"I hate my job. I'm a workers' compensation attorney. We handled the settlement of workers' compensation claims. They don't send me in the hard cases so I can learn more. I volunteered depositions, and I was told to focus on settling cases. I work at a firm that has way too many clients and not enough staff.
My clients are needy, emotionally demanding, sometimes rude. My pay is bad. My clients are constantly wanting updates, but I can't give them what they want because, many times, there's no progress. They want to be kept in the loop, and I just want to do my job and settle cases. I want to move to DC. I've been trying to get an attorney position, but it's hard because I'm not barred in Virginia, Maryland. I've been told it takes a lot of time, I don't know if I can make it. I don't want to be fired for going off on a client, but I can't stay. What should I do? I am at my wits end."
That sounds like you're having a fairly typical problem, and you have a fear being overworked and be given very uninteresting work that you don't like. That does not sound fun, and I agree with you. I would recommend doing your best to find another position where you can get a better experience. If you don't want to do worker's compensation, it is fairly easy to transition into different types of work. There are lots of workers' compensation firms in DC. You can develop a system for keeping this information more organized or find a database or something online that will make that easier. Those are some suggestions that I would give you to try to improve the whole system for the next person that comes along and set up a positive memory of yourself after you leave. Do whatever you can to do a great job there. That's probably not what you want to hear. I also understand how difficult that must be to work with these clients because they're wanting to get money and many times, they have serious issues and so forth, but you just need to develop a system and try to make the most of it. The thing is that what's nice about the experience you're having now is it's only going to get better.
If you can tolerate this, you can probably tolerate anything. I would recommend just doing whatever you can and realizing that something better will come along and applying to other types of firms, and taking care of yourself. So that means exercising and just getting better and better despite being in this horrible situation. There's a story I'd like to tell it's about my soccer coach when I was very young, and he was from Cuba and had been in prison there for being against Castro. He said when everybody else around him was going to hell and were using drugs and being unhappy. He would every day get up and figure out a way to find a razor and shave and to keep his hair clean and take a shower and exercise and do pushups and sit-ups and run around the yard.
One day he got an opportunity to walk out of prison somehow. There was visiting hours or something. Someone brought him a clean change of clothes and he just walked right out with all the visitors, because he was the only one that didn't look all beaten down, horrible like the prisoners. The important thing to remember is anytime you're in a really bad situation, you want to do whatever you can to make yourself even better when you're in that situation.
