Other

I came across a link today through Above the Law and thought it was relevant to this discussion. It's to a blog article called Create A New Career Outside The Law. While I think this was meant for those who don't want to practice law, it also could apply to those of us trying to figure out how to make an impact and pursue happiness as lawyers.

My big fear for my future is taking a big law job to pay off my loans and getting shackled by golden handcuffs. The author addresses the financial issue, which resonated with me:

How Do I Leave Behind My Big Paycheck?

Financial considerations always arise when transitioning out of the law. Remember, though, that it may not be the case that moving into another career will mean a pay cut. A substantial number of non-legal positions pay very acceptable salaries.[5] And if a position you decide to seek does pay less initially, it may offer the potential for you to earn more as you progress. Sometimes changing careers does entail reduced earnings, prestige and control while you take the time to develop new expertise. On the other hand, your new work may build on your previous experience, and pay more than you expect. You may also be able to supplement your income with contract legal work while you are learning a new trade or building a new business, which is what I did.

Consider, too, that you may not need to make as much money as you earned as an attorney. There’s always a trade-off: your income may diminish, but your satisfaction may increase. Because you’re doing what you want to do, you’ll feel as if your life is richer and more fulfilled in ways that can more than compensate for a lower salary. Don’t let your assumptions and fears stop you from investigating what may be open to you.

-- MolissaFarber - 13 Mar 2009

Non-Profit Organizations

After doing some research for my first paper, I realized that the Innocence Project does amazing work. Working to free the falsely-accused has tremendous meaning. I can't imagine many other uses of a law license that so directly achieve justice. For me, traditional criminal defense work raises a few moral concerns (Robinson is, after all, never far from crime). But the Innocence Project, by definition, avoids some of these issues.

With respect to happiness, I would imagine workers are far more content than at many other places. There is likely little competition against your fellow employees. Instead, workers are joined by a common, justice-driven goal. This is just one non-profit organization that surely needs young attorneys to help better the world. Any other ideas?

-- KeithEdelman - 09 Mar 2009

What do we do with this job satisfaction research? I don't think the answer is that we all become government lawyers. The goal is to determine what it is about these types of careers that provide higher satisfaction and try to figure out how to get those features into our own careers. I think the hours requirement is one factor that relates to job satisfaction. In addition, a concern over ethics most likely plays a role. If government lawyers don't need to worry about being disbarred for purposely losing their cases (as that NYTimes article suggests), then maybe there is an explanation for why they are happier than everyone else.

About John Monahan's forthcoming study ("Lawyers at Mid-Career: A 20-Year Longitudinal Study of Job and Life Satisfaction"):

I think what Anjali referred to as "all the standard problems of getting people to self-report on their own happiness" may be that expressions of overall happiness are not quite the same as overall happiness. [Oops! I see Anjali also replied while I was writing this.] As Prof. Monahan said, ideally he would have done something like the classic Csikszentmihalyi studies, where participants wore beepers and were asked at random moments throughout the day to record their momentary state of mind. This lessens reporting bias ("Look at my life! I ought to be happy overall. So I guess I am."): people are more willing to say "I'm frustrated right now" on many occasions than to say "I'm usually not satisfied."

As Lauren points out, the forthcoming study has an extremely high response rate compared to earlier studies. Among these earlier studies was one that found that 11% of North Carolina attorneys considered suicide at least once a month every month for the last year. (This and other studies were summarized in a famous 1999 meta-study, Schiltz, P., On Being A Happy, Healthy, and Ethical Member Of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession, 52 Vand. L. Rev. 871.)

The new study strongly suggests that lawyers do not report less happiness than others (earlier studies had suggested that lawyers do report much less happiness), that government lawyers report the most happiness, and that big-firm lawyers (even after 15 years, when most people who discover that big firms are not for them have long left) report a statistically-significant lower happiness (but are still quite happy).

-- GregJohnson - 05 Mar 2009

On the topic of having autonomy as a junior government lawyer: An anecdote in yesterday's Times describes a prosecutor who tried to lose a case he didn't believe had merit (rather than, say, resign or openly abandon the government's position). He argued that his client was the people and that they "would have been ill served had two innocent men remained in jail for a crime they did not commit." He's been notified that he won't be disbarred.

-- GregJohnson - 05 Mar 2009