While the general population increased 15% from 1970 to 1985, the population of lawyers nearly doubled. Drogin, 1990, citing Miller, 1986.

2d generation lawyers more satisfied than most lawyers, and those who work in the family firm most satisfied. Wasby, 1994.

Corporate counsel lawyers’ job satisfaction is the highest among lawyers – Chiu, 1998 at 533, citing M. C. Fisk, A measure of satisfaction, The Nat’l. L. J. pp. S2, S9-12 (May 28, 1990).

40% of young lawyers dissatisfied with their jobs. Winter, 1982.

Canadian lawyers do not work long hours because they are "highly committed to practicing law, because it may further their legal career, or because they feel their work is important to society." Only three factors were related to number of hours worked: internal work commitment, actual work overload, and having preschool children for women. So the researchers concluded that lawyers work long hours because they are internally driven to do so or externally forced to do so by excess work. Actual work overload was the most important factor influencing feelings that work invaded one’s nonwork life. Perceptions that the practice of law is increasingly competitive and profit-driven do influence feelings that work is invading one’s nonwork life, but do not affect number of hours worked. Lawyers who feel they have a future in the firm or those who feel intrinsic social rewards from working with clients were less likely to view long hours negatively. Wallace, 1997.

Among lawyers with ten or less years of experience, female lawyers had lower job satisfaction than males, primarily because of lack of influence and promotional opportunity. – Chiu, 1998 at 532-33

Among Israeli attorneys, male and female attorneys’ communication styles with their clients did not differ much, with one exception. Female attorneys were more willing to step outside their role as an attorney and acknowledge the client’s emotional concerns, while firmly insisting on their professional identity – Bogoch, 1997.

Lawyers as a group have testosterone levels similar to that of other white-collar workers and significantly lower than that of blue-collar workers, however, both male and female trial lawyers’ testosterone levels were high compared to other lawyers, about 30% higher, as high as blue collar workers’ levels are compared to white collar workers. Trial lawyers also used fewer cognitive mechanisms in oral arguments before the Supreme Court. Testosterone levels are associated with energy, dominance, persistence, combativeness, focused attention, antisocial behavior, drug and alcohol use, marital discord, violent crime, competition, higher spatial ability and lower verbal ability, fewer smiles, actors, and tattooed people. Dabbs, Alford, and Fielden, 1998.

NOTE: A 1979 study found female lawyers to be higher in testosterone than nonlawyers.

Nonlawyers and lawyers evaluate litigation/settlement options differently; lawyers tend to simply look at the economics of an offer and decide based on wealth maximization, while nonlawyers are much more influenced in their decisions by noneconomic, psychological factors, such as the size of the rejected opening settlement offer or the quality of the other side’s explanation for their poor behavior. Finally, the lawyer’s advice also skewed the nonlawyer’s decisions whether or not to take a particular settlement offer. – Korobkin & Guthrie, 1997

Myers-Briggs differences exist between practice areas: (data collected between 1971 and 1984) Lawyers in private practice were more likely to be Introverted, Intuitive, and Thinking, their most frequent types were ISTJ, ENFP, INTJ, least frequent types were ESTP, ISFP, ESFJ, and ESFP. More likely to have the NT combination.

Judges were more likely to be Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging, most frequent types were ISTJ and ESTJ, least frequent type was ISFP. More likely to have the ST combination.

Administrative attorneys were more likely to be Introverted, Thinking, and Judging, their most frequent types were INTJ and ENTJ and likely to have the NT combination. Drogin, 1990.

Undergraduates more likely to acquit when defense attorney was aggressive and male, so lawyers are motivated to be aggressive. Hahn & Clayton, 1996.

Turns out that the ethic of care and Feeling on the Myers-Briggs are NOT the same thing.

The only factors associated with law students having an ethic of care were (1) being female; (2) abstract ways of learning, meaning processing experiences, ideas, and information through comprehension, reliance on intellect, rationality, logic, and distanced knowing instead of concrete, personal experiences, emphasizing understanding, truth, and reflection before action; and (3) an organicist world view, meaning absolute idealism, focused on change and holism, interactionism, constructivism, synthetic understanding of organization, function served by structures, views people as active, purposive, autonomous, inherent functions, creative, changing, progressive, integrated into their social environment (instead of mechanist). Communitarian vs. consequentialist moral orientations weren’t associated with ethic of care or justice orientation, either. White & Manolis, 1997

Law students’ interest in public interest work decreased during law school, suggesting that their idealism decreased during law school. 50% were interested in public interest work before law school; only 13% took a public interest 1^st job. Continued idealism was strongly predicted by only two factors: political orientation and prior political activism. Good grades appear to squash idealism (students take jobs with private firms) and no clear relationship was found with total amount of student debt (debt is irrelevant?). Erlanger, Epps, Cahill, & Haines, 1996.

Law students were less authoritarian and more liberal than undergraduates. Their locus of control was the same as undergraduates. Law students in Korea and U.S. were more like each other regarding their attitudes towards prisoners than they were like undergraduates from their own countries, respectively, demonstrating the power of professional training. Na & Loftus, 1998.

Australian law students were less authoritarian than medical students. As training progressed for both medical and law students, males became less authoritarian and females became more authoritarian (the groups converged). Pestell & Ball, 1991.

Canadian graduate law students were more analytical, not intuitive, compared to British management students. Women law students were more analytical than the men. Third-year students were less analytical than students in first- or second-years. Students interested in litigation were more analytical than those interested in corporate/commercial work. Doucette, Kelleher, Murphy, & Young, 1998.

More female law students than males preferred Judging over Perceiving on the Myers-Briggs. Randall, 1995.

Specific reading strategies that involve forming a hypothesis as you read and testing it against the material, as opposed to simply restating or paraphrasing material, were associated with higher law school grades. Deegan, 1995.

Pessimism associated with high grades; optimism associated with low grades. Pessimism so great as to be more pessimistic than the beliefs of clinically depressed individuals. Pessimism meant: internal, stable, global attribution for negative events (bad things are frequent and all my fault) and external, unstable, and situational for positive events (good things happen by chance), while optimism was the opposite. Satterfield, Monahan, & Seligman, 1997.

Myers-Briggs Introversion and Thinking associated with higher law school GPA. Randall, 1995.

Situation-specific (state) anxiety for male and female law students was higher than that of undergraduates, but long-term (trait) anxiety was only higher for female law students compared to female undergraduates. McCleary & Zucker, 1991.

First-year women law students reported more strain due to sexism, lack of free time, and lack of time to spend with one’s partner, and more depression and physical symptoms, than first-year men law students. However, before starting law school, women did not have more physical symptoms or depression than men, so the results were not simply the result of expectable gender differences in willingness to report problems. Women’s stress did not appear to come from academic pressure but rather came from the personal domain. McIntosh, Keywell, Reifman, & Ellsworth, 1994.

Looking at the stressfulness plus controllability of various law school factors, those with the most "helplessness" built in were (in order): lack of feedback (particularly positive), performance pressure, time pressure, difficulty of academic material, competitive and demanding academic environment, and lack of recreation. The most stressful were time pressure, difficulty or novelty of material, and lack of feedback. Segerstrom, 1996.

Over one-half of 3,000 law students at 15 school surveyed said they drank more than they intended to on some occasion and one-third reported driving drunk. Most didn’t know where to turn for help. About a third reported that faculty get drunk around students. Burman, 1997.

Spanish law students underestimated the risks of alcohol use, as compared to medical students, who were more knowledgeable about its effects. Luna, Osuna, Zurera, et al., 1992.

Canadian law students scored below the population mean on vocational satisfaction, time pressure, depression, and anxiety, where medical students only scored worse than the general population on depression. Law students scored better than the general population on health potential, domestic satisfaction, achievement ethic, and relaxation potential. Women law, medical, and graduate students scored higher on anxiety, depression, and stress than men. Law students scored worse than medical students on health potential, vocational satisfaction, driven behavior, achievement ethic, relaxation potential, anxiety, hostility, total stress, and subjective stress. Yet medical students work 29% more hours per week than do law students. Helmers, Danoff, Steinert, Leyton, & Young, 1997.