The NY Post writes about lawyers giving up the golden handcuffs:
Young, Gen-X lawyers in their third to fifth year in the business are walking away from their $200,000-a-year positions in record numbers - at times without another job in view.
At the firm I'm currently temping at, the young associates are swamped and varying degrees of miserable. Several (4 out of 9), have spontaneously opened up to me and expressed their deep unhappiness not only with the hours they work, but with the lack of fulfillment they feel with the law in general. They're want to know about temping, I shrug my shoulders.
When I walked away from my career as a big firm associate - the healthy salary, the career I had spent plenty of time and money to join - I was seen by my bosses and peers as reckless, irresponsible and naive. And perhaps I was, I didn't have a job lined up, and though my savings seemed decent, if you really think about what it costs to live in this city, I was essentially broke. But I was miserable and money, prestige, and whatever else came with the job was not fixing that. On the day I left I was surprised at how many of my colleagues, people I knew only through work - hardly good friends - expressed to me a measure of jealousy and envy. I got the sense that they wished they could do it - what I was doing - but Manhattan rents, and family and social pressures made it impossible for them. In some ways I felt lucky at not being part of a social circle where people would know if the firm I was working for was Top 20 or not. In my circle all firms sound the same and I sometimes even get credit (and incredulous looks) for having passed the bar exam on the first try. Needing only to make myself happy, I did.
Five years later I can't say that my path has been without it's problems. And despite my early experiences, I have, for practical and financial reasons, flirted with returning to associate life. Temping is no dream job. It's a paycheck (a decent one), but it's no career and along the way some of the work you will find yourself doing is downright demoralizing. Dave, please count the pages in this stack and make sure there are an equal number of pages in that stack. Yet temping can be a great alternative for those whose interests lie in other areas, or for people with kids to raise, or for people who want to reap the rewards of their education but who don't want to live in the office or check their blackberrys while on their honeymoons.
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1 comment:
unlike big-D, my career path had me working long hours for a SMALL firm AND getting paid a third of market! while I enjoyed the challenge, the court room exposure and helping out unions/trust funds, in the end I was being used.
now I make just as much money temping without any stress. I have been very fortunate to end up at a firm that does not treat its temp like shit. this place knows how profitable reliable temp attorneys are, so we have a good work environment and decent attorneys.
my only resentment is that my temp agency is making insane amount of money of my work without even providing anything in return--no benefits and no raises.
People who are considering law school, need to understand that law is a very difficult and sometimes unsatisfying career.
More importantly, law school graduates who graduate with huge loans will be hard pressed to get a high paying, extremelly demanding and nerve-raking law firm job. Not many grads get such jobs, so they struggle to pay those loans--those who do get such high paying jobs burn out quickly and end up miserable.
In other words, think carefully before going to law school. Unless you are going for free, it is a very risky move.
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