Castan, M; Paterson, J; Richardson, P; Watt, H --- "Early optimism? First-year law students' work expectations and aspirations" [2011] LegEdDig 3; (2011) 19(1) Legal Education Digest 9

• Early optimism? First-year law students’ work expectations and aspirations

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Early optimism? First-year law students’ work expectations and aspirations

M Castan, J Paterson, P Richardson and H Watt

Legal Education Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2010, pp1-11

In Australia, students embarking upon studies leading to a professional legal qualification have traditionally enrolled in an undergraduate degree (‘Bachelor of Laws’ or ‘LLB’). Students entering LLB degree programs are usually expected to have achieved high academic results in their previous studies, whether Year 12 in high school or towards another tertiary degree. First-year law students usually study up to four units per semester, one of which must be a subject introducing legal reasoning and method; for example, ‘Introduction to Legal Reasoning’. In addition, they might study substantive units, such as contract, torts and criminal law. Considerable effort is invested into orientating incoming students to the demands of studying law. As we might expect, when students have an accurate understanding of the nature and demands of their selected course of study, their levels of academic achievement and satisfaction with their studies improve. It is less clear that students have a realistic understanding of what it means to practise law on completion of their degree.

In Australia, there are relatively few studies of law students and those studies that have been conducted have focused on different elements of the student experience. Livingston Armytage and Sumitra Vignaendra’s study found that 70 per cent of final-year law students in Australia intended to work in the law. Similarly, a study by Maria Karras and Christopher Roper also found that approximately 80 per cent of Australian graduates were in law-related employment. This is consistent with recent figures which indicate that 87.7 per cent of Australian law graduates who graduated in 2008 reported being in full-time employment. These studies show that most law students intend to work in the law, and actually do utilise their legal education, upon graduation.

Wendy Larcombe, Pip Nicholson and Ian Malkin considered the relationship between law students’ interests and expectations and their academic achievement. They found that the first semester results for LLB students were associated with their realistic expectations of workload and support, self-ratings of academic ‘readiness’ and initial levels of interest in law. Karen Nelson, Sally Kift and John Clarke reported that, whilst students’ expectations of their first year in law studies had an important impact on their experience of transition from school to university, there was often a misalignment between those expectations and the actual experience of studying and life at university.

The discrepancy between expectations and perceived reality of learning to practise in the law could result in some individuals developing serious psychological disorders, such as depression. In a study of depression among law students at the University of New South Wales in 2005, Massimiliano Tani and Prue Vines observed that law students began to suffer depressive illnesses within the first 6 to 12 months of beginning their studies. They pointed out that earlier studies had shown that there were no discernable differences in wellbeing between prospective law students and the general population, so it was not the case that young people with depressive tendencies chose to study law. They also found that law students’ attitudes to their education may be connected to a number of traits which have been described as factors contributing to depression, such as lack of autonomy, high levels of competitiveness and lack of social connectedness. They proposed that these traits might help to explain the disproportionate rate of depression in law students.

The literature on why people choose to study law at university, and their motivations and expectations, is more extensive in North America than in Australia. Students in North America study law after completing a Bachelor degree. They are therefore slightly older and might be expected to demonstrate greater insight into their own motivations, expectations and choices. Debra Schleef’s study into the motivations of law and business students in the United States attributed a strong role to class status and the importance of gaining a professional qualification for the purpose of maintaining social status. She concluded that students’ choice to study law was not always a rational or even a conscious decision. Students often cited reasons such as ‘keeping options open’ and other ‘default’ reasons (that is, being the best of all available alternatives). She interpreted her results to mean that ‘students were making investments in human capital, not long term occupational decisions ... [and] that maintaining the professional class status of their parents was a priority’. Schleef also drew upon Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to refer to the early and deeply held tendencies and assumptions that shape the choice to study law. Although based on a small sample size of 79 individuals, Schleef suggested some interesting categories of reasons for law career choice, several of which resonate with our study. She described these as ‘professional status, intellectual interest, upper middle class lifestyle, parental influence and “default”’. More recently, Catherine Carroll and April Brayfield asserted that in United States law schools women had lower expectations of their career trajectories than men, and both men and women identified ‘family concerns’ as a potential barrier to career advancement. Some caution is required in applying these results to an Australian context. Nonetheless, we were interested to explore this gendered difference in expectations in our study.

We set out to investigate the career expectations of first-year law students in the very early stages of their degree to see how realistic these expectations might be. In our study, we used the ‘Motivations for Career Choice’ (‘MCC’) scale, which was developed to assess career motivations and perceptions among diverse populations. The first section, ‘about you’, asked about the participants’ age, gender, and the degree in which they were enrolled. The following section, ‘your career plans’, asked participants to nominate details of their ideal career. In the third section, participants were presented with 64 items and asked to rate on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (extremely) the extent to which their professional domain (in this case, law) allowed for the realisation of their ideal career. The final section elicited demographic information relating to the participants’ parents’ country of birth, qualifications, occupation and income. The MCC survey examines altruistic, utilitarian and intrinsic motivations together with ability-related beliefs, all of which are the focus of the broader career choice literature. This approach provided an empirically- and theoretically-tested framework to generate reliable results regarding law students’ aspirations and expectations. The MCC survey was administered to first-year LLB (undergraduate) students at Monash University.

The participants were 371 students enrolled in an LLB degree, and all were undertaking the first compulsory unit, ‘Introduction to Legal Reasoning’. Students in this unit are divided into six ‘streams’ of approximately 90 students. All streams were surveyed, with a response rate of 82 per cent, 59 per cent of those students completing the survey being female. All commencing law students attending classes in early 2009 were given the opportunity to participate in the survey. Participants indicated their gender, age, year of high school completion and any other academic qualifications held, as well as their parents’ combined income as an indication of socioeconomic status.

Survey participants’ expectations about a legal career were assessed using the MCC scale. Students were asked about expectations relating to altruistic or social utility outcomes (for example, a career in the law will offer the opportunity to ‘benefit the disadvantaged’); personal utility values (for example, a career in the law will offer a ‘clear pathway for career development’ or ‘hours that fit with family responsibilities’); and intrinsic values (for example, ‘matches my skills’ or ‘suits my abilities’).

Expectations about the legal profession were summarised by mean scores for each factor. A mean of, for example, 5.5–5.7 would indicate a high level of expectation about a specific aspect of a law career; whereas, a response below 3 would indicate a low level of expectation. Responses of 3–5 indicate a medium level of expectation about a particular feature.

The surveys were administered by the authors early in the first semester of studies in 2009. Ethics approval, consent of the Faculty and unit coordinators, and the informed consent of participants were obtained. It took about 15–20 minutes for participants to complete the surveys.

Nearly one-third of those surveyed reported a combined parent annual income of over $120,000; while just over 10 per cent reported a combined parent annual income of under $30,000. Nearly one-third reported that their father had at least one tertiary degree; just under two-thirds reported that their mother had at least one tertiary degree. Close to 10 per cent of students reported that their parents did not complete high school.

Just over half (55 per cent) of the students surveyed ‘were considering’ a career in the law, and 42 per cent ‘may consider’ a career in the law. Of those students considering a career in the law, the largest proportion (28 per cent) were considering working in a medium to large law firm (this term was not defined in the survey, but is typically 20–200+ lawyers).

Students were asked a series of questions about the workload in legal practice. They consistently disagreed with questions indicating that the work load required ‘little effort’ (M = 1.66) or was ‘light’ (M = 1.89). Students considered that a career in law would be rewarding in the sense of being ‘well paid’ (M = 5.94); because it ‘is a well-respected career’ (M = 6.19); and because it offers a ‘clear pathway for career development’ (M = 5.56). Students also expected that law involved a high degree of specialised knowledge, reporting that a career in law would be ‘strongly related to university studies’ (M = 6.18) and involve a ‘high level of expert knowledge’ (M = 6.37). Students considered that a career in law would allow them to ‘provide a service to society’ (M = 5.73), and to ‘fight against injustice’ (M = 5.70). Students’ understanding of what the work–life conditions of legal practice might be like fell into the medium band. Students gave mid-range responses as to whether a career in law would offer ‘job flexibility’ (M = 3.21) and ‘hours that fit with family responsibilities’ (M = 3.39). These results suggest that students had no strong expectation in relation to managing family commitments.

The data presented in our study are not entirely consistent with the literature from the United States on career expectations and gender. In our study, the expectations of incoming male and female law students were similar; in fact, the data suggest that they were similar, even for most categories of career expectations. Studies from the United States seemed to indicate a stronger divergence between male and female students’ expectations about their careers in the law. In part, this may reflect the different structure of a law degree in Australia as compared to the United States. As already noted, in the United States, law is studied as a postgraduate course, so that students would be at least four years older than the average first-year LLB student surveyed in our study. It may also be evidence, however, of the changing ‘sexual contract’ that now sees young women increasingly attributed with social, political and economic capacity; ‘indeed they are now the privileged subjects of capacity, including the capacities for success, attainment and social mobility’. As McRobbie has argued, this incitement toward capacity is particularly visible in the fields of education and employment, where young women are increasingly compelled to be active, motivated and aspirational.

Students did not express strong opinions about whether a career in the law would fit in with their ‘family responsibilities’ or offer some ‘job flexibility’. This is not altogether surprising, given the age and experience of the students surveyed. It is possible to argue that for many, if not most, respondents the prospect of family responsibilities is a distant one and hence their interest or need to consider seriously how these will mesh with their professional aspirations is limited. These issues are likely to impact more directly and heavily on women as they move into a career in the law.

While women account for around 55 per cent of law students, they represent only 45 per cent of all solicitors in NSW and Victoria, and leave private legal practice at a significantly higher rate than men. At the ‘elite’ level of the profession, women account for just 19 per cent of barristers and 19.5 per cent of partners in private law firms. A number of surveys have examined the reasons why women decide to leave the law and to make a change of career. Thornton has written extensively on the experiences of discrimination and harassment reported by women in their professional lives. The difficulty of combining private practice with parenting responsibilities is another factor identified as contributing to the attrition of women from private legal practice. Lawyers in private practice are usually expected to work long hours which leaves little room for other commitments.

The first-year law students in our study showed somewhat optimistic views about the reality of legal practice. Whilst students recognised they would have to ‘work hard’ in the law, they also indicated that they expected considerable return from their work; such as, a high social status, opportunities for advancement and high salaries. Students expressed a belief that working in the law would also enable them to advance socially useful goals of helping others. These views suggest that students consider that their hard work will be balanced by other forms of reward, be they material or altruistic.

In our view, this is an optimistic view of the profession as, for many lawyers, the reality of legal practice is very different. The wealth of scholarly research on the peculiarly disproportionate rate of depression and dissatisfaction amongst lawyers attests to this. It would be useful in future research to ask enrolling law students explicitly about mental health concerns and career plans. Moreover, other Australian research into career satisfaction generally demonstrates that a significant factor in low job satisfaction for this generation is the failure to find that their post-graduation employment fully utilises their abilities and knowledge: in short, that they do not find the work challenging and fulfilling – something they strongly desired.

Our study found a number of interesting characteristics of first-year law students commencing their studies. The majority (97 per cent) were contemplating working in the law – rather than, for example, regarding law as a ‘generalist’ degree. These students appeared to consider that the high level of commitment demanded in the legal workplace would be compensated by a range of factors, including financial reward, high social status, merit-based opportunities for advancement and opportunities to give back to society. Perhaps these findings are unsurprising on the basis that we might expect students starting a university degree to be generally optimistic about their chosen career. The findings contrast with high levels of depression and stress within the legal profession. However, we did not ask students about mental health concerns, instead concentrating on career expectations.

We found that there was very little difference between the career expectations of male and female first-year law students. In the case of women students, this perhaps also indicates the ‘protected’ environments that schools (and then universities) provide in relation to gender equity and opportunity. The attrition rates of females in legal practice might suggest that strategies to ensure equity and opportunities for females have not been successfully embedded structurally into the work practices of law firms. These differences must be confronting for women who have previously experienced an emphasis on equity and achievement in school and university. Nonetheless, the study does highlight a disjuncture between expectations of first-year law students commencing their degree and the rigours and routines of practising law in their futures. Law schools traditionally concentrate on training law students for legal practice, and this study demonstrates that law students are generally optimistic about their aspirations and prospects for working in legal practice. Further research needs to be undertaken as to whether later-year students hold similar levels of optimism as first-years. However, given the realities of careers and practices in law, we believe that it is necessary for law schools to consider carefully their responsibilities to students in relation to their prospective careers and to address the preparedness of their students to negotiate the often difficult workplace environment ahead of them.