If you were to play a game of phrase association with a group of lawyers (and law students for that matter) and give them the phrase “mental health”, I would posit that many of the answers would deal with clients. You would be likely to hear many things: not criminally responsible, fitness to stand trial, and other job related answers.
The troubling part of this thought experiment is that lawyers (and law students) have a strikingly high occurrence of mental health issues but would be very likely to point to the mental issues of others. As is pointed out in the New York Times article by Douglas Quenqua, lawyers are over three-and-a-half times more likely to suffer from depression. The reasons and causes for this are unknown but oft hypothesized. The fact that getting into law school (I would argue it starts even when trying to get into law school) results in an immediate spike in the likelihood of developing depression is a scary proposition. I’m sure that many students understand that they are getting into a difficult profession and one that involves a great deal of stress.
There is something to be said for the fact that lawyers are among the highest paid professions. There is an allure, a draw, and something to be said for the idea that lawyers get into the profession to make more money than they might in another field. This is possibly done at the expense of some personal relationships and free time. Most lawyers go into the job with open eyes and decide to do it despite the downsides.
Lawyers are often of a certain personality type, and I would argue that this personality type is also the reason why lawyers have a higher risk of depression. They are less likely to admit there may be a problem, less likely to seek treatment because of it, and more likely to continue trigger behaviours that exacerbate depression symptoms (read: stress out and drink). Too often depression is seen as a weakness instead of the chemical imbalance that it truly is. The chemical receptors in the brain that allow you to feel happiness do not connect as frequently in a person that suffers from depression.
Quenqua’s main thesis of his article was that lower paid lawyers reported being happier than the more well paid legal professionals. He states that lawyers in the public sector (public defenders and legal aid lawyers) were more likely to report being happy. The most likely rationale for this disparity between public and private is that private sector lawyers are far more likely to be working longer stressful hours. One aspect of public sector and in-house counsel legal work that is often touted as a recruitment tool is that of work-life balance. While not conclusive I believe this is because the expectations of both hours and “billable” work is reduced. As a corollary, the public service lawyers drank less than their higher income counterparts; as noted earlier, alcohol is a depressant. The alcohol may be a “chicken or the egg” argument; the higher-paid lawyers drink more, thus resulting in more unhappiness, or the unhappiness triggers more drinking.
I also take issue with the program at George Washington university, when attending law school many students are unsure of what sort of practice they will be in when they graduate. This is true of most students and speaks to the variety of legal work out there; however, the other major factor at work is the uncertainty of the job market. Many lawyers report finding a firm that they liked following graduation and the firm having an opening or a need in one field or another and “ended up doing x”. I would suggest that while giving students a taste for all the different opportunities is noble, it may also result in a student getting their heart set on one potential stream (abandoning a more broad course load), come out of school seeking only one type of opportunity, only exacerbating the problem of finding a job after law school.
Hey Jackson, I agree that mental health issues among lawyers are correlated with long hours and an otherwise demanding profession. However, I have a slightly different take on your comment about law students exacerbating their problem by unduly narrowing their focus on a specific practice area. It is true that it is directly related to the number of employment opportunities once you graduate. However, picking a practice area based on interest will be beneficial in the long run due to the higher satisfaction level associated with your career, and thus, hopefully, reducing the likelihood of a mental illness. A narrowed focus is detrimental in the short term but ultimately beneficial in the long run.
I agree with Ravi that it is worth considering the potential benefits of becoming an expert or specialist in a particular field. It seems that the prevailing advice in law school, from career services etc., is to be a generalist and be flexible, maybe to increase the chances of getting that entry-level job – on the theory that if you are a generalist you can fit into any slot that’s available. Personally, I think that advice should be met with some skepticism, for a few reasons. First, law is constantly getting more complex and sophisticated, and mastering any particular area is a serious undertaking. If you are a generalist then there’s a good chance you don’t have enough in-depth knowledge of any specific area of law to be a real expert, and if you try to remain a generalist then you deprive yourself of the opportunity of developing that deep expertise in one area over your career. Second – and this is related to the first point – if you have in-depth knowledge of something (especially if others are mostly generalists and lack that deep expertise), you have career leverage. As long as your in-depth knowledge is in an area that’s in demand, you are a scarce commodity. Big law firms like generalists because they can be slotted into whatever area of (low-expertise) need the firm has for as long as it has that need. That’s good for the firm, but it’s not good for you. If you have (relatively) rare, sought-after specialist knowledge, then you are needed to do something that you are especially qualified for, and that gives you comparatively more autonomy and power. (It’s helpful to think of the image of the “T-shaped professional,” with deep expertise in a narrow area – the vertical line of the T, plus broad but not deep understanding of related areas – the crossbar of the T.)
All this, in my opinion, is related to the reasons that higher levels of unhappiness and dissatisfaction are reported among lawyers in big firms. It’s not only about the simple number of hours worked. There are many public sector and in-house lawyers who work long hours, too. Two things that make a real difference are having a sense of control and autonomy, and finding one’s work meaningful and important. Nobody loves being in the office late at night, but there is a big difference between an hour of document review or due diligence where all the important decisions are being made far up the chain from you, versus an hour of sophisticated analysis of a tax or securities law issue that everyone is counting on you to figure out because you are the one with the expertise.
Maybe that’s why tax lawyers are the happiest law firm associates 🙂 http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/01/who-are-the-happiest-law-firm-associates-.html
Being a lawyer can be a tremendously satisfying career. (Honestly, though, it’s highly unlikely to make you enough money to buy that yacht up there.) I think the chances of satisfaction are higher if you have more agency, which means taking ownership of creating a plan and a strategy for your career rather than just following the path of least resistance. I think an intelligent part of that strategy can be developing a specific, in-demand skill set and not settling for being just one more generalist like all the others, in the hope that lucky things will happen to you and it will all work out alright. That may happen, but we do not live in a climate in which it’s a good bet to count on that.
To substantiate my assertion that this really can be a wonderful career: read this story from the ABA Journal called “Why I Love Being a Lawyer” from February 2011 – a “valentine to the profession.” http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/why_i_love_being_a_lawyer/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=navigation&utm_campaign=most_read