10 Critical Tips on How to Hire an Attorney
Filed underEthical Issues
By Aaron Brooks
In the modern world an attorney does more than bail people out of jail. Every business including that of the World Wide Web needs the services of an attorney. But the world is full of attorneys of all kinds and sadly not all are honest.
Since a client attorney relationship is based on trust you would need to only appoint an attorney you are comfortable with and are not intimidated by. Another important consideration is what you need an attorney for. Law is a specialized field and you will need to look for an attorney who practices in the area you need help with.Before just selecting an attorney at random it would be advisable to familiarize yourself with the way law works. Many states have websites to guide people.
Check out everything before you hire a lawyer.Set yourself a goal to locate a lawyer who you like and trust. One you can confide in and one who will care about what happens to you. A lawyer is in many ways your conscience so choose with care. Think about using a reputed lawyer referral service like this one set up by the Massachusetts Bar Association.
The 10 most critical things a lawyer must toe the line for are:
1. He must have the proper qualifications and have extensive experience in the field of law you need him for. You cannot choose a criminal lawyer to handle say a divorce case.
2. He must agree to handle your case himself and not assign you to a colleague or assistant.
3. He must be licensed to work in the area and state or country you need him.
4. He must be honest and upfront with you about the case. If he thinks you have no chance of winning he must say so.
5. He must answer your questions clearly and tell you about not just his successes but failures too.
6. He must be well connected in your area other wise the case will be a damp squib.
7. He must not be loose lipped and discuss salient features of your case at social gatherings.
8. He must lay the cards on the table regarding fees and there should be no hidden charges.
9. His experience should enable him to tell you how long he thinks your case will take and what the strong and weak points of your case are.
10. He must make an effort to listen to you carefully, make notes, read your file thoroughly and not just set the file aside, smile at you and shake your hand within minutes to indicate the meeting is over.What is most essential for you when you step out to hire a lawyer is to do your homework. Ask friends, business colleagues, and others who have ever used a lawyer. Learn how to sift through the chaff and find a lawyer that will suit you most. Do not hire one that charges the lowest fees. Find one that is well qualified, dedicated, and affordable.
Friday, 10 August 2007
Tuesday, 7 August 2007
Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers-4
Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers-4
Basic Contours of Satisfaction in the AJD
Data Consistent with prior research, reported levels of job satisfaction in the AJD study are high: when asked to rate their satisfaction with 16 specific dimensions of their jobs, respondents consistently rate themselves as more satisfied than dissatisfied (see Table 1). In particular, lawyers express higher levels of satisfaction with their relationships with colleagues, their level of responsibility, the control over how they work, and the intellectual challenge of their work (all rated 5.39 or higher on a scale of 1-7), with somewhat lower ratings given to their performance evaluation process, the diversity of their workplace, and their opportunities for pro bono work (all rated 4.4/7 or lower). More strikingly, respondents' satisfaction with their career choice is very high: fully 79% of respondents report that they are extremely or moderately satisfied with their decision to become a lawyer. In contrast, however, when asked how long they plan to stay with their current employer, the data suggest a different pattern, with 44 percent of respondents expressing that they intend to be looking for a new job within two years-and almost one-quarter of these respondents express that they are already looking for a new position or plan to within one year.
These data present somewhat of a paradox: on the one hand, we find very high levels of reported satisfaction with the decision to become a lawyer, while on the other, we find fairly high levels of job mobility expectations, often taken as indicating lower levels of professional satisfaction (Kay & Hagan 2003). To get underneath this tension, we disaggregated these findings by the prestige of the law school attended by the respondents. As Bourdieu has argued (1977, 1998), schools are a key site through which students acquire their professional expectations-schools thereby play a critical role in the reproduction of social stratification, with students not merely acquiring the skills they require for professional life, but perhaps more trenchant, adapting to the dispositions necessary for the professional roles they are destined to take. This can be achieved because schools are themselves embedded in the reproduction of students' social origins: the prestige of the school that individuals attend is itself a function of their social class, so that in bestowing degrees and credentials, schools confirm and reaffirm students' anticipated status within the profession (Bourdieu 1998). Research on law schools-from Granfield's (1992) study Making Elite Lawyers to Stover's (1989) Making It and Breaking It and to Mertz's (forthcoming) work on the Language of Law School-indeed establishes that these are key sites in the development of students' expectations and aspirations.
Our measure of the law school hierarchy is derived from the rankings published in the U.S. News and World Report for 2003; each school in the AJD data set was assigned its corresponding U.S. News score and was then placed into one of six major groupings: the top 10, top 11-20, top 21-40, top 41-100, schools in the third tier, and schools in the fourth tier. Analyses reveal that these rankings correlate well with the measures of lawyers' social background available in the AJD data. Table 2 indicates that students attending top 10 schools report fathers' occupational prestige scores that are significantly higher than those from the fourth-tier schools, with reports of fathers' occupational scores declining in a linear fashion along with law school tier. The data on fathers' educational attainment display a similar pattern: more than two-thirds of top 10 school graduates had fathers who had completed some graduate education, compared to one-third of fourth-tier graduates.6
The law school rankings also map directly onto the settings within which law graduates work, an indicator that the social hierarchies that led students into particular law schools will also continue to be reproduced in their professional careers. The data in Table 3 indicate that more than half of the graduates from top 10 schools work in the megafirms of more than 250 lawyers, compared to just 4 percent of fourth-tier graduates, who are instead working predominantly in small or solo practices. Even when they work in the public sector, graduates of elite schools are more likely to be working in the more prestigious federal government positions, while lower-tier graduates are more likely to work for state government.
Given these patterns, it is perhaps not surprising that measures of job satisfaction also track the hierarchy of law schools. While our initial examination of job satisfaction resulted in somewhat of a paradox, noting high levels of satisfaction at the same time as high job mobility intentions, examining these same measures by law school tier sheds considerable light on this disjuncture. The data in Figure 1 indicate that almost 60 percent of top 10 graduates expect to leave their positions within two years, while only 27 percent report that they are extremely satisfied with their decision to become a lawyer. However, substantially fewer (41 percent) of the fourth-tier graduates intend to leave their employer within two years, while substantially more (43 percent) of these graduates are extremely satisfied with their decision to become a lawyer. These patterns suggest that there is in fact a convergence, rather than a divergence, between expressions of career satisfaction and job mobility intentions: the most elite students are the least satisfied with their career choice and the most likely to be thinking of leaving their employer, while lower-tier graduates express high levels of career satisfaction and high levels of commitment to their employer.
It may be, however, that this relationship between law school tier and job satisfaction has more to do with the practice settings in which these lawyers work, rather than being a direct consequence of the law schools they attended. After all, the most elite students are the most likely to be working in large corporate law firms (see Table 3), so their lack of satisfaction may be the result of where they work, rather than the dispositions they acquired in law school. To investigate this possibility, we restricted the sample to those respondents working in firms of more than 100 lawyers. The data in Figure 2 confirm that even within these large law firms, the most elite graduates continue to express lower levels of career satisfaction than those from the fourth tier (26 percent of elites report extreme satisfaction, compared with almost half (49 percent) of those in the fourth tier). Similarly, we find that top 10 law school graduates are more likely to intend to leave their employer within two years, compared to their fourth-tier counterparts (59 versus 27 percent). These patterns suggest that the relatively lower satisfaction of elite graduates is not merely driven by their work settings, and that there is an independent relationship between law school tier and expressions of satisfaction that requires further investigation.
By incorporating patterns of social stratification into our analysis of satisfaction, we find that expressions of satisfaction map fairly clearly onto the hierarchy of law schools-and that attention to social hierarchies resolves the apparent tension between lawyers' career satisfaction and their mobility intentions. We find a pattern consistent with Bourdieu's (1998) model, in which schools not only play an important role in the transmission of social reproduction but are also important predictors of the dispositions and aspirations that shape new lawyers' careers. Below, we build on this approach by relying on multivariate analyses, which allow us to further explore the interplay between the social origins, values, and credentials of lawyers across various practice settings.
Satisfaction as Process: Mapping the Structure of the Legal Profession
We begin by exploring the determinants of job satisfaction, which Hull (1999) has argued are best conceptualized as a multivalent concept. Following this approach, we conducted a factor analysis of the 16 measures of job satisfaction reported in Table 1, which reduced the 16 measures of satisfaction into four factors; factors were extracted using principal component analysis and were then saved as standardized scores with a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.7 The first factor represents "job setting satisfaction," consolidating ratings of recognition received at work, relationships with colleagues, control over the work, and job security. The factor for "work substance satisfaction" reflects the intrinsic interest of the work, while the third factor, "social value satisfaction," concerns the reported relationship between work and broader social issues (workplace diversity, opportunities for pro bono work, and the social value of the work). The fourth factor, "power track satisfaction," comprises two items: satisfaction with compensation levels and satisfaction with opportunities for advancement. We then estimated four separate models of job satisfaction-one each for satisfaction with job setting, substance of work, the social index, and the power track.
Table 4 outlines the means and standard deviations for the variables used in all analyses.8 Just over half of the respondents are male and just over half are married, but fewer than one-third have children and only 16 percent are more than 36 years old. Eightythree percent of respondents are white, with 38 percent living in major metropolitan areas (New York; Chicago; Washington, DC; Los Angeles; San Francisco; and Boston) and another 23 percent living in other metropolitan areas (Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis, and St. Louis); each region was modeled as a dummy variable, with the excluded category representing those living in nonmetropolitan areas. To control for the effects of practice setting, we relied on a series of dummy variables; the measure of firm size relies on the total number of lawyers employed by the entire firm.9 The excluded category is small private firms (of two to 20 lawyers), which also accounts for the largest concentration of respondents (28 percent). The mid-sized firms of 21-100 account for 14 percent of respondents, 9 percent work in large firms (101-250 lawyers), and 25 percent work in the megafirms of 251+lawyers. We find a smaller proportion of respondents working outside of private practice, with 8 percent working for state government, 3 percent for the federal government, and 2 percent working in sole practice; less than 11 percent of respondents work in nongovernmental public settings and in business. Of course, the grouping of lawyers in private practice according to firm size conceals much variation within each of the work settings-for example, even among the megafirms of 251+lawyers there exists a hierarchy of firms according to profitability, associate-to-partner ratio, and whether firms have a two-tier partnership track (e.g., of equity and nonequity lawyers) (see, e.g., Henderson 2006). While this article cannot address the full range of variation within each setting, the groupings employed in the analyses below reveal important cleavages in the hierarchy of lawyers working in private firms.
Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers-3
Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers-3
Satisfaction Debates
Academic research on the legal profession finds generally high levels of satisfaction. In one of the original studies of lawyers' job satisfaction, Hirsch (1985) reported on a random probability survey of lawyers in the United States finding that overall levels of reported satisfaction were high (68 percent of respondents were very or somewhat satisfied with their current job). Similar results have been found from research surveying lawyers across the country (Hirsch 1985, Tucker et al. 1989; Chambers 1989) and in particular cities or regions (Taber et al. 1988;Gellis 1991; Adams 1994; Hagan & Kay 1995; Lempert et al. 2000; Heinz et al. 2005; Boon et al. 2001). Yet the popular press, along with some academic work, continues to proclaim that law is a dissatisfying career (e.g., Tazian 2005; Pedone 2004; Ranalli 2003; "Lawyers Express Dissatisfaction with Stress Levels and Long Working Hours, Survey Shows," National Post, 6 April, p. C7; Eviatar 2000).
Sorting out this divergence-and in particular, determining who is satisfied and who is not-has become the key source of debate in this area. Faced with a generally satisfied set of lawyers in their sample, the most recent study by the Chicago bar asks if "Chicago lawyers are special" (Heinz et al. 2005:257). Most research similarly tries to parcel out satisfaction by asking whether certain groups within the bar-in particular, women and minority lawyers-are where one finds dissatisfaction within the profession. Here too, however, researchers have been stymied: women (Taber et al. 1988; Chambers 1989; Tucker et al. 1989; Gellis 1991; Hagan & Kay 1995; Dau-Schmidt & Mukhopadhaya 1999; Lempert et al. 2000:486, Table 33; Reichman & Sterling 2004; Heinz et al. 2005; Boon et al. 2001) and minority lawyers (Dau-Schmidt & Mukhopadhaya 1999; Lempert et al. 2000; Heinz et al. 2005) continue to report high rates of overall job satisfaction, even if they are less satisfied with certain aspects of their workplace or certain elements of lawyering. Since women and minority lawyers do not, in fact, enjoy the success of white male lawyers (e.g., Hagan & Kay 1995; Wilkins 1999; Chambliss 2000), this has led to a "paradox" of satisfaction (Hull 1999) that researchers continue to investigate.
Analyses of data on Chicago lawyers collected through nearly 800 personal interviews have made an important contribution to this literature (Heinz et al. 2005). Based on these data, Hull (1999) distilled two major components of job satisfaction: context satisfaction, which comprises measures that relate to lawyers' workplace, such as satisfaction with salary and opportunities for advancement; and content satisfaction, which includes the content of work, control over the amount of work, and level of responsibility. Hull found that there are in fact different predictors for different types of satisfaction-for example, money and prestige of practice area increase context satisfaction, while working in a larger organization decreases content satisfaction-calling attention to the need to incorporate more sophisticated approaches to the study of job satisfaction (Hull 1999:694; see also Heinz et al. 2005).
Research has also provided a number of additional insights into the relationship between job satisfaction and important structural features of legal practice, such as income and practice setting. The Chicago Lawyers survey found that income was a positive predictor of high satisfaction, but that lawyers practicing in large law firms were less likely to be highly satisfied than lawyers practicing elsewhere (Heinz et al. 2005). Similarly, Hagan and Kay (1995:170-2) found that lawyers who earn a higher income are more satisfied with their jobs, but that among private practitioners, there is no effect of firm size.3 Analyses of University of Michigan alumni data (Lempert et al. 2000) suggest that law graduates with jobs in government, legal services/public interest law, and education are significantly more satisfied than those working in private practice, despite their lower incomes. Other have found that even after controlling for a wide range of factors, private practice in large firm settings is the least satisfying type of practice, even though it is the most lucrative (Dau-Schmidt & Mukhopadhaya 1999:362). The consensus from these studies is fairly strong: while higher incomes lead to greater satisfaction, those working in large private firms are relatively less satisfied with their jobs.
We can draw on a number of additional findings to better contextualize this strong relationship between income, setting, and satisfaction. Sandefur and Heinz (1999) found that satisfaction with income decreases as income inequality within a field increases (1999:14), and that satisfaction with chances for advancement tends to decrease as income inequality increases (1999:15). Other features of practice settings that have been found to increase satisfaction include autonomy and decisionmaking (Hagan & Kay 1995; Heinz et al. 2005; Wallace 1995) and mentoring (Mobley et al. 1994).
While the majority of research has focused on expressions of satisfaction, a number of studies have relied on turnover and job changes as indicators of dissatisfaction-with researchers assuming that those who are unhappy change jobs, or intend to change jobs (see generally Kalleberg 1977). There is no doubt that the legal profession is characterized by high rates of job mobility, especially among new lawyers,4 and studies have found clear links between expressions of satisfaction and job mobility. A recent ABA (American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division 2000) survey reports that respondents' general job dissatisfaction and desire for greater financial rewards are the strongest reported motivations for leaving their current employer (see also NALP 2001). Kay's (1997) examination of exits from the practice of law concluded that job satisfaction is one of the keys to understanding the "causal forces and motivations that lead to job exits and lateral mobility in law" (1997:327). Furthermore, in a recent analysis of lawyers' intentions to leave their employer and the role of trust within law firms, Kay and Hagan (2003) argued that "intention to leave the firm can also be viewed as a more concrete, or even behavioral, measure of job satisfaction" (2003: 512). They found that satisfaction with both the intrinsic (e.g., intellectual challenge and enjoyment in legal work) and extrinsic (e.g., pay, workplace benefits) aspects of lawyers' work increases intentions to stay with the firm. And it is not surprising that much of the research on mobility, like the research on job satisfaction, focuses on issues of inequality, with studies finding higher rates of mobility among women (Kay 1997; Kay & Hagan 2003;5 Sommerlad & Sanderson 1998) and minorities (Heinz et al. 2005; Wilkins & Gulati 1996).
Satisfaction Debates
Academic research on the legal profession finds generally high levels of satisfaction. In one of the original studies of lawyers' job satisfaction, Hirsch (1985) reported on a random probability survey of lawyers in the United States finding that overall levels of reported satisfaction were high (68 percent of respondents were very or somewhat satisfied with their current job). Similar results have been found from research surveying lawyers across the country (Hirsch 1985, Tucker et al. 1989; Chambers 1989) and in particular cities or regions (Taber et al. 1988;Gellis 1991; Adams 1994; Hagan & Kay 1995; Lempert et al. 2000; Heinz et al. 2005; Boon et al. 2001). Yet the popular press, along with some academic work, continues to proclaim that law is a dissatisfying career (e.g., Tazian 2005; Pedone 2004; Ranalli 2003; "Lawyers Express Dissatisfaction with Stress Levels and Long Working Hours, Survey Shows," National Post, 6 April, p. C7; Eviatar 2000).
Sorting out this divergence-and in particular, determining who is satisfied and who is not-has become the key source of debate in this area. Faced with a generally satisfied set of lawyers in their sample, the most recent study by the Chicago bar asks if "Chicago lawyers are special" (Heinz et al. 2005:257). Most research similarly tries to parcel out satisfaction by asking whether certain groups within the bar-in particular, women and minority lawyers-are where one finds dissatisfaction within the profession. Here too, however, researchers have been stymied: women (Taber et al. 1988; Chambers 1989; Tucker et al. 1989; Gellis 1991; Hagan & Kay 1995; Dau-Schmidt & Mukhopadhaya 1999; Lempert et al. 2000:486, Table 33; Reichman & Sterling 2004; Heinz et al. 2005; Boon et al. 2001) and minority lawyers (Dau-Schmidt & Mukhopadhaya 1999; Lempert et al. 2000; Heinz et al. 2005) continue to report high rates of overall job satisfaction, even if they are less satisfied with certain aspects of their workplace or certain elements of lawyering. Since women and minority lawyers do not, in fact, enjoy the success of white male lawyers (e.g., Hagan & Kay 1995; Wilkins 1999; Chambliss 2000), this has led to a "paradox" of satisfaction (Hull 1999) that researchers continue to investigate.
Analyses of data on Chicago lawyers collected through nearly 800 personal interviews have made an important contribution to this literature (Heinz et al. 2005). Based on these data, Hull (1999) distilled two major components of job satisfaction: context satisfaction, which comprises measures that relate to lawyers' workplace, such as satisfaction with salary and opportunities for advancement; and content satisfaction, which includes the content of work, control over the amount of work, and level of responsibility. Hull found that there are in fact different predictors for different types of satisfaction-for example, money and prestige of practice area increase context satisfaction, while working in a larger organization decreases content satisfaction-calling attention to the need to incorporate more sophisticated approaches to the study of job satisfaction (Hull 1999:694; see also Heinz et al. 2005).
Research has also provided a number of additional insights into the relationship between job satisfaction and important structural features of legal practice, such as income and practice setting. The Chicago Lawyers survey found that income was a positive predictor of high satisfaction, but that lawyers practicing in large law firms were less likely to be highly satisfied than lawyers practicing elsewhere (Heinz et al. 2005). Similarly, Hagan and Kay (1995:170-2) found that lawyers who earn a higher income are more satisfied with their jobs, but that among private practitioners, there is no effect of firm size.3 Analyses of University of Michigan alumni data (Lempert et al. 2000) suggest that law graduates with jobs in government, legal services/public interest law, and education are significantly more satisfied than those working in private practice, despite their lower incomes. Other have found that even after controlling for a wide range of factors, private practice in large firm settings is the least satisfying type of practice, even though it is the most lucrative (Dau-Schmidt & Mukhopadhaya 1999:362). The consensus from these studies is fairly strong: while higher incomes lead to greater satisfaction, those working in large private firms are relatively less satisfied with their jobs.
We can draw on a number of additional findings to better contextualize this strong relationship between income, setting, and satisfaction. Sandefur and Heinz (1999) found that satisfaction with income decreases as income inequality within a field increases (1999:14), and that satisfaction with chances for advancement tends to decrease as income inequality increases (1999:15). Other features of practice settings that have been found to increase satisfaction include autonomy and decisionmaking (Hagan & Kay 1995; Heinz et al. 2005; Wallace 1995) and mentoring (Mobley et al. 1994).
While the majority of research has focused on expressions of satisfaction, a number of studies have relied on turnover and job changes as indicators of dissatisfaction-with researchers assuming that those who are unhappy change jobs, or intend to change jobs (see generally Kalleberg 1977). There is no doubt that the legal profession is characterized by high rates of job mobility, especially among new lawyers,4 and studies have found clear links between expressions of satisfaction and job mobility. A recent ABA (American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division 2000) survey reports that respondents' general job dissatisfaction and desire for greater financial rewards are the strongest reported motivations for leaving their current employer (see also NALP 2001). Kay's (1997) examination of exits from the practice of law concluded that job satisfaction is one of the keys to understanding the "causal forces and motivations that lead to job exits and lateral mobility in law" (1997:327). Furthermore, in a recent analysis of lawyers' intentions to leave their employer and the role of trust within law firms, Kay and Hagan (2003) argued that "intention to leave the firm can also be viewed as a more concrete, or even behavioral, measure of job satisfaction" (2003: 512). They found that satisfaction with both the intrinsic (e.g., intellectual challenge and enjoyment in legal work) and extrinsic (e.g., pay, workplace benefits) aspects of lawyers' work increases intentions to stay with the firm. And it is not surprising that much of the research on mobility, like the research on job satisfaction, focuses on issues of inequality, with studies finding higher rates of mobility among women (Kay 1997; Kay & Hagan 2003;5 Sommerlad & Sanderson 1998) and minorities (Heinz et al. 2005; Wilkins & Gulati 1996).
Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers-2
Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers-2
Data and Methods-The After the JD Study
This article relies on the first wave of data from the After the JD (AJD) study, a national longitudinal survey of law graduates designed to follow a sample of slightly more than 10 percent of all the individuals who became lawyers in 2000 (Dinovitzer et al. 2004). The study is based on a sample representative of the national population of lawyers who were admitted to the bar in 2000, and was designed by using a two-stage sampling process. In the first stage, the nation was divided into 18 strata by region and size of the new lawyer population. Within each stratum, one primary sampling unit (PSU)-metropolitan area, portion of a state outside large metropolitan areas, or entire state-was chosen. The PSUs included all four "major" markets, those with more than 2,000 new lawyers (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC); five of the nine "large" markets, those with between 750 and 2,000 new lawyers (Boston, Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis, and San Francisco); and nine of the remaining, smaller markets (Connecticut, the remainder of New Jersey, the remainder of Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Indiana, St. Louis, Utah, and Oregon). In the second stage, individuals were sampled from each of the PSUs at rates that would, combined, generalize to the national population. In addition, the study included an oversample of 1,465 new lawyers from minority groups (black, Hispanic, and Asian American).1 The final sample included 9,192 lawyers in the 18 PSUs.
Data collection was based on a mail questionnaire that included sections on the respondent's job history and search process; the nature of the respondent's current job, including its content, the work environment, and the respondent's satisfaction with it; the respondent's law school history; and a variety of background and contextual information. Following the initial mailing of surveys in May 2002, nonrespondents were followed up by mail and telephone (with the telephone survey using a somewhat abridged version of the mail questionnaire). Approximately 100 in-depth-face to face interviews were conducted with a subset of respondents.
About 20 percent of the individuals in the sample could not be located, and roughly 20 percent of those located proved to be lawyers moving from one state bar to another rather than lawyers entering a bar for the first time. These "movers" were included in the sample so long as they had graduated from law school no ear lier than 1998. (Consequently, about 6 percent of the AJD sample began law practice in 1999, and 1.5 percent began practice in 1998.) Of the original sample members who were located and who met the criteria for inclusion in the study, 71 percent responded to either the mail questionnaire or a telephone interview, for a total of 4,538 valid responses. The analyses in this article rely on data from the national sample only (i.e., the minority oversample is not included), comprising 3,950 respondents.2
Comparisons with external data indicate that the AJD sample is representative of the general population from which the sample was selected. When comparing the sample with young lawyers in the 2000 U.S. Census, we find that the racial composition of the sample is almost identical (US Census Bureau 2002, 5% Public Use Microdata Sample Census 2000, all lawyers and judges, ages 27-32). To the extent that practice settings can be inferred from census data, the sample also closely approximates the distribution of lawyers across firms, government, and business employers (US Census Bureau 2002, 5% Public Use Microdata Sample Census 2000, all lawyers and judges; Carson 2004). Finally, the gender distribution in the sample closely matches data published by the American Bar Association (ABA; American Bar Association 2005).
Data and Methods-The After the JD Study
This article relies on the first wave of data from the After the JD (AJD) study, a national longitudinal survey of law graduates designed to follow a sample of slightly more than 10 percent of all the individuals who became lawyers in 2000 (Dinovitzer et al. 2004). The study is based on a sample representative of the national population of lawyers who were admitted to the bar in 2000, and was designed by using a two-stage sampling process. In the first stage, the nation was divided into 18 strata by region and size of the new lawyer population. Within each stratum, one primary sampling unit (PSU)-metropolitan area, portion of a state outside large metropolitan areas, or entire state-was chosen. The PSUs included all four "major" markets, those with more than 2,000 new lawyers (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC); five of the nine "large" markets, those with between 750 and 2,000 new lawyers (Boston, Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis, and San Francisco); and nine of the remaining, smaller markets (Connecticut, the remainder of New Jersey, the remainder of Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Indiana, St. Louis, Utah, and Oregon). In the second stage, individuals were sampled from each of the PSUs at rates that would, combined, generalize to the national population. In addition, the study included an oversample of 1,465 new lawyers from minority groups (black, Hispanic, and Asian American).1 The final sample included 9,192 lawyers in the 18 PSUs.
Data collection was based on a mail questionnaire that included sections on the respondent's job history and search process; the nature of the respondent's current job, including its content, the work environment, and the respondent's satisfaction with it; the respondent's law school history; and a variety of background and contextual information. Following the initial mailing of surveys in May 2002, nonrespondents were followed up by mail and telephone (with the telephone survey using a somewhat abridged version of the mail questionnaire). Approximately 100 in-depth-face to face interviews were conducted with a subset of respondents.
About 20 percent of the individuals in the sample could not be located, and roughly 20 percent of those located proved to be lawyers moving from one state bar to another rather than lawyers entering a bar for the first time. These "movers" were included in the sample so long as they had graduated from law school no ear lier than 1998. (Consequently, about 6 percent of the AJD sample began law practice in 1999, and 1.5 percent began practice in 1998.) Of the original sample members who were located and who met the criteria for inclusion in the study, 71 percent responded to either the mail questionnaire or a telephone interview, for a total of 4,538 valid responses. The analyses in this article rely on data from the national sample only (i.e., the minority oversample is not included), comprising 3,950 respondents.2
Comparisons with external data indicate that the AJD sample is representative of the general population from which the sample was selected. When comparing the sample with young lawyers in the 2000 U.S. Census, we find that the racial composition of the sample is almost identical (US Census Bureau 2002, 5% Public Use Microdata Sample Census 2000, all lawyers and judges, ages 27-32). To the extent that practice settings can be inferred from census data, the sample also closely approximates the distribution of lawyers across firms, government, and business employers (US Census Bureau 2002, 5% Public Use Microdata Sample Census 2000, all lawyers and judges; Carson 2004). Finally, the gender distribution in the sample closely matches data published by the American Bar Association (ABA; American Bar Association 2005).
Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers-1
Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers-1
This article proposes a new approach to the study of job satisfaction in the legal profession. Drawing on a Bourdieusian understanding of the relationship between social class and dispositions, we argue that job satisfaction depends in part on social origins and the credentials related to these origins, with social hierarchies helping to define the expectations and possibilities that produce professional careers. Through this lens, job satisfaction is understood as a mechanism through which social and professional hierarchies are produced and reproduced. Relying on the first national data set on lawyer careers (including both survey data and in-depth interviews), we find that lawyers' social background, as reflected in the ranking of their law school, decreases career satisfaction and increases the odds of a job search for the most successful new lawyers. When combined with the interview data, we find that social class is an important component of a stratification system that tends to lead individuals into hierarchically arranged positions.
The published literature on lawyer satisfaction tends to take one of two forms. One comes from those seeking to make the profession, and especially corporate law firms, more open and humane. This literature paints a "gloomy" (Rhode 2000) picture of a profession in "crisis" (Kronman 1993), relying on data on depression and alcohol use in the profession, or on more general measures of career dissatisfaction (e.g., Glendon 1994; Schiltz 1999; Rhode 2000). Much of this work highlights the lack of equal opportunity within the bar, focusing on the relative dissatisfaction of women and lawyers of color (e.g., Rhode 2000). These findings are often picked up on, repackaged, and transmitted by the popular press-with media headlines often reflecting data from bar surveys or polls with relatively low response rates, tending to overrepresent the more dissatisfied population of lawyers (Dolan 1995:A1; Muir 1995:16). The overall picture is one of a profession not doing enough to respond to perceived dissatisfaction.
By contrast, a second literature, typically stemming from more systematic social science, tends to minimize the problem of lawyer dissatisfaction. This empirical research often finds that lawyers are relatively satisfied across a range of measures (Hirsch 1985; Taber et al. 1988; Tucker et al. 1989; Gellis 1991; Heinz et al. 2005) and that this finding is fairly stable across gender (Chambers 1989; Hagan & Kay 1995) and race (Dau-Schmidt & Mukhopadhaya 1999). These reports of relative satisfaction, however, need to be contextualized by the more general finding that most people, across most occupations, tend to report that they are "satisfied" with what they do (e.g., Firebaugh & Harley 1995).
Underlying both strands of work on satisfaction is the implicit assumption that differences in satisfaction are symptoms of discrimination or inequality within the profession. This assumption is not surprising. Decades of work on the legal profession have confirmed that there are hierarchies in the profession that every lawyer knows. Access to the most prestigious positions has not been attained by women and minorities in proportion to their representation in the lawyer population (see, e.g., Carson 2004; NALP 2004). At the same time, however, this inequality is not consistently reflected in measures of job satisfaction-and it is this disjuncture of expressions of job satisfaction within structures of inequality that calls for a new approach to understanding lawyer satisfaction. We therefore seek in this article to steer the literature on job satisfaction in the legal profession away from models that evaluate the internal interest of lawyers' work or explain differences in satisfaction based solely on the obstacles or rewards that lawyers enjoy within the profession.
Rather than assuming lawyer satisfaction to be a persistent problem, no problem at all, or simply one of discrimination, this article argues that job satisfaction should be understood as both a manifestation of and a factor in a stratification system that tends to lead individuals into hierarchically arranged positions. We argue that job satisfaction depends in part on social origins and the credentials related to these origins, with social hierarchies helping to define the expectations and possibilities that produce professional careers. As Bourdieu (1996) demonstrated in his work on The State Mobility in France, for example, class positions not only explain which schools students will attend, but these social origins also determine how well students will fit with the mission of particular schools. Indeed, Bourdieu's work has clearly demonstrated the ways in which individuals' dispositions across a range of fields-from their taste for film, food, music, or art (Bourdieu 1987, 1993) to their career aspirations (Bourdieu 1998)-both reflect and legitimate social differentiation. A Bourdieusian approach thereby emphasizes that social stratification is not merely externally produced, but that individuals, through their habitus-the set of practices and dispositions acquired through the repetition of living life-internalize what they can reasonably expect in life and, more important, what they cannot (Calhoun 2003). And in this way, it is often their choices and expectations that reproduce patterns of stratification, so long as we recall that the "dispositions that incline them toward this complicity are themselves the effect, embodied, of domination" (Bourdieu 1998:4).
This connection between social origins, hierarchical structures, and dispositions is further supported by empirical research in the sociology of work, with studies finding that "job values""-what individuals expect and seek to obtain from their jobs-are themselves shaped by social origins, rather than inculcated through particular job settings (McClelland 1990; Jacobs et al. 1991; Johnson 2001, 2002; Halaby 2003). Similarly, expressions of job satisfaction are intimately linked to career expectations and aspirations. As Seron (1996) found in her study of solo and small-firm lawyers, many of these attorneys were from less-advantaged social backgrounds and came to the profession with hopes for jobs that would provide them with independence and autonomy-and they did not desire positions in large firms (1996:12).
Taken together, this work leads us to inquire whether comparatively lower career expectations-particularly for those for whom joining the profession is itself a ticket to a bourgeois professional status-can keep large numbers of lawyers satisfied, despite positions offering relatively few possibilities to move into elite legal or other careers. Others, who expect naturally to be given a position within the elite, may grumble about their work because it does not comport with their image of where they belong or because they know already that they are passing through to something higher-perhaps in business or the state. And still others, in between these poles, may express dissatisfaction with relatively elite opportunities less because of an expectation of something more elite, and more because they feel they are not welcome in a particular setting. They may translate their dissatisfaction into a need to leave their jobs or possibly even the profession, with likely downward effects on their professional trajectories.
In this article, we therefore conceive of job satisfaction as a mechanism through which social and professional hierarchies are produced and reproduced, and we argue that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are part of a process that links particular people to particular careers-supplying, stratifying, and legitimating the legal profession with its various hierarchies. Relative satisfaction is produced out of the chemistry of people and their backgrounds, expectations, and career possibilities. The process can only be understood by looking at who goes to which law school, what they expect, what they get from practice, and how they view their future. Job satisfaction, in this way, is a mechanism (Stinchcombe 2005:178-80) that connects earlier social backgrounds with the maintenance of professional hierarchies.
This article builds our argument along five sections. We begin with a discussion of the design and methodology of the larger project on which this article is based. The second section provides a review of the literature on lawyer satisfaction. In the third section, we begin the analysis by drawing out the contours of the satisfaction data, and in the fourth section, we combine satisfaction data with variables that are not often linked to satisfaction, such as law school attended, grades, and social background. The fifth section seeks to distill the analysis by drawing on in-depth interviews to construct models of lawyer careers that flesh out the relationships between lawyer satisfaction, social and academic background, and particular practice settings. This analysis brings into relief the processes of constructing satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and it also reveals some of the challenges faced by the legal profession today, which the conclusion then addresses.
This article proposes a new approach to the study of job satisfaction in the legal profession. Drawing on a Bourdieusian understanding of the relationship between social class and dispositions, we argue that job satisfaction depends in part on social origins and the credentials related to these origins, with social hierarchies helping to define the expectations and possibilities that produce professional careers. Through this lens, job satisfaction is understood as a mechanism through which social and professional hierarchies are produced and reproduced. Relying on the first national data set on lawyer careers (including both survey data and in-depth interviews), we find that lawyers' social background, as reflected in the ranking of their law school, decreases career satisfaction and increases the odds of a job search for the most successful new lawyers. When combined with the interview data, we find that social class is an important component of a stratification system that tends to lead individuals into hierarchically arranged positions.
The published literature on lawyer satisfaction tends to take one of two forms. One comes from those seeking to make the profession, and especially corporate law firms, more open and humane. This literature paints a "gloomy" (Rhode 2000) picture of a profession in "crisis" (Kronman 1993), relying on data on depression and alcohol use in the profession, or on more general measures of career dissatisfaction (e.g., Glendon 1994; Schiltz 1999; Rhode 2000). Much of this work highlights the lack of equal opportunity within the bar, focusing on the relative dissatisfaction of women and lawyers of color (e.g., Rhode 2000). These findings are often picked up on, repackaged, and transmitted by the popular press-with media headlines often reflecting data from bar surveys or polls with relatively low response rates, tending to overrepresent the more dissatisfied population of lawyers (Dolan 1995:A1; Muir 1995:16). The overall picture is one of a profession not doing enough to respond to perceived dissatisfaction.
By contrast, a second literature, typically stemming from more systematic social science, tends to minimize the problem of lawyer dissatisfaction. This empirical research often finds that lawyers are relatively satisfied across a range of measures (Hirsch 1985; Taber et al. 1988; Tucker et al. 1989; Gellis 1991; Heinz et al. 2005) and that this finding is fairly stable across gender (Chambers 1989; Hagan & Kay 1995) and race (Dau-Schmidt & Mukhopadhaya 1999). These reports of relative satisfaction, however, need to be contextualized by the more general finding that most people, across most occupations, tend to report that they are "satisfied" with what they do (e.g., Firebaugh & Harley 1995).
Underlying both strands of work on satisfaction is the implicit assumption that differences in satisfaction are symptoms of discrimination or inequality within the profession. This assumption is not surprising. Decades of work on the legal profession have confirmed that there are hierarchies in the profession that every lawyer knows. Access to the most prestigious positions has not been attained by women and minorities in proportion to their representation in the lawyer population (see, e.g., Carson 2004; NALP 2004). At the same time, however, this inequality is not consistently reflected in measures of job satisfaction-and it is this disjuncture of expressions of job satisfaction within structures of inequality that calls for a new approach to understanding lawyer satisfaction. We therefore seek in this article to steer the literature on job satisfaction in the legal profession away from models that evaluate the internal interest of lawyers' work or explain differences in satisfaction based solely on the obstacles or rewards that lawyers enjoy within the profession.
Rather than assuming lawyer satisfaction to be a persistent problem, no problem at all, or simply one of discrimination, this article argues that job satisfaction should be understood as both a manifestation of and a factor in a stratification system that tends to lead individuals into hierarchically arranged positions. We argue that job satisfaction depends in part on social origins and the credentials related to these origins, with social hierarchies helping to define the expectations and possibilities that produce professional careers. As Bourdieu (1996) demonstrated in his work on The State Mobility in France, for example, class positions not only explain which schools students will attend, but these social origins also determine how well students will fit with the mission of particular schools. Indeed, Bourdieu's work has clearly demonstrated the ways in which individuals' dispositions across a range of fields-from their taste for film, food, music, or art (Bourdieu 1987, 1993) to their career aspirations (Bourdieu 1998)-both reflect and legitimate social differentiation. A Bourdieusian approach thereby emphasizes that social stratification is not merely externally produced, but that individuals, through their habitus-the set of practices and dispositions acquired through the repetition of living life-internalize what they can reasonably expect in life and, more important, what they cannot (Calhoun 2003). And in this way, it is often their choices and expectations that reproduce patterns of stratification, so long as we recall that the "dispositions that incline them toward this complicity are themselves the effect, embodied, of domination" (Bourdieu 1998:4).
This connection between social origins, hierarchical structures, and dispositions is further supported by empirical research in the sociology of work, with studies finding that "job values""-what individuals expect and seek to obtain from their jobs-are themselves shaped by social origins, rather than inculcated through particular job settings (McClelland 1990; Jacobs et al. 1991; Johnson 2001, 2002; Halaby 2003). Similarly, expressions of job satisfaction are intimately linked to career expectations and aspirations. As Seron (1996) found in her study of solo and small-firm lawyers, many of these attorneys were from less-advantaged social backgrounds and came to the profession with hopes for jobs that would provide them with independence and autonomy-and they did not desire positions in large firms (1996:12).
Taken together, this work leads us to inquire whether comparatively lower career expectations-particularly for those for whom joining the profession is itself a ticket to a bourgeois professional status-can keep large numbers of lawyers satisfied, despite positions offering relatively few possibilities to move into elite legal or other careers. Others, who expect naturally to be given a position within the elite, may grumble about their work because it does not comport with their image of where they belong or because they know already that they are passing through to something higher-perhaps in business or the state. And still others, in between these poles, may express dissatisfaction with relatively elite opportunities less because of an expectation of something more elite, and more because they feel they are not welcome in a particular setting. They may translate their dissatisfaction into a need to leave their jobs or possibly even the profession, with likely downward effects on their professional trajectories.
In this article, we therefore conceive of job satisfaction as a mechanism through which social and professional hierarchies are produced and reproduced, and we argue that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are part of a process that links particular people to particular careers-supplying, stratifying, and legitimating the legal profession with its various hierarchies. Relative satisfaction is produced out of the chemistry of people and their backgrounds, expectations, and career possibilities. The process can only be understood by looking at who goes to which law school, what they expect, what they get from practice, and how they view their future. Job satisfaction, in this way, is a mechanism (Stinchcombe 2005:178-80) that connects earlier social backgrounds with the maintenance of professional hierarchies.
This article builds our argument along five sections. We begin with a discussion of the design and methodology of the larger project on which this article is based. The second section provides a review of the literature on lawyer satisfaction. In the third section, we begin the analysis by drawing out the contours of the satisfaction data, and in the fourth section, we combine satisfaction data with variables that are not often linked to satisfaction, such as law school attended, grades, and social background. The fifth section seeks to distill the analysis by drawing on in-depth interviews to construct models of lawyer careers that flesh out the relationships between lawyer satisfaction, social and academic background, and particular practice settings. This analysis brings into relief the processes of constructing satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and it also reveals some of the challenges faced by the legal profession today, which the conclusion then addresses.
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