Saving an innocent person's life is a great thing and an attorney does it will full force. It is always not as fancy and exciting as people consider it but an attorney faces lots of trouble and a tiresome effort is required by him to save his/her client. A career in law is most desired by many young people and it is rewarding too, but it also has different drawbacks as well. Here are some worst scenarios which an attorney faces every single day-
1. Long working hours
A criminal attorney not only argues in favor for his client in the court but also gather various information related to the case which could be helpful for his client. For that, he has to spend a great amount of time at his office or outside. He has to meet different persons like courtroom personnel, police officers, client's family members and so on. There is not a fixed routine for an attorney's working hours. He could be working more than double than a normal working person.
2. Client pressure
Nobody likes to get a ticket or face a potential prison time so if an individual is caught into any legally punishable offense then he goes for a criminal attorney who could help him to get out from this situation. Now the pressure is on an attorney to save his client and prove his innocence.
Legal proceedings are known to be quite longer and stressful as the attorney has to face the critical judge, rival attorney and other courtroom officials, so an attorney has to not only motivating his client but himself too to face different challenges.
3. Stressful job
Deadlines, client's constant pressure, long working hours, frequent changing laws, and other professional demands make the life of an attorney quite stressful. It becomes a great challenge for an attorney to cord a balance between job's requirements and own physical and mental health.
4. Unpredictable career
The career of an attorney depends upon his performance in a particular case if he is not successful in winning the case for his client and it is a chance that he will no get cases anymore.
So a career in law is quite unpredictable and there is no security of a constant income like any other profession.
5. Competition
Just like any other profession, being an attorney make you open to the competition where there will be different attorney ready to take a case with least remuneration possible. It makes a quite difficult situation in front of an experienced and competent attorney who can provide better legal assistance. But the client who wants to save his money could go for a mediocre attorney with questionable credentials.
6. Frequent legal changes
Laws are bound to get amendment at frequent intervals or when a need occurs. Governments are quite harsher on punishable offense too so they keep adding different sub-categories on present law.
It makes the job of attorney much harder as he would have to make himself updated and find loopholes to modify the case in his client's favor.
As per experts, to get a law degree even from a mediocre law college an individual would have to pay approximately $45,000 a year. To repay this debt it will take much more time than the person spent to get the degree. So in today's competitive environment, it is quite difficult for an attorney to earn a handsome amount of fee from his clients.
Advancement of technology has made work a little bit easier for an attorney as he can take references from previous cases and can get important tips for his case but it has also affected him in a negative way. Now people also can get legal aid online as they too can gather legal information about any situation or a free consultation from any legal counselor. So it stops any attorney from getting an earning option.
9. Poor image among public
Image of an attorney is always poor to the public. People considers attorneys as a devil's advocate who makes illegal things legal. Such perception has always kept attorneys away from normal people and an individual does not go to any attorney till they fall into legal cases.
Though there are many initiatives when attorney fought for common people without taking any money and different bar associations have started doing regular sessions to meet people and give them legal assistance.
10. Employment dissatisfaction
It is also the biggest challenge which every attorney faces in his professional life. The increasing competition, expensive education, constant pressure from the client, bad reputation in society and longer working hours have made a life of attorney quite challenging and stressful. According to a study, approximately 40% of attorneys have told that they would not recommend any youth to go for a career in law.