ABSTRACT The 2008 economic recession had a seismic impact on the legal market. In this article, we empirically assess whether the recession has made law an unsatisfying career. Relying on survey data from over 11,000 active members of the State Bar of Texas, we find that only 13.5 percent of all attorneys and 11.5 percent of full-time attorneys are dissatisfied with their careers. Newer attorneys report greater career dissatisfaction than more experienced attorneys, yet they too are largely satisfied. We also determine using logistic regression that three factors are highly predictive of lawyers’ career dissatisfaction: (1) comparatively low incomes; (2) working in private practice as opposed to in government or non-profit/public interest; and (3) law firm employment in a non-partnership role. Equally important, debt and lower class rank only slightly increase the odds of career dissatisfaction; and race, gender, years of practice experience, and firm size have no effect.

中文翻译：

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新常态下律师的职业不满

摘要2008年的经济衰退对合法市场产生了巨大的影响。在本文中，我们从经验上评估了经济衰退是否使法律成为令人不满意的职业。根据得克萨斯州州律师协会11,000多名活跃成员的调查数据，我们发现，只有13.5％的律师和11.5％的专职律师对其职业感到不满意。与较有经验的律师相比，较新的律师对职业的不满程度更高，但他们也很满意。我们还使用逻辑回归确定三个因素可以高度预测律师的职业不满：（1）收入相对较低；（2）从事私人执业工作，而不是从事政府或非营利/公共利益工作；（3）担任非合伙角色的律师行。同样重要 债务和下层阶级只会略微增加职业不满的几率；种族，性别，多年实践经验和公司规模没有影响。