to think that the majority of lawyers are arseholes

[FunnysInLaJardin]

I know I am one, but having spent 5 years outside the legal profession I can now see lawyers for what they really are. Arrogant, combative arseholes. They on the whole seem to exist in some kind of other universe where everything is an argument which they have to win. I mean I did know this when I worked in law, but now I am on the outside I can see what twats a lot of them are when compared to the population as a whole.

There, that's better

Ahh I see I crossed posts with eldritch saying the same thing! It really gets my goat with this good / bad lawyer viewpoint. I feel quite strongly about it!

One of the nicest people I ever knew was a lawyer. She was very popular, you should have seen how many cards she got on her birthday. She was a lawyer as her mum had always been disabled and she saw how unfair it was for her to be so disadvantaged in everyday life and wanted to change that.

I think it is quite interesting what professions attract what type of personalities.

There are all sorts of lawyers. In my family we've had specialists in criminal defence, corporate (water resources), researcher for a judge and immigration. Only one of those involved an active confrontation role (and only a small amount of the time, at that).

I am a litigation lawyer. Obviously it is part of my job to have arguments and never take them personally (lawyers who do, or who get unnecessarily antagonistic are generally not liked by their peers). If I have a fault, it is forgetting that other people may be more likely to take arguments personally, and offending them as a result. I've noticed that since entering the law, people tend to treat me as less approachable than before, although that may also be me reflecting the stress in my marriage . FWIW, litigation lawyers apparently have a particularly high rate of marriage breakdown.

I tend to find an arsehole is an arsehole regardless if their occupation.

I find most lawyers (like most people) to be lovely. I DO think business/big city/etc; lawyers to be more likely to he arseholes than the smaller scale criminal, care and immigration lawyers (in fact, I've found most of those to be absolutely lovely!). The majority of lawyers are great but I DO think the big city lawyer jobs attract certain people, and most of these certain people are great, but the skills and personalities they need to be good and successful at their job might mean they could be more prone to arseholeness than some other jobs.

And just saw the mention of All Bar One. I pass that daily and see quite a few lawyers, who I've met in my professional capacity (as a non lawyer).

I'm a lawyer. I look after elderly clients and I think I'm quite nice, actually.