I don't really mean that, but at times like these, being a lawyer sucks. It is 5:30 Saturday morning and I'm finally about to go home. My Friday plans were ruined and have not had a day off in a month. Being a lawyer for a big law firm sucks a lot of the time. OK, I'm done complaining and am headed home to sleep.

I've been a lawyer for eight years. At times like that I think back to my pre-college days when I dug irrigation ditches by swinging a pick into solid rock all day, every day, in the sweltering sun. I'd rather be a lawyer.

I was gonna say that it probably beat digging a ditch (in the figurative sense) before yabanci's rather timely, literal post.

I know it probably won't last, but I'm content with my job. Medium-sized firm (3 offices, probably a total of 60 attorneys), but in our office, we only handled administrative/corporate work, 99.9% transactional, no court time, and I work 7:30-6:30 M through F, VERY rarely on weekends. And I'm making good money, especially by Tallahassee standards.

I can't complain.

Dola.

Still, the more competition, the worse the job market.

So, I agree with John Galt!

5:45am on Saturday, my wife and daughter are still asleep upstairs, and I am on my way out the door to head down to the office. Damn it.

Its 7:45 in the morning and since 11PM I've received 3 urgent e-mails with comments to previously negotiated and supposedly "final" documents. I hate senior associates who think they are more important than they really are.

LAWYERS OF THE WORLD REPENT!

Save yourself before you are damned to HADES (or its cousin, Wal-Mart) eternally.

I'm in public accounting, its nuts during Feb-April, but the rest of the time its 35 hour weeks!

My lovely spouse has seemingly lucked into good circumstances. She's still a year and a half from partnership talk, but her bosses love her. She gets to go in after 9:00am and comes home when the work is done -- usually 7:30ish, but sometimes much later if something is up. This gives her some time each morning to be with the kids (without which she would not survive!) and she sees them at night too. Rarely does she work a weekend. AND she's a litigator! In the big corporations I take it things don't go to court very often..

I'm just saying that there are better situations out there, but you have to look for them. My wife specifically looked for a small firm in DC with people who seemed clued into the fact that there is a life beyond the doors of the firm. She found one and she's been happy ever since.

Unfortunately, that firm merged with a big stupid firm, so I can't suggest anyone work there. My wife is insulated from the insanity by virtue of still being attached to her old team. But she hears stories..

As one of several here at FOFC who have been recently laid off and is spending the holidays unemployed, allow me to get out my violin....

For a second, I thought Galt was proposing "don't be a lawyer" as the new generic insult.

It could replace "don't be gay".