survey results is attributable to two of my personal pet peeves:

1. The billable hour, and all of the pressures, imbalance, and general stress and unhappiness it causes, and
2. the failure of law schools to teach lawyers how to run their practices as a successful business.

The  latter may be more prevalent for the solo and small firm lawyers with whom I am accustomed to interacting, but I think it has to be a contributing factor to the general dissatisfaction expressed in these statistics.

So, I’ve got three questions for you: Are you satisfied with your career?  Would you recommend a legal career to a young person?  And, if you answer either question in the negative, WHY?

I invite you to share your own answers in the comments section - do so anonymously, if you prefer.  And, for the record, my answers are Yes and Yes.

Full post as published by Law for Profit on October 18, 2007 (boomark / email).