Find out what it means to me

In its way, this is good news - from Legal Sanity:

organizational disrespect in the law

(B)urnout within a business or organization really reflects more on the employer than the employee...

(R)espect is critical to inducing or avoiding burnout because it fuels employee engagement in the workplace. Respect gives people the conviction that what they’re doing is important and meaningful. Conversely, when employees experience disrespect directly or vicariously through coworkers, they conclude that the company doesn’t care about its workers and demoralization follows...

Maybe you're like me, and you've worked in both kinds of organization. Some days when you're feeling like you want to bail on the whole public defender experience, maybe it isn't you, or your clients, or even your caseload - maybe it's your office culture.

I also enjoyed these posts from Legal Sanity, on lawyer burnout, and on "meaning + money".

The latter has persuaded me that this Concurring Opinions post -

Assume that our law school graduate has two options. She can work at Skadden Arps and earn $140,000 a year. Or she can work at Legal Aid and earn $40,000 a year. Which should she take? What if... she took the Skadden job, and donated most of her salary to Legal Aid?

With her $140,000 Skadden salary, she could donate $80,000 to Legal Aid, sufficient to allow them to hire two new attorneys, and thus defend twice as many indigent criminal defendants... That's twice the net gain in overall defense for the indigent, if our law student doesn't choose Legal Aid herself...

- is less Law & Economics, more very subtle joke. (check out the comments for answers to Professor Wegner's question, "So why don't more law students take this route?" Or the blogs of any public defenders or p.d. - inclined law students.)