Lawyers and Their Discontents: Findings from a Survey of the Chicago Bar

Abstract

There is a widespread perception that "a crisis of morale"' afflicts the legal profession.Dean Kronman of Yale has defined it: "It is the product of growing doubts about the capacity of a lawyer's life to offer fulfillment to the person who takes it up.Disguised by the material well-being of lawyers, it is a spiritual crisis that strikes at the heart of their professional pride."'Thus, the complaint is not merely that there has been a decline in lawyer's ethics, altruism, and professionalism, 3 but that this deterioration has made lawyers unhappy in their work.Both the popular and the professional press have been full of stories -about burnout, career abandonment, and general despair in the bar.A headline in the Los Angeles Times read: "Miserable with the Legal Life: More and More Lawyers Hate Their Jobs, Surveys Find."The story notes that: A RAND Corp. study last year concluded that California attorneys were "profoundly pessimistic" about the law, with only half indicating that they would choose again to be a lawyer.Seven in 10 lawyers responding to a 1992 California Lawyer magazine poll said they would change careers if the opportunity arose.4And the news from Michigan is much the same: "[T]hree out of every five lawyers" responding to a poll by the Michigan Lawyers Weekly said'that they would not 0 1999

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