When I was a young associate lawyer in DC, I didn’t have a life, and my wife eventually evacuated from our house at 304 East Capitol. At least it was for a good cause: learning how to tackle hard but interesting issues the right way with people who knew what they were doing. Except that for a short time I did insurance defense work (negligence, products liability, etc.) in order to get some “trial experience”. The firm gave me 15 cases. That experience would have made me leave the profession if I had even suspected a long term or full-time assignment. But the rest of my workload was a mixture of helping write U.S. Supreme Court briefs, antitrust litigation research, some lobbying, environmental defense issues and working with the crude oil reseller regs. A demanding but cool job–except for the insurance work.
At the end of a year I begged the powers that were not to give me any more cases from the carrier out of Baltimore. When I did that work, my brain atrophied, my skin broke out and I drank more–it was if I were working at a fast-food chain with people who were happy with the idea of going through the rest of their lives as turds. The work repeated itself in 7 or 8 boring themes. It required you to think of the client (insured) as needed equipment and the insurance company as the client. And to try those cases, you didn’t need a law degree. No one in the free world should have to do insurance defense work. So see this associates’s blog: “Why Practicing Law Sucks” – “Ruminations of a Bored Insurance Defense Attorney Stuck In The Trenches”. I root for this anonymous lawyer.