Motivation

    Yesterday, I attended Professor Coates’ Chair Lecture where he gave a talk entitled “On Being a Corporate Lawyer.” I’m sure everyone going to a corporate law firm will be interested to know that one of the results from his research was that lawyer’s were being underpaid. This is deduced in part from the fact that lawyers are overworked. In response to the amount of work that needs to be done, law firms are providing inadequate training (and I’m guessing inadequate feedback), especially as some firms focus on increasing leverage. Assuming Professor Coates’, and the conventional wisdom that corporate lawyers are generally an unhappy bunch, is right, what does this say about the intrinsic motivations of lawyers? I don’t think that increasing salaries of lawyer’s has lead to a crowding-out effect – quite the opposite. However, I’d like to think that legal practice presents numerous opportunities to engage in the type of complex-solving problems for which intrinsic motivation is important – but then again maybe document review and due diligence are not all that complex. I think few of Deci’s “needs” are fulfilled by junior corporate lawyers. Autonomy? Nope. Competence? Hopefully, but with increasing leverage its unlikely that you will be able to get as much feedback as you’d like and, again, the tasks that are given to you at least initially may not be the best avenue for showcasing your abilities. Leverage also has a negative impact on relatedness.

For many people then, myself included, being a corporate lawyer would come down to the $160,000 salary. But if I’m being underpaid, there goes my extrinsic motivation! However, in this case, it would appear that raising the price could, in a round-about way, help increase intrinsic motivation. The higher our salary, the less demand there’ll be for our services (but, unfortunately, more competition for jobs between law students). This will make it essential that junior lawyers get better training and substantive work. I’m not sure an increase in salary will directly or indirectly make us feel like we have more control over what we do, but if it can magically grant us a better work-life balance, some measure of autonomy will hopefully seep back into the lives of junior lawyers.

I realize that I am painting what is probably an overly pessimistic view of being a corporate lawyer and there are several angles I’m missing. However I’d love to hear what other people think of this even though it’s a response largely to last weeks readings.