An interesting perspective on a real problem. 25 years ago my mother advised me not to do law because lawyers were the most unhappy people she knew. I doubt the unhappiness is confined to young lawyers, but as they are often more mobile and active they are more likely to do something about it.

I think the main cause is the huge gulf between the high ideals that the profession aspires to and the actual reality of how it is frequently practised. With the possible exception of the military in times of war, no other profession comes close to the law in this dichotomy of standards, and this is bound to make its practitioners unhappy when they cannot reconcile the gap.

Legality has very little to do with justice or ethics.The legal system is about twisting reality to suit your version of events.

No wonder many young lawyers have become disillusioned.

The general public are rightly cynical about lawyers and the litigation mentality they have created.They have appealed to the most base of human emotions and have made our society all the poorer in the last ten years.

It is indeed a waste of human intelligence to create a system that feeds off itself in a frenzy of self destruction.

I would side with the view that the fundamental wrongness of what a lot of lawyers do for a living must be a contributing factor.

How can you go to work each day knowing that by advising your client regarding the law and following instructions you are helping to destroy innocent lives? How do we get ethics back into the practice of law?

Where is a lawyer acting within the law and following instructions ethically different to someone working at a Nazi death camp if their actions are harming innocents because the law allows their client to do so?

I agree that the role of the lawyer is not to be the judge but somewhere the idea of right and wrong appears to have been lost by many. Not the way to make happy people.

When you are one the receiving end of the abuse of law being told that the lawyer was "just following instructions" does not cut it.

It's time for a massive rethink of the role lawyers play in our society and the harm they are doing to the nature of our society.

James's my opinion may be addressing the very foundation of the legal system that supposed to practice the hollowed grounds of Law (which has evolved to what it is through the efforts of the best minds in the past) but does not and this thought to be a sacrilege particularly when it is used as a tool of manipulation and control by those in power.

The legal system (meaning the physical locations where anyone who wants 'law' to 'help' them deal with their irresolvable problem) is fully owned by the Crown and all lawyers are "Crown Agents" trained in this systems processes to give effect to above transaction (using legal speak).

So you have a situation where owners of the tool called Law having their own agents to act for those seeking its services ( meaning to represent disputing parties by breaking their problem into legal parts which forms the equation law uses in such matters to give a result) with almost no regulation and daily monitoring of this process by a civil body to ensure proper process and common mark of jusitce consistently followed and this where the whole systems weakness and by all evidence falls - it relies on the person acting as the judge to be a high moral and ethical being while sitting on the high chair BUT we are all humans and with our failures and this apple of corrupting this hallowed process with its vested powers to force change for self gain too tempting any person or group and in particular those who hold its control.

Hence you have justice becoming injustice and law to lawlessness and the civil population rely on it less and fight it more causing a increasing breakdown in community stability (maintaining it is the purpose of law Not controlling it). The family court is the prime example of this brown smear on the venerable use of law.

So the crown agents are increasingly depressed going to face a civilian population that is viewing the legal process more as a tool of control... I can understand that.

Sam

Those very people charged with redistribution of happiness, are confronted with their own deficiency.

Irony, sweet irony.

Friends,
It is sad to realise what is happening in the thoughts of the keepers of justice. We need balanced and fulfilled people administering the law otherwise we as a society are just as unhappy and unfulfilled. Could I ask what relaxing, satisfying and stimulating activities do they indulge in outside and other than their law practise?