Thoughts on Being a Human Lawyer

I decided to take August off from the newsletter to focus on some forthcoming initiatives. Among those are two big writing projects and a brand new re-focused website and blog. More to come on those things over the next few weeks.

As for this post, it is personal. It was challenging for me to write, but nevertheless important to share.

I hope it helps you or someone you know.

The legal profession has long valued work and results above all else. The mental well-being of lawyers has been pushed aside to meet deadlines, meeting billable hour quotas, meeting the expectations of managers and clients. Even the educational system in place to train, though I use that term loosely, and educate lawyers is embedded with elements that weaken the mental and even physical well-being of those desiring to join what once and should remain an admirable profession.?This cannot stand.

Being a lawyer is challenging. The law is not black and white. Applying it is not a straightforward endeavor. One must think through various potential scenarios. One must analyze possible risks and balance those risks with the demands of the client. Decisions need to be made quickly and yet strategically. Add to this the fact that today’s environment lawyers are now being asked to perform more work with even less time and less resources. It should come as no surprise, then, that stress and anxiety plague the profession.?For far too long the profession has ignored the mental strain of working as a lawyer. As a result, there are stories of many suffering, sometimes dramatically, from dealing with both being a lawyer and being mentally pushed to the max. Some of these stories, sadly, involve the lawyer taking his or her own life. One of my friends from law school did just that.

Some thoughts I have on addressing this issue:

1. Let’s start with addressing self-care head-on during those formative years in law school. Let’s have taking care of oneself be a required subject addressed during the first and second years of law school. During the first year have students learn about healthy coping skills and what mental health means. During the second year, address it in context using scenarios drawn from reality. Let’s have folks who work as counselors, as therapists speak directly to the students. The world is not always a friendly, fun place. Individuals need to understand the reality of working as a lawyer and accept what they are signing up for.
2. Let technology help you manage your work. Teach students how to use technology in law school starting with the basic tools of the trade – Word, Excel, etc. in law school. Then, once in reality, encourage yourself and your colleagues to use more advanced technologies to automate tasks, especially those that are time-consuming, but repeatable, routine, and low risk. Let technology help you with responding to common requests, drafting agreements, creating templates, responding to routine red lines. Use the freed-up time sometimes on more strategic higher-risk work and, more importantly, sometimes on yourself. Give yourself breaks. Get up from your desk. Get some fresh air. Go for a brief walk. Take time off and by time off I mean time not working. We, as humans, are not automatons.
3. The billable hour model is not healthy. The billable hour model is clearly financially lucrative, but at what cost? There is a cost paid by clients both in terms of high cost and responsiveness. Yet that is not the price I am talking about here. The price I am alluding to is a much higher one. The price is often our own lives. This is not right. This is not safe. This simply cannot continue as is unabated and indefinitely. I have seen some firms either reduce their billable hour requirements or allow for some hours to be spent on things other than client work. This is a very small step in the right direction. Still, truly the model needs to be reimagined for a new world, a world driven by data and by technology. A world which puts our own humanity first and our work second and not the other way around.

Just because the law doesn’t care, doesn’t mean that we, lawyers, who interpret and apply the law to varying scenarios, should not care. We need to give ourselves time to refresh and to recharge. We do not have unlimited energy, unlimited time, or unlimited lifespans.

Life is far too short and far too precious to let it be consumed by work at the expense of ourselves.