I want to examine two motives well known in discussions of legal practice. The two, in short form, are ‘making money’ and ‘simply winning’. They are in themselves seldom analyzed in a philosophical way, but I will try to make a start. As motives other than a belief in the merit of what one does, I shall call them ‘cynical’ motivations. While someone might equally describe as cynical, say, being part of a system of legal decisions dictated from an agenda designed only for the rich, the more apposite understanding here is the conviction that legal outcomes are ‘without right answers’ (or no one is better than another) and will flip first one way and then another depending upon what the judges have for breakfast. From that position of meritless law, there is little to move a lawyer but ‘money’ or ‘winning’. I want to consider happiness in legal practice under those cynical assumptions. I shall say, in the most general way, that one is happy only when one is able to rest content with what one does. This means that one is conscious of having in one’s life what one values as such. Certain things are ‘part of’ and (if not that) ‘directed toward what is part of’ this value. To indicate the duality, I shall speak of ‘constituent’ and ‘ulterior’ values as together what one values as such. Whether or how the two cynical motivations in the practice of law might contribute to this state is a question worth asking. And an answer will be given.