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Arts (Humanities and Social Sciences)

6 (21.4%)

Computer Science

8 (28.6%)

The Other Kinds Of Science

2 (7.1%)

Law

2 (7.1%)

Nursing

1 (3.6%)

Medicine

0 (0%)

Finance\Management

0 (0%)

Fine Arts

4 (14.3%)

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3 (10.7%)

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1 (3.6%)

Other

1 (3.6%)

Total Members Voted: 28

[Pacobird]

Are you planning on saying anything helpful, or are you just going to rant?

I've said nothing that isn't true.  Lawyers have about a 50% job satisfaction rate, and these numbers are skewed by the number of people who just drop out of the profession after a few years.  The reasons for the mass dissatisfaction are twofold, from this survey; 1) unreasonable demands on time, and 2) the fact that the practice of law is teeming with assholes.

Here's some advice: get an MBA if you absolutely insist on pursuing a graduate degree, or something in the Hard Sciences.  Or just get a job.  You have a college degree.  The default response to a tough job market in your degree's field should not be "go to grad school".

[Pacobird]

Why do lawyers have a high substance abuse rate?  I dunno, maybe precisely because of idiots like that author, who went into Law prone to substance abuse already, looking for nothing but the huge paychecks "everybody knows" lawyers make?

Yes, just like the doctors and engineers and MBAs and accountants and all the other professionals who are markedly less inclined towards depression and suicide than lawyers?  What is it that makes our profession more demanding and less satisfying than its closest counterparts?

Could it be that practicing law sucks a lot of dicks?  No, it couldn't be that!  The Judge told me so!  I also plan to be President!

And, frankly, yes, I would expect that at some point, one of the people I've met, the long-time friends of my family, would say something like that if it were at all true.  Particularly when I'm going around before applying for school and asking whether going into Law is a good idea.

Do you often take people at face value when you force them to evaluate their life choices?

And if you went to a school where you were consistently and exclusively getting those kind of contradictory messages, then you went to a shitty school, "top tier" or no.  A lawyer is not and has never been "a hired gun who had no choice but to do whatever any given fuckwit client demanded or lose my license and possibly get imprisoned", and anyone who told you that is flat-out lying to you.

Have you taken Professional Responsibility yet?

[Brentai]

the practice of law is teeming with assholes.

So much for that second career option.

[TA]

Why do lawyers have a high substance abuse rate?  I dunno, maybe precisely because of idiots like that author, who went into Law prone to substance abuse already, looking for nothing but the huge paychecks "everybody knows" lawyers make?

Yes, just like the doctors and engineers and MBAs and accountants and all the other professionals who are markedly less inclined towards depression and suicide than lawyers?  What is it that makes our profession more demanding and less satisfying than its closest counterparts?

Could it be that practicing law sucks a lot of dicks?  No, it couldn't be that!  The Judge told me so!  I also plan to be President!

Or that practicing law in a satisfying way requires an ideological grounding that medicine and engineering and finance really don't, which people who don't have aren't going to spontaneously sprout when they pass the bar.  Or that law is stressful, like your article says.  Stressful isn't the same as "sucks a lot of dicks".  Lots of jobs are stressful, and the more rewarding jobs tend to be.

Curious that you put doctors and engineers and such as "closest counterparts" to law.  I'd look at journalists, activists, and politicians more.  But again, I guess your definition of lawyering is "work 90 hours a week in a large firm for a mid-six-digit income", which is a small subset of legal practice.

And, frankly, yes, I would expect that at some point, one of the people I've met, the long-time friends of my family, would say something like that if it were at all true.  Particularly when I'm going around before applying for school and asking whether going into Law is a good idea.

Do you often take people at face value when you force them to evaluate their life choices?

Why are you so insistent that anyone who actually likes the law is either pitifully ignorant or deluding themselves?  Or, as you said, a douchebag?  Why this desperation to be the only voice of truth fighting against an elaborate scheme of fraud and self-hatred?

Yes, when I ask someone who's been a lawyer for forty years, who's been my mom's friend since college, whether or not the law is worth going into, and they tell me that it can be incredibly rewarding, I'm inclined to believe they genuinely found it so.  Fuck, I just finished a Federal Criminal Practice class taught by one of the US Attorneys fired in the scandal a few years back.  If anyone was going to be bitter about government law, he would, and he spoke plainly about both the hardships and the joys of the work.  Joys that do exist, as unbelievable as you think that is, and which someone like Thad would probably find.

And if you went to a school where you were consistently and exclusively getting those kind of contradictory messages, then you went to a shitty school, "top tier" or no.  A lawyer is not and has never been "a hired gun who had no choice but to do whatever any given fuckwit client demanded or lose my license and possibly get imprisoned", and anyone who told you that is flat-out lying to you.

Have you taken Professional Responsibility yet?

Yes, I have.  Would it shock you to learn that that's a dispute that came up?  That we actually talked about it, at some length, and that some people actually do not have any great difficulty in reconciling the duty to the profession with the duty to the client?  Is it so hard to believe, for example, that I might actually want to do Criminal Defense, because I genuinely believe that when a guilty man is set free because the prosecution screwed something up, justice is served and society is better for it?  Or would that be some of that "high-functioning autism" you think is so central to law?

[Friday]

I genuinely believe that when a guilty man is set free because the prosecution screwed something up, justice is served and society is better for it

Um, what?

[Koah]

I genuinely believe that when a guilty man is set free because the prosecution screwed something up, justice is served and society is better for it

Um, what?

It proves the system works.

[Friday]

I'm not questioning the system, just the actual belief that a guilty guy being set free for any reason is something that is good.

[Thad]

And, frankly, yes, I would expect that at some point, one of the people I've met, the long-time friends of my family, would say something like that if it were at all true.  Particularly when I'm going around before applying for school and asking whether going into Law is a good idea.

It's not really news to me.  I have a cousin who went through a pretty nasty case and left it largely disillusioned with the profession.  She teaches law rather than practicing now.  Mostly writing, I think.

[TA]

I'm not questioning the system, just the actual belief that a guilty guy being set free for any reason is something that is good.

If the state can put someone who actually committed a crime in jail without proof, they can put an innocent person in jail without proof.  It's the role of defense attorneys to keep the state honest, to get defendants found not guilty if the state does not prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt using legally-obtained evidence, and keeping the state honest is vitally important.

I fear unrestricted police power far more than any criminal.

[Friday]

Yeah, OK, /agree.

It's still a funny thing to say, though. Perhaps some sort of method of keeping the state honest could be devised other than letting known criminals and murderers walk free "for the betterment of society."

Nothing immediately springs to mind. I bet this is a topic that a lot of people have discussed and not found a better answer to!

 

[Friday]

Barring the Punisher, I mean.

[Thad]

...oh hey, there's another page here.

Are you planning on saying anything helpful, or are you just going to rant?

I've said nothing that isn't true.

I just farted.  That's a true statement.  "True" and "helpful" are not equivalent.

Lawyers have about a 50% job satisfaction rate, and these numbers are skewed by the number of people who just drop out of the profession after a few years.  The reasons for the mass dissatisfaction are twofold, from this survey; 1) unreasonable demands on time, and 2) the fact that the practice of law is teeming with assholes.

Now I'm curious what the stats are for programmers.  (I am disappointed to find that your linked blog post does not actually have the word "engineers" in it anywhere.  It also doesn't seem to have links to most of the stats it's quoting.)

I think TA's right, though.  "Lawyers have lower job satisfaction and higher substance abuse and suicide rates" is a nasty statistic, but I'd like to see some more variables isolated.

Here's some advice: get an MBA if you absolutely insist on pursuing a graduate degree,

I'm not getting a damn MBA.

or something in the Hard Sciences.

That's more like it.  But I didn't do that damn well in physics.  I guess I did all right in chemistry, and I haven't taken bio since high school.

Or just get a job.  You have a college degree.  The default response to a tough job market in your degree's field should not be "go to grad school".

But I think stats are going to show us over the next couple of years that it is, regardless of whether it should or shouldn't be.

[TA]

Yeah, OK, /agree.

It's still a funny thing to say, though. Perhaps some sort of method of keeping the state honest could be devised other than letting known criminals and murderers walk free "for the betterment of society."

Nothing immediately springs to mind. I bet this is a topic that a lot of people have discussed and not found a better answer to!

 

Pretty much, yeah.  Letting criminals go free because there isn't enough admissible evidence to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt is a necessary consequence of requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt for the state to start denying them rights.  And as much as I enjoy reading the Punisher and watching Dexter, this isn't something for anyone but the state to handle.  So, that's how it has to be.

That's what I mean about ideological grounding.  If someone can't look at that sort of situation, take a step back, and see it that way, then they shouldn't be involved in criminal practice.  And that sort of big-picture mindset isn't really teachable (and, apparently, is also "high-functioning autism dressed up as professionalism").  Not everybody is psychologically capable of law.  That's not a slam on people who aren't, either: not everybody is psychologically capable for every job - I know I could never be any kind of surgeon, because I simply could not stand people's lives being directly reliant on my split-second decisions.  And if I went after the money that surgeons make, without considering that I couldn't stand the actual process, I'd probably be miserable in doing it, and likely contribute to the statistics of depression and substance abuse among doctors.

On the other hand, my grandfather was a heart surgeon.  He died before I was born, sadly, but everything my mom and grandma told me about him was that he was a very happy guy, who loved knowing that on a regular basis he'd be able, by direct action, to save people's lives, and that he was expanding the field of human knowledge to help save more lives in the future.  As stressful a job as it was, he found it immensely satisfying.  But I guess because it's a stressful job, it's a scam aimed at suckers and nobody in their right mind should ever be a surgeon when they could work at Walmart instead.

[TA]

Or just get a job.  You have a college degree.  The default response to a tough job market in your degree's field should not be "go to grad school".

But I think stats are going to show us over the next couple of years that it is, regardless of whether it should or shouldn't be.

The Bachelor's of today is the High School Diploma of yesteryear.  It's a sign of basic education and educability, not of particular training.  There are people who get jobs in their fields of study on nothing on their resume but a Bachelor's, but it's really the exception, not the rule.

[Friday]

And as much as I enjoy reading the Punisher and watching Dexter, this isn't something for anyone but the state to handle.

Disagree. Sometimes the rules/laws must be broken to enforce real Justice.

Slippery slope, I know. I don't stand by Vigilantism as a rule.

[Pacobird]

Or that practicing law in a satisfying way requires an ideological grounding that medicine and engineering and finance really don't, which people who don't have aren't going to spontaneously sprout when they pass the bar.  Or that law is stressful, like your article says.  Stressful isn't the same as "sucks a lot of dicks".  Lots of jobs are stressful, and the more rewarding jobs tend to be.

Curious that you put doctors and engineers and such as "closest counterparts" to law.  I'd look at journalists, activists, and politicians more.  But again, I guess your definition of lawyering is "work 90 hours a week in a large firm for a mid-six-digit income", which is a small subset of legal practice.

I group them together because they are defined as the "professions", not the "careers".  A certain level of conduct and attitude are expected from them.

Go find a hospital intern somewhere and tell him he's doing it for the money.  Go on.  I dare you.

Why are you so insistent that anyone who actually likes the law is either pitifully ignorant or deluding themselves?  Or, as you said, a douchebag?  Why this desperation to be the only voice of truth fighting against an elaborate scheme of fraud and self-hatred?

Have you clicked a single link I have posted?  It is statistically EXTREMELY unlikely that every (or even half) of the lawyers you've spoken to are happy with their jobs.

And no, this is not "desperation".  I am posting for Thad's benefit, not yours. 

PR

Saying you want to be a Criminal Defense lawyer to help wrongly-accused people go free is like saying you want to be a virologist to find the cure for AIDS.  The vast majority of your clients will be guilty.  The Defenders I know who are not callous assholes/want to sleep well at night see themselves as watching the watchmen.

[Pacobird]

The Bachelor's of today is the High School Diploma of yesteryear.  It's a sign of basic education and educability, not of particular training.  There are people who get jobs in their fields of study on nothing on their resume but a Bachelor's, but it's really the exception, not the rule.

The Bachelor's of today is an opportunity to get internships in your chosen field to build actual work experience and distinguish your resume.

T THAD go with Hard Science if you like it at all.  That is a degree that is actually marketable.  I'm not going to pull something up right now that supports this because Thanksgiving, but a graduate degree is not a meal ticket any more than an Bachelor's; you have to go out and do the internships to build the resume.  If you didn't do that as an undergrad, you are much better off just finding a job (ANY job) while your debt is still light than going back to school to "wait it out".

[Mongrel]

practicing law in a satisfying way requires an ideological grounding that medicine and engineering and finance really don't

HA HA HA

I don't give a damn about the rest of this argument, but you can shut the fuck up right there, mister unique and beautiful snowflake.

[JDigital]

I know a guy who was a FreeBSD expert by 16, didn't go to college, and at 19 joined Yahoo for $90,000pa.

And what year was that?

As recently as 2006 or 2007.

[Mongrel]

Anyway, joking and snide comments aside, I actually know more lawyers or soon-to-be-lawyers than any other profession (well, except 'bum', my friends tend to go in one direction or the other). I understand that this is all anecdotal evidece, but I figure I'll add what little useful comment I can.

I've personally known some of those substance abusing lawyers. They're not very friendly or happy people and it strikes me that they may well have had problems in other careers, but that law exacerbates the issue, with its long hours and stressful lifestyle. It's a mixed bag of blame, really.

A great part of the reason legal stress is different than stress related to other professional careers is the generally negative public opinion people have of lawyers. And it's not just that the public thinks of you differently than they might a doctor, no. Lawyers are not bred out of some kind of strange frog-cow hybrid DNA and then raised in total isolation, they are the same as any of us and many of them go in with the same preconceived notions about law and many of them are very disappointed when they get there.

I also know people who are happy in law, but in fairness, my anecdotal numbers are roughly 50%. HOWEVER, of that 50%, some have found other routes to happiness. Some have gone on to teach law, so that they can still be involved with 'pure' law without having to deal with the legal profession. Another is setting himself on a fast track to becoming a judge.

And of course there's always Politics. 


The most important thing I can tell you is this: Do not under any circumstances go into law, unless you have some appreciation for it as a pure social and linguistic science.

Forget that horseshit about being a defense lawyer, prosecutor, professor, adjutant, subspecialist, judge, or whatever. Take Engineering for example. Think of all the different categories and subcategories under the heading 'Engineer' - that's a lot of space! But no matter what, you should not ever be urged to go into engineering if you have no instinct at all for logical thinking, thoroughness, detail, systems planning, or any of the other traditional 'Engineer' traits. By the same token, someone who is all logic and no speculative imagination should probably not have anything to do with art, nor should the antisocial and silent have anything to do with teaching. There are exceptions of course, but these tend to be unique, readily obvious individuals. Not so much the "Well, I've been thinking of going back to school" kind.

If you want to go into Law, you need to appreciate Law in and of itself at least on some level.

Only you will know for sure what the correct level of engagement is. Thad, on these boards, I've seen a high degree of logic and legal-type thinking from you, but at the same time, I haven't seen you mention a legal career before, so I have no real basis for saying this is a good or bad idea for you personally. Though based on my views, I would not go in simply because you think "the world needs more [IP] lawyers who 'get it'".