Dear readers,
When you decided to go to law school, was it your aspiration to hate your job, hate your life, and live in misery? Of course not. Which begs the question: why are so many lawyers unhappy?
I used to be in the Miserable Lawyer camp. I wore it with pride. I’d regularly pull all-nighters and work 70+ hours. (By the way, research indicates that your output sharply falls after 50 hours and “falls off the cliff after 55 hours.” In other words, working more doesn’t equal more output.) I’d get that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach on Sunday nights and it would magically disappear during Friday happy hours.
I chose to live this way because I didn’t think there was an alternative. I was surrounded by “work martyrs.” The message was simple: lawyers are supposed to be miserable, and if you’re anything but completely miserable, you aren’t doing it right!
The first step in making any change is awareness. I often work with lawyers who say, “I hate my job. I need to quit.” Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If it were as simple as just quitting her job, that would’ve happened already. Our work is more than a paycheck. It’s intimately tied with our identity. Also, many lawyers recognize simply changing law firms won’t really solve the “misery problem” — and likely, she’ll just be trading one unhappy workplace for another.
In our coaching sessions, we explore the details, the specifics, the root of the unhappiness. Often, they’re things like: lack of autonomy, not having an understanding of the bigger picture — how her work fits into the larger project, “emergencies” that could’ve been prevented with proper planning, lack of feeling that her work matters, lack of teamwork, interpersonal conflict, and dealing with people who suffer from what I call “A**hole Syndrome.”
In order to start this exploration, it’s important to create a bit of quiet space. When it feels as though you’re neck-deep in misery and desperately treading in an effort not to drown, it’s difficult to be introspective. We need to be able to cultivate the ability to look at our situation from a calm and centered place. In other words, we need to create the space to respond rather than react.
One sure way to create this space that I know works is the practice of mindfulness. When I suggest to a lawyer that she simply sit quietly for just two minutes a day, I often get a look of terror. It can feel extremely frightening to simply stop and sit in the middle of a storm. However, with practice, what I have learned is that I can find the eye of the storm in my mindfulness practice. I can notice my emotions, anger, frustration, outrage, fear, joy, happiness, sorrow, hesitancy, and all the other complex feelings that make up our emotional landscape without getting carried away by them.
This is the difference between losing your temper and going off the deep end by screaming at your coworker — reacting to a situation — versus calmly telling your coworker that you are extremely frustrated for her screw-up.
For me, looking at those areas of work that caused deep levels of dissatisfaction and pain ended up being a gift. I was able to better relate to my clients, and produced better work product when I began to master my own emotional reactions by gaining a deeper understanding of myself. It turns out, that saying — heal thyself — is just as applicable to lawyers as is to physicians.
Look, if you’re miserable, it is up to you to do something about it. You can continue to sulk in your misery and spread it to everyone you come into contact with. What you practice becomes stronger. If you practice being miserable every day, that will be your default reaction to every situation. If you practice bringing something better — whatever that higher aspiration may be for you — then that is what will get stronger. For me, it’s approaching each situation with as much kindness, empathy, and compassion as possible.
So, my dear readers, start paying attention to your life — get proximate, get intimate, get curious about each moment.
Thoughts or questions about cultivating a joyful law practice? Drop me an email at [email protected] or connect with me over on Twitter: @jeena_cho.
This article previously appeared on Above the Law.