Over at the ABA Journal, someone got the bright idea to solicit lawyers who wanted to see their name in lights to tell why they love being lawyers.
We’ve all seen the downbeat headlines—surveys show as many as half of all lawyers wouldn’t enter the profession if they had it to do over, wouldn’t recommend their children become lawyers, would rather be digging ditches or breaking rocks. As the profession struggles to recover from the Great Recession, it’s certainly not easy being an attorney.
But what about the other half of the profession—the half that doesn’t grab the headlines, that finds satisfaction in their jobs?
If you can get past the logical gaps that would make a satisfied lawyer cringe, the balance of the article consists of some curious testimonials. My absolute favorite was the very first.
I knew nothing about criminal law and said as much to a California federal court judge who wanted to appoint me to represent a woman facing forgery charges. I was a business and tax attorney in court that day for a calendar call. The judge saw my name on a pleading and appointed me.
The woman was about to plead guilty to 22 counts of forging signatures on Social Security checks. Her hearing was scheduled for 2 p.m. The judge told me to educate myself and if I needed more time, he could continue the case for a week.
I introduced myself to the defendant. She told me that she was guilty, and I asked her why she had forged the checks. “Because he told me to” was her answer. The “he” turned out to be the woman’s husband, a Social Security recipient who was hospitalized in Texas. She handed me a letter her husband had written directing her to sign the checks and deposit them in their bank account.
Relying on what I learned in bills and notes class, I told her that an authorized signature wasn’t forgery. At the 2 p.m. hearing I moved to vacate the woman’s plea, offering her husband’s letter as evidence. The government acquiesced and the case was dismissed.
It was at that precise moment of dismissal that I realized being a lawyer was about helping people who needed help. And I felt that I had found my calling in life.
Jay Foonberg
Beverly Hills, Calif.
Before you jump all over Jay Foonberg for the procedural, ethical and substantive issues his story raises, bear in mind that he is the author of such scholarly tomes as How to Start & Build a Law Practice and How to Get & Keep Good Clients, prominently displayed for sale on his website.
Assuming that they are leading with the best they’ve got, the ABA Journal’s “other half” promotion isn’t quite moving me to tears. In fact, my initial reaction was to respond with some very snarky thoughts about dredging up dead bodies to fill the empty space. But that’s really not my view of the law.
Some days, I love being a lawyer. Some days, I hate it. There have been more of the latter than the former over the years. Everybody loves doing something useful and productive, feeling that their efforts have had a positive contribution to others and society, which is why being a good carpenter can be so fulfilling. Criminal defense lawyer? Not so much.
But rather than serve up a heaping bowl of snark in reaction to the ABA Journal’s “let’s get happy”-fest, I wondered what you, kind reader, think about being a lawyer. We do it because we must, because if we don’t, then who will stand between the accused and the mighty. But do you love it? Do you? Tell the truth.
Addendum: As I’m reminded by my buddy Bennett, this question has been asked before, but as time passes and new folks come by, it’s worth another go ’round.
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To love being a lawyer means you have to hate it at times. If you truly care about what you do as a lawyer, then the happiness you get from giving a client good news is matched with the hatred of making that call that the client is going to jail unless they are acquitted, or that the appeal was affirmed.
Some years ago I got to know a lawyer that was well respected in criminal defense. Great trial advocate, always got, and still gets, big cases. He also presented himself, at least to me, as someone that didn’t give a crap about the plight of the client. The clients committed the crimes and would pay if he wasn’t successful, but that was not on him. I initially thought I would like to be like this one day – be more of a surgeon. I make the cut, and if the patient dies, it’s probably not my fault and I go on to the next surgery. (this is not to say that as a general practice surgeons feel nothing about the loss of a patient on the table). IF I could go through my days being completely objective about my role in the system, I could be happier.
But I can’t. My practice is small enough that I know my clients, their families, there innermost thoughts, dreams, and fears. Some clients I don’t like, but even for those clients, I want to do my best and hope that although they are not the type I would ever want to have a beer with, at least I won’t do anything to make them more of an asshole then they are.
ALl that being said, I was not a good student. I was lucky to get in to one law school. I remember being admitted to the Bar and thinking how incredible it was that the Florida Supreme Court gave me a card that says I can go in to court and try and keep the government from putting someone in jail, or taking away their liberty otherwise.
I still feel that way. I am part of the Constitution, and the third branch of government. I am privileged to be a lawyer.
This doesn’t mean I don’t have days where I wish I owned a t-shirt shop in the Florida Keys, or won the lottery so I could live part time in the Carribean.
But day for day, I can’t imagine waking up and being in any other profession.
I’m new to the blawgs since Bennett raised the question, so I’ll take a shot at it here.
I’d been licensed and practicing for maybe 3 or 4 years before I got to where, when someone asked what I did, I could say without first dissembling that I was a lawyer. Of course, the law was my second career choice, and it’s hard to pass on the fantasies of youth.
Anyhow, I don’t love the law (and as I’ve said repeatedly, don’t believe in the Law) and don’t love being a lawyer. But I sometimes get real satisfaction from it. And I enjoy some of the work and most of the fight.
I get to stand every day as a bulwark between the government and an individual. (Did the same thing when I took a break from private practice for 5 years and worked for the ACLU of Ohio, which I always said was of a piece with what I’d been doing before.) That’s a dream position.
But the work itself is often tedious. The clients, their families and friends, the courts, and the prosecutors can be demanding, frustrating, unrealistic, irritating. And of course as a criminal defense lawyer I am from time to time roundly reviled and my work is routinely misunderstood.
I’ve made bad law. I’ve had clients whose execution I couldn’t prevent, about whose imprisonment for months, years, decades I could do nothing. I’ve lost cases I should have won. Then again, I’ve won cases I should have lost, I’ve made good law and made bad law go away, and I’ve successfully kept people from getting convicted or from getting convicted of as much, gotten people’s convictions overturned. I’ve prevented the state from killing some of my clients (and in one case perhaps several others, too).
Ultimately, it’s not about loving or hating what I do. Life’s never that easily divided. What I’ve discovered about myself over the years is that what I do is what I am.
I am a criminal defense lawyer. It’s really the only sort of lawyer I have any interest in being. Most days I can go to work knowing that and feeling good about that, even if the day itself sucks.
Yes. I love it. Yes, I hate it. It is, as Gamso said, who I am. For a few years I tried to run away from it. I stayed home and dreamed of a thousand things I could do instead, but I came back because I can’t do anything else. I don’t know how and I wouldn’t want to.
I would be thrilled if my kids wanted to be lawyers. I encourage folks who want to practice law to go to law school. It’s hard work. It’s frequently frustrating. But it’s what I do. And it’s cooler than what anyone else does.
When I went to law school, the nasty, adversarial nature of my colleagues convinced me that I never wanted to be a lawyer. I didn’t like them, didn’t want to have anything to do with lawyers or the profession. I didn’t want to be a jerk and therefore didn’t practice law.
I did want to make the world a better place. My early advocacy work fell into a patchwork of jobs that were more like what social workers do. For example, I ran a domestic violence shelter and advocated for changes in policies and I worked to end hunger in my community.
In late 1993, I met Forrest Bayard, a lawyer from Chicago, who was practicing divorce law. He practiced with the goal that the parties would be friends at the end of the divorce, that they would be able to co-parent amicably, and he talked about how important it was to grant dignity to everyone in the process. Forrest was the kind of guy who introduced himself to cab drivers and desk clerks and thanked them for their service. He knew something about dignity and service. He was not a jerk. Perhaps I could be a lawyer and not a jerk?!!
A few months later, I opened my own law practice with Forrest’s model in mind. I reworded my previous “I don’t want to be a jerk” approach to include what I did want: a law practice that was based on peacemaking, problem-solving and healing conflict.
As a family law litigator, there were times when I got riled up and wanted to destroy the other side. I found my inner jerk more than I liked. I took those as opportunities to center myself, return to my purpose for practicing.
I built a support network around me and took some public stands. For example, I stopped taking cases with the opposing counsel who was the biggest jerk in town and I started inviting opposing counsel over to sit down and talk about resolving cases. I researched and found collaborative law, restorative justice and mediation and eventually a dozen other approaches that fell within my framework.
And I found that there were a lot of other lawyers out there who wanted to be peacemakers, problem-solvers and healers of conflicts. I started networking with them, knitting together a community of support and information sharing.
My quality of life as a lawyer just kept getting better. My clients were the lucky beneficiaries of a lot of my personal transformation, creating a peaceful place in myself that could honor their processes, hold space, and help them get clear about what was most important and share it in a way that could be heard and honored by others.
I don’t see many law clients these days. In 2010, my book, Lawyers as Peacemakers, Practicing Holistic, Problem-Solving Law was one of the ABA’s best sellers. For three years, I’ve been location independent, capturing what has become a movement in this peacemaking, healing and problem-solving approach [Edit Note: self-promotional link deleted]. I keep my law license current and I enjoy being able to work with clients when I can. I love being a lawyer.
My name is Eric, and I’m an addict.
[Edit Note: Hi, Eric.]
Ditto to what the guys above this line said. They are right, and they are far smarter than I. They operate in a sea of tempered enthusiasm and professional focus. Sometimes, I find them hard to understand.
In so many ways, it’s not me. I operate on compulsion. I operate to get the next high.
I haven’t yet found a support group for criminal defense addicts, but this seems like a decent place to start. You know, decent people, compassionate perspective, germane ideas, though some jerks spoil the soup.
I like puzzles, to be perfectly honest. Every case is a puzzle. Some puzzles come with all the pieces. All I have to do is put them together in the correct place and order. Others are missing pieces. Some have damaged pieces. I try to put them together in a way that seems to work best for the person handing me the pieces.
Some come to me after being smashed and shat upon by another lawyer. I hate those. I don’t hate the client, and I don’t hate my ability to help them. I hate the fact that they were abused and misused by another lawyer who took their case and sought a quick, cheap high. I lament the fact that their case, given a bit of nurturing, attention, and time, could have produced a wonderful, euphoric high. Instead, it was wasted by a charlatan.
Some of the puzzles have detailed rulebooks. Those can be boring and tedious. Some come without rulebooks, or the rulebook has been partially burned in a fire. I like those the best. I love entropy. I try my best to steer the legal ship toward a sea of total entropy.
I’m always searching for my next fix. That next case that might produce a full acquittal always seems right on the horizon. I keep pulling the handle of the one-armed-bandit hoping that the barrels align. When I finally get a hit, the high is amazing. It lasts for days, but it never lasts as long as I want.
Helping folks always produces a high–albeit a lesser one than that full acquittal. It gets me by, and somedays that’s all I need. And they are nice people. They want help. I want to help. Most of the time, I want to help them more than I can. Every addiction comes with it’s own set of restrictive irons, and I curse mine every week–if not every day.
Some days I love my addiction, and it loves me back. It is part of me, and it makes me feel good, really good. I’m on top of the world. On other days, it feels like 1000 needles in my body, and the sickness produces a pain like no other. It is my demon. It is a curse.
Don’t worry about me. I’ve got it under control. I can stop anytime I want. No intervention necessary.
I think.
My name is Eric, and that is my story.
Let me be the first to admit I loved the power and the money. Lest anyone think me shallow, it wasn’t that easy for a woman to enter a profession which could all but guarantee her a solid middle class income in 1975 when I graduated from college. Being a literature major insured that my first post-college job was in a typing pool (Gen-Y alert – there was this thing called a typewriter and another thing called a dictaphone) There were also few jobs open to women where she could move the gears and levers of the system for the benefit of the people who came to her for assistance. Power. Not for its own sake but not merely as a social service either. The ability to say “hey buster! you can’t do that to her or them or me!” and have it mean something is powerful. Economic power meant I was not doomed to be dependent on another human being for my financial support. And political power meant I could pursue a vision of the society that I believed in. Money and power. Not dirty words after all. Then, of course, there was justice, as in the “justice system.” Not so much of that. Still, having the opportunity to SEEK justice on one’s own behalf, on behalf of family and friends, and on behalf of one’s clients, there’s really nothing better, is there/
“Lawyers as Peacemakers, Practicing Holistic, Problem-Solving Law.”
Ommmmmm! Femi-Nazi! You remind me of somebody I don’t like v. much. Don’t think I’ll be reading your feel-good book any time soon. I want my attorney to be wearing a hair-shirt and itching for a g00d fight. If he/she is in the Lotus position, I’ll keep looking.
Remember, it’s a war. There are winners and loser; occasionally, it’s a draw. Somebody here goes under the name, Trial Warrior. That rings for me.
I don’t “heart” law these days–being a lawyer is a different (and more complex) story.
But I have to say (vis-s-vis the article) I “know” Jay Foonberg– he was part of the “Bridging the Gap” program all us new-minted lawyers (LA Cali) took… part in in 1983, the year I was sworn in. I suspect he still is. He is famous in these parts for his humor and (I dare hope) commitment to the honorable practice of law, as what he taught us then was about the history of law.
Vickie– I graduated college in 1970 with yes, an English degree– so I, too jumped way up when I went to law school. Alas things have degraded badly since then.
Hey, I’d like to promote my books on SJ too!
I’ve always wanted to share the lessons I’ve learned through the years. They are lessons about tenderness, compassion, peacemaking, healing, and problem solving. Now, all of it can be found in my book “How to Make Love Like a Lawyer.” It can be found here:
[Edit Note: Link to Amazon Best Seller list deleted]
I talk about ways to use your skills as a lawyer to be a better lover, partner, and advocate. In it, I give techniques on closing the deal and completing a personal transformation. Through my patented 69 step process, you too can feel the passion and intimacy that’s been missing in your practice. New, tantric positions can stretch both your body and mind and expand your horizons as a lawyer–like the “Preliminary Inquiry,” the “Discovery Request,” and the “Final Verdict.”
Lawyers across the country are raving about “How to Make Love Like a Lawyer” and the untapped inner potential it reached in each of them. Consider the following:
[Edit Note: Link deleted to multiple testimonials from well-known lawyers, including one from a lawyer in south Florida]
It changed their lives, and it can change yours–one intimate, discrete moment at a time.
But, that’s not all! You can also purchase the follow-up to my blockbuster hit–How to Hook Up at CLE Seminars:
[Edit Note: Link deleted to “ABA After Dark Committee” book list]
In How to Hook Up at CLE Seminars, I discuss such important legal topics as:
Hiding it from the wife
Getting your freak-on while getting PR hour credit
Scoring points discretely at the icebreaker
Clandestine hookups–not just for male attorneys anymore
Bagging the keynote state supreme court justice
AND MUCH MORE!!!
BUY NOW!!!
Oh, and I really like being a lawyer. Go law.
This was a serious post for serious comments. Not a place for lawyers to insert self-promotional material.
[Edit Note: Link to 23 lawyers that think he’s “awesome good” deleted]
Now lets get back to answering the question about our love for law.
[Edit Note: Link to website of fans of Brian Tannebaum that “love law and him” deleted]
Grow up.
With Scott’s permission, I am linking my post: “A Psalm in reply to Scott Greenfield’s post, ‘Do You ♥ Law?”: http://tinyurl.com/4rv83s3
“Scott’s permission?” That’s BS. I’ve never gotten “Scott’s Permission.” I demand equal (simple) justice. Here’s a link I want to post.
You still don’t have my permission, but I will leave your link as a monument to your unbearably bad taste in music for use to humiliate you now and in the future.
I am a public defender and I LOVE my job. Sometimes I go home and cry. Sometimes I cry while I’m still at work. Sometimes I go home and drink. Sometimes I feel guilty for participating in a system that treats poor people so unfairly.
I’ve filed for bankruptcy and I’ve got $80,000 in student loans that I have no idea how I will possibly pay back.
But whenever I think about changing jobs I think “Damn I love my job.”
Love it. Went to law school as a second career at age 52. Felt criminal defense is what I should be doing. It fits me well — relatively fast-moving, always interesting stories, sometimes really, significantly help people, other times merely able to treat someone with respect and caring who has (almost) never had either, makes me grateful daily for my good parents and good luck to have been born to them. Love it.
. . . and who knew that the law would BE literature . . . one of life’s better surprises
I am NOT the well-known lawyer in South Florida who posted the testimonial that was deleted from this advertisement.
I know I love the law – you won’t hear me throwing a fit because “I thought law school was a ticket to riches and what do I do now that I’m not making over 100 K a year” like alot of the unhappy law grads. I never wanted to be hired for a big firm. I just wanted to work for myself, and to stand up to people who abuse their power and authority and violate others’ rights. I have had a passion for criminal law since I was six years old. Really. This is what I have always known that my calling was. As cheesy as it sounds, it’s true. And I’m glad that it is. The day I was sworn in was the happiest day of my life (besides my wedding, I guess) because I had become what I wanted to be “when I grow up”.
Let me guess, you’re young.