92 thoughts on “5 Reasons Being A Lawyer Sucks”

1. Dude, it’s FORD Pinto, not GM Pinto.

   1. Thanks, fixed. Minor brainfarts when writing late at night…

      1. gm pinto sounded funnier

2. sounds like you need a vacation……
   either that or find something you enjoy…..
   i’d enjoy fighting all those battles i know i would, but doesn’t seem like it’s for you
   on a side note, last lawyer i went to hire, required a 30 page contract, so essentially i needed a lawyer to hire a lawyer… and what if the second lawyer also wanted a 30 page contract… then i’d have to carry on hiring lawyers, to check the contracts that lawyers wanted me to sign to hire them….
   when i pointed his out to her (woman of course) she lost her tiny mind….
   I then responded by explaining to her that : ITS A CONFLICT OF INTEREST TO HIRE A LAWYER, since their jobs only exist by making things complicated.
   You notice that most politicians are originally lawyers… lawyer = liar.
   That’s probably the real reason you dislike what you do…. I personally enjoy being a two faced liar… it’s entertaining…. but that’s just me.

   1. yeah you could keep on hiring an infinite number of lawyers to read each and every successive contract and waste millions of dollars doing so.. or you can just read the first contract on your own and make up your mind for yourself.

3. Reminds me why I passed up a full-ride to law school. My mom still isn’t over that, but I didn’t want to be miserable.
   Entertaining and quality article.

   1. Tell your mom to get over it! Tell my mom to get over too while you’re at it because they don’t seem to understand why being a lawyer is directly correlated to UNHAPPINESS!

4. Every single lawyer (probably over 60 different people) I have spoken to has told me not to go to law school.

   1. why is that?

5. Law school is killing my soul

   1. just wait till you get into the practice of it, you’ll love it even more then

   2. how much did you pay to get in?

6. I dated a lawyer once. Had one of my opinions about a movie turned into a pointless argument. And my propensity for looking ahead I got the impression I would experience more of this so..
   Never again.
   Add that to the fact that (no offense) it’s one profession in the US at least that we have too many of that we don’t need.
   Which makes many of them useless.
   If you rack up debt going to school for that at this point I think it’s a waste.

7. In my early 20s, I once knew a guy in my first graduate program who worked as an attorney. While chatting with him the one day about what life was like as a lawyer, he said, “Lawyers are just glorified paper-pushers.” He eventually withdrew from the program after the first semester and went back to doing law because he made a decent income.
   His comment has stuck with me to this day.
   Fast-forward a few years and my mother was embroiled in a civil case over being fired, unjustly, from her job. Her first attorney was a drunk and fled from the case, holing himself up in his parents’ house so that his clients couldn’t come after him. Her second attorney was more philosophical and took little money. Eventually, she accepted the settlement that her former employer offered her (along with a written apology and reference from the boss that fired her), but not after going through a short period where she thought, erroneously, that it was “all about justice” and not about settling. But, the second attorney, as I said, was philosophical about this. Sadly, though, he died about a year after the case was finished. My mother felt a hole in her heart, because the guy helped her out during what was a very stressful period of her life.
   I once considered being an attorney, but only because I was fascinated with the law itself and not with practicing as an attorney. The only real benefit I see to being one, or going through extensive law training, is, as you said, you’re less likely to be fucked with as an attorney, and you can argue with the best of them, picking apart their flimsy arguments. But, I think that any smart guy can learn that on his own and through practice. Law school isn’t necessary.

8. This is pretty interesting. My dad is a litigator. He tried to get me to go to law school for a while and then just kind of gave up. His parent’s pushed him to go. He is more of an entertainer people person, so he is good in the court room. But the things you mentioned I have seen tire him out as he gets older. He is now 63. The funny thing is on the side my dad has always done other gigs for fun (ie play santa, do weddings, radio). And the two things he candidly told me when he was in a pretty honest moments as he gets more nostalgic are:
   – The reason I like doing weddings is even though the pay is joke compared to what I make practicing law, people are happy. It is a happy occasion. The problem with what I do is that even if I do a good job or get the guy a good verdict is that they are almost always still pissed because they have to pay me 10k.
   – If you end up hating law as you get older and have an established career, you can almost never leave it because it is hard to find anything else that pays as good. Which is why he knows a ton of miserable lawyers.
   Good article. Thanks for the honest reflection.

   1. You made, easily, the smartest decision of your life and I envy you for it!
      .

   2. Become a doctor. You make most people happy, and they are even happier to pay you. Particularly if you are a dermatologist, obstetrician, or pediatrician. Of course, lawyers are trying to ruin that profession by turning it into a field filled with landmines.

9. Doctor is shit too. If you want a good job than be a pizza delivery guy. I’m not joking. Travel and listen to music. Get paid. No stress.

   1. Or learn to weld. The hours are long, the pay is exceptional, the music is as loud as you damn well please, and you get the benefit of seeing your creations not only get built by your own hand sand hard work; but people pay you money for it. Depending on how hard you want to work, they pay you more in a year than their engineers.

   2. Good point there. I may take this up again if I need to pass time for this year of grad school. I delivered pizza once upon a time, but $5.50/hour plus tips didn’t really do all that great a job of paying off recently-gotten-rid-of business debts…gotta; find a good neighborhood with decent looking chicks where the delivery radius isn’t too out of control, too.

10. This is a topic close to my black heart.
    Here are the reasons I hate the circus that goes by the euphemism “the practice of law”:
    1. The field is completely dominated by a government monopoly — the court system. It’s hard to describe just how grossly inefficient and wasteful it is. Since it’s a government enterprise, the judiciary has no sense of how to economically manage its business — dispute resolution services. Imagine that it’s your job to fill out forms requesting action from the DMV, and to deal with red tape and the bureaucratic runaround, all day, every day. That’s what being a lawyer is — a bureaucratic liaison.
    2. The only thing the judges care about is themselves and their workload, and their No. 1 priority is not being inconvenienced, just like all other government employees. In this regard, the courts are run a lot like prisons, public schools, tax collectors and regulatory agencies.
    3. Your work is absurd. because the rules of law and procedure that you are paid to wield are absurd. These idiotic rules were formed by corrupt committees and other brown-nosing idiots, which means they make no sense. The rules encourage (and often REQUIRE) everyone involved to engage in constant, pointless, counter-productive antagonism, to spend time and energy dealing with every point of conflict possible, strictly out of self-preservation, which multiples the volume of stupid busy-work.
    4. Here’s the Big Problem — Everyone hates you. Even your clients, to whom you owe an open-ended duty of loyalty, hates giving you money. They think you ought to work for free, as a government service. Even the personal injury claimant who (at the beginning of the case) will offer to tongue-shine your shoes, walk your dogs and wash your car if you’ll only take his case will fucking DESPISE you by the time the case ends and you put money in his hands and you tell him it’s time for you to take your fee. Clients who pay by the hour are even worse — they hate you every minute of every day, and resent you even when you win. It’s a world built on win-lose relationships. In contrast, the world of commerce (selling desirable goods and services) is built on cooperation. It’s win-win. Customers are actually GLAD to give you their money and receive what you’re giving them. Sure, some measure of conflict in this world is inevitable, but lawyering is all downside, all the time.
    5. Lawyering rewards and promotes only three kinds of people — pedantic spergs, spiteful bullies who get off on their new-found power, and frauds. Strong, stable, capable, self-confident productive people get sick of it almost immediately, and leave as soon as they can.
    The modern legal system is a cancer in our society. If my son wanted to go to law school, I would lie down on the street in front of his car to prevent it.

    1. Ditto on the judges and the workload. I’ve heard that one too many times.

    2. wow very well said. For you, lawyering must have been a natural choice haha

       1. Thank you, dragan, but may you burn in hell for saying that.

    3. Good lawyers need to be careful lest they end up like Sydney Pollack in the movie, Michael Clayton:
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpKQyIQA9Ns
       Better
       to do what Hans Keeling, the lawyer written about in Four Hour Work
       Week did: leave before it’s too late to own your life. Here’s what he
       did instead of toiling away in Century City, Los Angeles:
       http://www.nexussurf.com/
       There’s more to life than making a buck. Especially if it’s almost always adversarial and zero-sum.

    4. Yeah I dated a lawyer for 5 years and had a child with him while he was
       in the process of leaving his wife (stupid thing on my part to date
       him..im older now and wiser). He then left me for another woman after he
       left his wife and when I turned him in for Child support to get more
       money from him because he would never see his son physically, i was told
       I was entitled to twice as much. Two weeks later he served me with
       papers to gain custody of our son with his new rich girlfriend. I walked
       into court that day after his attorney (he fired his first one because
       she didn’t like what he was doing to me and quit) was in the judges
       chambers for 1 hour. The mediator said that there needed to be a period
       of transition because he never had physically taken his son over night
       and was barely around. Judge threw that out, within 1 hr I had to have
       my sons bags packed and handed over to his father and new girlfriend. No
       SS, no drug test, no psychiatric evaluation…nothing just have your
       son ready to be picked up (i only mention this because normally when a
       person gets their kid taken thiat is common procedure). I saw my son a
       few times after that and every time i went to family courts they said I
       needed to get an attorney and treated me horribly. I eventually had to
       walk away from this because I had 2 other daughters that I was raising
       and dealing with this guy was destroying my life and he is a very
       prominent attorney I had no chance, I also became very ill and almost
       died of a chronic infection so fighting with this guy was not my cup of
       tea. He was also 20 years older than me and just had too much clout.
       Two
       years ago I get served by his new girlfriend at that time …(now wife )
       served me with papers in front of my daughter to adopt my son. I didn’t
       fight it…I signed it..I wanted tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb out of my
       life.He stole my son from me when he was age 5 and now 10 years have
       already passed…me and his sisters are waiting for my son and their
       brother to turn 18 in 3 years so we can finally reunite!
       My
       point is…don’t date a lawyer, don’t become one because they are
       crooked and if your not crooked…somewhere don the line you will. That
       day when I walked out of the court all these people came up to me and
       said it was a inside job…they have never seen anything go down like
       that and one woman said she had been going to that court house for 10
       years and literally lived there said you don’t understand how hard it is
       to take a child from the mother…especially because you obviously
       arent on drugs and have never been arrested.It’s even hard for women
       like that to get their kids taken.
       I hope this story opens up
       people to the fact that although our judicial system is set up to
       protect us, most of the time its about who you know and it’s corrupted.
       Why would someone want to waste a bunch of money on Law school is beyond
       me. Lawyers are corrupt. Since my kidnapping of my son, this person has
       become one of the top 10 lawyers in the city I live and sits on his
       throne. My downfall has actually made him more powerful. However the
       natural laws of Karma somewhere in this life will get him.I also wonder
       how my son will deal with this after he turns 18.
       Is it
       fair?…no but nothing in Law is fair in this day and age so think twice
       before becoming a Lawyer or dating one…it’s not all its cracked out
       to be.
       I hope my story can help people to make a good decision on
       where their money should be spent education wise. The industry is full
       of these types and because I dated one for so many years I can tell you
       the whole profession is crooked inside and out.

       1. Dear Hollywood 777 – you have just absolutely proved the poster’s point. You are no different to the many others that feel aggrieved by events in their life that haven’t turned out as planned and seek to blame someone else for it. Sometimes the complaints are legitimate, sometimes they are not. But if you are a lawyer you have to take every case as it comes. The above is run of the mill as far as failed relationships go. The way you put your complaint above reflects worse on you than the lawyer, unfortunately…

          1. The extreme irony of her post is that she sounds exactly like the clients who come into my office and are one of the many reasons I’m getting out of the legal profession.

       2. I think the karma is yours, Hollywood. What did you think was going to happen when you stuck yourself in the middle of a marriage? Wickedness begets wickedness.

       3. your story is a crazy womans novel, straight out of the 80s tv series dynasty or falcons crest,the law doesn’t work that way your either exaggerating or not telling us the whole truth and nothing but the truth to you over active imaginative story. sorry were you psych evaluated , something sound a bit like a WAYYYYYYY bit off about your false victim mentality of a story.

    5. sorry that was for Brobox who dated a attorney 🙂 I pasted in the wrong box

11. I work as a reference librarian, and while I’m not making big $$$, I have a pretty stress-free and rewarding job. I mention this because it’s possible to parlay your law education and experience into the library world. There were a number of guys (and some women) in my MLS graduate program who had earned their JDs and had spent a few years in a legal career, only to realize they hated it. They were going for a library science degree (which is a breeze to earn compared to law school, passing the bar, etc) in order to work in law libraries. The higher positions at law libraries usually require both degrees, but they allow you to work in the legal field in an infinitely less stressful capacity, and you make more on average than your typical librarian. Something to consider if you like law but are not too hot on everything that comes along with a career in it.

12. The lawyers I know all have the same complaint – it’s boring as all hell. Same shit day in, day out and, as you said, it never ends. They all want to change careers despite having good jobs that recent law school graduates would salivate over.

13. I always thought it was like Clarence Darrow (portrayed by Spencer Tracy) in “Inherit the Wind”.

14. I like practicing, but I do a lot of estate planning, transactional and probate in my practice. Estate planning is great because you are looking forward and trying to save people money. Probate is admittedly paper pushing but you get to help people through shitty times and I like that.
    I do find litigation fun – its a good mix of introversion and extroversion, arguing and writing, and left and right brain activities. Definitely not for everybody but fun for us few weirdos.
    That said, I am looking to make the switch into big law litigation for a few years to pay off school debt and get a nest egg saved up, then drop to part time or a new gig while I work on getting some artistic business ideas up and running. I just can’t sit still.

15. Sounds as miserable as being a Real Estate Broker.
    And we fuckin hate lawyers LOL

16. Oh come on, LD.
    Think you need a pep talk, man. Every few months we put ourselves through this self-scrutiny and self-examination. And maybe it’s a necessary thing. Maybe it helps to flush the bile out. But at the same time a reality check helps. All careers are bullshit, more or less. All involve trade-offs. As you well know by now.
    Want to be in the military? Fine, you’ve got 20 years of sucking up shit and dealing with meatheads and douchebags. Want to work in the corporate world? Fine, you can deal with PC bullshit all day, filing TPS reports, and go to sensitivity seminars, only to be fired at the drop of a hat for on good reason when you’re 47.
    Want to work at some bullshit government job? Yay. You’re now on the treadmill of being surrounded by wusses, punks, and worthless scum who don’t know anything and think they’re job is important. And your soul is slowly crushed by a stultifying routine of boredom and political correctness, unless you’re fired one day when someone finds out you write for ROK or you got spotted at Vegas at some strip club.
    Want to be self-employed? Fine. Deal with the uncertainty and instability of not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from, and putting yourself on the hook for big debts.
    All jobs are bullshit. There is no panacea. You can eat, you’ve got a roof over your head, and you can travel. You are your own boss. That matters. Your freedom is paramount. The Renaissance scholar Erasmus passed up many lucrative positions offered him from powers-that-be so that he could remain his own man. So that he could remain independent. And it was the right decision.
    You’re a lawyer because at some deeper, inner level, the job chose you. You didn’t chose the job. It suits some inner combative need you have to get in the arena.
    So suck it up. We’re all in the same boat. Get up, wipe that sweat and sand off your torso, and pick that gladius back up. And get your ass back into the arena.

    1. See Phinn’s comment above, he summarizes it nicely. I enjoy your comments but have to disagree with you on this one. All jobs are not bullshit. I know many people that actually like their jobs, as well as a host of others that hate their jobs. But as someone who values themselves on not being made part of the conformist majority and the false pretenses of society, why should I also hate my job?
       Take Roosh for example, should he have just sucked it up and stayed in the science field? I’m guessing he’s a lot happier he didn’t.
       I had a friend graduate from Columbia law. Genius kid, started off making 185k in 2001. Worked for 3 years, then couldn’t take it anymore and quit and moved halfway across the world to become a chef. A few years later, he emailed everyone and said that it’s happened, he has reached his dream. He’s doing what he loves, he’s finally making as much as we was doing law and he is just straight happy. He left everything he had in his life behind to pursue his dream and it worked for him.
       I’m not saying this Cinderella story will happen to everyone. But it’s worth a shot. I already gave up lots of money to have a somewhat bearable life (leaving big law to start my own practice). I’m getting closer to giving up all law to at least attempt doing something that doesn’t kill me day by day.

       1. Yeah, I hear you, man. These are the types of existential questions that there is no easy answer to. I often think the same things myself…especially about relocating outside the US. I keep going back and forth…but the big thing is that you don’t want to be doing some radical “find myself” shit that messes your life up and you lose all your bloody money.
          But seriously, man, do you really see yourself abandoning it all to go to Belize and be a cook, or to teach windsurfing? Would you feel challenged by that? Only you can answer these questions.
          I am leaning towards the model of having your business here, and then spending increasing amounts of time abroad. I guess it all comes down to what your heart tells you. Truth is, I don’t know anymore….we’re all wrestling with this question.

          1. The other thing to consider is whether where you want to relocate is really that much better than where you are. I wrestled with this many years ago when I was in East Asia teaching. Though the 1997 financial crisis there prematurely cut my time in half, I was more or less fed up with the life and the culture within two years. I wanted to do something different, and I wanted to do it outside of East Asia.
             The older i get, the more I see the benefits of being location semi-independent. I know a guy who does this for IBM and he really enjoys it. He gets to work from home and travel occasionally to client sites. This is what I’m working towards.
             The location-independent lifestyle seems attractive at first, and I think this is more attractive for younger guys who have the drive and the will. However, how do you keep from turning into a vagabond? I wonder if these thoughts go through Roosh’s mind from time to time.

          2. Well said.

       2. LMAO.
          Roosh has never been in the science field.”Being” in the science field
          means taking up a PHD and than proceeding to a real,reasonably well paid job,either in academia or in the industry.Taking up a PHD requires some brain,concentration and often balls.
          Roosh had some primitive office,paper filling,job.And you suckers listen to his “career” advice lol.

    2. True, all careers are bullshit. But some careers are more bullshit than others 😉

    3. All jobs are bullshit. We are definitely agreed on that, but the amount of bullshit in some is worse than in others. Example: your gladius ‘motivational’ ending. Now I don’t want to be too critical, for being a Roman gladiator did have some perks to it, especially in regards to free women and beer. But despite recent historical revisionism, we have to remember that gladiators were at the end of the day slaves, without rights, who were expected to die before the end of their career. For some people the perks outweigh the danger. For other’s, living as a farmer definitely seems preferable.
       So what? My main point is just this: the job does not choose you. Nobody gets to meet a walking corporeal job that says “hey Bob, can I be your new job?” No, that is utter bullshit. We choose our job, often in college or high school, at an age where we do not know the world or what we want from it. Some people shine in the legal field. Some like LD can even do well despite despising it. But despite that, suffice it to say that some personality types are better suited for specific jobs. Some people enjoy fulfilling their “inner combative need.” Other people, I hate to break it to you, are simply not psychologically wired to enjoy competition. Competition is not the be all and end all of life. I don’t know what is. You don’t know what is. The Pope doesn’t know what is and neither did Erasmus or Luther. We have to choose the lifestyle that best suits us. Yes, there are no panaceas, but to say “get up, wipe that sweat and sand off, and suck it up” is akin to telling somebody with a fever that they need to just suck it up, since everybody gets sick at some point in their life, and those damn Romans didn’t have aspirin or robitusin anyway!
       Law Dogger: do what you want. If you think law is not for you, you would know. We wouldn’t. We are not you and we have no idea what you are truly feeling with the exception of whatever thoughts you put into this blog.
       Quintus Cortius, thank you for sharing your opinion. It’s really interesting and valuable. I just disagree with your conclusion. Jobs all suck. That’s why they’re work, but some doctors hate being a doctor less than others, some surfer instructors hate instructing morons less than others, and some gladiators would have been smarter to either flee the arena or find more gainful employment managing security at the salt mines of Carthage.

17. Become a pharmacist. Good pay. Many job opportunities. Doctor is a crap job (im doing this). Cost me $600 000 to do pre med and $600 000 for med school. I also paid $1.2m (most for education) up till this point. Return on investment? It is not worth it. Plus, whilst i liked US and Canadian doctors, British doctors dont know their tradecraft and the women here, always being undergrad, never grow up and are [email protected] Not worth it at all. Shouldve spent my formative years getting more tail instead of doing this thankless career. Im actually bailing out of the West as there is much more for me in other places where I have lived before. Better women. More money. More freedom.

    1. If I was not a medic in the UK I would swallow this pile of rubbish you just have written here.
       ps:Where did you spend 600k on tuition,seriously?

       1. Ha! You actually think you know something compared to Americans!
          I’m British btw. But Ive lived all over the world. I have gone to US med school, but am on secondment in the UK.
          On average US med students have 3-5 degrees. You only have one.
          When I lived in Singapore, most students spoke 3-5 languages minimum. Ditto Germany and Luxembourg when I lived there. You only speak one.
          Also when I lived in Singapore, all adults at 18 had to have military experience for 2 years. You probably have none.
          The sorriest thing is you actually think you are competitive and intelligent. If you had to face real competition, you would be finished mate. This is part of the reason why the UK is going down the drain. Ive been to Europe, Asia and the Americas. Unfortunately, Ive never met a British person who was Brit educated and could compete with people from these countries.
          Im currently at UCL. I also spent some time at UEA. UCL students are okay, but UEA were a joke. Nowhere near competitive as the guys at my uni in the States.
          Pull your socks up and get a wider skill set and learn some languages if you only speak English. Because if you dont, you will find that over time you and your kin will be replaced. Its survival of the fittest. Youve been protected from the real world far too long.

          1. Take it easy,tough guy
             I speak 5 languages and I am at Imperial

          2. Still laughing at your post))
             “Pull your socks up”.What a looser,jesus.
             wil je nederlands met mij spreken?попробуем по-русски?espanol quizas?
             Lol

          3. Despite your offensive posts, you may deem to call me a loser, but I never meant for you to find my posts offensive. I think its great that you actually tried to become educated given its inherent difficulties and the fact that many others in your shoes would choose to do something different.
             Im leaving the UK as I do not believe it will be around near the end of my lifetime and I feel that I can help other countries in a way that this country can never be helped by anyone. Still, I hope that you and yours can make it a better place as it once was. That is your responsibility now. All the best for the future mate.

          4. If you are actually a medical doctor as you claim to be, I would hate to have you be my practitioner since you are an immature braggart. I would expect someone who has undergone so much educating to be composed and spend their time wisely, yet here you are arguing with some complete internet stranger (or do you actually know Marechausse?), making a joke of yourself.

18. elicit

19. Men just become lawyers, doctors and all those other beautiful things because they know if they do, there’s tons of (quality) pussy out there that’ll be available.
    Doesn’t sex with many attractive women offset a job being miserable?

    1. This is actually a good side of a feminist society-women don’t give a shit about your profession,as long as you are alpha.

       1. bullshit, you’ve obviously never seen the way a woman’s eyes light up when they find out you’re a lawyer (at least here in Canada)

    2. No.

20. This is somewhat off topic, but if you had a wife who took care of your children part-time and worked part-time, and she were happy in both occupations, would you resent her, because her good life would be partly enabled by you working a job that is slowly destroying your soul, and because you would probably be happier if you could switch roles with her, though other people might frown upon such a switch?
    There seem to be opposing desires on this website. Or, rather, there are multiple writers, so multiple opinions, some in oppostion- but, there is supposed to be the common theme of modern masculinity, yes, tying posts together? Some writers seem to want (a) women who put motherhood and wifedom before career and these men long for older times, while other writers want (b) to be free from constraints to pursue their dreams, when those dreams combined with a longterm relationship would necessarily require a more androgynous woman, or at least not a stay-at-home mom type. So, which is more the sentiment of men seeking modern masculinity, to those on this website, being the complementary part of (a), or being (b)?

21. Shit, im headed to Law School this Fall at Charlotte. Here I go…

22. You’re a lawyer and you used the word “illict” for “elicit”? That, my friends, is frankly suspicious.

    1. Fixed.

23. I went to Melbourne Law School (top 10 world QS rankings) and have been admitted as an Australian lawyer but don’t want to practice. Did a few clerkships and know some lawyers – it’s a high-paying soul-crushing profession at the top, albeit one that opens doors (think politics/consulting). I have no passion for law despite my choice of studies and will look to business instead.

24. After law school I hurried to find a job that had nothing
    to do with what I did in law school or the legal intern jobs I had. It took a while, but now I’m in a sweet spot. Law jobs kill you with the stress and no free time, I couldn’t keep that shit up. Use your J.D. to impress someone in a non-legal field.

    1. If you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing now ? I’m trying to get the hell outta law right now…. luckily I did a joint degree (MBA/JD) so I got lots to fall back on…. just curious what you ended up doing?

25. I quit practicing law in order to become a mechanic. Why? Ten reasons:
    1. The bar exam is just a filter to limit the number of people allowed to join The Guild. It is nothing more than a gauntlet to be run. An Ivy League degree means nothing; one of the stupidest lawyers I ever met was a Harvard grad.
    2. The preening jerks who populate litigation practice think that being a frothing-at-the-mouth maniac is the equivalent of being “tough.” Beware the polite, quiet litigators; they really know what they’re doing. Unfortunately, very few of them are in the profession anymore.
    3. Practicing law in transactional areas is nothing more than acting as a conduit for paper on its long, tortuous journey from the forest to the landfill.
    4. Only two people ever cared that I was a lawyer: my wife and my mother, and my wife, not so much.
    5. Every lawyer I know wishes he or she was doing something else for a living. One I know quit to become a yoga instructor. Another is now a photographer.
    6. What was once a learned profession has devolved into a mercenary trade.
    7. On the scale of social respectability, lawyers rank just above politician and slightly below child molester.
    8. If you have malpractice insurance, you will get sued at some point. Guaranteed. If you haven’t been a defendant in more than one suit, you haven’t been practicing long enough.
    9. When your clients lose, they are pissed because they feel like they should have won. When they win, they are pissed, because they feel like they should have won anyway and they resent having had to pay you to help them win.
    10. Practicing law is a net drain on the Gross National Product.
    When I returned from an overseas trip once, I was asked at Customs if I had anything to declare. I said: “Yeah! Don’t go to law school!”

    1. Best. Comment. Ever. And just remember, 99% of lawyers give the other 1% a bad name 😉

    2. 6. What was once a learned profession has devolved into a mercenary trade.
       Sounds appealing.

26. This article reeks of unabashed douchebaggery.

27. This article reeks of unabashed douchebaggery.

28. There’s your mistake, you feel.

29. The emails and phone calls are the worst. Clients email on Friday night and expect a response. If they don’t get one, they call. If you don’t answer they text. You know the little bastard thinks, “that guy has to know I need to talk to him, why isn’t he responding?” I’m not responding, asshole, because I’ve already worked 60 hours this week and your $3k in the hole on my bill! There are days I love my job–a solid, well earned victory in court (especially a jury) can make all the shitty days worth it. However, most people come hire me to dig them out of the giant shit pile they created. When that is impossible, suddenly I’m not doing my job.
    In a high-value divorce: Look, you married the bastard and had three kids with him and no, just because he banged his nurse does not entitle you to 100% of all y’all’s stuff. My recent favorite is the CPA who started his own firm with his former employer’s clients despite the non compete. What’s he looking for? He wants me to make that contract disappear. Like, poof, I’m your fair fucking godmother moonlighting as Atticus Finch. Good lord, even the smart clients tend to be total idiots. Give me a criminal case any day. These guys know they got caught and just want as little jail time as
    Good article, by the way.

    1. Criminal defense sucks too. Especially private practice white collar cases. They try to justify everything and get pissed if they think you don’t believe them. They doubt your advice, obsess over every detail, and don’t think they deserve one day in jail. It’s killing my soul and often ain’t worth the money.

30. I am in highschool and my mum keeps telling me that i should become a lawyer but i wasn’t sure about it since i’ve never expirienced it. After reading this article i have a more realistic idea of the job, thanks to the author.

31. I’m almost 30 and quit the profession. There is something about doing legal work for people who are ACTUALLY DOING AWESOME THINGS IN THEIR LIVES that made me realize this was the dumbest, most pointless profession IN THE WORLD!
    My advice to anyone thinking about becoming a lawyer: DON’T!
    This would have been a good idea— 15 years ago! But not any more. There are too many lawyers, not enough jobs. You will not make 6 figures unless you’re extremely lucky and it will take YEARS to pay back your debt from law school (and by the way, they don’t really teach you much considering how much you’re paying them).
    I was blinded by my own stupidity and what I thought was going to be a great career! Sadly, I was completely wrong. All those years wasted in law school I could have been using to write a book or create something AWESOME!
    The point is: Do something that makes you happy!

32. I’ve been to law school and I should’ve been a rj or rapper. Most lawyers are
    Uptight white middle class nerds he kind of ass
    Holes who were
    Laughing about snl episodes
    On Monday in class
    Instead of a whiskey hazed packed metal
    Club in their college days. This American system is a cold grey Zionist banister ran plantation and lawyers are
    Just slaves out in the fields
    Holding whips beating other slaves. There’s nothing worse than living a life without passion risk and authenticity aka white suburbia strip mall existence vs being honest with yourself and not listening to that middle
    America corny bull shot about getting 100k + in debt to be another desk monkey.

33. Would love to talk with you about contributing to my upcoming book “Why Lawyers Suck and What You Can Do About It” but not sure how to contact you.

34. If there’s something I regret the most, it’s attending law school — and going all the way to pass the bar. What a waste of 10 fucking years of my life. Fuck.

35. Your reasons are right… but still… I love being a lawyer!!

36. You need to stop bitching about your profession and quit if you are unhappy. I understand that you have invested an ungodly amount of time and money into it. But its obviously not for you. You seem like you would have made a better paralegal. Not everyone can be a top flight attorney. Judging from you article, you clearly are not. Become a paralegal and stop whining. PS for those out their that think becoming a doctor and a pharmacist is any better then you are beyond naïve!

37. Ya that job sucks. It probably doesn’t help that you go to school for years to learn to speak some weird lawyer language that you have to decipher every word to you
    client.
    I put nails into wood for money. I cant understand a word you say.

38. This is interesting.. I used a solicitor once to ward off an employer after I decided to walk out of a failing badly run company (I was on contract with a 2 month notice period). All I wanted was for her to write a latter stating my intentions and that I felt I would have a case against the company if they bad mouthed me or gave damaging references to any of my future employers. I explained to her that I had no intention of trying to extract money and even if I did have a solid case I don’t have the resources to match that of the company owner.
    She didn’t listen to a thing I said and decided to try and get some sort of cash compensation out of the company. She could not understand that I was simply trying to install fear in to them so that they would think twice about bad mouthing me. As a result of her blocked ears the company’s solicitors came up with a counter claim in order to scare me off and I landed up having to pay a fortune for a chain of letters between herself and the company.
    To me it seemed that her only way to measure her success was by the amount of money she could win for me. She failed to understand that I was simply trying to play a psychological trick on the company so that would see me as a threat and would therefore not be a threat to me.
    I am an accountant, I have had to study a certain amount of law myself and I have been in business for a number of years. I have worked closely with corporate lawyers on various claims and counter claims. It may be different in criminal law but I am well aware that in civil law justice goes to the guy with the most resources.
    There are some great lawyers out there who are creative in what they do but be careful when choosing a lawyer because, as the author of the article has eluded to, most lawyers are just half-witted dullards who got in to the profession either for the money or because they wanted to be that sharp lawyer on that TV show.
    This is a good article. Most people do not understand that Western countries don’t necessarily have functional legal systems and there is no guarantee of justice. What we hear about liberty and justice are just a PR stunt to get you to believe in the judiciary system. If people did not believe in the system it would fall apart and a lot of judges, lawyers and politicians would be out of work.

39. There’s a certain sexiness that comes with being a lawyer though. The men want to be you and the women want to be with you. Being a lawyer raises your social status beyond almost any other job, no matter how much money you might make doing something else. Being a lawyer opens almost every door in society. Just being a lawyer gains you instant respect from almost everyone. That’s what make it tough to leave even if the actual job sucks.

40. Okay I’m actually at the stage where I am deciding on law school. I’m 19 currently a junior majoring in Criminal Justice with a minor is Political Science. A lot of people tell me being a lawyer is good because of the money, nice homes, etc. Disregarding the stress, long work hours, etc. Also a guy told me on twitter that he was in debt by going to law school over 200K actually. My second career path I’m deciding on is being a federal agent. I hear this is easier because it requires a higher degree than a bachelors. Which one would you guys recommend? My email is [email protected] I just wanted some advice. Thanks!

41. im a 15 year old girl who dreams to became a lawyer after reading this i still really wanna be a lawyer but i suffer from depprssion befor and thats my own fear of becaming a lawyer what if i became not a good laywer

    1. Depression.
       If you think you are depressed now,wait until you are tens of thousands of dollars in debt without the income to justify the debt and you will see how depressed one can become.
       The main problem with the cost of law school is getting a job that would justify the cost of the law school after you graduate. Unless your family owns a law firm or you are in the top 10% of the class at one of the major schools, the jobs are simply not there anymore to justify the expense. The problem is that there are just simply too many lawyers for the work that is out there.
       It is not just making enough to cover the payment on the debt from law school, but you also to need make extra money beyond that to justify having taken the law school path. Most of my classmates in law school are making the same or less money than they were before law school. This means that they spent 3 or 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars to do no better than they were before for income, and in some cases much worse; plus now they have to pay off the student loans.
       In any other situation, people would ask if the cost of an additional credential would result in enough income to justify the expense and time. Making enough to just pay the debt is NOT enough since at the end of the day, you have no extra money ‘left in your pocket’ and your life is no better off; plus you did all kinds of extra work to get the result.

       1. Thank you for giving me more informaiton

       2. Thank u for giving me information . I hope one day my dream of becaming a good lawyer will come true.

42. I was a divorce attorney for 4 years and I had to get out of that game. Actually, between 2/3rds and 3/4ths was family law. If I could have rounded up more commercial clients and other interesting stuff like defamation and wrongful dismissal, I might have stayed on. Dealing with custody and divorce was too stressful. Weird thing because I worked with explosive demolitions in the army and I considered that relaxing.
    .
    In 4 years I had 3 professional complaints lodged against me, all by women: one opposing counsel and two soon-to-be ex-wives of my clients. It totally fucked with my work until the file landed on the desk of a man in the administration and he put an end to it. I the case of the opposing counsel, she wanted to tag me for breach of an undertaking. The law society investigator – a woman – tossed that out but of her own initiative cited me for unprofessional language.
    .
    The pay scale for lawyers is bi-modal. A bunch earn about $50k and a bunch more earn just over $100k. Most people are not aware of the former. Teachers and plumbers make more than most lawyers. Plus, many of the ones making $100k have to work 90 hours a week, so they are not really all that well off.
    .
    In one divorce case I went up against an ornery female attorney. My boss had heard about her and asked me what she looked like. My answer was “like a cheap barrel of rum” which elicited a smile from him. I asked about regarding her reputation and one guys said “her clients love her; she is a complete cunt!” That’s the thing about divorce work: half of it is showboating for your client – particularly if they are female – and embarrassing and socking it to their spouse.

43. Agree w the writer. Only if you really like what u r doing n don’t mind spending most of your time doing it. Holidays are rare n rest days can be very often working days.

44. Fuck Lawyers. They run the government and they have fucked up this country and turned it into victim heaven. Fuck them all, even the ones on my side who charge $500 an hour. I hope they all jump off a cliff or quit.

45. Lawyers are miserable. Sweet! Thanks much for sharing.

46. Spot on. Monotonous b.s. surrounded by greedy d-bag partners, obnoxious spoiled-brat associates, and fingerpointing clients. If you ever meet a lawyer who says they LOVE their job, do us all a favor and kick them in the crotch, HARD.

47. Back in 2007/8 I was at a crossroads with a degree in finance that I didn’t really want to use anymore for reasons I won’t go into (just prior to the financial crisis I made my exit). I worked in a factory for a year (which turned into 3 years) and thought long and hard about what I really wanted. I considered taking a few more classes so I could sit for the CPA. I considered an MBA (thank God I didn’t do that). I even considered just being a laborer the rest of my life. It wasn’t THAT bad and I made fair money in a job with no stress after I left for home.
    Eventually, I decided law school was the path I would take. I studied for and did very well on the LSAT. Then I thought it would be smart to talk to some lawyers. I probably talked to ten different lawyers in various fields to get an idea of what it was like. Every single one HATED their job and told me not to do it. They said it was nothing but reading and paper work and unless I love that and the likelihood of making 50k for a degree that cost me 200k, I should look elsewhere.
    A few months later I took a leap in a completely different direction and enrolled in biology and organic chemistry (I sneakily took orgo before gen chem because I could self advise). 8 years later, I’m a pharmacist and goddam if I don’t love my job. Others would hate it, but I love it even when it sucks and people treat me like a fast food worker. I make six figures, but if you took away my student loans, I’d be happy making 60k a year. There is something out there for all of us, and I’m sure law is perfect for some. I just thank God every day that I researched a little further at the time (and I’m an atheist).

48. “Literally, you have no idea how broke my client is. …”
    Of course, this whole email might’ve been a deception. It’s hard to prove a negative of this type — that the person has no money. Who knows what he might have socked away somewhere?

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