Can Lawyers Learn to Be Happy?

 " Can Lawyers Learn To be Happy?
Ted David
“We’re lost, but we’re making good time.” — Yogi
Berra
Maybe it started when you were in college. You know
— that dream to become a lawyer. Certainly by the time
you entered law school you were convinced that the profession
was for you. I can just bet you told your friends you
wanted to be a criminal lawyer or a constitutional lawyer.
By the time you got out of law school, you may have realized
that tax law or corporate law was for you. But no
matter, the thought of practicing law simply made you
happy. So what happened? Study after study has revealed
that lawyers are often unhappy in the profession. Is this
because of the work we do — advocates and adversaries?
Or is there something more to it? Perhaps, as the cliché
goes, we are only human.
The statistics are not encouraging. Out of 105 professions,
according to a John Hopkins University study,
lawyers topped the list for major depression. One in four
suffer psychological distress from feelings of inadequacy,
inferiority, and anxiety. We are depressed at a rate
3.4 times higher than employed persons generally. We
lawyers are twice as likely to commit suicide than ordinary
folk in the population. And when we are not thinking
about doing ourselves in, one in five is alcohol addicted.
Substance abuse for lawyers is double the national level.
Though statistics are scarce, divorce among lawyers is said


to be higher than other professionals. One study of
female lawyers found that they were twice as likely
to divorce than female doctors and 20 percent to
40 percent more likely to divorce than teachers in
secondary schools. Frankly, 52 percent of us simply
describe ourselves as unhappy.
Now, if you’re sitting in your office or comfy at
home reading this article and a feeling of happiness
overwhelms you, there may be no need for you to
read the rest. But if not, this article may explain
some of the reasons lawyers are unhappy and how
perhaps we can change our tune.
Happiness? • What is happiness? This is a ticklish
question. It is that emotion that evokes joy to some,
to others it is meeting the ordinary necessities of
life. To quote the sage young lawyer from Illinois,
Abraham Lincoln: “Most people are about as happy
as they make up their minds to be.”
Ours is a profession with money, that root of all
evil, at its core, in which the chief complaints are
long hours and decreasing time for personal and
family life.
An article in the English Sunday Times a few years
ago, focused on the misery of American lawyers. It
attributed the situation to an excessive workload,
mind-numbing work, that was self-inflicted upon
individuals who were basically pessimistic. The article
concluded that lawyers were part of the least
popular American profession. Swell.
The Golden Ratio
Mathematicians may find comfort in referring to
a formula for happiness. One such formula is called
the “Golden ratio.” In that ratio, the numerator is
what you have, the denominator is what you want.
There are therefore two ways of achieving happiness
by the numbers: increase the number of things
you have or reduce the number of things you want.
It does depend on what and how much you want.
That is, what are your desires: A car or a Porsche, a
house or a mansion, a child or a family of eight. Often,
ever-expanding wants result in excessive work,
burnout, heart attacks, miserable family life, frustration,
and resentment. On the other hand, attempting
to be satisfied with what you have is not easy
and can also result in similar feelings of inadequacy,
failure, and depression. The Golden ratio, it would
seem, may have been fine for Pythagoras, but it is
tough to apply in today’s modern legal world.
The Plight Of The Overachiever
Are we as lawyers trained to be overachievers?
And worse yet, overachiever pessimists? There are
law school studies that show students who describe
themselves as pessimists do better in law school.
They are better able to see the legal issues in fact
patterns. A child is struck by a motor vehicle. A
non-lawyer thinks, “What a tragedy, is she hurt?”; a
lawyer thinks, “Who is liable? And is the insurance
adequate?” A pessimist believes a good day is just a
bad day about to happen. An optimist on the other
hand, is “a person who travels on nothing from nowhere
to happiness” according to Mark Twain. Often
neither the pessimist nor the overachiever is on
the road to happiness. These days, schools early on
begin to sort out the overachievers from the underachievers.
Class work is labeled “advanced placement,”
which is sought out by the overachievers and
their parents. Society soon labels the underachiever
as its also-rans.
The poor underachiever is to be pitied for it is
the overachiever that gets the A in the course, the
corner window office and the partnership designation.
Often, however, the overachiever is stressed
for perfection. He needs medication of some sort,
counseling, and by 35 is burned out. The underachiever,
on the other hand has more fun, time off,
and a better lifestyle and often better health, family,
and friends. He can work happily well into old
age without difficulty, looks back on his life work
experience fondly and in fact does incidentally accumulate
more things than his overachiever brethren.
The underachiever is not a no-achiever. The
Happiness as a Lawyer | 31
no-achiever is a real mess. For a no-achiever, there
is no job, no career, no friends, and no respect. The
no-achiever is at an opposite end from the overachiever,
but has the same problems, but with no
rewards. He is both defeated as well as burned out
before he even begins. But is overachieving necessary
for happiness?
As lawyers, should we be aiming to become true
underachievers? What an outrageous suggestion. Is
the reasonable man of negligence law a reasonable
underachiever? Or have we created a standard,
which is driving many of us to think twice about
the profession? If underachieving is the objective,
who then can be our role models?
Who is the ideal underachiever? My personal
favorite is none other than Homer Simpson. Just
consider his laws of the workplace: “It was broken
when I got here”; “I’ll look into that”; “That’s a
great idea, boss.”
Homer is oblivious to his work colleagues. He is
immune to peer pressure and failure. He is familycentered,
happy, and well-adjusted. He desires nothing
from life and receives little in return. “If you
really need money, you can sell your kidney or even
your car,” per Homer. The weekly television show
creates situations in which Homer deviates and tries
to be like others, that is, an overachiever. By the end
of the half hour, he fails, falling back into Marge’s
arms and he learns another valuable lesson. The
theme is not unique. Jackie Gleason in The Honeymooners
in the 1950s played out the same story as the
loudmouth bus driver threatening to send Alice to
the moon for her level-headed comments to one of
Ralph’s outrageous ideas. They never moved out of
that tiny apartment in Brooklyn, but they did seem
to live happily ever after. Underachievers tend to be
moderates. Their expectations of life are less and so
are their disappointments. Life, like practicing law,
may be about negotiating a decent settlement between
over- and underachieving.
International Underachievers?
International studies have rated Denmark as
the happiest country on earth and it’s not because
of the weather. It is said to be a culture of relatively
low expectations, but in 50 years there have been no
wars, there is little national turmoil and it has one
of the lowest murder and crime rates in the world.
There is simply less worry and more contentment.
All education is free, and students can take as long
as they want to graduate. Healthcare, elder care,
and nursing homes are provided as is Social Security.
The average vacation is six weeks from a 37-hour
work week. By comparison, out of 79 countries the
United States has turned up a dismal 15th in the
happiness department.
Are You Unhappy?
How does unhappiness manifest itself ? Here is
a simple self-test. Do you suffer with anger, frustration,
isolation, extremism, depression, physical illness,
or sleeplessness? Is life an adventure or full of
endless drudgery? And if you are miserable, do you
make those around you miserable, too? Or is your
life one of peacefulness, serenity, friendship, contentment,
restfulness, moderate fitness, and reasonable
good health? Do people seek your company?
Have you been invited to lunch lately?
Ten Rules of Happiness:
• Life is a marathon and not a 100-yard dash.
Burnout is real. Stop rushing. Take a vacation;
• Control is an illusion. No matter how hard you
try, a great deal of life is unexpected;
• Life is short. No one dies gladly at the office.
Make time to enjoy family and friends;
• Great achievements create great expectations.
Underachievers may be more happy than
you;
• The law of diminishing returns applies to life.
At some point no matter what you have, you
simply can’t live better;
• Your blood pressure should not be higher
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than your IQ. Your conduct creates your problems;
• Good health does not come from overwork.
But from work being over;
• He who dies with the most toys doesn’t win,
he just didn’t understand the game. Your beneficiaries
will live better than you did on your
money;
• Worry without action is a waste of time. Stress
kills;
• Finding balance is the best accomplishment.
It’s the ultimate goal worth achieving.
Can We lawyers Learn To Be Happy?
At some Ivy League schools, courses called
“Positive Psychology” attempt to teach undergraduates
the science of happiness. These courses are
sold out every semester. Harvard and the University
of Pennsylvania seem to believe happiness can be
taught. Professor Martin Seligman is the Happiness
Guru at Penn and one of the foremost authorities
on Positive Psychology. He says in his recent book,
Flourish — A Visionary Understanding of Happiness and
Well Being, that it is not happiness we really seek but
“well-being,” a construct like the weather, which itself
is not a real thing apart from its components like
temperature, humidity, and wind speed. Well-being,
the good Professor asserts (and he’s got tons of statistics
both medical and psychological to prove it),
consists of the elements of positive emotions, relationships,
meaning, and accomplishments. He rates
positive emotion, such as being an optimist, high
on the well-being scale; and pessimism as the culprit
behind depression, unhappiness, and physical
illnesses like the common cold and, in the extreme,
cancer and death itself. His studies show pessimists
in fact live on average seven years less than optimists.
Great news isn’t it? We are trained as lawyers
to be pessimists and it’s killing us.
In 1997, eons ago in computer time, Dr. Robert
Gerzon published Finding Serenity in the Age of Anxiety.
He correctly forecasted the anxious period, filled
with the fear that we are all living through now. His
book offers some simple suggestions to finding peace
of mind no matter what your profession. Gerzon
focuses on “Toxic Anxiety” as “the dreaded and destructive
overreaction that results in fear, worry, selfsabotage
and panic” and contends that all forms of
anxiety can be transformed into self-awareness and
growth. His book, too, is a must-read for lawyers in
a happiness tailspin.
Many of the happiness courses teach that more
is often not better. The unhappiest zip codes are often
the wealthiest. In fact, close relationships and
friendships are better predictors of happiness than
affluence. Americans earning more than $10 million
usually are only slightly happier than average
Americans. In theory, if we lawyers can learn the
Rule against Perpetuities, we can learn to be happy.
Today’s world is filled with happiness traps:
• Consumerism — creating an unending stream
of artificial desires;
• Credit accessibility — allowing people to satisfy
those desires by getting hopelessly into debt;
• Physical unhealthiness — computer screens
instead of outdoor exercise;
• Overmedication — a bad way to deal with
what are simply bad lifestyle choices;
• Archaic institutions that capitalize on worry
and guilt for motivation — Hell for nonconformists;
• Politicians who use fear for control — it is
much easier to control people who are scared;
• Employers, like law firms, who seek to create
an imbalance favoring work over play — creating
a culture in which overachieving is rewarded;
• The American work ethic that makes leisure
evil — lawyers that brag they have no time for
a vacation;
• Media that emphasize obtaining more
through almost irresistible advertising — own
the ultimate driving machine, even if it sits in
the parking lot most of the time;
Happiness as a Lawyer | 33
• Media that peddles fear to hold viewer attention
through the next commercial — even a
weather forecast of a thunderstorm has “severe
and dangerous” lightning. Isn’t all lightning severe
and dangerous?
Is It Fear That Makes Lawyers Unhappy?
“All we have to fear, is fear itself ” said Franklin
Roosevelt. But Roosevelt was talking about the
Great Depression in his 1933 first inaugural speech,
not practicing law. Today’s Great Recession is
sometimes too reminiscent of those fearful times.
Roosevelt dug into the “money changers” and the
greedy, but concluded his speech with how important
it was to have joy once more in work. No coincidence.
Listen for your self at americanrhetoric.
com/speeches/fdrfirstinaugral.html.
Fear is related to worry as it is an anxious use of
time. How can you remove the fear and worry from
practicing law? One way is to keep a journal of
your fears and catalog what you intend to do about
each such worry or fear. Approach each fear from
the worst-case scenario. Then, remember it rarely
o ccu rMs. y first legal job as an IRS trial attorney in
the U.S. Tax Court had me assigned to a supervisor
who worried about everything. He made sure I
saw the potential danger in every single document
I filed and every presentation that I was to make.
In no time I was a wreck. Frustration, anger, and
sleeplessness soon followed. Had I remained under
his pupilage I am certain I would have found some
other profession. Fortunately for me, reassignment
to a more realistic mentor made the job one I hated
to leave. As a matter of fact, my ALI-ABA book,
Dealing with the IRS, is dedicated to him, Ned Hance.
Soon after going into private practice as an associate
in a law firm, I began keeping a journal. Eventually,
it told me I was unhappy, and that it was time
to start my own practice. It’s been a 31-year-long,
happy experience. Franklin Roosevelt would have
been proud.
Sometimes the way we practice law must
change if it is happiness we seek. Frankly, you can
either change what you do or change your attitude
about what you do. For me, I sought balance between
the active practice of law and the ivory tower
of the university. My income dropped, but my happiness
ratio soared. The constant barrage of client
demands and expectations was a sharp contrast to
the peacefulness of the university classroom. In the
one setting, I was seldom right, as I was often reminded
by IRS adversaries, and in the other, I was
seldom wrong. I was once approached by a law firm
to establish a tax department. “We’ll double your
income,” they said. I had no doubt that they would
— and with it, double my misery.
Speed Kills
In 1845, Henry Thoreau questioned the need
for the telegraph and the speed with which society
was careening into the industrial revolution. He
queried whether a conscious decision had been
made whether we would live as men or as baboons.
Fortunately for him, he did not get to live to the
computer age.
Lawyers now deal with legal issues at the speed
of light. We are stuck in the “on” position. I can
recall the days when client contact was in person or
by telephone, and that response was given by correspondence
in ordinary mail. The pace was professionally
leisurely. There was time to pause and
perhaps to think. Being on vacation meant not being
easily accessible. Enter the fax machine, email,
cell phone, Blackberry, and iPhone.
Clients now expect instant response and unlimited
availability. If you have ever seen someone
walking a large dog on a cold winter morning you
know for sure, it is the dog taking the owner for a
walk. Many lawyers allow their clients to run their
lives. The plane barely touches down as cell phones
flip open and contact is reestablished. We are train34
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ing our clients to make us unhappy. They are, on
the other hand, finding immense joy in transferring
their problems instantly to us. How many activities
can you think of that you have really enjoyed more
by doing them faster?
The fight or flight response in humans is how
modern man got to survive this far on the planet.
But these days, that response is not needed all that
often. Certainly cavemen fleeing from a sharpfanged
predator needed to have it. But today we are
applying it to many ordinary things: driving the car,
getting to the office on time, preparing for a presentation,
reviewing a file, speaking on the phone.
Literally, 50 per cent of the telephone messages I
receive are incomprehensible due to the speed at
which the caller leaves his message (the rapid-fire
delivery makes the telephone number equally useless).
In this regard, it is not only lawyers at fault.
We live in a society whose pants seem to be on fire.
We must stop rushing to be happy both in the shortand
long term.
The Ideal vs. Reality
In law school, you may have dreamed of the day
a client would call and actually ask your opinion.
Never mind that they would be willing to pay for it.
Many of those dreams probably included learned
discussions of the interplay of case and statutory
law with just a touch of drama a la Perry Mason or
Boston Legal for good measure. Plenty of interesting
research projects in a dream world inhabited
by gentlemen and ladies. Jobs were plentiful, and
you were appreciated, whether a lowly associate or
a senior partner. You would spend your time devoting
yourself to the higher laws of society: Righting
wrongs, protecting the weak and infirm, convinced
that your job was to secure truth, justice, and the
American way. And then you got involved in the
practice of law.
Lawyering is a business. Unfortunately, law
schools prepare few lawyers to partake in the mysterious
notion of running a business. It is possible to
acquire a law degree without much, if any, exposure
to fundamental business principles, like accounting
and taxation. Those once-dreamt ideals run smack
up against a strong wall of reality. Time is money,
and you seem always to be short of both. Running
a business includes administrative duties most lawyers
are ill prepared to perform: time management,
marketing, sales, employee issues, financial recordkeeping,
filing business tax returns, maintaining
good client relations, none of which were included
in the dream of practicing law. All these things any
successful businessperson eventually comes to understand,
but becoming a lawyer does not necessarily
make you a businessperson. That is the harsh reality.
The deeper you get into the practice, the more
you realize the business of the law is not for you. If
you stay, it may make you miserable. But you may
be able to change to meet the challenge.
So What Can Lawyers Do About It?
We all must face a fact of life: No matter what
you accomplish in life, someone at your funeral will
mention that you were a lawyer. It’s a club you just
can’t quit. You can write the great American novel,
but you will be remembered as a lawyer. So how can
we make this trip a happy one?
We must find balance. Some Freudians say that
we are all in two parts: ego and inner spirit. It is that
rotten ego that wants more. It’s competitive, never
satisfied, always ready to rumble. For the ego, our
wallet is never sufficiently full. It is our inner spirit
that wants peace and quiet. This is our dilemma, as
lawyers and as people, to be torn between the two.
So we must learn balance, taming the ego in favor
of the inner desire for happiness. This balanced life
must be ethical and rewarding. No pile of money is
worth losing a good night’s sleep over, at least not
regularly.
We must find where our joy lies. The dramatist
and social reformer, George Bernard Shaw, author
of Pygmalion, and who lived happily working until
age 94, had this to say: “This is the true joy of life:
Happiness as a Lawyer | 35
Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as
a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a
feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances
complaining that the world will not devote itself
to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my
life belongs to the whole community and as long as
I live. It is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.”
Leo Tolstoy said, “Joy can be real only if people
look upon their life as a service, and have a definite
object in life outside themselves and their personal
happiness.” The Buddha reiterated the same idea:
“Happiness comes when your work and words are
of benefit to yourself and others.” Homer Simpson,
obliquely made the same point: “Bart, with $10,000
we’d be millionaires. We could buy all kinds of useful
things… like love.”
We must learn to control our minds. Science
has begun mapping the brain and sophisticated
machines can show the area of the cortex where
happiness fires up. Some scientific studies suggest
that there is a happiness gene. That gene, it is said,
is preset to determine our happiness level. But even
this science community recognizes that genes may
account for no more than 50 percent of the happiness
we experience. So it becomes an issue of nature
vs. nurture. What we are vs. what we think we are.
Lincoln may have been right after all — that our
minds control at least the other 50 percent of our
happiness. Or as Yogi Berra once said, “Remember,
that whatever you do in life, 90 percent of it is half
mental.” We may not be able to control, at least not
yet, our the makeup of our genes; but we can work
on our minds, and that may be half of the battle.
What we feed our minds will determine how good
or bad we feel. Negative thoughts produce a negative
life and a negative life is unhappy, Even worse,
the more you see the world as unhappy, the more
it and you become unhappy. Lawyers may need to
change their horn-rimmed glasses and their attitudes
more to rose-colored. None of this is easy. We
are entrenched in our negative world. Admitting we
may be unhappy can be a large first step. Committing
to actually doing something about it is much
more difficult.
We must learn the basic principles of running
a business. Many of us are from liberal arts backgrounds
and have no clue what it takes to run a
business and be happy at it. Going to law school at
the head of the class doesn’t qualify anyone to run a
business.
We must learn to ask for help. Self-help books
can be of value and getting professional help for addictions,
whatever they may be, makes sense. If the
administrative hassle of being involved in the business
of lawyering is too much to bear, be fearless
and accept the need for change. If the large firm
atmosphere is trouncing your enthusiasm, stifling
your creativity and burning you out, you may need
to move on.
We should listen to Groucho Marx: “I have just
one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.”
CONCLUSION • Lawyers can learn to be happy.
Being an optimist is an art and a learned behavior
that’s worth the effort. Some specific suggestions
are:
• Learn to create balance between work and
play — err on the side of play;
• Take control of time — don’t give all of it away
to clients or the law;
• Mix up your workload — varying tasks can diminish
the drudgery;
• Aim for moderation — avoid seeking perfection;
• Stay human — develop interests and friends,
not just business contacts;
• Exercise — this is always a good thing, especially
outdoors in contact with nature;
• Recognize that lawyering is a business — devote
some time to learning how a successful
business operates;
• Take vacations — often, even for just a few
days;

• Develop an optimistic viewpoint — easier said
than done;
• Protect yourself from burnout — recognize
that overachievers often burn out;
• Conquer fear and worry — keep an action
journal;
• Slow down and smell the cappuccino — stop
rushing, occasionally shut off the phone and
computer;
• Try moderation as a lifestyle — stress does kill;
• Control your wants and desires — improve
your golden ratio;
• Discover your joy — reconnect with your family,
get involved in your community;
• Tame the ego — listen to your inner spirit;
• Read self-help books and get counseling if
needed — you are not alone in this;
• Know your champion — find a mentor or role
model;
• Be realistic — recognize that you can either
change what you do, or your attitude about
what you do;
• Migrate — when all else fails, consider other
law-related work: government, university, business;
• Accept the fact that you are entitled to be
HAPPY.