According to the 2024 Lawyer Satisfaction Survey — which marks Law360 Canada’s second deep dive into the feelings and thoughts that legal professionals have about their jobs — 60 per cent of respondents in this year’s survey report being satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs overall, down from 69 per cent last year. It should be noted that while 2023’s survey only looked at lawyers from firms with more than 50 lawyers, lawyers from larger and smaller firms were similarly satisfied in this year’s survey, indicating the drop is not entirely due to the change in the survey population.
Lawyers indicate high satisfaction with the collegiality and collaboration at their firms, with 70 per cent saying they were satisfied or very satisfied with that component of their jobs. There was also high satisfaction in areas such as firms’ in-office policy, investment in technology and opportunities for advancement and compensation.
Brook Greenberg of Fasken LLP in Vancouver said he was “pleasantly surprised” with the findings — given the degree of stress in the legal profession — that so many people would do it all over again.
“That was a bit heartening,” said Greenberg, who also serves as first vice-president of the Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC). “People recognize what a difficult profession this is, but they do find reward and satisfaction with it.”
Greenberg — who emphasized that he was speaking for himself, not his firm or the law society — said as much as lawyers talk about the struggles and difficulties of the profession, there are good things about it that need to be emphasized.
Rob De Toni, director of student and associate professional resources at Siskinds LLP, said he too was not surprised about the findings on job satisfaction.
“It’s a very rewarding career, and challenging. It stretches you and allows you to help out people that you know need your help,” he said. “I'm not practising law any more myself, but it was always very satisfying helping people out.”
In terms of financial stability, Canadian lawyers are significantly less enthusiastic than their U.S. counterparts, of whom 51 per cent rated their financial stability as excellent in a survey conducted by Law360 Pulse earlier this year. For Canada, 53 per cent of surveyed lawyers regard their financial stability as average. Thirty-seven per cent said it was excellent, and only 10 per cent selected “poor.” The responses differed by rank, with 58 per cent of equity partners rating their financial stability as excellent, and 69 per cent of associates rated their financial stability as average.
De Toni said it is important to emphasize that not all lawyers make $250,000 a year.
“And for the younger generation coming in, or people who have gone back to law school, have accumulated a lot of debt from that,” he said. “And that is where I imagine some of the stress would come from — if you’re starting out as an associate, how am I going to pay all this debt down?”
And the evidence shows that stress remains an issue in the profession, with over a third of lawyers saying they feel stressed most or all of the time and nearly as many say their work-life balance has worsened over the past year. Moreover, while a majority of respondents said they have never been mistreated at work, a majority of women said they had experienced some form of gender discrimination.
Greenberg noted that most firms have employee assistance programs and other resources to help people but said lawyers have come to him looking for support but are not sure where they can be found.
“I want employers to move from making resources available to actually encouraging people to use them,” he said. “And it's not a huge difference, but it's an important one — it sends a message that these programs aren’t just available, but we want people to use them. We want people to know about them.”
The results of this survey are a combination of versions in English and French, which collected 256 and 27 answers, respectively, from July 19 to Sept. 2. Fifty-two per cent of respondents identified as men, 45 per cent as women and three per cent did not disclose their gender. Seventy-three per cent identified as white, 10 per cent chose not to disclose their race and seven per cent identified as other. Sixteen per cent of the respondents also selected one of the following six categories: South Asian (five per cent), Chinese (four per cent), Arab (two per cent), Indigenous (two per cent), Black (two per cent) and West Asian (one per cent).
Thirty-nine per cent of respondents were from Ontario, 22 per cent from British Columbia, 16 per cent from Alberta, 11 per cent from Quebec, five per cent from the Atlantic Provinces, four per cent from Manitoba, three per cent from Saskatchewan and one per cent from the Territories.
Graphics by Jason Mallory