Why are so many lawyers depressed? Professors Larry Krieger and Ken Sheldon’s research indicates that the loss of intrinsic values is responsible—at least for a lowered sense of wellbeing among first-year law students. If Krieger and Sheldon are correct, then identifying intrinsic values, holding firm to them, and integrating them into day-to-day law practice are the keys to inoculating oneself against psychic distress and depression.

The Loss Of Intrinsic Values Can Account For Depression

Extrinsic values come from without, not within. They are the “prizes” we aim for and accumulate along the way. In law school, extrinsic values abound. My students can create a long list: “Grades! Class rank, law review, Order of the Coif, moot court, that great summer clerkship at a silk stocking firm, a plum judicial clerkship, and the brass ring: a lucrative associate position with a crave-able large private practice firm.” First-year associate salaries at these firms, for example, reportedly hit $160,000 for select graduates from select law schools (The National Jurist, January, 2008). In comparison, the median gross starting salary of a lawyer at a non-profit public service organization is approximately $40,000 (National Association of Law Placement).

According to my students, after law-school graduation, extrinsic rewards include, “money, cars, houses, and boats,” Martindale-Hubbell ratings, and win/loss records. Extrinsic rewards may also be intangible, such as the approbation of one’s peers, colleagues, other lawyers, and judges, and prestige, status, and reputation.

Identify Your Unique Intrinsic Rewards

What are intrinsic values? Unique to each individual, there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer. Some may find it intrinsically satisfying to represent a client and give that person her “day in court,” uphold constitutional rights, craft a particularly good oral argument, draft a competent legal document, structure a complex corporate transaction, or negotiate a settlement of a legal dispute. Others may be motivated by feeling that they “made a difference” in someone’s life, helped someone in need, created a new business venture, or saved someone money.

Mismatched Expectations Can Also Account For Depression

Depression can also arise if prospective lawyers harbor unrealistic expectations about their chosen profession. Reich (1976) found that many pre-law students wished to be seen as competent, socially ascendant, and in control, but that inwardly they felt awkward, anxious, cautious, and unsure. He suggested that they may have chosen law as a career because it allows them to hide behind a professional mask of competence, leadership, and dominance; they don’t have to expose more tender feelings of discomfort and social awkwardness. In other words, lawyers can interact with clients, other lawyers, and judges, at a comfortable professional distance and according to professionally defined “roles” with clear expectations and obligations, often imposed by the lawyer’s code of ethics.

For some, this might reduce their anxiety. However, it can also be isolating, lonely, and discouraging—and ultimately lead to depression. As a result, lawyers often end up feeling alone even as they are surrounded by clients, assistants, other lawyers, paralegals, and law office personnel. The very psychological dynamic that may have in part driven them to choose the law as a career may ultimately contribute to debilitating depression necessitating treatment and behavioral change.

The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good

Another cause of depression is perfectionism. In Stress Management for Lawyers, Dr. Amiram Elwork notes that perfectionism is adaptive and even rewarded in both law school and the practice of law; however, it can lead to a demoralizing way of thinking—“If I don’t do it perfectly, I’m no good; it’s no use; I should just give up,” or “I have to do it perfectly and I can’t quit until it’s perfect.” Beliefs like this can result in workaholism, isolation, and depression.

Perfectionism can also lead to an overdeveloped sense of control and responsibility so that individuals believe they are responsible for situations over which they actually do not have complete control. If things do not turn out well, these individuals often blame themselves: they didn’t work hard enough or they weren’t sufficiently prepared or vigilant. They then either “beat themselves up” or resolve to “work harder” next time, not acknowledging that some things are out of their control. This erroneous belief causes a great deal of angst, which is then expressed either as depression or irritability and anger, which are really two sides of the same coin. Psychologists claim that depression is “anger turned inwards.” Perhaps the anger and irritability, emotions so often seen in private law firms, is really depression turned outwards.

You Can Change The Way You Think

Fortunately, solutions exist. To ward off depression, you can: (1) focus on your intrinsic values and what you find intrinsically rewarding about your work and integrate these values and rewards into your day-to-day work, keeping in mind that you can change your job only if necessary; (2) challenge yourself to drop your “mask” by increasing your emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills so you are more comfortable and more fully emotionally present in interpersonal situations; and (3) undergo cognitive restructuring to get rid of perfectionistic thoughts and behaviors that set you up for anger and depression.

Begin identifying your intrinsic rewards and incorporating them into your daily life right away. The second and third changes may be harder to accomplish alone; you may need help from peers or professionals. Any changes you can make will be worth it, as no profession is as stimulating and challenging as the law, and a career in the law that is satisfying is, indeed, the “brass ring.”

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What the data did show, however, was that lawyer distress was highly correlated with another factor I measured: job dissatisfaction. At first, I thought this was pretty un-stunning—if one is unhappy in general, one is likely to be unhappy at work as much as at home or while at play. Then one of my mentors, a psychology professor and talented researcher, pointed out that the data might be interpreted as showing that, for distressed lawyers, their jobs are their whole lives. In other words, if one is not happy at work, one is not happy in life. This in turn might suggest that distress is linked with a life that is out of balance, or has become unbalanced, in that “work is all.”

Balance Is Always Important

This interpretation is consistent with the Terman/Stanford longitudinal study of the gifted, which studied gifted individuals from early childhood to the ends of their lives and included a small group of lawyers. This study split these lawyers into groups based on their broadly-defined, relative levels of “success,” and then compared the most successful group to the least successful group. It found that the least successful group was more “neurotic” and had fewer broad-based, outside (outside the law) interests. The researchers concluded that their data debunked the myth that success in the legal profession requires one to abandon all other interests and abilities and be a single-minded, somewhat neurotic individual.

So a “work is my whole life” mentality may lead to depression, anxiety, and other psychic distress, because when work is not going well, one’s whole self-concept and general life satisfaction can collapse. It may also lead to a lack of success in the outside world, both professionally and personally, since a broader-based set of interests and activities was important in the Terman study. Once again, “balance,” that well-worn word, emerges as important.

Achieve Internal Balance

But it is not only balance in our outside interests and our work/nonwork lives but also inside our minds that bears scrutiny. As lawyers, we have been trained to live in our heads; more precisely, in the left side of our brains, where logic, rationality, analysis, and thinking reside. We also are likely to over-rely on (or at least highly value) our higher cognitive functions of analysis and thought. In doing so, we may overlook the value of the right brain functions and the value of intuition, creativity, and compassion. We may ignore our feelings, our visceral reactions, and the knowledge and information that come to us not from our mind but from our heart and gut. This, however, cuts us off from all the information available to us and from our entire, complete selves.

Vernellia Randall wrote about the imbalance she perceives in law students with their emphasis on logic, rationality, and thinking. She  associated this tendency with the “Thinking” preference for decision-making as measured by the well-known personality test, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The MBTI has often been used in counseling, corporate, and educational settings to help individuals understand their preferred decision-making, work and learning styles in order to help them relate better, work together more efficiently, and learn more effectively. Almost 80% of lawyers score as “Thinkers” on this test. Thinkers also tend to have higher grades and a lower dropout rate in law school compared to Feelers. However, Randall points out that the concerns emphasized by Feelers, when making decisions—harmony, mercy, interpersonal relationships, care, harm to others, and others’ feelings and emotions—are also important for well-roundedness.

Live In Your Head And Heart

It may be easier, emotionally, to “live in your head” and focus only on logical analysis and rational thought. Detaching from your heart and emotions may help many lawyers to deal with the messy, painful affairs of men and women who come to their offices for help. It may be useful as a temporary strategy for dealing with irrational clients or in other emotion-laden situations where the attorney is expected to be the voice of reason. However, as a steady, long-term diet for life and work, it may not be a successful strategy. True intelligence, the kind that incorporates both cognitive and emotional intelligence, requires the ability to integrate and synthesize the wisdom of the head and the heart, the Thinker and the Feeler, and the mind and the body. Truly connecting with other people also often requires this integration and often cannot be done simply via the mind and logic.

The fact that as a profession we are now interested in examining these issues is exciting. Bar associations are dealing with depression among lawyers openly. Law schools, like medical schools, have begun to ask how to teach some of these concepts in their classes, including emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills and the notion that balance is important. Young associates at large law firms are attempting to demand positions at firms that acknowledge quality of life and work/life balance issues as important. With these issues now in the forefront, we may see continued change in our great profession.

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