Lawstudents.ca

In every sarcastic statement there is a little truth, and I would not be surprised at all if you are taking meds or seeing a therapist.

I suggest you seriously consider your problems at heart and seek out your therapist, your obviously very very disturbed and upset and I think you need to resolve those issues.

If you're interested in stats on lawyers, check out this article:

http://www.averyindex.com/happy_healthy_ethical.php

Wow, he makes the profession out to be pretty negative...........he mentions the surplus value of labour that partners extract from associates as about 1/3 (1/3 is assoc. salary, 1/3 operational costs), which for a first-year assoc. billing 2000 hours @ $100/hour comes about to be a salary of $70,000 for the assoc. This is obviously a reality of capitalism, but consider the surplus value extracted from other types of workers, (construction, retail, sales, blah, blah, blah), and i would venture to guess that 1/3 (and thats just year one, with the ratio rising), is pretty damn competitive on the worker-exploitation scale................... I guess I am optimistic that if I truly hate what I am doing once I get there, that I will find other work to do with my law degree, I think there is a lot of options for persons with law degrees aside from practicing, and I know for sure that I would like to avoid the perils outlined in that article, but then again, we assume that the problems assoc. with the law profession are somehow isolated, I'm sure every professional position/career has its challenges, I guess it depends on the person facing them.

I think it's pretty clear from the stats he quotes that lawyers are much more miserable than people in other professions. But certainly not all firms (or law jobs) are alike.

Here's another link, to a calculator that lets you figure out how many hours you have to work each day to reach a certain billable hours target - it's quite enlightening!

http://www.envoyglobal.net/jdbliss/test/calculator2.htm

Yale's Career Development Office also has a number of good links, including this one, entitled, "The truth about the billable hour":

http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/C ... e_hour.pdf

Being a lawer IS INDEED A BAD THING... If you are the lawyer who t-boned my car last week, and now completely refuses to accept the blame. The moral of this sad little tale is as follows: if you are ever hit by a lawyer who is pulling into on-coming traffic... (looking right while steering to the left) make sure you get lots of witnesses... because the lawyer may look nice, honest, and clean in his suit and tie...he may even say'sorry for smashing into your lovely and well-loved car', but underneath it all is a swamp of evil...

All lawyers are evil.

oh, except me.

and,

hopefully...
all of you.


sorry for the personal digression. felt the need to vent.

In the piece, the author compares happiness and other factors (e.g. suicide rates, alcoholism, divorce) from lawyers to "comparable demographics." Usually the implies income, race/ethnicity, gender, location...

I wonder if that means lawyers are just less happy and more alcoholic/suicidal/divorced than other white men earning over $200K a year living in urban centres New York or Los Angeles. Seriously...I mean is it possible they are more happy than the people earning the American average of like $30K a year? I am just curious...money doesn't always bring happiness, but in some ways, it can reduce stress (e.g. not stressing as much about mortgages or if you can afford college for your kids, marriages not falling apart over money fights, etc).

I wonder if a lot of the angst that middle aged, well salaried lawyers feel comes from that exact expectation, pencil-skirt.

I think a lot of the unhappiness in the legal profession comes from the realization that the money is not worth the hours of personal time lost, but yet by the time this realization hits, you and your family are accustomed to a certain lifestyle that seems impossible to give up.

60K does sound a little low to me. Not that I'm in it for the money, but lets be honest here -- a job is a job. If you are going to work for a living you may as well make a lot of money - call it efficiency.

I recently found a stat that had law coming out on top of medicine and teaching (on average - in Alberta). Plus you have to realize that people who practice education and medicine are both employed by the government. I would hate the idea of working for the government only to realize that you can only make x amount and get to x position. Law, like a previous poster said, is a business. The sky's the limit. You get out of it what you put into it.

thanks for posting those links anascott... they were really enlightening...
I can honestly say they made me rethink my view of a lawyer's life. I'm applying to school right now, so I suppress all these negative aspects to being a laywer... but I really need to address them now, before I've worked my butt off for a life that's really not that great.
I'm just curious.. what is everyone's top 3 reasons to want to pursue law.

In a lawyer career:

1. To have a job that challenges me daily.. that is constantly changing and asking me to apply knowledge and creativity
2. I like the prestige of being able to do something that not everyone can, it's like being an "expert" on something. In society we are the expert of making the rules and making sure everyone plays by them. I like to be able to help someone with something they can't do own their own.
3. I won't lie, I like the financial compensation.

I am one of those future lawyers who aims to spend next to no time inside a law firm.

Ultimately, I would like to combine my JD and Bachelor of Science and go in-house for a science corporation or a research lab, work my way up to CLO and then CEO.

However, we all know that dreams change, so my my top three picks as to why I want to pursue law are:

1. In-house legal advice and then a CEO for a technology corporation.

2. Money for my brothers and mine pet project - our own start-up corporation. He is earning an MBA right now from a highly regarded university and I am going to get a JD. Then our skills + work experience + money and several years down the road we are going to make a start-up company. We already have several ideas (hopefully they wont become outdated )

3. Financial world, working for a bank or something. I heard they like JD types over there.

4. Working as legal professional for a military mercenary company, specializing in international warcrime law.

I realize thats four picks by the way

That last one #4 made me laugh. Mercenaries operate essentially outside the law, so they probably won't have much of a need for lawyers. Still, I can see how business accumen could translate into committing warcrimes.

Maclean's just came out today with their August issue. They have an article on an interview with an author of a very interesting book.

Details here: http://lawiscool.com/2007/07/26/absolut ... osolutely/

It amazes me that the "top 3 reasons for wanting to become a lawyer" that people have listed so far have failed, in every case, to mention wanting to help OTHERS.

I must admit that this profession sickens me to my core - even from the outside looking in. Every lawyer I have ever met has been an integral scumbag willing to use his skills to help whomever will pay him most. And worst of all, these lawyers use every opportunity to adorn themselves in the garbs of saintliness whenever their clients just happen to be in the right...

The fact is, the practise of Law has degenerated into a trade. The painter and the carpenter are no different from the lawyer, except that the latter will use his wits and not his hands to create monstrocities. I feel nothing but sympathy for the truly upright practitioner of law who is caught in the maelstrom of this field's endless greed, corruption and ignorance.

I must admit that *ONLY* reason I am even willing to THINK about going through with Law School for the sake of the billions of people that are suffering miserably right now...but I wonder whether anyone even stopped to realize that such suffering is rooted in our incessant selfishness...

Ugh! And to think that I was rejected last year because my LSAT was under par. To hell with the LSAT! It tests nothing but wits, and wits without a heart will be the death of every man!

Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton and Dante...here I come. Only the truly great souls are the defenders of the Law.

You seem to have good intentions... but you sound so crazy...

I mean this is really sad......Contrary to the stereotype...
MOST lawyers are a grea ETHICAL bunch of people who HELP out people.

If you really wanted to help people, you would go dig wells in Africa. Law is a business--a way to make money--and little more. There is nothing immoral about making a living.

eecheck,

I believe that the downfall of the legal, and indeed of every profession, is rooted in your brand of naive amoralism.

The practise of law never fails to impact human lives. Therefore, if Law is only a "business" to you, then rest assured that you will be making business with the suffering of others in your near future.

I do not intend to study Law so as to avoid building a dozen or some odd wells in Africa. I intend to study Law so as to fight to have a MILLION wells built in Africa!

crazmo

this is how lawyers contribute to society.

Think social justice: defence lawyers ensure that individual rights are not abused by the state. They fight against prosecutorial misconduct, they fight against the wrongfully accused, they fight against unjust sentences suggested by their friends. The list goes on.

by saying "law is just a business" is a gross generalization that neglects to consider many fine aspects of what being a lawyers is all about.

Remember what Mr. Kirkland's grandfather said......being a lawyer is the finest thing you can be......

Sure, but like those who know....the greatest tool in the hands of the morally righteous would make the world a better place, and vice versa. End of discussion.

I am a lawyer (not a prospective one) and absolutely love what I do.

Most of the lawyers I know are very happy in their work and get good financial rewards and personal satisfaction.

Personally I make enough money to have a very good lifestyle and to pursue a number of charitable interests both inside and outside the law.

I feel I honestly do help my clients to have better lives, and even when the case is over I have good relationships with the vast majority of my clients.

A lot of stuff gets published about how hellish law is, and it can be, but like most things, it is the discontented minority that draws a lot of attention, and this does not reflect the practise of most lawyers.

Russ

what area? big/small?

I am a partner in a small (5 lawyers 18 staff) plaintiff PI firm in Aurora ON.

In the past I have served in a number of positions on the OTLA Board and still run a couple of committees and do a lot of CLE. As a whole I would suggest that the plaintiff PI and def. insurance counsel I deal with are happy both with their career and their life overall.

Russ