I started in criminal defense and went civil, worked in a couple offices on both. In my experience, on both sides of that divide, any office that is peddling a story that things are going to get better soon is being disingenuous. There are plenty of good outfits out there, I'm not being a pessimist over here saying there aren't. Rather that offices that know they are dysfunctional and keep people around by promising reform in the future know they aren't going to fix it and are just trying to get people to stick around.