Phillip Estes
After I began to practice, I realized that the attorneys that I practiced with were more often than not in a fowl mood. Some were never cheerful or pleasant. I enjoyed most of the work involved in my practice, but many of my associates did not. After about nine months, I decided that the main problem with the profession was that there were too many attorneys. The pressure of having to compete for clients and advertise just to survive made it unbearable for nearly every one I met. For example, I had a friend who had quit a lucrative position with an insurance agency to attend law school and, then, to practice law. We would go to lunch together on many occasions. He had a wife, who worked full time and they had several children. The conversion at lunch always turned into his complaining about the lack of business or fees for his practice. He complained so much that I got to the point I didn’t enjoy going to lunch with him anymore. At times I have tried to call other lawyers about a particular case only to get a recording saying that the phone had been temporarily disconnected. This has happened with lawyers who had been practicing for twenty years! Well, I decided that I could do my part to correct this situation. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but this book is my attempt to help potential attorneys see if they really want to be lawyers and, more importantly, to see if the law profession wants them.
