Unhappy Practicing Law? You Might Be Working on the Wrong Side of the “v.”

In the class I taught at Temple University Beasley School of Law, I discussed with my students a 2015 study by professors Lawrence Krieger and Kennon Sheldon regarding what makes attorneys happy.

After surveying thousands of attorneys, Professors Krieger and Sheldon’s data showed that attorney satisfaction did not come from money, prestige, or pride in one’s alma mater. Instead, happiness came from finding meaning in one’s work, specifically, public-service attorneys working with individuals badly in need of legal counsel.

The lawyers who reported the highest life satisfaction were in public service. The lawyers who reported the lowest were in Big Law. Then I polled my class: knowing what the data says, who would still choose to work in Big Law? Roughly eighty percent of hands went up.

Law students’ inclination to pursue Big Law at the expense of their personal fulfillment is apparently nothing new and is likely a reason many attorneys struggle with mental health issues stemming from their legal practices. In The American Lawyer’s May 2026 Mental Health Survey, 35 percent of attorneys reported experiencing depression, and 67 percent reported experiencing anxiety. Forty-two percent of respondents said mental health and substance abuse issues are “at a crisis level” inside the profession. Three-quarters said the practice of law has had a negative effect on their mental health. When ALM asked what at their workplace was driving those numbers, the top answer was billable-hours pressure, cited by 63 percent.

Having practiced workers’ compensation law for four decades and having interacted with thousands of attorneys on both sides of the “v” over that time, the results of Professors Krieger and Sheldon’s survey are right on the money.

I believe more attorneys would find the fulfillment in the practice of law they’re currently lacking, and have happier lives, if they practiced at a plaintiffs’ firm. Plaintiffs’ work provides the same psychological benefits to attorneys that public service work provides—you are helping people, counseling them, and advocating for them when they are hurt and vulnerable.

What the data says about lawyer happiness

Professors Krieger and Sheldon’s survey, which they covered in their February 2015 article in the George Washington Law Review, titled “What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success,” remains the most comprehensive look at lawyer well-being we have.

It surveyed roughly 6,200 lawyers and ranked their subjective well-being by practice area. Service-oriented lawyers—public defenders, legal aid attorneys, and prosecutors—were at the top. Lawyers in what the authors called “prestige” positions, the highest-paying and most sought-after jobs, were at the bottom. The New York Times reported on the survey with a headline that summed its findings up perfectly: “Lawyers With Lowest Pay Report More Happiness.”

As the authors noted, their data “consistently indicate that a happy life as a lawyer is much less about grades, affluence, and prestige than about finding work that is interesting, engaging, personally meaningful, and focused on providing needed help to others.”

They don’t hold back on law students’ and new attorneys’ propensity to chase money and prestige early in their legal careers: “[T]he tendency of law students and young lawyers to place prestige or financial concerns before their desires to ‘make a difference’ or serve the good of others will undermine their ongoing happiness in life.”

Their remarks are an indictment of the prestige-chasing, billable-hour coveting conveyor belt that ushers law school graduates from well-known law schools into prominent corporate defense firms without letting them know there is an alternative path.

Three reasons plaintiffs’ firms, including workers’ compensation firms, are more fulfilling places to work

When a defense attorney embarks on a new career journey by practicing law at a plaintiffs’ firm, such as a claimants’-side workers’ compensation firm, they’ll see at least three stark differences between how law is practiced at their new firm versus their old one. These differences are why plaintiffs’ work is, in my view, the more fulfilling way to practice law.

First, you spend your days helping real people in their worst moments. When you represent the clients of a personal injury or workers’ compensation firm, you’re representing individuals and their family members whose lives have been changed forever because of someone else’s conduct. They’re scared, overwhelmed, and often in dire financial straits. Every motion, every hearing, every settlement-related communication with opposing counsel is in the service of getting them what they need to put their lives back together.

Krieger and Sheldon found that this kind of work—focused, direct, in service of someone who actually needs you—was the strongest predictor of attorney happiness in their data. I do not need a study to tell me that this is the case. I see it on my colleagues’ faces every day as they fight employers and insurers to secure the life-changing workers’ compensation benefits our clients are legally entitled to.

Second, you build real litigation skills early because the firm’s interests are aligned with yours. Plaintiffs’ firms are paid on contingency: secure a favorable result for the client, or no one gets paid. That economic reality drives how the firm operates. Every client matter is a shared bet. Every junior attorney is an asset to the extent that they can move files, take depositions, examine witnesses, and try cases. So the firm has every reason to put its junior attorneys in the courtroom from the beginning.

As a result, you’ll build hands-on litigation skills faster than most defense associates do. Plaintiffs’ firms are still faithful to the apprenticeship model that shaped American law for more than a century. Senior partners sit in on case-strategy sessions, run trial workshops, and prep depositions alongside their juniors. We do this because we have to. If our junior attorneys don’t learn how to try cases, our firms cannot function, and our clients don’t get the best results.

Third, the work is driven by outcomes, not inputs. Defense firms are paid by the hour, so they’re built around hours: who logged them, which client can be billed for them, and who needs to log more. In addition to the negative impact billable-hour pressures have on attorneys (as noted in the ALM Mental Health Survey I mentioned above), mid-career advancement at defense firms inevitably gets entangled in the politics that follow regarding origination credit, billing rates, and business development positioning. None of it has anything to do with whether any client’s legal problem actually got solved.

Plaintiffs’ firms are built around the opposite question: did we get a result for the client? You either move the file, or you do not. You either hold the defendant and the insurer to the fire, or you do not. You either connect with a jury, or you do not. That can be uncomfortable for a certain kind of lawyer. For those who want to be evaluated on what they actually accomplish, this outcome-driven structure is liberating, motivating, and fulfilling.

Don’t be fooled: plaintiffs’ work is every bit as demanding as defense work, if not more

I want to be clear-eyed about what plaintiffs’ work asks of its attorneys, because if one comes into it expecting an easy 9-5 job, they will be sorely disappointed.

First, you have to be the person who will be a steady presence for a stranger in crisis. Our clients are suffering. They’re living through a nightmare. They might be fighters, but they need counseling and support. They may need help scheduling and getting to medical appointments. They may need help understanding why their employer’s insurance company is denying a claim that should never have been disputed. They may need help arranging a rental car when their vehicle has been totaled, and the at-fault driver’s insurer is dragging its feet. The work is not just legal work. It is, at moments, something closer to social work.

At the same time, the contingency-fee-based economics of plaintiffs’ work can be unforgiving. A case can run for three years and produce nothing. Another can settle the week before trial for less than an attorney spent preparing it. As a plaintiffs’ attorney, one must learn to think in portfolios—managing their own docket and the firm’s docket the way an investor manages risk—and to be patient with cycles they cannot control.

The plaintiffs’ practice also means an attorney will spend much of their career across the table from defense counsel who are paid by the hour to slow everything down. Their economic incentives are the inverse of ours. They get paid to litigate cases and delay when their clients and their insurers have to write checks; we ensure our clients are compensated for their losses. That asymmetry shapes every deposition, every motion, and every status conference. A would-be plaintiffs’ attorney must be temperamentally suited to know that every matter they will handle will be a war of attrition.

Finally, a plaintiffs’ practice can be eliminated with the stroke of a pen. A single statute, regulatory rollback, or appellate ruling can reshape or erase an entire area of practice. Thus, plaintiffs’ attorneys must always be thinking about diversifying their practices, staying engaged with policymakers, and investigating emerging areas of law to incorporate within their firms.

Opportunities to do fulfilling work abound in the plaintiffs’ space

The students in my Temple Law class were not failing a values test when they raised their hands in support of pursuing a Big Law career. They were responding to the rhetoric they’ve heard since the day they attended their law school orientation—that success in the practice of law means joining a white-shoe law firm, where the compensation is more lucrative for new law school graduates compared to other firms, you’ll defend corporations, and hopefully become a partner.

Nobody told them there was a path where they could be a champion for people in crisis and also build a good life for their families. They never knew that they could be intellectually challenged, become a master in the courtroom, be well-compensated, feel like they’re contributing to the betterment of society, and be happy at the same time.

Now they do. To any law student or young attorney reading this who wants their work to mean something: reach out to me, my colleagues, or one of the stellar plaintiffs’ attorneys often featured in this publication. We’d be happy to tell you more about the personal injury and workers’ compensation practices of law—and why we wholeheartedly agree with Professors Krieger and Sheldon’s findings that practicing law in service of people in need is the most fulfilling use of a law degree and bar license.