a legal career: a means to split ends

I was always a pleaser. At school I did exceptionally well and got a first at a top university. I was pleased because I'd got a first and pleased because my parents were pleased. At university I'd learned how to pass exams but not how to think for myself. Which I think is why, when my mother suggested I do a law conversion course, I abandoned all thoughts of going into publishing.

 

My father, a City lawyer himself, was keen too. "Why not just try it?" he said. "You can always give it up after a couple of years if you don't like it." So I thought. But 10 years on there isn't a chance I'd give up my job, and probably for all the wrong reasons. People talk about job-satisfaction but I can't say I enjoy mine. I don't hate it, I'm just not very passionate about it. I think of what I do much like I imagine a window cleaner thinks of his job - a means to an end.

 

I don't do it for the status. I wouldn't go to a party and say "hello, I'm a lawyer" with a beam of pride. It is slightly embarrassing to admit it sometimes. I have a friend who introduces himself as "Chris, I work at Chiswick Pet Cemetery," but this makes people suspect that he is a solicitor, so it backfires.

 

My parents' generation is impressed but the job was different in those days. Even the bankers who employ us think of us as a hindrance and an expense. What the parents don't really get is how ruthless the profession has become. Everybody wants to be a partner and it's always being dangled in front of your nose by bosses. It encourages ruthlessness, back-stabbing, senseless hard work and unbelievable sycophancy. Top lawyers are master politicians, masters at the back-handed compliment, necessarily made in public to denigrate a colleague. To paraphrase Gore Vidal, the City lawyer's mindset can be described as the following: "When a colleague of mine succeeds, a little part of me dies." If I talk to my friends doing so-called creative jobs, they always end up saying things like "how on earth can you do that all day?", and sometimes I wonder.

 

Then I look at where they live and the size of their mortgage and I remember. What have I learned? Well, I am an absolute world-class paper shuffler. That's what I do all day: and I feel paranoid. Thank God I don't work in an open plan office - my paranoia would spill over in front of my boss, which would be the kiss of death. It's true that you should never trust a lawyer but especially true if you are one yourself. You can't trust anybody except for part-timers; if you've gone part-time it's like telling your boss you've lost the will to live. I spend a lot of time trying to make sure that I don't look paranoid: plucked eyebrows are helpful.

 

There was a new guy in my office. He was nice but was obviously being bullied. I heard later that his boss got him to write his best-man speech at 2am, then tore it up in front of him the next day. The guy eventually quit. I saw him a few days before he handed in his notice, stuffing a sandwich in his mouth, obviously trying not to cry. I couldn't have possibly said anything to him as he would have found it too humiliating. What would I have said anyway? "I had my break-down in the emergency exit stairwell of our law firm." Which is sort of true. That was the time a colleague "playfully" pointed out that I had dandruff from all the stress. My advice to budding lawyers: never wear black in a law firm.

 

I used to feel sick at the thought of not making partner, more often these days I just feel sick. I know lawyers who have semi-retired at 40 with nice cars and second homes. I don't even like cars. What I'd really like is another career.

 

A lot of lawyers think that it's cutting-edge to work until 2am often but they don't need to. I'm always slightly amazed when I see how emotionally involved some get with their deals, which after all, are deals they are doing on behalf of clients.

 

There are lawyers who will be devastated if a deal collapses. I'd rather it be my deal in the first place, but I think I've become too risk-averse for that. Working in law makes you wary of taking risks. In the end very few lawyers chuck in their jobs.

 

I suppose the real reason I did law was because it was the easiest option. I have friends who love it and friends who hated it so much that they left - scarred by sexist bosses or the bad jokes that lawyers send to each other by email.

 

It's not a great job if you can't stand being told what to do or if you are allergic to hierarchies. It's not particularly good for meeting people either. There are lawyers so pale from being indoors that they look ill. You'll find a lot of them on internet dating sites. I'm lucky, I have a partner - not a lawyer - and a bombshell: I'll be asking for maternity leave later this year.