Lawyers Are Often Dissatisfied With Their Work

Many lawyers are disillusioned, dissatisfied, or at least not enthused with the practice of law.  One commentator has concluded that lawyers are less than happy, and that their source of unhappiness is the work that they do as lawyers.  According to a study by the RAND Institute for Civil Justice, only half of surveyed California lawyers said they would become lawyers again, if they had the chance to start all over.  The study found that California lawyers were very pessimistic about the current state of the legal profession and its future.  A 1992 survey from the California Bar Association revealed that 70 percent of the responding lawyers would choose a different profession if they could, and that 75 percent would prefer that their children not become lawyers.  (See Carl Horn III, LawyerLife at 32-33; Amiram Elwork, Stress Management for Lawyers at 3; Patrick J. Schiltz, 52 Vand. L. Rev. at 881; Steven Keeva, Transforming Practices at 4; Mary Ann Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers at 85.