Tom Kane’s The Legal Marketing Blog has a post on the importance of enjoying your work and your clients, apropos of a recent post by Bob Bly on the importance of passion in work (I just noticed that Tom and I both posted comments to that post). Passion is a bell a lot of people are ringing these days, but that’s just because it’s true (by the way, you should follow both Tom and Bob’s blogs).
Tom refers to research suggesting that more than 50% of lawyers merely tolerate or hate the work they do and the clients for whom they do it. Ouch, but very easy to believe if you’ve practiced in the big firm environment. I see so many references to this these days – the most interesting recent reference came from Lessig in his post about the recent West Wing episode that included a storyline about him (played by Christopher Lloyd):
And so is "fame" made: My story is on the West Wing because I was at Harvard — not because the brilliance of my intervention had been noted and reviewed, but because I was teaching talented kids who would prove to be important. Indeed, so has the most important of my "fame" been made: Did Justice Jackson pick me to be his special master because he had determined I was the perfect mix of Holmes and Ed Felten? No, I was picked because I was a Harvard Law Professor teaching the law of cyberspace. Remember: So is "fame" made.
Two things about the episode did, however, make me very happy. First, that it showed that at least some law students escape the trap that the top law schools have created — the path to a tedious and unrewarding practice that few seem capable of avoiding. And second, that it captured beautifully the single most important thing that I learned from my years working on "constitutionalism" in Eastern Europe: That 90% of the challenge is to build a culture that respects the rule of law, and that practices it. A document doesn’t build that culture. And no one has a formula — either for building it, or preserving it.
Another reference came from Yale Law School, which prepared this resource, presumably to answer student questions about their future careers.
Ouch indeed.
I alluded to this recently – see the first bullet in the second group here – and I think about it a lot – how it is that this comes to be? Bright, talented, hard-working people, eager to contribute, routinely, in my experience anyway, find themselves unhappy in their legal careers, and feel unable to do anything about it. I’ve been thinking that one thing we can do is more aggressively teach law career choices and management to law students and those starting out. We should be answering the questions they have, and debunking myths, about firms, clients, the practice, etc. in frank, interactive sessions that tell people what it’s really like, and what their alternatives are. I’m not certain it would do any good – but it would be a good place to start.