Getting Judged – Why Don’t You Go Get a Real Job?
I’m not a contract attorney because I’m not motivated or because I’m lazy or incompetent, but because it’s the best thing going for me at this time in my life. Although sometimes you just want to look back and try to remember what originally inspired you to attend law school in the first place and compare those reasons to what motivates you today.
Many of my former classmate friends and I left law school with high hopes of working inspiring jobs and living comfortably. Others pursued their dreams of working in organizations where they could help the needy and less fortunate. Since that time, I have seen many of my friends and former classmates grow disillusioned with the law and leave the profession altogether. Others, such as myself, have eventually found ourselves performing contract attorney work. It is so disheartening when I hear stories of people becoming beaten down so early in their careers, and burdened with the relentless weight of unforgiving student loans that presses down heavier with each passing day.
I know many law school graduates who end up working in low paying attorney jobs ($40,000) for years with little hope of advancement. They stay on because they are unable to find any other positions out there and because it affords them the apparent security of a steady paycheck, albeit a tiny one. Some end up working in areas of the law they have no interest in that won’t prepare them for future work in any field they really enjoy. Many keep working in the same dead end job like a good worker bee – just like they were told would be the path to success when they were little. This goes on until they finally burn out and have enough. Hearing all this, it all makes me wonder if I’m really in a worse position because I work as a contract attorney.
What I Always Hear From Non Lawyers
I’ve been told frequently that temporary attorney work is a dead end job, that I should go get a “real permanent position” that will allow me to grow with the firm and ultimately make a million dollars a year. Many of the people who are constantly blabbing in my ear are usually non-lawyers (namely my family members) – people who have bought into the media-spun fantasy image of what attorneys do and the fabulous lives they must live.
But the reality is that being an attorney is not what it used to be. Competition for jobs is fierce and even for the fortunate few who make it as associates working in the big law firms, a tremendous amount of their life energy is demanded of them. Many find themselves working well in excess of 80+ hours a week for many years with little time for anything else.
Is that the working life I really would want to have for myself? Frankly, if I didn’t have people telling me that I needed to go find a stable full time position, I would be feeling pretty okay about my working situation. After all, I currently have a reasonably steady paycheck, a set of growing retirement accounts, paid holidays, and the ability to work as little or as much as I’d like. I can afford to live in a nice apartment with reasonable utility bills and have the means to save a sizable portion of my contract attorney income, even after satisfying my regular student loan payments. True working freedom means that when work time is over, I go home without having to worry about what happened on the job today. Unless I am working weekends, that time is my own and I will never have to rush into the office on a Saturday night because a demanding partner wants me to prepare an emergency brief.
In fact, I am now making a lot more than most of the people I know who took permanent positions at smaller firms where their salaries have yet to experience any appreciable increase, and where they continue to struggle mightily with student loans in the hopes that someday their financial ship will arrive. With the legal job market the way it is, I personally could not wait around forever like them. Suffice to say, my job as a contract attorney has been very good to me.
November 13th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
That was a good post. As long as you’re happy and theres a meal on the table…what else is there to worry about? People are to consumed with materials and the belief that money can make you happy. Money, cushy retirement, and no life….v…..at times struggling to make ends meet, working longer when your old, happy now. Easy choice for me.
November 14th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
It can be good. On the other hand, it can be bad.
After you’ve done it a while, your conflicts list keeps growing. When you get conflicted out of several projects in succession, and wind up with no work for months on end, it can really stink. But that can happen in a firm, or as a solo.
Yes, you may be making more than some associates. But what are you learning? Are you doing anything that will make you a better attorney. After 8 or 10 years experience in doc review, you are only as valuable as the Noob sitting next to you that was sworn in yesterday.
And it may be good now, but when it gets outsourced, what skills have you developed? And you will find that it gives a stigma to your resume if you want to do anything in “real law.”
November 15th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Overall, this piece sounded apologetic to the relatives/friends, at times praiseworthy of the sewer rats called temp agencies which make a 50% profit off the backs of the temps, and chatty. Disappointing.
November 15th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Jaded,
Before you start focusing your anger to all of the agencies, and there are some bad ones I grant you, what about the firms who make a minimum 200% profit off of all the work we do?
November 15th, 2007 at 11:48 am
And after 8 to 10 years experience as an associate, how valuable are you? Perhaps too valuable; the noob who was sworn in yesterday can do and will do the same job for less … There is no guarantee of partnership these days – there is no guarantee of a decent living. The only thing you can be sure of is your student loan payment.
Document review is the same job that associates have done for years and has a definite potential for 6 figure income. You can slug it out in the trenches going through hundreds of clients for 3 or 4 that are good to work with, and hopefully turn a profit or make money, hmmmmm …
I am confused as to what this “real law” is – and if it is “real” then why the quotation marks? If you mess up your priv review, you are going to booted, that sounds real … a priv doc slips through and the privilege is lost, that sounds pretty real.
The stigma is a self fulfilling prophecy on both ends – big law keeps cutting their costs, they are going to get what they pay for … the coder thinks they are hopeless well, then they are ..
November 15th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Great post.
I have met many contract attorneys who have a lot to offer, even outside of the law. We all had a whole host of accomplishments and talents before we went to law school. It is a mistake not to continue to develop those highly personalized skills–no matter how long it has been–because those are the talents that will allow you to bring added value, rather than just being another face in the crowd. It is equally, if not more important and fulfilling, I think, for one to continue to expand their horizons into areas in which they had never imagined. Dan Pink suggests this in his book, A Whole New Mind. Pink suggests reading magazines in which you previously had no interest, as a way to make new connections and develop “right-brained” skills.
This need to think in broader terms is the same for everyone whether they are a temp, CEO, or park ranger. Or whether one has been temping for one year or twelve. If you are 30, you have over 80% of your working life left to go. If you are 45, and you have been temping for ten years, you still have more than 50% of your working life to go–assuming that you retire at 70–and many work well into their eighties.
Many labor experts predict that the average worker will change careers–not jobs–several times over the course of their working life. If you stay in the legal profession, it will be unusual. If you want to be a lawyer, great. But if the difficulty of being a lawyer starts to get to you, there are innumerable possiblities out there–despite what the naysayers tell you. It’s that constant tug of war between the bulls and the bears–the optimists and the pessimists.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Are you happy to have incurred massive student loans to make less money than the bus driver or policeman?
In DC, you need an annual income of $600,000 to lead a dreamy upper-middle class life.
In DC, at $40,000 a year, you qualify as a low income person, and are, in fact, worse off than welfare recipients.
Are you happy in your delusional world?