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The American Bar Association recently put out a new survey that revealed up to one half of this country’s lawyers are miserable in their career choices. The reasons were varied, but the survey suggested it’s a combination of the long work hours, the pressure from partners to raise the bar in terms of the number of hours they bill and the stress that never seems to ease up. There’s something else interesting, too, says A. Harrison Barnes, lawyer and LawCrossing.com founder. Many attorneys are wanting more. There’s been a definitive, but subtle, shift among many attorneys across the country. They’re looking for more fulfillment than they are bigger bank balances. Surprised? The LawCrossing.com founder isn’t. “For years, lawyers have plugged along, working incredibly long hours and sacrificing much of those things in life that give us meaning. They told themselves that they’d slow down after they became partner or struck out on their own; before long, their dreams for the future come full circle and the financial rewards began flowing, but they were still unhappy”. And as Barnes says, for some, this process took a decade or more.

Another interesting finding is that more women than men are feeling the blues. “They’re bored”, says A. Harrison Barnes. Both men and women must be aggressive, competitive, detached and adversarial, but it grows more tiresome than women – and in a shorter amount of time. Couple the boredom of the day to day goings on, and before long, a deep resentment begins to emerge that is absolutely exhausting.

But is this really any different than other careers that folks grow tired of? “What sets the legal profession apart – along with other careers that require a major financial and time commitment that college demands – is that they feel as though they have to recoup some of those investments; if not for themselves, then for the parents who shelled out years of savings to send them to law school. Their only repayment they ever expected was to be able to say during their weekly bridge games, “My son’s a lawyer” or “My daughter’s a judge”. Really, who wants to take that from their parents?

Finally, the suffering many lawyers witness in their clients can quickly become tiresome and even depressing. Ask any lawyer, and odds are, he’ll tell you his goal was to use the legal profession as a way to do good, to give back and to make another’s life better. That’s frustrating when the very field you’re working is the reason you can’t make that difference.

While there are many who wouldn’t trade their legal careers for anything, there remain those who wish they were doing anything but. They’d change a courtroom for a mail room any day of the week.

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