Anjali, I went to that "Life After Law School" talk. I'm not sure which standard problems of self-report you are referring to; Dr. Monahan received over 80% return on his surveys and used a standard survey that has been normalized over millions of individuals. In terms of government lawyers being the most satisfied, I think that the differences in satisfaction scores were so close that they were probably not statistically significant. Also, since these surveys were taken 20 years after law school, it's hard to extrapolate whether a government job right out of law school would also achieve very high satisfaction scores.

I think that there are certainly pros and cons of government work which have been touched on by Andrew and Pete. The bureaucracy and the inability to select your cases would be quite frustrating. Better hours and quality of life are certainly important benefits, especially a few years out of school when a majority of people have families. I think that the most important question is whether the type of work you are actually given is personally stimulating, and that seems to be an idiosyncratic question.

-- LaurenRosenberg - 01 Mar 2009