Termination; therapists point of view

I think that for me, whether a client of mine changes or not is not the point of me acting as their attorney. That is just my stance. It is not my place as an attorney to judge whether the client wants to change or is trying to change or whatever.
And it does not matter who is or is not paying me. A difference is that a lawyer can more easily say "look you ungrateful jerk blah blah blah."
Remember the joke about client gratitude - an hour after the winning verdict, divorce appeal etc - the client thinks you were great.
a day after the lawyer is okay but it was because the client had great facts
Two days later the client could have won without the attorney. And so on (in some versions the time is different)
Again - I am certain therapists and others have the same sort of joke about their clients.

The thing is, therapists are not supposed to make it about themselves.
I think for therapists, it is possible for them to get to personally worked up about a client changing in ways the therapist expects, rather than what the client wants. Not always, but I think more than therapists admit.

I think we have different clientele, stopdog. For instance, one domestic client was crying in my office about how much he wanted to change and get his family back. He was sobbing saying how desperate he was to see his children. I worked really hard with the other attorney to set up the meeting with the kids. He then just didn't show for the meeting because the kids were on his wife's "side" and admitted he wanted to punish them. He was trying to use me to continue his bullying ways with his wife and children. He took everything I said NOT to do to his wife as a "TO DO" list. Same with one guy who claimed he wanted to fight this lawsuit by his daughter and wanted to change and fix his relationship with her, when what he wanted was to try to use the legal system to regain control over his daughter.

I was much less apt to have any concern about my criminal clients, except for the one I liked, but couldn't continue with because I didn't want to deal with the emotional fall-out when he eventually overdosed.

Yes it seems we do. I hated domestic work with a passion and not surprisingly - I was terrible at it. I have some guys on death row that may be tough to deal with eventually, I suppose. The probate work I do is family law for the incapacitated, but I always represent the alleged incapacitated person. Families are more treacherous than straight out criminals, in my experience.

This makes a lot of sense.to me, MKAC.

MKAC - I admit that after having had one kid like 4 different times on appeal for being a burglar - I did suggest that he might just try to accept he was bad at burglaring and perhaps McDonald's was something to try. But totally his choice.

Sorry for the hijack.

SPECULATION:

Lawyers know a lot more about the law than therapists do about the soul.

There is a theory that human beings are more complicated than mere law. And the goals of the two professions are entirely different in my opinion.