Throughout January 2008, eLawyer.com.my has been actively reaching out to the legal community, by setting up booths in law schools and law career fairs. During our promotional drive, we have conducted a survey about the community’s perspective on legal career prospects. The two main questions asked were concerning the factors that they looked for when choosing a law firm to work for, and whether they thought the legal profession is being paid as well as it should be.

A total of 602 participants did the survey. They comprised of 524 law students (97%), 48 lawyers (8%), 19 pupils or paralegals (3%) and 10 people from the general public (2%). A careful analysis on the survey results reveal some surprises.

The first question required the participant to rank the importance (5 = most important, 1 = least important) of the following criteria in choosing a law firm or company to work for, namely:

1. Friendly Environment
2. Learning Opportunity & Exposure
3. Remuneration or Salary
4. Career Path
5. Firm’s size

Let us start with the student’s perspective. Curiously enough, while the ‘Firm’s Size’ criteria received the highest amount of ‘most important criteria’ rating from students (26.9%), it also at the same time received the highest amount of ‘least important criteria’ rating from them (34.5%). Such an extreme result is similarly reflected in the ‘Learning Opportunity & Exposure’ criteria. Although 25.2% of the students rated it as the most important criteria, as many as 19.7% of them rated it as the least important criteria.

Why both such criteria should figure so highly at both ends of the spectrum is quite a mystery. But the fact remains that many law students rate ‘Firm’s Size’ and ‘Learning Opportunity & Exposure’ as important factors to decide where to work at. In sharp contrast, only 12.9% of the students rated ‘Remuneration or Salary’ as the most important criteria. All these results show that law students are not as money-minded as society stereotypes them to be.

Any doubts that law students are merely being idealistic and unrealistic is dispelled by looking at the lawyer’s perspective. 25% of them rated ‘Firm’s Size’ as the most important criteria, and another 25% rated ‘Learning Opportunity & Exposure’ as the most important criteria. Only 6.3% rated ‘Remuneration or Salary’ as the most important criteria.

The second question asked the participants on whether they thought the legal profession is a well-paid industry compared to other professions. Here, there is a sharp divergence of opinion between law students and lawyers. 37.7% of students agreed that the legal profession is a well-paid industry, 33.2% disagreed, and 17.6% were unsure. In contrast, a meager 8.3% of the lawyers agreed that the legal profession is a well-paid industry, a whooping 70.8% disagreed, and 10.4% were unsure.

It is only reasonable to take the lawyer’s perspective as a fairer reflection on the true state of the legal profession, in that it doesn’t pay enough for the work put in. After all, they are the ones in practice, and know what’s life as a lawyer really is like. So students, beware. All the ominous warnings on being required to work till the wee hours of the night, and returning to office on the weekends are probably true.

On a side note, we like to thank those for taking part in our survey. Each of your input is much appreciated.

And finally, it is perhaps reassuring to know that the legal profession is not all about the money. And even if it is, it’s quite clear that most lawyers aren’t exactly getting enough of it, or at least as much as they think as they deserve.