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If
you could pick your clients’ legal causes, what would
they be? The ones you fight for now, or some entirely
different set? If you’re like most lawyers, many of the
legal battles you wage on behalf of clients concern
matters that are of little significance beyond the
parties. Sure, an indifferent or bad cause pays as well
(often better) than a good cause, but we’d be happier if
we earned our bread in some other way. Poet, lawyer, and
Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish wrote that he
knew it was time for a different line of work when he
lost the ability to care very much “whether $900,000
belongs this way or that.” The happiest lawyers tend to be
those who do work that they think make the world at
least a marginally better place. Law professor Deborah
Rhode, one of the nation’s leading experts on the legal
profession, states that attorneys experience “the greatest source of disappointment in
practice” when they feel that they are not contributing
to the public good. Unlike some other sources of lawyer
unhappiness, feelings about not serving a larger social
purpose come from a choice you made. No one forced you
to take the job with the fancy downtown firm with its
list of well-heeled clients. You could have taken a job
with the county prosecutor or the public defender (which
one would have given you a sense of contributing to
society’s betterment depends upon your own views on law,
order, and justice). Maybe that dream job with the
Justice Department or the Sierra Club wasn’t going to
happen, but there probably was something
out there that would have aligned better with your own
values than the job you took. If you have sympathies
that run to the little guy, perhaps a job in a personal
injury plaintiff’s firm would have been a good fit. On
the other hand, if you believe, as did If you cannot readily answer the
question that ended the last paragraph, make a list of
people, causes, and things you pay attention to.... |