Debunking Misconceptions about Lawyers with ADHD

If it's October, it's ADHD Awareness Month at JD Nation.

Because if we're talking about lawyers, we know that anywhere between 12-20% of them will have ADHD.

In addition to being a debilitating and confusing disorder for lawyers , ADHD is also extremely isolating.

And that’s due in large part to the widespread misconceptions about ADHD within the legal profession and in general.

I’ll be debunking some of those ADHD myths with the dual aims of validating the experience of ADHD lawyers and educating our neurotypical colleagues.

Keep reading to see what’s really behind this chronically misunderstood disorder. (If you prefer to read on the blog, you can head here.)

If you’d rather watch or listen, you can view the video “ Debunking ADHD Lawyer Misconceptions | Understanding Neurodiversity in the Legal Profession ” by clicking here.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ADHD lawyers face challenges and isolation due to widespread misconceptions and stigma.
• ADHD is not a lack of attention, but rather difficulty in regulating an abundance of attention.
• High achievers can have ADHD; it does not correlate with intelligence in either direction.
• Late diagnoses of women and the timely diagnosis of girls contribute to the recent increase in ADHD diagnoses, treatment, and prescriptions.
• ADHD lawyers may require reasonable workplace adjustments to reach their full potential.
• When all lawyers understand ADHD, we reduce stigma, frustration, and burnout for everyone in the legal profession.

The High Percentage of Lawyers with ADHD

ADHD is far more prevalent in the legal profession than in the general adult population.

Statistics suggest that anywhere between one in 5 - 8 lawyers have ADHD (12.5 - 20%) , compared to one in 20 in the general population (5%).

We only have an estimate for the actual number of lawyers with ADHD because many remain undiagnosed.

With such a large incidence of ADHD among lawyers, it’s vital for all legal professionals to gain a deeper understanding of how ADHD impacts their colleagues and the overall workplace.

Attorneys with ADHD Are Misunderstood

It’s virtually impossible to know for sure why there are so many myths and misconceptions about ADHD.

But at least part of the reason is likely related to the fact that the nervous systems of ADHD people are not structured the same as neurotypical nervous systems.

In particular, the triggers related to focus and motivation are completely different.

Neurotypical nervous systems are importance-based.

Which means they’re motivated by things that are:

?Important

? Priorities

? Rewards

? Consequences

ADHD nervous systems are interest-based.

Which means they’re motivated by things that are:

??? Urgent

??? Interesting

??? Challenging

??? Novel

That’s not to say neurotypicals aren’t motivated by these, as well!

What’s important to understand is that ADHD people are never solely motivated by importance, priority, rewards, or consequences.

And this is where many frustrations and misunderstandings arise.

Sometimes it will appear that people with ADHD are motivated by importance, but they’re usually responding to a coincidental, co-occurring interest-based trigger.

And that can look like people with ADHD responding to importance-based triggers.

So when they don’t respond to them consistently*, people with ADHD are labeled as willfully disobedient or lazy.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Debunking Misconceptions About ADHD Lawyers

Before we dive in, I want to be clear that I held many misconceptions about ADHD until I received my diagnosis at age 40.

So no judgment implied if any of these are news to you!

Lawyers with ADHD Do Not Lack Attention

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is an unfortunate misnomer because ADHD brains actually have an abundance of attention.

ADHD is the brain’s inability to regulate this vast attention and prioritize where to direct its primary focus.

I say “primary” because I’m going to be real with you—we’re almost always focusing on more than one thing at a time.

Yes, even when medicated.

ADHD Does Not Correlate with Intelligence

There’s no correlation between IQ and ADHD in either direction.

I’ve had acquaintances and strangers alike tell me I couldn’t possibly have ADHD because I did well in school and am a high achiever.

But they’re simply uninformed.

Many high achievers with ADHD exist , including Richard Branson, Stephen Hawking, Walt Disney, Bill Gates, and even Albert Einstein, who is widely believed to have had ADHD even though he didn’t have a formal diagnosis at the time.

While this article focuses on high achievers with ADHD, it’s only because lawyers tend to be high achievers. Not all people with ADHD share this trait.

In fact, academic struggles are still a significant diagnostic criteria with commonly used assessments.

So if you’re a high-achiever who didn’t get diagnosed until much later in life, it’s often due to this misconception.

(Looking at you, my fellow gifted students!)

ADHD Is Not Overdiagnosed

Here’s the thing. Boys are often misdiagnosed with ADHD. That’s always been a problem.

What has also been a long-standing problem is that girls and women have been underdiagnosed and undertreated since…well, forever. This is primarily because their symptoms manifest differently than they do in boys and men.

Both things can be true.

So while ADHD diagnoses have been increasing in recent years, it’s due to the late diagnoses of women and the timely diagnosis of girls. Which truly is something to celebrate.

Lawyers with ADHD Are Not Lazy

Would you call Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, Michael Jordan, or Mel Robbins lazy?

I ask because they all have ADHD.

Laziness, according to multiple definitions from the internet, generally refers to the lack of willingness to do something or to exert any effort to achieve a goal.

That’s not what is going on inside an ADHD brain when you see us not doing something. We WANT to do what needs to be done!

And for reasons that often we can’t even understand or articulate, we’re unable to actually do them.

The preeminent expert on ADHD, Dr. Russell Barkley explains this phenomenon as a break between the part of the brain that knows what to do and the part of the brain that’s in charge of the “doing”.

An example of this might look like me scrolling my phone while sitting on the couch when I should be washing a sink full of dirty dishes that’s been piled up for hours (days?).

But my inner dialogue (the part of my brain that knows what to do) sounds like,

“OMG why are you such a piece of garbage? You can’t just wash some stupid dishes? What the hell is wrong with you that you can’t just get off your ass and do the effing dishes?!”

And the part of the brain that is in charge of the doing or the execution of the task is completely oblivious to what the other part of the brain. I imagine it as a little brain that has jammed its little brain fingers into his little brain ears and is yelling, “La la la la la!”

Sooooooo yeah. It’s extremely confusing and frustrating even when you know you have ADHD–just imagine what it’s like if you know you have it?

My Misconceptions about Lawyers with ADHD

Unfortunately, I don’t have to imagine. That was me for 40 years of my life.

It was especially confusing to me that I often struggled to initiate simple tasks or projects, but could easily handle more complicated things and rack up laudable achievements and accolades.

Because I didn’t know I had ADHD, I chalked it up to some unidentified moral failing.

Which led to shame. Which led to anxiety over the fear of being “found out” as a bad lawyer or bad person, in general.

And once the toxic swirl of anxiety and self-loathing reached critical mass, my brain would release adrenaline and cortisol to help me do what I needed to do.

But living under a cascade of stress hormones for 40 years intensified my generalized anxiety disorder (that I did have a diagnosis for in my 20s) and negatively affected my physical health.

What anyone’s brain really needs in those situations is dopamine.

The big takeaway here is that for lawyers with ADHD, the triggers for dopamine are categorically different from neurotypical ones.

Setting Up ADHD Lawyers for Even Greater Success

With some reasonable adjustments to the workplace, ADHD lawyers can be even more successful than they already are.

And it would come with the added benefits of reducing the:

1. stigmatization and isolation of ADHD lawyers,
2. frequency of frustration among their colleagues, and
3. higher than typical incidence of burnout that ADHD lawyers currently experience.

Speaking of burnout…

ADHD Lawyers and Burnout

Whether you’re neurotypical or neurodivergent, if you’re a lawyer you’ve probably dealt with burnout to one degree or another.

To learn more about what causes lawyer burnout (spoiler alert: it’s not your fault) and how to manage it, you can download my free guide called Break Free From Lawyer Burnout by clicking here.

My hope is that with a better understanding of ADHD, we can all dispel these misconceptions and make the legal profession a better place to work for everyone.

Annie Little, JD, ACC is an ICF-certified career coach and former lawyer who was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 40. After practicing law for seven years, she founded JD Nation in 2012. Since then, Annie has helped hundreds of lawyers (with and without ADHD) land, lead, and succeed in the legal profession and beyond.?

P.S. You can access the original article and accompanying video at https://thejdnation.com/blog/adhd-lawyer-misconceptions .