Maggie's Farm

B

I have read over the past decade several studies that state that upwards of 80% of attorneys hate their work and would not go into law if they could get a mulligan.

Ever hear any of that?

LAW: AT THE BAR;

More lawyers are less happy at their work, a survey finds

By DAVID MARGOLICK

An American Bar Association survey has corroborated what has become increasingly apparent to lawyers, legal recruiters and psychiatrists: job dissatisfaction among lawyers is widespread, profound and growing worse.

An American Bar Association survey has corroborated what has become increasingly apparent to lawyers, legal recruiters and psychiatrists: job dissatisfaction among lawyers is widespread, profound and growing worse.

Since a similar survey was taken in 1984, the number of lawyers saying they are ''very satisfied'' with their work has decreased by 20 percent, to slightly more than 3 in 10. The rest, from all levels of seniority and kinds of practice, report that they are less fulfilled, more fatigued, more stressed, more caught up in office politics, more likely to be in unhappy marriages and more likely to drink excessively than they once did.

Authorities on the legal profession said the results reflect the growing economic pressures on lawyers in an adverse economy. ''People were miserable before, but were willing to put up with it because they were making a lot of money,'' said Celia Paul, whose six-year-old counseling service for disaffected lawyers now handles 2,000 people a year. ''If there's less money, other rewards have to fill that vacuum, and they just aren't there.''

Other explanations, they say, include the volatility of the legal marketplace, even among partners, and the coming of age of a younger generation that entered the profession either with unrealistic expectations or, in many cases, almost by accident.

''For about the past 15 years it has been sort of a knee-jerk thing that if you decide not to go to medical school or business school, you go to law school by default,'' said Carol M. Kanarek, a New York-based consultant on legal personnel matters.

That impulse, she said, was spurred on by the feelings that a law degree is ''infinitely flexible'' and that the profession is glamorous - an impression fostered by television portrayals of lawyers as sexy characters driving sports cars and working on cutting-edge issues.

''As a result, the gap between expectations and reality is much greater than in the past,'' she said. ''Our parents' generation of lawyers tended to have a more realistic sense of what the practice was all about.''

The bar survey also found that at a time when teetotalism is increasing, there has been ''an astonishing rise'' in drinking among lawyers, particularly women. In 1984 less than half of 1 percent of those surveyed reported consuming six or more drinks a day. That figure has now risen to 13 percent, including one in every five female lawyers.

That, in turn, is part of the still greater malaise among women in the profession, even as their numbers continue to grow.

Those questioned in the survey were selected at random from lists containing the names of almost all lawyers in the United States, both A.B.A. members and nonmembers. In March each was mailed a copy of the survey; those failing to respond to that or a follow-up postcard were then interviewed by phone. They were promised confidentiality.

Only 3 to 4 percent of the 2,289 lawyers participating in the survey, conducted by the bar association's young lawyers division, said they planned to leave the profession in the next two years. But even if an exodus is not imminent, the survey says, the prevailing levels of unhappiness bode ill for the law profession and the people it employs and serves.

''The increased stress of dissatisfaction and billable hours have disturbing and important implications for the profession,'' says the report, which was released at the bar group's recently concluded annual meeting in Chicago. ''These lie in the area of increasing social dysfunction or destructive behavior by lawyers and the impact of this behavior on themselves, their families, their quality of work and productivity, their firms and their clients.''

Ronald L. Hirsch, the A.B.A. official who conducted the 1990 and 1984 surveys, said the greatest change was not so much in the depth of the dissatisfaction as in its scope, which he attributed to ''a deterioration of the law firm environment.''

Mr. Hirsch said the bar association planned to hold what he called an ''ice-breaking, seminal conference'' next April, at which lawyers, psychologists, sociologists and others would discuss the growing malaise among lawyers and what could be done about it.

Twenty-two percent of all male partners in private practice said they were dissatisfied with their work, as opposed to only 9 percent in 1984. For female partners, the figure rose to 42 percent from 15 percent. Forty-three percent of all men in solo practice said they were dissatisfied; among women, it was 55 percent.

''It's not just young lawyers and it's not just in the largest firms,'' said Mr. Hirsch, a former senior administrator at the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago. ''It's systemic. It's everywhere.''

According to the survey, public notions of how much money lawyers make, based largely on the hefty salaries paid to beginning lawyers at large firms in New York, are wildly exaggerated. Fifty-nine percent of all lawyers nationwide earn less than the $83,000 paid to beginning lawyers on Wall Street. But unhappiness over pay is not a principle cause of low morale among lawyers.

Instead, the despair is felt over quality-of-life issues. Respondents cited growing political intrigue and backbiting in the office, greater pressure to work longer hours and a concomitant decrease in personal time and time with families. Half of those surveyed in private practice reported working at least 200 hours a month, up from only 35 percent six years ago; 13 percent say they work more than 240 hours.

In nearly every category, women report greater job dissatisfaction than men.

The women interviewed were less challenged intellectually by their work than were men, found the office atmosphere less congenial, complained that they had fewer chances for advancement than men, were less likely to be judged solely on the quality of their work and were more likely to feel they did not have enough time for themselves.

The disaffection has spread to the upper reaches of the profession, where the lucrative salaries based largely on seniority, collegiality and security have waned in a newly competitive marketplace.

''The camaraderie and the loyalty have broken down,'' said Elaine P. Dine, a legal recruiter in New York. ''With everything bottom-line orientated, many partners feel as though they're employees of a corporation rather than members of a firm.''

Perhaps more than any lawyer in the land, Alan U. Schwartz of Los Angeles personifies the upheavals and unhappinesses of a newly peripatetic profession. (Among Mr. Schwartz's clients is Mel Brooks. In the movie ''Spaceballs,'' when Mr. Brooks declared, ''May the Schwartz be with you,'' it was to Alan Schwartz that he was referring.) For 21 years Mr. Schwartz worked in the gentlemanly world of Greenbaum, Wolff & Ernst, where his clients included Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin's daughter. The firm disintegrated in 1982, and since then Mr. Schwartz has gathered little moss.

From Greenbaum he moved to Barovick, Konecky, Braun, Schwartz, Kay & Schiff, which merged with Fulop & Hardee, which then fell apart. He went to Finley, Kumble, Wagner, Heine, Underberg, Manley, Myerson & Casey, which closed in early 1988. From there he went to the Los Angeles office of Shea & Gould, which also disbanded, then to Meyerson & Kuhn, which recently filed for bankruptcy. He is now at Cooper, Epstein & Hurewitz in Beverly Hills.

''It was much more of a profession when I started,'' Mr. Schwartz said. ''People did not expect to make big bucks so much as they expected a kind of way of life and practice.''

Some younger lawyers have even decided to abandon law entirely in favor of something they enjoy doing. In April 1988, Lynn Armentrout, a 1981 graduate of New York University Law School, took a leave of absence from her post at the Legal Aid Society office in the Bronx to pursue a career as a dancer. She has since decided not to return to law.

''I went to law school to make a difference in the world and I wasn't,'' said Ms. Armentrout, a 35-year-old dancer with the Isadora Duncan International Institute. ''What was missing is the emotional and spiritual content - all the things that make life important.''

At WEGX-FM in Philadelphia, a lapsed lawyer named Sam Milkman is the host of a top-40 music show twice weekly. It is only one of the many tasks handled at the station by Mr. Milkman, a 27-year-old Cornell Law School graduate who until March was an associate at the Philadelphia law firm of Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll.

''I always felt like a misfit as a lawyer,'' said Mr. Milkman. ''I found myself in the middle of depositions not really caring what the outcome was.''

In making his move, he said, he was the envy of his former law firm colleagues. ''One of the associates, who has since become a partner, said, 'When one of the prisoners breaks free all of the prisoners are happy,' '' Mr. Milkman recalled. Maura Carlin, 29, of Manhattan was a litigator at Sidley & Austin before deciding to take a long-postponed shot at broadcast journalism. ''I can't tell you I hated the law or practicing it because it's not exactly true, but there was something else I really wanted to do and this is the time to try it or I'd be too old,'' she said. ''I always had this vision of myself saving the world, and the practice of law as I knew it was very far from that.''

Ms. Carlin said she was prepared to take as much as an 80 percent cut in pay. Speaking of her new salary, she said, ''It's such a ridiculous number, it's comical.''