Nov

11

Why are lawyers so miserable?

November 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Sathnam Sanghera writes for The Times about the  juxtaposition of two stories in The Times last week – one reporting that top-flight City lawyers were charging as much as £1,000 an hour for their expertise, another that a quarter of lawyers wanted to leave their profession – raised a pertinent question: just why are those in the legal business so miserable?

The list is long and includes:

  1. Dehumanising hours.
  2. The yawning gap between lawyers intelligence and the mind-numbing nature of their work.
  3. The distance between the ideals of those entering the profession and the reality of the profession.
  4. The cumulatively lowering nature of the work, becoming competitive, aggressive, judgmental, analytical, adversarial, emotionally detached, paranoid of being sued and, worst of all, pessimistic.
  5. The vortex of hatred that envelops them entirely.
  6. The self-inflicted nature of their suffering.

But human misery isn’t relative, and these problems could be solved.  All City firms need to do is take a moment or two to look at what ItsMyLaw is starting to offer and realise that they have new options starting them in the face.


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