Career Alternatives, Job Searches, Rankings

Is 'Attorney' Still a Good Job?

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Career Cast has compiled a list of the Top 200 Jobs for 2010. Here’s how the Career Cast came up with its (totally arbitrary) first to worst rankings:

How does Jobs Rated determine which professions rank better than others? Data on each job is broken down into five key categories: Physical Demands, Work Environment, Income, Stress and Hiring Outlook. Jobs receive a score in each individual category, and when these are added together, the career with the best overall score is ranked 1st, while the one with the worst overall score is ranked 200th.

The number one job to have in 2010? Actuary! Wow, I almost fell asleep while I was writing that word.
The top ten jobs are … wait a minute, what do you care? Let’s skip all the way down to where “attorney” comes it.
Attorney is actually well outside the top ten. Let’s take a short break while I rappel down the list to find the legal profession.


We have to go all the way down to #80 to find attorney on Career Cast’s list. That’s what you get for three years of post graduate education, suffocating debt, and countless hours spent pouring over inscrutable opinions and documents. #80. A tipster puts it this way:

set designer and forklift operator (both of which ive done in the past) are ranked higher then attorney.
so so so sad.

It’s true, both set designer and forklift operator are supposedly better options that the legal profession in 2010. Cosmetologist is also ranked higher than attorney. Bank Teller is ranked higher than attorney. And, according to Career Cast, receptionist and typist are significantly better jobs in 2010 than attorney.
You know what, f*** Career Cast. F*** it right in the ear. It’s one thing to say that learning a real skill and earning a honest, albeit humble, living is a “better” job than being an attorney. I’ve repeatedly mentioned that aspiring law students should consider becoming plumbers before they sink six figures into a legal education — and I’m not really joking about that.
But don’t tell me it’s a better job to sit like a mindless drone all day manning the teller window. Don’t tell me that you are better off being a receptionist at a law firm than an attorney at that firm.
Obviously, Career Cast isn’t taking “intellectual stimulation” into account with it’s silly little methodology. And again, i can certainly see how designing sets for interesting plays or coming up with neat things to do with hair can be more fulfilling than reviewing boxes of documents and making privilege logs. But typing? It’s 20-freaking-10. Typing isn’t a career, it’s a chore.
I mean, you have to ask yourself, based on this random collection of career judgments, what is worse than being a lawyer? Janitor comes in at #83. If you want to say that lawyers are essentially janitors with advanced degrees, go right ahead. But at #96 Career Cast has “Clergy.” Clergy! In what universe can you rate being a man of the cloth as a career choice, and compare it unfavorably to being a janitor?
Sorry, I’d write more but Lat just reminded me that the Career Cast list can’t actually hear me, no matter how loudly I scream. There are lots of ways to describe how terrible it is to be a lawyer right now. It’s fertile territory. But Career Cast just achieved the list making equivalent of not being able to find oil in Texas.
Jobs Rated 2010: A Ranking of 200 Jobs From Best to Worst [Career Cast]

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