We unpack the real reason why you’re an unhappy lawyer
Updated 10/6/2024
If there is one word we hear from lawyers in our Leave Law Behind community more often than any other term, it is "burnout," as in "I'm so burned out practicing law, I need to leave before my mental and physical health suffers any more."
You likely arrived at this article after googling "lawyer burnout," "attorney burnout," "lawyer anxiety," or "unhappy lawyer" or some other similar term. And you're not alone. The groundbreaking American Bar Association and Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation study (here and here) of 16,000 attorneys across 19 states found that 19% of the polled attorneys suffered from anxiety, 21% qualified as problem drinkers, and 28% struggled with depression. Lawyer burnout is real. Toxic law firm culture is real. A drug problem is real.
In this article, we will dive into what lawyer burnout means in the context of attorneys’ health. We will deep dive into why you may be experiencing burnout, some of its early signs, and lawyer burnout’s negative effects. We will also discuss ways many attorneys have been able to prevent burnout. We will examine why the legal profession takes such a toll on you and why you cannot set boundaries, and will also provide some actionable ways to free yourself from this "broken system that is the legal profession."
What does lawyer burnout mean?
Chemically, "burnout" describes when a fire runs out of fuel and reduces to nothing.
Occupationally, burnout describes a "special type of work-related stress — a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity." (Mayo Clinic)
And when it comes to being an unhappy lawyer, the pain is even more acute. Lawyers are at an extremely high risk for burnout, mainly because the job description of an attorney demands more than the lawyer can reasonably provide. This gap creates the unique lawyer burnout and attorney anxiety you, unfortunately, know so well.The three main reasons you suffer from lawyer burnout
1. Lawyers do work that is boring and tedious
Your lawyer job is boring because people pay you to do dull, monotonous work they don’t want to do themselves.
You sit in a chair all day, looking at a Word document, reviewing, editing, and arguing.
You deal with people’s problems all day. You manage a lot of fighting.
You work in silence for a good portion of the day. You work alone a lot of the time. And when you interact with people at your law firm, they are often other (stressed out) lawyers or angry clients that only exacerbate your stress and degrade your well being.
Clients don’t give you thrilling missions to complete. Sure, you may have had some compelling cases or brief moments in your legal career when you were the hero for your client. Sure, some of you might recall the case you argued in front of the Supreme Court or the significant settlement you landed. Yes, those were likely exciting. But they were the exception to the rule.
And the work also has little meaning to you. How often have you opened the same Word doc template, changed the names, and altered a few pertinent facts? How often have you dealt with clients who do not appreciate your work or whose work you don’t align with?
Of course, there are moments for all attorneys when you feel you’re doing good for the world, see the joy on a client’s face, or enjoy getting into the weeds of research. But for most unhappy attorneys, those are few and far between.
You have very little enjoyable personal time.
Regardless of your practice, lawyers are just glorified “paper pushers.”
You get the idea. For the most part, the work is incredibly dull.
You’re an unhappy lawyer who is suffering professional burnout.
2. Lawyers are overworked and underpaid
A seminal American Bar Foundation study found that an average workweek for lawyers totals 50 hours, with over 40% of large firm lawyers working over 60 hours per week. If you do the math, this shows that an attorney who only works Monday through Friday logs 10 to 12-hour days at work. If they carve into one weekend day, this “drops” to 8 to 10-hour days. Those are long days! And that doesn’t factor in the time taken for commuting, eating, or other meetings and obligations.
With all this time at work as a lawyer, you have little to no time to see your family, exercise, take care of yourself, or appreciate life and smell the roses. You, indeed, are a slave to the system. As Morpheus said in the movie The Matrix: “You are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”
Nor are you highly compensated. Lawyers make less money than conventional wisdom would have you believe. Sure, some senior law firm partners earn a hefty salary, and other successful attorneys can earn a good salary.
However, most lawyers make less when compared to other industries and fields. High-level desk research at the National Association for Law Placement and PayScale and Salary.com and our polling of Leave Law Behind course members reveals that most attorneys make between $90,000 and a little over $200,000 annually.
Let’s do the math again. Taking the high-end $200,000 annual salary figure some law firms may pay as an example, if you are an attorney working 40 hours a week, you end up making $100 per hour (40 hours per week X 50 weeks per year = 2,000 hours per year. $200,000 salary divided by 2,000 hours = $100 per hour). If you end up working 50 hours a week, that drops to $80 per hour. And your “working hours” still may not translate into the requisite billable hours.
Do you know who else regularly makes $80 to $100 per hour? Your plumber. And that is no knock on plumbers - they make the same money we unhappy attorneys do, and they don’t have to worry about paying down law school debt, being sued for malpractice, or being tormented by senior partners. But we don’t think making a salary equal to plumbers was what you had in mind when you went to law school.
Working a lot isn’t always a bad thing. If you love something, you can easily work many hours at it. We love the work we do here at Leave Law Behind. We continuously hear from Leave Law Behind course graduates who have their dream job out of the law that they have found purpose, meaning, and exciting work to do, and so they often do not notice when they put in long hours. Work doesn’t seem like work to them.
Most Leave Law Behind graduates have a balanced life outside the law, make a great living in their “non-law” jobs, and can nurture their personal well being.
Unfortunately, that is not the reality for the unhappy lawyer. When you don’t love the law, you feel overworked and underpaid, leading to burnout.
3. Lawyers are required to deal with a disproportionately large amount of stress
A third major cause of your attorney burnout and chronic workplace stress is the high-stress environment and pressure-packed nature of being an attorney.
You have to get your difficult job done with little room for error and little concern for your physical and mental well-being.
You deal with sensitive, confidential client information that you must safeguard and protect.
Your job is often very strictly regulated, requiring you to always be conscious of the rules and guardrails within which you must act.
Being an attorney involves very tight deadlines that, if missed, could result in punishments, fines, and irreparable harm to your client.
The law is constantly in flux, leading to lawyer anxiety about keeping up with the most recent on-point statute or case law..
And then you have the client’s urgency to resolve matters, the finely worded client communications, the thin staffing on deals and cases, the endless paperwork and billing, the toxic, stressful firm environment, and the inability to set boundaries.
Sure, there are attorneys who claim they thrive on these feelings and let them push them to be productive and at their best for their law firms. But these lawyers are in the minority, and we hope they are not sacrificing other aspects of their well being in the drive to produce results.
For the burned out lawyers, the unneeded stress, pressure, and intensity of being an attorney is a negative. It doesn’t push you to be your best. Instead, it makes you feel isolated, angry and stressed out.
It’s no surprise that a 2018 study cited by the ABA Journal found that attorneys are 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than people in other industries and fields of work outside of the law.
Most of us chose to be an attorney without knowing the potential for burnout. We had no idea what kind of work we would be doing day in and day out. When I (Adam) was about a year into my law practice, I realized something was wrong. I had been sold a bill of goods!
I write about this topic in my book “Raising The Bar: Turning a Law Career You Hate Into a Life You Love, In or Out of the Law.” We think the profession will be exciting and fun, and there will be loads of money. This is what is portrayed in the media, TV, and movies. Most people believe that being a lawyer is a fantastic career choice, but sadly, as we all know, it is not.
How to break free from the system that causes your lawyer anxiety
There are two ways you could change your life:
(1) Adjust the way you look at your lawyer job and find a new role within the legal industry that you enjoy, provides you with a support network, and doesn’t wear you down so much; or
(2) Make a conscious effort to stop being a lawyer and leave the burnout for your dream, alternative/“non-law” career.
1. Change the way you look at your lawyer job
Before working with anyone in the Leave Law Behind coaching program, we will ask you to spend time describing your experiences as an attorney. We would ask you to do the same exercise now, and the below questions can help:
- What do you enjoy about being a lawyer?
- What are the areas you do not like about the role?
- Do you doubt your skills and even feel like an “imposter” as a lawyer? If so, why?
- If you were to rate your experience as a lawyer, with “1” being you’re miserable and “10” being you love the work, what number would you score for your job? Why that number?
- Why are you experiencing burnout?
Critically assess your answers. What did you rate your lawyer job a 9? … a 5? … a 2?
If you’re experiencing burnout, we could point to you having a bad day or week. It could be that you’re in the wrong firm or office and need a change of work environment. It could be that you should focus your practice on another area of the law. It could be that your skills and strengths are best suited as a lawyer, but you may need to change your current situation and soon give notice.
We do not want you to leave the law if being a lawyer is indeed what you’re good at and find meaningful.
But if you read this blog post, this is probably untrue. Chances are the law is stressful for you, not suitable for your physical and mental health, and is causing you negative psychological issues and burnout. It behooves you to look at your options in the law to see if there are any other areas that might work better for you to practice.
Sadly, a move from transaction to litigation or vice versa may not cause a new interest in or appreciation for the profession. They are very similar, albeit one goes to court and the other often doesn’t.
2. Explore the possibilities of finding your dream career out of the law
Like many lawyers, if your answers to the questions above cause you to feel even more confident that being a lawyer is bad for your health, isn’t what you’re meant to do, and will only bring you more lawyer anxiety and increased risk of mental health issues, physical fatigue, and stress, we suggest discovering the next steps to leave the law.
To help you understand what it’s like “on the other side” of the law, we like the work we do here at Leave Law Behind. We look forward to the writing we’re able to create, the professional help we can provide to unhappy lawyers, the counseling and coaching we can focus on, and the ideation and curiosity we can explore in our dream career roles out of the legal field.
We enjoy our conversations, feel stimulated and inspired by what we’re creating, believe in what we are doing, and know our customers and clients appreciate us.
When you leave the law and find that dream career that fits your skills and strengths, you feel less and less the need to focus on some end goal. We no longer chase “it” (whether it’s money, success, or stature).
Of course, we make money, pay our bills, and live good lives, but we’re increasingly focused on being in the moment, adding value, helping people, and spending more time with our family.
Gabe Rothman (LinkedIn profile here) is an example of an unhappy and lawyer who had overwhelming burnout. He utilized our Leave Law Behind coaching program to manage and leave the stress, self doubt, and negative effects of construction litigation and find his dream job and overall well being as a Revenue Optimization specialist for the tech industry in San Francisco.
He always remarks on how calmer, happier, and more inspired he is now that he’s out of the legal profession. One weekly test, in particular, helps prove his lack of lawyer burnout.
As Gabe explains:
“Since changing careers, I’ve yet to fail what I call “The Sunday Night Test” (i.e., how do you feel at 9:00 pm Sunday?). Dread? Fear? Nausea? When I was an attorney, I felt all of those every Sunday night. Now? None of those. Ever. While I occasionally don’t feel like going to work on Monday, I always feel calm and satisfied knowing that I have to wake up Monday morning and go to a job I love.”
Be like Gabe, and the hundreds of others who have left the law, gained a semblance of a work life balance, earned more personal time and removed the title of burned out lawyer. Don’t let the lawyer burnout snuff out your fuel and reduce you to the ashes of your former self. We are here to help.
Find out more about Casey and Adam go to https://go.leavelawbehind.com/aboutus.
We have written other articles and resources that can help you on your path out of the law. Five of our most popular and helpful are:
Alternative Careers for Lawyers: The Ultimate Guide to Your Dream Career Out of the Law
The Real (Surprising) Reason You Hate Being a Lawyer
What You Can Do With A Law Degree Besides Being a Lawyer