A career as a lawyer is highly sought after, but Bob Marrow was absent of happiness in this field. Here’s why.
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My career as a lawyer is the goal of many law students. I graduated from the New York University School of Law, one of the most prestigious law schools in the country. I was a founding partner of a New York City law firm that still bears my name. I was head of the litigation department at the firm for many years during which I tried cases involving criminal defense, business disputes, medical malpractice and intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks, patents and trade secrets). I was successful yet unhappy. I am told that most lawyers are unhappy. The question I have asked myself since retiring is, Why? Here I will try to partially answer that question for myself.
1. There is an inherent conflict of interest in the way lawyers charge clients. In most cases lawyers bill by the hour; the more hours billed the larger the fee and the profit. The conflict is obvious; the lawyer benefits from bigger bills which are created by billing more hours. The client pays these bills (usually). The time lawyers include in their bills frequently involves correcting mistakes or doing work that turned out to be unnecessary — doing research that was not used, interviewing witnesses who were never called to testify, writing drafts that could have been avoided if the issues had been correctly analysed initially. The client is billed for time that is not used for his benefit, but is not told as much. The bill just describes the billable hours as “legal research”, “drafting”, “interviewing witnesses”, “reviewing documents”, “client conference”, “conferences with partners and associates”, and so on. There is a feeling of dishonesty about billing which trails some lawyers like a mist of pollution.
2. Another conflict between a lawyer and his client is frequently caused by the client who is not honest when describing the facts of the case and the lawyer who is not candid about the likely outcome. The reasons for this are understandable. The client wants the lawyer to be emotionally involved in the case and work as hard as possible to win. The client thinks that the lawyer will not do his utmost unless he likes the client and believes the case is just. Therefore, the client presents himself and his case in the best possible light. However, in order to do his job the lawyer must learn the weaknesses in the case at the beginning — not at trial. But if the lawyer delves too deeply, inquiring about those weaknesses, the client feels that the lawyer is not supportive. The client then retains another lawyer. A client is lost. Both the lawyer and the client think they benefit from dishonesty or partial honesty; the client by incompletely describing the facts, the lawyer by pretending that he knows the case will be won.
3. The outcome of litigation is always uncertain. This was one of the hardest things about being a trial lawyer — not knowing the result of the hours, days, weeks, months and sometimes years of work devoted to a client who sometimes becomes a friend. The outcome of every trial is determined by conflicting testimony and arguments. The basis for the decision or verdict is almost never known and may have little to do with the evidence or the law. Did the judge or jury dislike a lawyer, a litigant or a witness? Did this have anything to do with the case or was it based on some irrelevant aspect of personality? Did the judge or jury remember the facts correctly during deliberations or was there an incomplete understanding based on a lawyer’s inept presentation, a juror’s wandering attention, a lack of appreciation of the significance of a document or a piece of physical evidence? Was this due to a weakness in the judge or jury, or the result of a lawyer’s inadequate presentation? The inability to predict the outcome of your actions is one of the most anxiety producing aspects of life. Trial lawyers live with it constantly.
4. These are three reasons the life of a trial lawyer is difficult. Then there is the all consuming feeling one has during a trial. Irving Younger, a distinguished trial lawyer, law school professor and judge used to say during his lecture called, “The Ten Commandments of Cross-examination”: “When you are on trial you think of nothing else,” and with his voice rising to crescendo, “you live that trial, you eat that trial, you drink that trial, you sleep that trial, you dream that trial, there is nothing else in your life but that trial. Once I was on trial for seven months and during that seven months I didn’t even open my mail. And do you know what happened? NOTHING? NOTHING HAPPENED? YOU DON’T HAVE TO OPEN YOUR MAIL WHEN YOU’RE ON TRIAL!” I have always admired, been in awe of lawyers who thrive on the conflict, the uncertainty, the anxiety of being on trial; never tiring of the prospect of victory even when infused with the potential of defeat. However, after a professional lifetime of living with that uncertainty and anxiety, I have concluded that it made me unhappy and I opt for the tranquility of retirement.
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Photo credit: Nick Page/flickr
A very powerful insight Andy. Don’t sell yourself short. My roommate and fraternity brother at UW Madison wanted to be an attorney from the time he was in 7th grade. He was phi beta kappa and was accepted by every law school he applied to except Harvard and Yale. And that was bevause of no connections. I lost touch with him after graduation and met up again when he was doing an internship in my city between his 2nd and third law years. I asked him how he liked it and in a wink he said he loved the learning… Read more »
Mr. Barrow, I can’t wait to someday mark the end of my career. Which, considering where I am at in my own legal career, may come as a bit of a shock. Let me explain. I went to a Midwest, middle of road law school where I graduated just above the middle of my class. For all things relevant, I am an average person, an average man; and likely, an average lawyer. I walked across the stage to receive my degree just about a month ago and I am preparing for the July bar (or should be). My mother always… Read more »
When I wrote this essay I omitted some of the pleasures of representing people in litigation. Here’s an essay I posted on TGMP that describes one of the best experiences being a lawyer can provide. “The Lums, My Favorite Clients” . Also, there are fields of law that are more rewarding than litigation. In the last part of my career I was general counsel to a public pharmaceutical company, a job which ended when the company merged with another company, and then counsel to several e-commerce start-ups. These jobs were great. They involved cooperation not conflict. Your reply indicates that… Read more »
This is a passion of mine. What I dislike about the law and especially therefore lawyers today is that there is no search for the truth and justice. It has become a bastardization of greed and a play on sympathy to get a win. That’s about the end result. For example in criminal law. Lawyers don’t really want to know the truth. They want a plausible story in defense so they can sell that to a jury, and they win. But how many families thereafterhave been devastated by these same people doing it again? Nobody talks about them. I’m not… Read more »
In Australia and Europe, they are revised their justice system where they are trained to seek out the truth and forget about this win at all costs. Isn’t that what the justice system is all about is to find the truth and punish the people who committed the crime instead of sending innocent people to prison?
The search for the truth can take many forms but the adversary system is the only one that provides each party with the opportunity to make his case with an objective judge or jury deciding the outcome. As Churchill said of democracy, “it’s the worst form of government except for all the others.”
Tried to find an objective judge who is not owned by Corporate America or find a jury that is not racial bias. It is amazing that potential jurors get eliminated if they show some kind of bias, but you don’t see the judge and/or the DA recluse themselves because of their own biases.
There is a former lawyer named Norma Goldman who has his own radio show and written a book about his life who stated that he left his profession because he got tired of all the corruption in his profession by his fellow attorneys and judges.