"The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers”, Shakespeare (1591), Henry VI Part 2

Any respectable insight into the legal profession in the United Kingdom seems to take as a starting point these words, uttered in Henry V1 Part 2 by Dick the butcher, a somewhat minor Shakespearean character.

The public perception of lawyers as self-interested “fat cats” has proved difficult to shift. In the UK, in the recent survey of the most trusted professions, it emerged that more people would trust hairdressers (69 %) to tell the truth than lawyers (51 %) (IPSOS MORI 2016). Similar studies in the U.S.A. have indicated that people rate the honesty and ethical standards of a building contractor higher than those of a lawyer (25 % and 21 % respectively, (Gallup 2015)). However, in the light of the results of earlier editions of the Gallup survey (which has been running since 1976) this can be viewed as a big improvement from the 13 % score reported in 1999 and 2009. One of the root causes of this situation is clients’ negative experience when using lawyers directly. According to research by Which? The Consumers’ Association, based in the United Kingdom (2005), one in six consumers of legal services considered the service they had received to be “poor”. The main causes for complaint were unexpectedly high bills and the failure of many lawyers to listen to customers’ opinions, while other common grievances included rudeness, arrogance and poor communication of the progress of case (Bedlow 2006). This negative image, and the resulting public attitude towards lawyers, has proved to be important in the current battle for increased legal aid funds, competition for work with “paralegals” or potential employment outside traditional legal positions.

Maitland Kalton, senior partner in Kaltons, in an interview with Derek Bedlow (2006) for the Law Society Gazette, noted low levels of morale in parts of the profession as the main impediment to the efforts of legal firms, departments and campaign groups to improve lawyers’ service to their clients. The evidence suggests that 40 % of lawyers are unhappy with their career choice, and, according to Kalton, “that’s not only very sad, it is very costly for law firms”. In the last decade, the very nature of legal work has evolved from craft to commerce; work that was formerly intellectual has slowly become purely commercial, and an aptitude for schmoozing has become more important than brainpower to profes­sional advancement in legal work, resulting in severe disappointment with the job. Ideas about innovation, change, the appropriation of other professional domains, excellence in client service or the application of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in legal services are useless if one cannot maintain a satisfied and motivated workforce. And the scale of the problem makes it impossible to overlook. A study by Johns Hopkins University found that among more than 100 occupations studied, lawyers were three times more likely to suffer from depression than any other profession (David 2011). According to C. Stuart Mauney, from the Lawyers Helping Lawyers Commission (undated), the rate of substance abuse among lawyers is twice that of the general population. The reasons behind this statistic are usually identified as work-related stress and the requirement for lawyers to work long hours to establish themselves. It should also be mentioned that there is a general tendency for law students to suffer from depression. Reports suggest that nearly 40 % of law students are dealing with some form of depression.

If not addressed, depression can develop into thoughts of suicide. Statistics indicate that lawyers are 1.33 times more likely to commit suicide than the average person, which puts them between fourth and eighth on the various lists of the 10 professions with the highest suicide rates, usually just behind professionals with easy access to prescription drugs, such as dentists, pharmacists and physicians, in terms of the highest per capita suicide rate.

The disillusionment about the legal profession starts with the number of tradi­tional legal job opportunities per legal graduate. The growth of the legal workforce seems to be following Moore's law, based on an observation by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor, that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every 2 years (Moore 1965): there are simply many more lawyers than there are traditional legal work opportunities. According to Matt Leichter (2013), attorney and proprietor of the blog Law School Tuition Bubble, in the U.S.A. it is estimated that there are more than two law graduates for every traditional job opening. For example in 2013, in the US state of Michigan there were 6.48 law graduates for each job vacancy, in Delaware 4.20 for each vacancy and even in New York there were 2.92 graduates for each vacancy. There is a common joke in the legal profession that the closest that the majority of law graduates will come to being employed at the bar is by working as baristas, clearly assuming that legal jobs are more desirable than coffee-making ones.

In addition to the general goals for a career there is, of course, the issue of compensation.

Law is generally perceived to be a highly privileged profession, and the financial rewards of legal work have lodged themselves in the public imagination. However, in reality those in the profession who can really afford a luxurious lifestyle constitute a relatively small percentage of the legal population. In an interview with Burkeman (2010), a barrister sheds some light on the “real” salary for legal work, with its self-employed status, chambers rent and variable income depending on caseload: “Last year I made around £45,000, but that includes VAT, and 20 % of it goes to chambers rent, then income tax on top”. The following year (2011), four years after graduation, he reported earning £60,000 (including VAT and before payment of chambers rent). Lawyers generally earn less than people think they do, and less than what they imagine their salary is going to be when they graduate. This is exemplified in the salary expectation mentioned by a legal professional in a career query e-mailed to Adams (2013), author of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting and a popular blog, in which an unnamed assistant attorney expressed the view that he would expect to be paid more than £55,000 4 years into a legal career.

Fortunately for many, the connection between happiness and money is to a large degree relative. As a general rule, people are happiest to earn more than other people rather than more per se, even if they are earning less than they otherwise might. Happiness is comparison-based, and it matters greatly with whom one choose to compare oneself. For many non-corporate lawyers it is fine to earn less than, say, their corporate peers; for example, the barrister cited earlier stated: “I am interested in money to have a nice life, but I'm not interested in being wealthy. Which is lucky, because most criminal barristers don't get paid as much as people think we do [...] The top commercial lawyers have high-powered clients and charge top fees - they're the ones who earn hundreds of thousands a year”.

If one compares legal positions listed on americasjobsexchange.com against the median rewards offered by these positions across the board collated by payscale. com, only a handful of these roles offer a starting salary higher than that offered, for example, to a certified industrial maintenance mechanic (median £36,000 per annum). From a commonsense perspective there is nothing wrong with this situa­tion: there are fewer people with mechanical skills than with law degrees, but from the perspective of a person who has just made an upfront investment of £100,000 for their legal education this might be a rude awakening.

Becoming a lawyer requires significant education, and therefore significant financial investment. An average legal professional is said to graduate with a £100,000 of debt. It is interesting in this context to note the average debt burden carried by other respected professionals. Architects, for example, are also said to accumulate £100,000 of student debt before they are legally allowed to use the title “architect”, as do doctors and dentists before they are allowed to practice.

By comparison, a construction contract administrator with a starting median salary of £25,000 can expect this to increase to £45,000 with experience. After 10 years of practice, as a senior contracts manager they will enjoy between £50,000 and £70,000 a year, with some corporate contracts administrators in construction enjoying higher salaries and performance-related bonuses. The role usually comes with a car allowance and other benefits.

In many industries there is a natural tendency to recruit qualified lawyers for contracting roles. This has never been the case in the construction sector. Construc­tion is rarely a field considered for employment by prime legal professionals, and even the largest, most prestigious global corporations operating in the built asset domain have less than a handful of lawyers working outside their (slim) in-house legal teams. Wearing safety boots (even occasionally) instead of Manolo Blahniks, or a high-visibility vest over one’s business suit, from time to time might not be everyone’s vision of professional success. And this is despite the safety footwear being paid for by the employer under The Personal Protective Equipment Regulations 2002 and the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations 1992 (as amended).

The potential of the construction industry to attract prime legal talent is further diminished by the fact that within the legal profession, in-house lawyers are perceived as “lesser beings”: contract lawyers have a low status among the “proper lawyers”, and for many general counsels, commercial contracting is way down their list of priorities and resources (Cummins 2010). Moving “in-house” is perceived as a one-way street, with the perception that one will be “out of practice” for a few years, ultimately hindering the possibility of a future career path in a traditional legal role. According to Harrison Barnes, chief executive of the BCG Attorney Search, the decision “to go in-house” is deemed to be one of the most significant career decisions a lawyer can make. Recognising the benefits of this choice, such as “more interesting work, shorter hours, potentially lucrative stock options, and the opportunity to be on the business side in a corporate environment” (Barnes undated), he quotes one of his recruiters providing advice to a friend (“three years out of a top Ivy League law school and working for arguably one of the top two or three law firms in the United States”): “Are you sure about the in-house thing? (...) kind of look at the option with the same sort of circumspection that you might view a vasectomy: It may be reversible, but you'd better be darned sure about it anyway.” Barnes further suggests that once you go in-house “your legal skills are likely to deteriorate”, “it is very difficult to move to another in-house job” and that “you may have to work as hard in-house as you did in a law firm”.

Law firms are relatively hierarchical institutions, with the work funneled up the chain of command, while in-house legal departments or contracting departments tend to adopt a flatter model. In-house lawyers “often talk to the person doing the work” (Manch and Shannon 2006) or—even worse—do the work themselves, as is the case among, for example, lawyers working in contract manager positions in the oil and gas or IT industries. The universal preference for in-house lawyers to be generalists stands in sharp contrast to law firms' preference for specialists. And while in any other profession a generalist is deemed to specialize in “everything” (a general practitioner or family doctor being the prime example), in the legal world, “As a generalist, you will be an expert in nothing” (Barnes undated). The reason such threats resonate with the legal community is a persisting stereotype of what it means to “practice law” rather than selecting a job best suited to one's credentials, skills, abilities and lifestyle.

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