Pennsylvania Bar Assn. conducts a telephone survey of lawyers recently admitted to practice

PA Law

These are just some of the questions asked in a survey of lawyers recently admitted to practice in Pennsylvania. The survey, undertaken by the Entry into the Practice of Law Committee of the Pennsylvania Bar Association (PBA) and funded by the Pennsylvania Bar Trust, was based on telephone interviews with 177 new lawyers admitted into practice between 1986 and 1990.

The survey process was supervised by John Bradley, a research consultant based in Havertown, Penn. and a member of the Entry into the Practice of Law Committee. "We knew that studies had been done by the American Bar Association, the Maryland Bar Association, etc., but we didn't have any benchmark on Pennsylvania. So we got a survey sub-committee together to decide how to structure the questionnaire," Bradley says.

The survey probed the reasons why people go to law school, what their hopes and aspirations are, and how their opinions changed during their education--both after they were admitted to the bar and during the first few years of practice.

In addition, the survey was designed to: help the PBA determine ways to help new lawyers handle the challenges they face; whether a practicum (which instructs new lawyers on the day-to-day aspects of law practice in their county, such as filing a motion, recording a deed) should be offered on a mandatory or voluntary basis.

"The Bar Association's mandate is to provide service to the public and service to the bar," says Enid Harris, chairperson of the Entry into the Practice of Law Committee. "The survey was designed to mainly address the second part of the mandate, to find out what it is lawyers are asking for from their bar association and hopefully develop specific projects to provide that."

Sent in advance

The Committee felt that the experiences of the recently-admitted lawyers might differ depending on the size of their respective county bar populations, so the Pennsylvania counties were grouped into five cells.

Nearly 700 copies of the survey were sent in advance to lawyers who were prospective respondents. The survey packet included a cover letter that explained the purpose of the survey and alerted them that they might receive a call to participate.

The interviewing was conducted by Research Corporation of America, Conshohocken, Penn. Sharon Miller, project director, Research Corporation of America, says that while giving respondents advance notice might not be practical for consumer studies, it can be helpful in research with specialized audiences such as doctors or other busy professionals. "It's not a method that's used very often, but it might be used with similar studies with doctors, for example, who can be difficult to get time with," she says.

In addition to speeding up the interviewing process, Bradley says that sending the survey in advance also resulted in high cooperation rates. "We couldn't guarantee everybody who got a copy in the mail that they were actually going to be called but we wanted them to be mentally and psychologically prepared for it and know it was Bar Association authorized when they got a call."

Though the instructions explicitly asked the people who received a survey not to complete and return it to the Bar Association, a few persistent souls did, despite the fact that the eight pages of text had been jammed onto four to make it look as forbidding as possible.

"The questionnaire we sent out was not formatted in the same way as the actual survey," Bradley says. "It was deliberately formatted in what you might call a user-unfriendly method because we didn't want people filling it out and sending it back through the mail. We specifically instructed them not to do so and we deliberately wrote the questionnaire in a physical format that would make it hard to do so but six of them still filled it out and sent it back!"

Interviewers briefed

Before the interviewing began, Bradley briefed the interviewers on what to expect, Miller says. "He went over the kind of answers they might get from the respondents. He gave them an insight into how the sampling was done. He" made them feel comfortable with the study; anything that they might have had question about as far as vocabulary or terminology, he was able to help them with.

"During the interviewing he frequently came here and spoke with the interviewers individually. It was a plus to have him with this kind of study because he didn't just drop it and leave it, so to speak. He was a part of the study, which made a great deal of difference to the interviewers."

Reasons for choosing law

In the first section, respondents were asked about their reasons for choosing the law profession. Questions covered topics such as: the type of practice the respondent planned to enter upon graduation and if that choice changed over time, and; the importance of various factors (earning potential, desire to serve clients) in the decision to practice law.

The second section dealt with respondents' experiences in law practice, how they differed from expectations, which aspects (such as winning an appeal, performing pro bono service) they found most satisfying, and which they found frustrating. It also asked about the obstacles faced in day-to-day practice and how they felt the PBA or their county bar might help them cope with those obstacles.

The final sections covered the transition from law school to law practice and inquired about the respondent's experience with a practicum.

Some findings:

• Respondents were evenly divided as to whether law practice was what they had expected it to be. Of the people who said it was different, the most common reason given was a disillusionment with the cutthroat nature of the profession.

In addition, the survey found that respondents who had entered law without a clear purpose were more likely to have feelings of dissatisfaction, says Enid Harris.

"The survey indicated that there are a number of problems related to people that have chosen law as a kind of default career. There seemed to be a correlation between people who had gotten into law that way and people who were dissatisfied or who said that the practice of law wasn't what they expected it to be. As a result we have decided the Committee should address not only the needs of recently admitted lawyers but of lawyers who are still in law school and perhaps even pre-law college students."

• The most frustrating element volunteered by respondents was the lack of time to do quality work, followed by lack of professionalism. Lack of time was also singled out as the main obstacle to successful practice.

"There were many, many complaints about not having enough time for a life other than practicing law, particularly when you have to put in a lot of billable hours. So we are thinking of developing programs either on alternative legal practice styles - such as practicing part time, farming out your services to other attorneys -that would enable lawyers to practice law but have more quality time with their family," Harris says.

• No one mentioned the problem of racism and relatively view mentioned sexism, Bradley says. "That's not to say these people don't encounter these problems in other areas of life, but it's not something that stands out to them as a problem in the entry into the practice of law."

• Respondents said they derived the most satisfaction from achieving positive results for their clients. They also enjoyed the intellectual stimulus of law practice. Personal rewards such as prestige and setting your own schedule were much less important.

• Law students and young lawyers don't have a much regard for law school placement offices. "They tend to regard them as centralized job registries," Bradley says, "almost like a bulletin board with somebody who types up the notices and schedules appointments. In terms of selecting their job, the placement office has virtually no influence. Almost everything else has more influence. Work experience does - you'd logically expect that--fellow students do, faculty members do. Placement offices come in last in influencing students in terms of what to consider.

"The logical conclusion is that the law student placement offices aren't marketing themselves effectively to the students as offering career counseling. That may be deliberate - they may have enough to do in terms of scheduling career counseling, giving them basic instructions, etc., and they may not feel they have time to offer any significant individualized career counseling. I think there's more that law school placement offices could do to help them pick the right job but clearly they're not perceived by their constituencies to be in a position to do so."

• Over two-thirds of the respondents felt they had been adequately prepared by law school for the ethical challenges of practice.

"The biggest differences we found were based on the size of the county that people came from, in terms of bar population. There were more differences between attorneys who were in large counties versus small counties than there were by age, sex, or income level," Bradley says.

"The county bar associations are in a position to particularize help based on their unique local circumstances, more than the state is. The only real thing that the state could do that anybody recommended to any serious degree was to perhaps add a series of seminars on time management specifically oriented to attorneys."

Bradley says he would like to propose that the study be done every five years. "First of all, the budget isn't there to do it annually. Second, things don't change that fast in the law profession. This study looked at people who were admitted from 1986-1990, so we would be looking to do it again in 1997 with people admitted between 1991-95. However, this is very contingent on finding an economic sponsor."