as published in Legal Week 24 May 2001Evidence of lawyer distress has been confirmed by acknowledged high levels of career
dissatisfaction and by psychological distress studies establishing higher
levels of depression and of substance abuse than the norm.
Does the lawyer personality create distress?
It seems that a great deal of the pressure so many lawyers experience is due to the particular
internal traits and
values of lawyers. Some of those identified as relevant,
include a higher desire for achievement and excellence than the norm; valuing
leadership, dominance and status versus subordination and deference; a
tendency to be much more conscientious and competitive ("competing against
oneself" even more than against others); and
pessimism.
All of these are also traits linked to higher psychological distress. Law
students scored even worse than medical students on health potential,
vocational satisfaction, driven behavior, achievement ethic, relaxation
potential, anxiety, hostility, total stress, and subjective stress. Yet, in
the US at least, medical students work 30% more hours per week than do law
students. It seems that studying law of itself does not create distress but
rather that those who choose law already possess a greater propensity to
distress-creating traits.
The other traits concern how we relate to others (the interpersonal aspect)
and appear to predispose nonlawyers to perceive legal professionals as being
very different as well as difficult to like. Lawyers, much more naturally than
the general population, tend to focus more on rights, duties, obligations, and
justice versus care, compassion, emotional issues or interpersonal
relationships, leading to a perception of insensitivity.
Another relevant aspect is that both male and female lawyers emphasise the
economic bottom line or materialism. For instance we evaluate
litigation/settlement options differently from our clients: lawyers look at
options solely on the basis of the legal arguments and ultimately the
"numbers" ("thinking style") whereas non-lawyers are much more likely to be
swayed by psychological and commercial factors ("feeling style").
Furthermore, the largest gender differences show up here. Approximately 60
percent of all men (in the US) prefer the thinking style over the feeling
style while only 35 percent of US women do. Among lawyers, however, the
figures tell a different story: fully 81 percent of male lawyers preferred the
thinking style as did 66 percent of female lawyers. Averaged together, these
"thinkers" represent 78 percent of all lawyers. In short, the law is a
"thinker's" profession in the US and these conclusions are believed also to
apply in the UK.
Studies also identified a tendency for those who achieve higher grades
during law studies to be more distant and professional in their relationships
with other students whereas those with lower grades have more collegial
relationships, partly reflecting the different emphasis that each places on
the balance between academic and social endeavours. In addition, under
pressure, lawyers tend not to ask for help; instead they become more
aggressive and determined, even when they have a friendly mentor: this may be
because, both at law school and in the early years of practice, attempts to
seek help are often discouraged.
Should lawyers change to meet the demand?
Is it possible
to reverse, or at least soften, some of the "less pleasing" attributes? While
studies show that 80% of lawyers have the "typical" lawyer personality, it is
believed that many have put on this personality as a "psychological mask" and
this may be partly what causes the higher levels of depression and distress.
Throughout our law education and training and during the first few years of
practice (especially in the City of London and Wall Street) there is pressure to conform and thus to put
on this mask. Then many of us spend the rest of our lives trying to scrape it
away. Perhaps partly due to that need and partly to shortcomings in career
development leading to monotony of law, it seems that lawyers are drawn to
looking at different areas: for example, lawyers apparently do more personal
growth work than the general population – they just don’t share it.
It seems that our values are often very different from those of many of our
clients; our "bedside manner" tends to be poor; and we are perceived as too
much like Spock in Star Trek – coldly logical and unable to consider the
"human factor". Yet lawyers should not attempt to change their personalities
(except for removing any "mask"): apart from the fact that a radical change is
virtually impossible, it really should not be necessary. There are many
reasons for the lawyer personality being what it is, amongst them that lawyer
attributes may be adaptive to the practice of law; may facilitate equal access
to justice; may allow lawyers to escape painful moral conflicts; and may be
long-standing, ingrained personality characteristics present well before
undertaking law studies.
What’s the answer, then?
The most practicable solution may well be a flexing of style to improve
both intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, rather than any attempt to change
personality. Nowadays the "hip" term for these skills is "emotional
intelligence" or EQ (as opposed to IQ) levels. EQ competencies involve
empathy, assertiveness, impulse control, emotional self-awareness, flexibility
and reality testing. These competencies require skills in noticing feelings,
paying attention to them, giving them significance, thinking about them, and
taking them into account in deciding how to act. They apply both to one’s own
feelings and those of others.
Some of the intrapersonal competencies – what you need for effective
self-management – are a) mood management; b) self motivation; c) handling
setbacks well; d) using your intuition; e) managing your energy; f) dealing
with stress (usually we wait until it is too late), and g) avoiding depression
or low moods. The better you are at all of these, the greater your ability to
deal with distress and your resilience to change and ambiguity. A higher EQ is
also identified with better personal performance and higher levels of
achievement.
A vital intrapersonal skill (for managing yourself) is learning how and
when to avoid negative thinking. Three main factors emerge as causal in the
problem of demoralization among lawyers: pessimism, low decision latitude and
being part of a giant win-loss enterprise. The tendency to generalize
pessimism beyond the law (the pervasiveness dimension) may be the most
important. Check out the
Happiness & EQ
section of our hundreds of pages of
Free Stuff,
particularly:
These techniques can help lawyers who see the worst in every setting to be
more discriminating in the other corners of their lives. The key move is
credible disputation: treating the catastrophic thoughts (I'll never make
partner; my spouse is probably unfaithful) as if they were uttered by an
external person whose mission is to make your life miserable and then
marshalling evidence against the thoughts. These techniques can help lawyers
to become less pessimistic in their personal lives yet maintain the adaptive
pessimism in their professional lives.
Some of the interpersonal competencies – what you need for effective
relationships – include a) encouraging people to motivate themselves; b)
leading others; c) developing others; d) collaborating with others; e)
confronting others (as opposed to conflict); and f) facilitating relationships
between others. These competencies create improved attitude, motivation and
productivity; enhance relationship and communication skills; and produce
faster integration and building of trust within teams.
These competencies are crucial for success in both business and life, and
undermine success when missing. Most people are perfectly capable of using
their EQ skills but cannot through lack of practice and appreciation. People
tend to trade the long-term advantages of effective performance for short term
payoffs. For example, inflexibility provides a stable, though narrow,
orientation to life. By simplifying the world for us, it allows us to act
rapidly and decisively, unhindered by the consideration of alternatives. Yet
it has obvious longer-term disadvantages such as the inability to respond to
change.
Improving these skills takes practice and commitment – and requires a very
different model of learning to traditional learning and training. Neither
reading about it nor hearing about it in lectures or seminars creates changes.
The emotional brain learns very differently from the
thinking brain. Just as only regular exercise increases physical fitness, we
can increase EQ only through practice and experience, via a combination of
learning and actions, including repeating new skills regularly. The fact that
we are beginning to recognize these competencies provides a note of optimism
for the future.
