I'm an attorney. I currently work for a legal aid type office, which basically means I work with poverty level clients. Some of them really need help, some of them are just really difficult to deal with and put themselves in bad situations. It is rewarding in some ways and VERY frustrating in others. The hours at this job are good. 37.5 hours per week, lots of vacation time and lots of sick time and lots of paid holidays. I have health insurance, but since I got married, I will also have TriCare.

I just got offered a job with opposing counsel on one of my cases (obviously the case we are doing together would have to finish before I would work with them). I was talking to her in court on Tuesday and she said she would talk to her brother (she works for him) about giving me a job. I didn't ask for it. They need help and I'm a good writer and they know that.

Pros: 125 billable hours per month, which comes out to about 6 hours per day. I could work whenever I want, even on the weekends or at night. They will pay me $50,000 for that amount of work. The new job would be solely Discovery (answering questions about cases to other attorneys) and writing/researching Motions (basically just argumentative papers), which is all I like to do anyway.


Cons: No health insurance, but it's because I said I don't need it. I will have military insurance and I have insurance through the school as well. Continue my job bouncing which is never a good thing (I haven't stayed at a job for more than a year in like 3 years b/c I HATE being an attorney and I can't find a job I like), but then, am looking to get out of law anyway. Much more flexible job, but probably no vacation or sick time, which probably isn't a problem because I could basically work whenever I wanted. Is $5000 less per year salary, but less hours, obviously. Billable hours, which means if something should have taken 2 hours, but it really takes 4 hours, I can't bill the other 2, which could mean that sometimes I end up working more than 125 per month.

Now, this is why I'm asking for help:

I'm in grad school full time for creative writing. I will graduate in June, 2009, so I have slightly more than a year to go. Working full time with a full time class load is killing me, because I HAVE to take three classes, and they are heavy writing classes. I'm ALWAYS in a bad mood these days.

Next school year, in September, I was going to quit my job or ask to go part time (don't know if they'd go for it b/c there are no part time attorneys here). I need to be a Teaching Assistant but I can't do that AND work full time. I'm done with being an attorney in the long run. SO, come September, was planning on quitting CURRENT job ANYWAY.

So... new job would be a way of getting a slightly easier schedule... no 9 to 5 type stuff.

What do you think? Keep current job or take new job?