Life-Balance
Issues of career satisfaction loom large in the legal profession. 2008 statistical data shows that 33% of lawyers in the UK would not want their children to be lawyers and 52% of Australian lawyers are considering leaving their current firm. American data is largely the same. Many firms are making great strides to find solutions to retention of their associates, providing flextime and utilizing technology so that lawyers may work in more virtual environments. Still, lawyer satisfaction in successfully balancing their careers and their lives is at an all time low. In our Life-Balance section, Legal Trends Network will show case articles and studies relative to how lawyers can be happier within their professions.
Professor Susan Daicoff says that in the United States, one in five lawyers currently suffer from clinically significant levels of depression, alcoholism or some other form of psychological distress. She says that:
empirical research has linked the development of lawyer distress, to the extent it develops in law school, to a shift in one’s values, not to any external, environmental pressures. This research showed that to the extent that law students shifted from valuing intrinsic concerns, such as personal, interpersonal and community values to valuing extrinsic concerns, such as grades, law review, Order of the Coif, plum clerking jobs, awards, and other people’s esteem, they tended to develop distress.
(See Daicoff's article "Walking Wounded" below in the "Of Interest" section of this page).
