Anyway – here’s the link.

The segment seemed to go well, although I had the unnerving if not atypical sensation of being the hot-headed radical spouting fire at a garden party.  Hélas, c’est mon destin.  At least my hair looked good.  At least, I think it did.

This time around, blessedly, the other panelists weren’t biglaw partners, law professors and authors of books with titles like “You can be super-duper happy as a lawyer if you just smile a lot!”  Been there, done that.

For a rather gloomier view of the current nightmare that is biglaw, click here.

It must be admitted, it is fun to be on tv and get to talk.

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My new book is a comic novel about a psychotherapist who falls in love with a blue alien from outer space. It’s called Bad Therapist: A Romance. I guarantee pure reading pleasure…

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s book about the sad state of the legal profession, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

My first book is an unusual (and useful) introduction to the concepts underlying psychotherapy: Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(My books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.)

If you’re a lawyer appearing at my doorstep and you work in biglaw, we’ll likely talk about the challenges ahead. Trapped in the bathysphere of biglaw, it’s hard to see out let alone get out. You’ve heard rumors about human beings who enjoy their jobs. In your experience, big firm attorneys loathe their chosen profession the way other people breathe air.

If you’re a lawyer appearing at my doorstep, and you work in biglaw, we’ll probably talk about a sideways shuffle I call the “crab-walk.” You can’t transfer from a big law firm directly to a tolerable work environment in one leap – the chasm between biglaw and anywhere anyone would want to be is too great. Crab-walking is the next best thing, based on the indisputable principle that a tiny step in the direction of somewhere else amounts to an improvement. Take a reduced schedule at your current firm (if such a thing exists in theory or practice.)  Give a “kinder, gentler” mid-law shop a shake. Go in-house at a bank. Dial for dollars as a headhunter. Switch to consulting and live in a hotel in Indianapolis all week writing reports recommending the firing of middle managers. Get a sales and support position at WestLaw teaching summers to concoct search terms. Small crab-walk-y steps remove you one centimeter at a time from where you are right now. That, by definition, is good.

If you’re a lawyer appearing at my doorstep and you work in biglaw, you probably want out, and have since your first taste of the Kool-Aid. You need to hear you’re not crazy or alone, and that there are others who long for a job without constant anxiety attacks, where Sunday nights aren’t a horror show, where a partner won’t tell you without a trace of irony to “go ahead and take the weekend off,” where it isn’t considered an easy night to get home at 11 pm.

These generalities hold true for about 96% of the lawyers appearing at my doorstep who work in biglaw. They do not, however, apply to everyone.

I don’t want to exaggerate the phenomenon, but there are folks who actually “fit in” in biglaw. They actually like it there. These are the “odd ducks,” and from time to time some of them also appear at my door.

Odd ducks are a rare breed, because the vast majority of biglaw attorneys are miserable. My client population likely self-selects for career dissatisfaction – although I suspect the effect is less prominent that is often assumed. Whatever the case may be, I’ve worked with hundreds of miserable biglaw lawyers – and they, in turn, have brought me abundant tales of many more. I also receive mail from miserable biglaw lawyers who read this column – and, let’s not forget I was a miserable lawyer myself once, lost in the umbrous recesses of Sullivan & Cromwell, and I’ve stayed in touch with many similarly miserable former colleagues from that world. Judging from all available evidence, it’s fair to conclude the vast majority of biglaw lawyers hate it and willingly report that their colleagues hate it, too. This is not a conspiracy to disrespect biglaw – the situation is real, and it is ghastly enough without over-statement.

It is not, however, the complete picture. That’s because of the odd ducks.

For the most part, odd ducks lay low. There’s a taboo surrounding their status, which makes sense, as it seems rude, on the face of it, in a world populated by legions of wretchedly unhappy lawyers, to trumpet your own contentment. The least you can do is pretend to be as miserable as everyone else. That’s why, if you suspect you might be an odd duck, there’s a strong impulse to keep your outlandish proclivities to yourself.

That means, if you’re an odd duck and appear at my doorstep, you’ll rarely identify yourself as such at the onset of our work. It’s simpler to say as little about your job as possible, with the implication that you feel the same way everyone else does.

The dead giveaway of un canard bizarre arrives when you admit to receiving consistent good reviews. That’s almost embarrassing, because no one gets consistent good reviews in biglaw. Then it leaks out you aren’t really miserable. The hours aren’t that big a deal. You kind of get along with the partner. You kind of love the money.

It’s no surprise odd ducks are the ones who make it to the top in biglaw – who else would? What’s stranger is that, from dizzying heights of power, odd ducks still hesitate to declare themselves.

I worked with a managing partner of a biglaw outfit who earned millions of dollars a year, but we spent our first few weeks talking about how his job was killing him. That was because he seldom got home before 11 pm, and often had to bring work home on the weekends. His wife, who didn’t work, beat him up for never being around for the kids. If he would only stop being so selfish and money-obsessed and quit his horrible job – this was the accepted wisdom – the family could be happy.

It took me a while to realize what was going on – that I was dealing with an odd duck.

“What if,” I hazarded one evening in the course of a session, “you were able to take pride in the fact that you’ve risen to the top of your field? What if your wife acknowledged that it took a lot of hard work to get where you are – a respected authority in your area, speaking to entire conferences as an expert? What if she were to acknowledge that the apartment in the city and the home in the country and the two expensive automobiles and the frequent luxury vacations and her ability to stay home and not have a job are also the fruit of your hard work and success?”

He stared, agape. But it was true. He was always home by 11 pm, latest, never went to the office on weekends, and took regular posh vacations with the family. Those were luxuries he’d earned as a managing partner. It was an intense job, but by this point he’d gained a level of control over his own hours.

“But running this law firm is killing me, and it takes a terrible toll on the family.”

That sounded a bit tentative.

“Are those really your words? And is it really killing you? Isn’t that a bit strong? Don’t you spend nearly every weekend and some evenings home with your family? And isn’t it possible that this job is also something you find satisfying and which brings enormous benefits as well as sacrifices?”

He looked stunned. I’d enunciated the unthinkable. He’d been outed. I kept going.

“Isn’t it possible some people have a right to choose to work hard and make sacrifices for their careers? What if you were a writer, or a scientist or a diplomat, and worked long hours? Would you get torn into in the same way, blamed for your dedication to what you do?”

He acknowledged my point.

This man was a classic odd duck. He might not be skipping and dancing to the office each morning, but deep down, the trade-offs of biglaw seem worth it to him. He maybe even sort of likes it.

Not all odd ducks are top partners. I worked recently with a biglaw senior associate who didn’t seem like an odd duck at first sight, but the more we traded experiences about the terrible hours and the cruelties of biglaw, the more something didn’t feel right. So I took the plunge and posed the forbidden question: For him, at least, was the status quo was really so terrible?

He looked shocked.

“Well, this is biglaw. I mean, all my friends at the large firms are miserable. Of the four of us who were close in law school, three have already left the profession and are either unemployed or doing something else. They all say they could never go back.”

“Yeah – but you’re a different person.”

A wave of relief washed over his features.

“I guess. But it seems weird, and arbitrary, doesn’t it? Why would I do better than everyone else?”

“Maybe it is weird and arbitrary. But you have a right to be different. Maybe you’re one of those rare birds who actually thrives in biglaw.”

To judge from his face, this was the first time in his life he’d felt understood.

After working with a few odd ducks, I’ve begun to note distinguishing features:

First – the true odd ducks are good at law – not just theoretical law as taught in law schools, but day to day actual law as actually practiced by big law firms. I’ve never met an odd duck who didn’t get good reviews. That’s an extremely rare thing in biglaw, where dismantling associate self-confidence and consigning their self-esteem to the flames of oblivion is an accepted norm. Yet odd ducks invariably receive good reviews, in part because…

Second – they’re actually cut out for this work. They like it. It’s not about being fascinated by Constitutional Law or wanting to defend civil rights (because that’s not what real lawyers do). It’s more mundane than that – and to be candid, dorky and nerdy. Odd ducks have the special knack that permits someone to sit up all night reviewing a purchase agreement and grow absorbed by the provisions of an indemnity clause. Or they relish the combat of litigation – that world of motions and discovery and settlement agreements and rushing to make deadlines and faking out your opponent with an unexpected dirty trick. They honestly find civ pro fascinating. It’s even, well, fun for them, the same way some people savor a game of Dungeons & Dragons or a long discussion of baseball statistics. Some odd ducks are simply low key, capable attorneys with a knack for winning clients and bringing in business. One way or another, they possess key real-life lawyering skills, and that means…

Third – they fit in with the partners, who can quickly spot a kindred spirit. Partners need associates who are good at the work and fit in and just…do it. No drama. When they find one of these rare creatures, they take them under their wing. The shelter afforded by a partner’s wing may spare you the worst of the crazy work hours and sudden surprises commonly delivered at 6 pm on Friday evenings.

Before I continue, I want to clarify that I am not giving advice here. This is not a column about “how to succeed in biglaw” or “how to make biglaw work for you” or – god forbid – “how to be a happy lawyer.” In my experience, any advice along the lines of “how to succeed in a career in which you don’t belong” broadcasts its uselessness long before the first platitude plops earthward with a fetid plash.

I can’t make you an odd duck: Odd ducks are born, not trained. This is the realm of nature, not nurture. You’re either cut out for biglaw, or you’re not. The vast majority of people who pursue law and end up at big firms have no business attempting to survive there. That’s why the bulk of any class of biglaw associates lasts no more than two years prior to complete mastication and subsequent expectoration, eructation or regurgitation.

But some stick it out and some even like it, which, when you stop to think about it, is pretty much why biglaw still exists. Someone has to belong there, even if those someones are few and far between and perhaps a bit…odd.

As another odd duck client confessed to me recently: “I don’t know why, but I guess I’m just okay with it. They seem to appreciate me. They give me good reviews. One partner admitted he didn’t want to use another associate on his projects – he needed my work because he had confidence in my abilities. That felt nice.”

“So why do I sense you hesitating to admit it?” I asked.

He looked thoughtful. “Because everyone else hates that place – and I don’t always love it either. The hours are brutal. But I enjoy litigation and the money’s great and I guess I’m just okay with it. I sleep at night. I don’t mind going in. It’s just, well, work for me.”

That’s what it’s come to. Biglaw is so universally detested that the few people for whom it’s a fit are ashamed to admit it. But the fact remains: Some people do fine in even the scariest biglaw firms – and they have a right to.

Before I start sounding too Pollyannaish, let me remind you that life as an odd duck is not all unicorns and rainbows. The oddest of odd ducks wishes he had more time for himself – and experiences bad days, or bad weeks, or bad months at the office. Or his firm implodes and he finds himself facing a brutal job hunt. Being made partner doesn’t guarantee permanent odd duck status, either. You might crack under the pressure of bringing in more clients and billables, or wind up working under a sadistic senior rainmaker. Plenty of people who think they’re odd ducks as associates wind up discovering they only like “doing” law, not marketing and bringing in clients, and there’s little room for service partners in today’s biglaw. Being pushed out of a firm, or stuck as a permanent senior associate with no hope of ascending, might discourage even the pluckiest waterfowl.

There are two final points I want to make about odd ducks. First of all, if you really are an odd duck, it’s okay to come out from hiding. I know you’re out there. You can stop apologizing. You’re allowed to admit you’re doing okay – and that biglaw works for you. Just because it nearly killed me – and has damaged the lives of tens of thousands of others – doesn’t mean there’s no room for a few odd ducks in even the most chthonic habitat. Enjoying something everyone else seems to despise is what being an odd duck is all about.

My second point is more relevant to the average reader of this column: Please don’t assume you’re an odd duck, or that biglaw is going to be your particular cup of tea. The overwhelming odds are that it won’t – and that biglaw will be a disaster for both your financial and mental health.

Odd ducks are a rare breed by definition, just like natural-born lawyers. The fact that this country is up to its ears in people calling themselves “attorneys” can be explained by so many regular ducks assuming they’re odd – or that they can get away with pretending to be.

We can all agree it requires a singular vocation to become a dentist. For that reason, my dentist friends are, in their own way, odd ducks. But imagine a world in which everyone assumed they were somehow put on this Earth to be a dentist. Imagine the dental schools playing along, telling anyone who will listen that they can attend a few lectures, “learn to think like a dentist” – et voila! – open wider and turn towards me…

You’d end up with a lot of unhappy non-dentists wondering why they can’t relax and enjoy performing root canals.

That’s what’s happening in law.

If you can’t think of anything else to do, don’t take it for granted you’re a biglaw lawyer, because working at a big law firm sure as hell isn’t for everyone. Real biglaw lawyers – true, honest to god biglaw lawyers who were put on this Earth to practice at megafirms – are some very odd ducks indeed.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

My new book is a comic novel about a psychotherapist who falls in love with a blue alien from outer space.  It’s called Bad Therapist: A Romance.  I guarantee pure reading pleasure…

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s book about the sad state of the legal profession, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

My first book is an unusual (and useful) introduction to the concepts underlying psychotherapy:  Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(My books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

Thanks for the shout-out (or read-out), June. I’m proud to be a part of your excellent series.

You can listen to the podcast here.  Be sure to catch the entire show – very interesting stuff in there about former law students suing law schools and an interview with an attorney who left the profession.

For more information on June and her blogging activities, click here.

For more information on “Way Worse” and all my books, click here.

Happy listening.

Even after so much effort has been expended for their benefit – i.e., which part of “Way Worse Than Being a Dentist” didn’t you understand? – these piteous creatures patiently queue up for their punishment, hungry to “learn to think like a lawyer.” If your resolve weakens, and pity prevails over contempt, you might mistakenly engage one in conversation. For your trouble, you’ll receive an earful of a clueless pipsqueak’s master plan to save the world. Because – you hadn’t heard? – that’s why he’s going to law school: The betterment of humanity.

Because that’s what the world so desperately needs:  Another lawyer.

Somehow or other, these automata get it into their programming that, if they actually did want to save the world, becoming a lawyer would be a sensible way to do it. They are unaware of how imbecilic their words sound to anyone not entirely befuddled by the miasma of law school propaganda.

Law schools inundate proto-lawyers with ‘lawyers save the world’ nonsense, cramming their crania with musty tales of Brown v Board of Ed. That’s because the schools are well aware of the likely effect of such indoctrination: Greasing the rails to the killing floor. If a kid can tell himself he’s going to “change the world” – as opposed to, say, “make a lot of money and feel like a big deal” – then he’ll line up that extra bit more smugly for the $160k/year that makes his eyes roll up into his head and a little string of drool form at the corner of his mouth.

It’s simple: If you can tell yourself you’re doing it for the good of humankind, you won’t feel so guilty selling out in the most soulless, stereotypical way imaginable.

You know the vast majority of law students will end up deeply in debt and unemployed. We all know that. But before that happens, the sorry little shlemiels honest-to-god tell themselves they’re going to save the world.

The problem is lawyers very seldom do change the world, at least for the better. The bulk of significant positive change that the world experiences at any given moment – surprise! – doesn’t derive from the actions of lawyers. It derives from the actions of non-lawyers, or, at very least, lawyers acting in non-lawyer-y ways.

Evidence? Let’s start with a quote from one of the nation’s top civil rights attorneys, Michelle Alexander, from her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness:

In recent years…a bit of mythology has sprung up regarding the centrality of litigation to racial justice struggles. The success of the brilliant legal crusade that led to Brown has created a widespread perception that civil rights lawyers are the most important players in racial justice advocacy…Not surprisingly…many civil rights organizations became top-heavy with lawyers. This development enhanced their ability to wage legal battles but impeded their ability to acknowledge or respond to the emergence of a new caste system. Lawyers have a tendency to identify and concentrate on problems they know how to solve – i.e., problems that can be solved through litigation. The mass incarceration of people of color is not that kind of problem.

Got that? Here’s a top-flight lawyer, at the center of a struggle to address the disaster of a nation that locks up a vast percentage of its poorest, most vulnerable citizens based largely on their race (whites don’t go to jail for minor drug possession offenses, blacks do.) What’s she saying? There are too many lawyers.

One of my clients, another committed, talented lawyer, who works on the West Coast in a not-for-profit to aid people with disabilities, reiterated the same message, as he vented his frustration with his job:

I don’t agree with the basic proposition of my office – the idea that people with disabilities can only be helped by bringing law suits. Most of the time that seems counter-productive. It’s incredibly inefficient and costly and the cases drag on forever. Meanwhile, the non-disabled service providers – the people we’re trying to educate, the people we need on-board to help us make the lives of people with disabilities easier – are converted into our enemies because we’re suing them. Soon everything turns into a world run by lawyers, that oh-so-lawyer-y world where avoiding liability drives every decision. Instead of practical, common-sense compromises and workaday solutions that might help people with disabilities improve their daily lives, we create an upside down world where everyone’s sole motivation is trying to dodge law suits.

Why does he stay, if that’s how he feels? You guessed it:  School debt. He’s stuck at his job because of massive law school loans. If he stays at his not-for-profit for a certain number of years, and bites his tongue, he can get his loans forgiven. That’s the one and only reason why he hasn’t left to pursue direct activism – education, political advocacy… all that nice non-lawyer-y stuff. He’s stuck being a lawyer, thinking like a lawyer, even though he knows it isn’t the best way to accomplish whatever world-saving he hopes to achieve. And that’s a drag.

So maybe the reality is that we don’t need endless heroic, committed, brilliant lawyers championing change any more than we need craven pre-law school weenies pretending they intend to become heroic, committed, brilliant lawyers championing change. The fact is, at least in the USA, we’ve got more lawyers than at any time in our history, and whether or not it is as a direct result of that situation, things are amply screwed up. It doesn’t appear to be the case that more lawyers is going to improve matters.

Well then, what do we need?  How about grassroots organizers?

The Republicans love to make fun of Barack Obama for being a community organizer before he went to law school. Personally, I think it’s cool that Obama (unlike, say, Mitt Romney or John Roberts) left the prestige bubble of top-tier schools for a few years to learn something about the real world. He probably learned more about world-changing from walking the streets of South Chicago than from cite-checking the Harvard Law Review. The majority of “Dreams from my Father,” Obama’s justifiably lauded first book, is about being an organizer, not a law student.

Astonishing as it might seem, there are plenty of non-lawyers who fight for justice and change. They get good results, too… at least, better than the lawyers.

Back in the 1980′s, before I became a lawyer, I marched and got arrested a few times with ACT-UP. I put myself out there with a bunch of other non-lawyers, demanding access to medical treatment for people with AIDS. Many of those non-lawyers I marched and got arrested with put their asses on the line because they didn’t want to die, or watch their friends die, from the effects of bureaucracy and homophobia.

ACT-UP changed the world. It made a difference and saved lives. And lo and behold, the heroes of ACT-UP weren’t lawyers.  Sure, there were a few lawyers there, who mostly dealt with the various bureaucracies involved in getting us out of jail after civil disobedience actions (thanks, guys.) But that was routine stuff. The best work done by the members of ACT-UP, the work that really blew me away, was done by regular (non-lawyer) human beings.

I was amazed, for example, by the artists, designers and illustrators from the Gran Fury Collective, who created posters and banners for our demonstrations, and made “Silence = Death” a catchword for millions.

I was astounded by the Treatment Action Group, a bunch of regular (non-lawyer) civilian folks from a variety of backgrounds who trained themselves in the latest HIV science, so they could educate patients facing difficult treatment choices and advocate to the medical profession for improved care and a more rational system of drug-testing.

I was deeply impressed by the talented folks coming from careers in advertising and PR, who led press conferences and crafted statements and manifestos for up-coming protests, explaining in the clearest possible terms the rationale behind our campaigns.

The lesson I wished I’d learned from all this work with ACT-UP was that the world doesn’t become a better place because another person becomes a lawyer. If you want to do something, make a difference, you can just do it. You don’t have to be a lawyer suing someone. Litigating isn’t the only answer to the world’s problems.

If you’re concerned about crime, you don’t have to be a prosecutor – join a law enforcement organization.  If you want to improve schools, well, how about becoming a teacher?  Whatever the problem is you want to solve, you don’t have to be a lawyer to spot an issue, gather a group of people around you, and do something to address it – even if all you do is stage a protest, write a column in a local paper or talk to your friends and neighbors.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t a lawyer. Neither was Rosa Parks.  They changed the world.

The single greatest waste of talent created by this generation’s stampede to law schools comes in the sciences.  Here’s a passage from “The Emperor of Maladies,” a history of the scientific battle against cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a brilliant writer and physician who, thank goodness, didn’t become a lawyer:

Druker [a cancer researcher] proposed an ambitious collaboration between Ciba-Geigy and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to test the kinase inhibitors in patients. But the agreement fell apart; the legal teams in Basel and Boston could not find agreeable terms. Drugs could recognize and bind kinases specifically, but scientists and lawyers could not partner with each other to bring these drugs to patients. The project, having generated an interminable trail of legal memos, was quietly tabled.

Yes. A promising treatment for a virulent form of leukemia, and a step forward towards that greatest of all dreams, a cure for cancer, was stopped in its tracks by…you guessed it… lawyers.  And not just any lawyers. These lawyers worked in pharma, so you know they used to be scientists. They were probably at Harvard or Stanford, laboring in laboratories, when it suddenly dawned on them – hey, I could switch to law and three years from now I’ll have a posh office and a secretary and a fat biglaw salary. Sign me up!

Why should you work hard at something difficult and important when you could chase big bucks in IP litigation, serving corporate masters hungry for profit?  Maybe because you actually want to help people, instead of talking about helping people while you sell out to the highest bidder.

Luckily, this story has a happy ending. To quote Mukherjee:

…Druker was persistent…having learned his lessons…[he] walked over to the legal department at OHSU [the new laboratory he founded to escape red tape] and, revealing little about the potential of the chemicals, watched as the lawyers absentmindedly signed on the dotted line.

It was that easy, a matter of getting around the lawyers (who, in my experience, mostly don’t know what they’re talking about anyway, they’re just reflexively risk-averse.)  The drug in question went on to revolutionize cancer research.  That’s what it takes, much of the time, to change the world: Getting around lawyers.

A final thought. Sometimes it seems like not becoming a lawyer could, in itself, save the world.  I was watching a documentary the other day on the astonishing Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami. Yes, it turns out that somewhere after finishing college he was feeling lost and a bit desperate…so much so that he very nearly went to law school. Thank goodness we dodged that bullet. Murakami went on instead to open a jazz bar in Tokyo, then write some of the best novels of the past fifty years.

The world’s a better place because Murakami-san didn’t become a lawyer.

I implore you:  Follow in his proud path.

It might make all the difference. It could save the world.

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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

My new book is a comic novel about a psychotherapist who falls in love with a blue alien from outer space.  It’s called Bad Therapist: A Romance.  I guarantee pure reading pleasure…

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s book about the sad state of the legal profession, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

My first book is an unusual (and useful) introduction to the concepts underlying psychotherapy:  Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(My books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

From start to finish… pure reading pleasure.

Buy it at Amazon.  Buy it at BN.com.  Also available via the Apple ibook store.

“I’ve never worked in a biglaw firm, but what happens if an associate just says no, I am busy this weekend, or no, I am on vacation that week, so I won’t be able to do that project. Do you immediately get fired? If that’s true, then you must not really have much to offer to the firm in the first place. In a situation where the associate had some real value to offer to the firm, I do not see why the firm would fire someone for that. Am I hopelessly naive?”

Go ahead – laugh. Get it out of your system. You know perfectly well your guffaws wear thin, right about when that twinge of poignancy creeps in. You, too, once mulled the notion of rising above the fray – going all Bartleby the Scrivener and muttering “I’d prefer not to” when asked – oops, I mean told – to work and work and work and work and work.

This “pure fool” of a comment-writer has raised a troubling issue (and that, by the way, was a combined Parsifal and Magic Mountain reference…this will be one of those classy columns larded with literary allusions.) Cower behind your carapace of cynicism, but sooner or later you’ll admit you weren’t always like this. You weren’t always a broken, cynical wreck who jumps at the slightest command. You used to be Bartleby The Scrivener, too. You imagined you were valued as a unique, complex individual. You imagined you held some sway over your own existence – some “preferences.”

I know it’s no fun trying to remember the stuff you read in college, but please attempt to keep up. Even if you weren’t an undergraduate English major, you might recall that the narrator of “Bartleby the Scrivener” was called “The Lawyer.” That’s right: “The Lawyer.” The whole thing takes place in a law firm! And remember what a scrivener did? It was the worst job in the firm – probably one of the worst jobs of all time. You sat at a desk copying legal documents – handwriting them – for hours. Reminiscent of doc review, or due diligence, or “running changes” – scrivening was mindless and, if you kept at it for too long, guaranteed to drive you bat-shit. You – and everyone else – would obviously “prefer not to.”

And yet, somehow or other, our narrator – “The Lawyer” (i.e., a partner at the firm) – is astonished when Bartleby, after being asked politely to scriven something, even more politely states in return: “I’d prefer not to.” The Lawyer explains his astonishment at Bartleby’s resistance by pointing out how he, as a partner – even in 1853! – possesses a “natural expectancy of instant compliance.”

You know all about that, right? The “natural expectancy of instant compliance”? Sure you do.

The “natural expectancy of instant compliance” is why you don’t say “I’d prefer not to” in biglaw. It’s why you instead “shut the fuck up.” The “natural expectancy of instant compliance” flows in the veins and arteries of biglaw partners. It fills those hollows where blood would otherwise go.

If you stop and unpack Bartleby’s mantra – and examine what it really means to say “I’d prefer not to” – you might not last long in this racket.

For starters, stating “I’d prefer not to” means telling the truth about your job. Of course you’d prefer not to – we’d all prefer not to work in biglaw. But saying “I’d prefer not to” also means perpetuating a lie – because you know perfectly well you have no choice whether to work or not. Pretending you have a choice is playing along with the official fiction that “an associate has real value to offer the firm.” The truth, which no one – least of all, you – wants to admit, is that the only value an associate has is as a slave. You are owned – your ass is bought and paid for – and because you are owned, you no longer have any choice in the matter of offering or not offering – or preferring or not preferring – or doing or not doing. You simply do what they tell you. Because they own you.

Behold the awesome power of $240k in school loans – coupled with a moribund job market.

Everyone knows what happens if you announce you’d “prefer not to” at a law firm: You get fired. The deed may occur in myriad ways, depending on how swiftly the holders of power opt to peel away the veil of self-deception surrounding biglaw employment.

Permit me to aid in the peeling process. Standing up to a partner at a law firm and going all Bartleby on him is akin to standing up to Simon Legree (literary allusion alert!) and averring the following:

“I am an African man, stolen from my family, dragged on-board a slave ship in chains, sold at auction to the highest bidder and forced to labor in these fields. Thank goodness I’ve encountered you, Sir. You look like a decent sort of person, and I know you cannot wish me ill, since I have done you none myself. Therefore, I humbly implore you release me at once and aid me in my return to my homeland!”

You might also try asking Mitt Romney for your job back. Not going to happen.

If I know Legree like I think I know Legree, he will snarl, crack his whip and shout some rather shocking, politically incorrect epithets – which will be your cue to return to picking cotton.

Why? Because, when push comes to shove, a slave – to Simon Legree – is nothing more than a way to make money – just like a worker is nothing more than a way to make money to Mitt Romney, and an associate is nothing more than a way to make money to a biglaw partner. As long as you labor, they earn (many, many, many times what you do.) That’s why they (barely) tolerate your nauseous presence in their lives.

Money is the only thing that matters to them.

Melville’s story takes place not only at a law firm, but at a Wall Street law firm (remember the subtitle – “A Story of Wall Street”?) Yes – it’s about biglaw. And biglaw is a storied world of monied elites: patrician, white-shoe, WASP-y and privileged.

Surely these are not the sort of people who crack whips and imprison human slaves?

Of course they are. Don’t fall for the powdered wigs and French manners. Who do you think owned the slaves – and profited from their trade? Our “founding fathers” were up to their ears in human trafficking, including those patrician, upper-crust, white-shoe New England types, who financed the voyages of the slave ships. Fancy people with lots of money – who wish to earn even more – can do terrible things. They simply do their best to avoid being present when the visuals take a turn for the indecorous.

Back to my comment writer – and his question: What’s it look like when the gloves come off in biglaw – when you attempt to relate as equals, or even near-equals, and the Bartleby hits the fan?

I got my first taste of the answer one dismal night in a Sullivan & Cromwell conference room.

My second or third assignment at S&C had me reporting to a senior associate in the real estate group. I’ll never forget this guy (he haunts my dreams, and appears in several of these columns) – an obese, greasy-haired ogre with yellowed fingernails perpetually clutching a smoldering Marlboro.

On our first evening together, it became apparent we were the only attorneys assigned to this deal… and we were in for a late night. We ordered food – I remember an aluminum foil take-out container of eggplant parmesan – and were sitting in a conference room together, with said victuals, at around ten p.m.   At which juncture I chose to deliver the following oration:

“It looks like we’ll be spending a lot of time together on this deal – so we might as well get to know one another. I never thought I’d end up on a real estate deal, but I guess why not? Anyway, I’m originally from New Jersey, grew up in the suburbs. You might hear a lot of jazz and classical music coming out of my office – those are my big passions. What are your hobbies in the outside world?”

The real estate ogre cut me off with a riposte as ingenious in its precision as it was elegant in its profanity.

“Do you think I give a fucking shit who you are or any of your bullcrap? Shut the fuck up.”

And so I did. I shut the fuck up.

Voila! We understood one another – and I assimilated an essential lesson of biglaw, with especial regard to my place within it. As we fed in silence, cherished notions of “collegiality,”“white shoe tradition,” “patrician institutions,” “practicing law,” “the profession of law,” “the Sullivan & Cromwell way” – and other such bullcrap and associated bullcrap of a similar nature miraculously fell by the wayside. I became, as they say in Scientology, “clear.”

I was a slave. I was owned. I did what he told me to do. I didn’t pretend he was my friend, or even a close acquaintance, or that he “gave a fucking shit about me or any of my bullcrap.” No one there did. That isn’t how S&C works.

I now address myself directly to the comment writer: Permit me to assure you, Dear Sir, without hesitation, that should you “just say no” to all-nighters and weekends – or suggest in the mildest way that you “would prefer not to,” they – the powers that be – will indeed fire your ass. Your “value to the firm” is your working hours – for which they bill many, many, many times what they pay you. If you are not working, they will fire you. If you refuse to work – or state your preference not to work – they will also fire you. If you attempt to make conversation over dinner, they may well fire you, too.

They might wait a bit, and first arrange for you to receive a bad review. They might give you three months severance (a quaint, dying tradition.) They might tell you to go fuck yourself. But your ass will be fired as surely as each morning the sun’s bright chariot scales the arc of the heavens only to descend once again each night.

Pardon me as I adopt the standard, accepted biglaw vernacular:

Get this through your head, Fucktard – the patrician graybeards who own your ass when you work at a big law firm are not, for the most part, nice people. It is not, for the most part, a nice place. They work for corporate America and the billionaires who own it – the Mitt Romneys of the world – who are, once again, for the most part, not nice people. They don’t get rich worrying about whether the common man has decent healthcare. Their attitude is simple – they love money, they don’t want to pay taxes, and you can go fuck yourself.

One of my clients reminded me recently of this state of affairs. She was interviewed by a major newspaper regarding the topic of a journal article she wrote in law school. She vetted everything by her firm’s PR department, so it was entirely kosher. And it was impressive – a feather in her cap.

Not one person at the firm congratulated her. Not one. It was as though it never happened.

Did she really think they gave a fucking shit about her or any of her bullcrap?

No. And that’s because they don’t. She’s looking for a job at another firm right now – any other firm – in the vague hope it might be different there. She knows better, but hope springs eternal.

Once again, for emphasis: They own you – and for whatever reason, owning you doesn’t inspire them to a concern for your welfare.

With regard to how it is you came to be owned – another client had a revelation this week after being accosted by a homeless guy for money. He gave the homeless guy a dollar, which apparently wasn’t sufficient, because the homeless guy screamed: “Fuck you, one-percenter dirtbag!”

In reality, my client explained to me, in strictly economic terms that homeless guy was the wealthier of the two of them. That’s because the homeless guy didn’t choose to go to law school, so he doesn’t owe a bank two hundred and forty grand. In fact, my client’s out-of-work, alcoholic brother-in-law who smokes Indo and slams forties all day is also wealthier than my client. Most people are wealthier than my client.  It isn’t a difficult status to achieve.

Perhaps, my client mused, he should be the one running after the homeless guy and yelling at him on the sidewalk. But, of course, my client can’t afford to run, yelling, after anyone on the sidewalk – he can’t afford to lose his job. He is forced to behave himself, because he is a slave.

You are too, Mr. Naïve Lawyer. You are owned. They own you. So you have to behave, too.

There’s a point where even Simon Legree grows impatient and blurts it out:

“Don’t you get it, fuckhead? You’re a human slave. I exploit your labor for money. Your health or welfare don’t matter to me.”

Mitt Romney himself, at some juncture, could lose it and spit out the truth: “I leveraged your company with massive debt so I could grab a pile of cash. I’m not your daddy. I don’t give a shit if you lose your job and get sick and need a doctor. That’s not my problem.”

At least with Romney you can open your eyes and realize – much as you may long to be him – voting for him won’t make it so. Toadying up to biglaw partners isn’t going to transform you into one of them, either – though it might delay your being fired.

It’s about money – and power.

Yeah. They own you. That’s why you’re there. They’re not nice people and they don’t “value you.” That’s reality.

Sorry, Bartleby.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

More immediately, for all my Hong Kong readers, here’s a fun event coming up on the evening of November 20th, 2012, featuring wine and canapes:

I look forward to the opportunity to meet more of my readers and share a few thoughts about the madness of biglaw. Hope you can make it.

Will

PS: If you’re in NYC On October 26th, 2012 and would like to hear me opine upon the divine absurdities attendant to biglaw, please come to the 2012 Fall Symposium of the National Association of Legal Search Consultants (NALSC), where I’ll be a featured speaker – information is available here.

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If you’re interested in the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of psychotherapy, you might enjoy my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”

My second book takes a humorous look at the current state of the legal profession, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist”

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

For information on my private practice, click here.

After we finished, I did the decent thing and sat and listened to the panel that followed mine. I happened to choose an empty seat next to a woman who introduced herself to me later as a Dean at a law school, in charge of career placement, or whatever the euphemism is for trying to find students non-existent jobs. The law school was obscure – one of those dreaded “third tier” places.

She confronted me afterwards. “I guess I’m the bad guy, huh?”

I was startled by her candor, but knew what she meant. This was one of those people from a third tier law school – the greedy cynical fraudsters signing kids up for worthless degrees, then leaving them high and dry – unemployed and deeply in debt.

Despite her participation in crimes against humanity, I had to admit she didn’t seem so bad, in person.

Then I snapped back to my senses – and went on the attack, assuming my sacred role as The People’s burning spear of vengeance.

“At very least, you have to admit the tuition is too high,” I vituperated.

“Don’t talk to me about tuition,” she rejoined. “It’s the tenured faculty – that’s where that money’s going.”

She took a step closer and lowered her voice, taking me into her evil confidence.

“I’ll tell you what I’m looking at. I’ve got to find kids jobs – that’s it, my assignment. Here’s how bad it’s gotten. Someone called the other day and said ‘I’m getting evicted – you have to find me something, anything.’”

Her face looked dead serious. She wanted The People’s burning spear of vengeance to hear this.

“I called in every favor – I called everyone I knew. What more can I do?”

I acknowledged her point, grudgingly. Maybe this was a lesser villain. Perhaps some vestige of good remained in her corrupted, blackened soul.

“The best thing,” she continued, “and it’s going to happen – will be a bunch of schools shrink their class sizes or close down completely.”

She paused while we mutually processed the implications – namely, that she’d lose her job.

“That would be the best thing,” she repeated for emphasis, as though daring me to believe her. I did.

I left the conference chewing over the big question: If that lady I’d just met, and chatted with, was Lucifer herself – then she failed to convince. In which case, who’s left? Who is the Great Satan?

Someone out there must wear the Sign of the Beast. Someone struts and cackles atop a mound of bleeding victims. That someone – whoever it is – carries the blame for the mess law has created in so many lives.

Peruse the list of candidates. Start at the top, with the Dark Lords of Mordor themselves, the senior partners who preside over biglaw with an iron cudgel.

These ogres (well, not the ones who come to my office every week for psychotherapy – they’re sweethearts, but the others) embody evil, and run a Ponzi scheme that exploits young people – damaging their lives by enticing them into debt, then over-working them in a brutal environment of intimidation.

What’s their defense?

They might begin by suggesting it’s the same everywhere in biglaw. They can’t change things at their firm unless all the firms change. Otherwise they’d be risking their business.

Do I buy it? Not particularly. These partners are rolling in dough. They could decide to earn less – hire more associates and ease the workload.

But here’s where the annoying shades of gray come in. The wicked law partners could – more convincingly – counter that the associates don’t want that – that these kids have loans to pay off and will always run for the highest salary. The top graduates from the top schools flock to whichever firm is most “prestigious” – i.e., the firm that pays most. Remember, these kids carry massive debt and can’t predict how long they’ll stick it out in biglaw hell. They want money – as much as they can grab – as quickly as possible. The only way to pay associates that much money (and still make a tidy profit) is to work them like slaves.

It’s the same phenomenon that makes it uncomfortable to fly coach. Economy airline ticket purchasers will – each and every time – choose the lowest-priced ticket. That inescapable fact results in cramped, uncomfortable seats. But when push comes to shove, they don’t care about legroom – they care about money.

A managing partner – evil though he might be – could accurately parallel economy airline passengers with junior associates, who will similarly pack themselves into notorious sweatshops if that means they can earn more money to pay loans. Wave $160k in the face of a first year, and he’s going to take it. Wave $120k and better hours in his face as an alternative…and he might not, especially if – like most of these kids – he has $200k in loans to repay.

Okay, so maybe the loathsome fiends who preside over biglaw hold claim to a valid point.

But if that lets the partners off the hook, we can still blame the students themselves. By now, these greedy little vermin ought to know better. Chasing dreams of riches via law school? C’mon…been there, been done by that.

This argument makes sense – and to some extent it’s borne out by falling application rates at law schools– especially those sleazy third and fourth-tier operations.  Some kids do know better.  Even potential law students – who define the term “mindless lemmings” – are starting to catch on.

What’s remarkable is how many law students still buy into the dream of law as a path to easy bucks. According to one placement director I spoke to, even when you give the kids completely accurate, utterly dismal employment figures, they still bite.

Tell a potential law student ten percent of his class will get a biglaw job. Try it. The egomaniacal grade-grubber will cling to the belief he’ll number among that ten percent. It’s an article of faith.

Harvesting good grades encompasses the signifier and the signified of most potential law students’ entire lives – and with the wildly inflated grades at undergraduate institutions, that doesn’t represent much of a trick. As a result, if you tell them they’ll need a B+ average to maintain a scholarship, they believe  - somehow – they’ll do it.

Law students who see a chance – even an imaginary chance – to earn big money, will always go for it. We’re talking about grasping, risk averse super-achievers ready to chew through steel to transform good grades – their only tangible asset – into filthy lucre. These aren’t entrepreneurs or creative types – they aspire to one goal: Go to school, work like crazy, cash in.

But aren’t we being a bit harsh? These are vulnerable kids – youngsters, with zero experience of real life. Can you blame them for trying to impress their parents? Many are under crushing pressure – as the “smart” one among their siblings and cousins – to outdo their progenitors in money and status.

Fine. So let’s blame the parents – the bullies who attempt to fulfill their own dreams by shoving children into a trap that cripples their futures.

Most of these parents never stop to ask what’s best for their child, or what he might want for himself. They pressure the kid from birth – it’s either medicine or law, or you’ve disappointed Mom and Dad.  The whole ugly business is wrapped up in the gauze of “parental love” – but it’s really intimidation.

What’s the parents’ alibi?

Alas, they have one, and it’s airtight. They push the kids off the cliff honestly believing it will work. Remember, in Mom and Pop’s day, a law degree didn’t cost as much, and usually led to a stable, boring career – and maybe a leg up the ladder. They’re just parents. They want what they think is best for their kids. They don’t know any better. They’re victims, too.

The real villain? Okay. We’re back there again.

It’s the schools, who lie to the parents as well as the kids, promise impossible wealth, pump up tuition – then pull the ol’ switcheroo as soon as the kid graduates.

The nice dean of career placement lady wasn’t evil – we already agreed on that. She doesn’t appear to earn much, kills herself trying to locate jobs for her students and even embraces the prospect of sacrificing her job if that would improve things for others.

But she steered us in the right direction – the scent of brimstone leads directly to the plushly-appointed offices of the tenured law school faculty. Bingo. Gotcha.

Here’s a bunch of overpaid blowhards who consider it their prerogative to pocket half a million dollars annually for twelve hours work per week (with summers off), delivering tired lectures and maybe scribbling the occasional article (with the assistance of student peons.) That’s blood money stuffing the pockets of these sad excuses for humanity – blood-stained takings from students bamboozled into financial seppuku.

At last, we are presented with The Great Satan.

So what’s their excuse?

Well…these guys worked their way to the top, didn’t they? You don’t become a distinguished professor of law, an authority in your field, without sacrifice. Right off the bat, they didn’t sell out and become biglaw partners. They’re among the few at the pinnacle of success in their field who pursued education all the way to the top. And their fat cat salary doesn’t look all that fat-cattish compared to what a biglaw managing partner stuffs down his gullet.

The world would be a better place if law professors abandoned their cushy posts and flocked back to biglaw – but that might not be so easy. Partner positions have grown scarcer – especially if you lack a book of business – and in any case, they’d be putting current partners out of work in the process. Easier to stay where they are, and earn what – for them – seems like a modest salary. Yeah, it’s evil. But not Great Satan evil – at least from their point of view. They’re just earning a living – one they took risks and competed furiously to claim.

You sense we’re running out of candidates for Overlord of Hades.

Don’t worry, there’s one left. Yes – Mammon. Greasy fingers in the till.  Dough. Greenbacks. Bucks. Moolah. Dinero. Dead presidents.

Money’s the common thread. The reason partners abuse their associates. The reason young lawyers line up for this abuse. The reason parents push their kids into law school. The reason law schools pack their classrooms with students then spit them out into a flooded market. The reason tenured faculty remain in their jobs instead of arranging to be paid less or quitting and doing something useful.

Each of these players viewed law as the path to an easy buck.

Now that it isn’t such an easy buck – and gets harder each month – things will, to some degree, take care of themselves. Every bubble pops at some point. Students – and their parents – will catch on. Enrollment will decline at marginal schools. Some will go out of business. Firms will have to ease up on abusing associates. Partners will earn slightly less to pay valued underlings to stay.

Partners are already earning less. The industry is contracting across the boards.

That’s good news, since the United States is drowning in the aftermath of a cloaca bursting with freshly-minted, entirely un-needed attorneys.

I have seen The Great Satan and he is us – when we put money before people and lose our humanity – our hearts – our souls.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

I don’t remember much more than the theme song and opening credits, but the concept – giving it all up, packing your bags and fleeing for the sticks, spouse (and maybe kids) in hand – resonates with my lawyer clients. Some are beginning to sound like aspiring Eddie Alberts.

I’d like to say there’s a great lawyer return to the land on the way – driven by a love for nature and the outdoors. To some extent that’s true. But mostly, it’s a product of desperation. The big themes are escaping biglaw misery, seeking adventure, looking for a healthier lifestyle… and fleeing school loans.
One client’s story weaves these themes into a magical tapestry of personal growth, spiritual awakening and debt avoidance.

He was suffering modestly at a big law firm in L.A. Then he got posted to an office in Asia, where he happened to speak the language. There he discovered how bad bad can be. The US office dished out standard-issue biglaw brutality. Nothing could have prepared him for the Asia office. The cruelties committed by the local staff and attorneys would make Hieronymus Bosch wince. In their laser-beam-like focus on punishing my client for speaking their language and attempting to work in their homeland, they achieved new plateaux of sadism on a weekly basis. He developed insomnia, migraines, then panic attacks – and was fired a year later, without comment.

That’s when the Green Acres theme began playing in his head.

I’m not sure where he got the idea, but for whatever reason, he bought a 500 square foot cabin in the middle of nowhere, snug against the 49th parallel. Then he wrote a blog about woodcarving. And that’s about all he did – that, and shovel snow.

Ten months later he remembered the $150k he owed in school loans and back taxes from his Asian debacle, packed his bags and caught a ride to New York City – and doc review. Foreign language doc review pays better than regular doc review, but it’s still doc review. Working with the burnt-out remnants of lawyers is refreshing after working with actual lawyers – and at first it was amusing to get paid to peruse an Asian businessman’s emails to his mistress, then click “relevant” “incriminating” and “privileged.” But even assuming steady work, he didn’t see how he could pay off his loans within a decade.

His solution? Hitch a ride back to The Great White North – and his rustic cabin. There, he could find public defender work in the local courthouse – and wait tables. He calculated that $30k per year would be enough to cover food and fuel – but insufficient to attract the attention of his creditors. Not even a bank addicted to the lifeblood of youth can squeeze that blood from a stone. In his free time – which is most of the time, at this point – he wood-carves. For whatever reason, he finds that more exciting than doc review.

Voila. All you weeping, tooth-gnashing, garment-rending lawyers out there who constantly ask me – what can I do now? Here’s a solution. Green Acres is the place to be!

If you’re a true daredevil, you can fly the coop bigtime – take it beyond a meek retreat back-to-the-land, and embark on grand adventure.

For role models, you have those lawyer-bloggers who regularly up-date us on their fantastic doings. My clients inundate me with links to these guys.

There was the former bankruptcy associate who walked across the country. I don’t remember if he did it for charity, or an up-coming documentary film, or because he was losing his marbles. From the bit I read, I suspect option number three.

I’m not sure what walking across the country costs, but most of the “grand adventure” types are drawing on some unnamed source of cash to pursue their dream.

There’s the former biglaw chick traveling around the world, who started with the Trans-Siberian, and last I checked, was on a vision quest in Thailand. Her spin on the whole thing is “wow! I’m taking time off to grow as a person!” but I suspect the truth is closer to “I was losing my shit in biglaw and could afford to do this.” She assumes we want to hear what it all means to her – ignoring the reality that smoking weed in Chiang Mai with cute Swedish guys is a well-worn trope. We get it. We’d love to blow out of law and into “personal growth” along these lines, too. But there’s the issue of cost…

I stumbled on another former biglaw victim who moved to Italy to work as a free-lance journalist. Once again, how she pulled off this feat remains a mystery – I suspect one involving an Italian husband with a family house.

For those of us who don’t savor walking across the country – and don’t have the money for a year of traveling around the planet or a husband with a house in Italy – the Green Acres experience might, of necessity, play out in a humbler – and perhaps more heartfelt – manner.

You can read about this breed of Eddie Albert – the humbler, heartfelt-er ones – in the “lifestyle” section of the New York Times. The key search terms are “organic” and “artisanal.”

You’ll find the family that lives in a house on fifty acres in the middle of nowhere, Maine. The husband – bearded, lanky, and simultaneously wifty and scarily intense – manufactures driftwood sculpture and furniture. The wife – with braided hair and sensible shoes – home-schools their kids. The family gathers hearthside in the evenings to steam kale and discuss books.  It’s all very heartfelt.

Another guy built a treehouse on the coast of Oregon. I can’t remember what he does up there – but stop smirking. He’s not marking up a purchase agreement or replying to a request for discovery, so it’s more fun than whatever you’re doing.

The spin in these pieces is appealing. It requires courage to give up the money, the status, the title – to head back to the land and commit yourself to something crunchy. Lawyers are feeling the pull.

Another one of my client’s got the itch bad. For her, the question is whether her husband, an academic who stays at home with their two kids, is up for abandoning his career and switching to goat farming.

He might be.

“I know this sounds crazy,” she says. “But I want to make cheese. I want to learn how, and I want to make my own cheese.”

“It can’t be that crazy,” I informed her. “You’re the second lawyer this month.”

I’m not making that up. Goat farming – and the manufacture of chèvre – have developed into a miserable lawyer leitmotiv. You can’t riff on the theme without it.

People are trying. Lawyers are talking the talk – even if fewer are actually walking the walk.

Once again, money is the first obvious roadblock on the road to Green Acres. Even Grizzly Adams needed a few buckskins to purchase his log cabin – and stock the pantry full of mac and cheese for the long winter ahead.

The trick to leaving your money troubles behind – and unshackling your peripatetic soul – is abandoning the crazy notion of repaying gargantuan loans. After that, settling into brewing your own buttermilk is a piece of cake.

My client on the 49th parallel is giving it a go – and it might work. At some juncture, as a lawyer with loans approaching two hundred thousand dollars, you begin to sense at a visceral level you’re never going to pay that money back – not in this lifetime. The loans are perpetual – so you might as well cry uncle and give up. Then you can stake a claim out past them thar hills, earn a pittance to feed yourself, and get on with your life.

There are two major steps you have to take right off the bat. First, get rid of your phone. You can’t afford it anyway, and it drives the banks into conniptions when they can’t harass you every day. Second, scale down your lifestyle. Dump any possessions the banks might sink their slimy claws into. My client’s cabin is worth about $40k. Even in the USA, where foreclosing is a way of life, that’s not worth foreclosing on – and, in any case, his mortgage is a few hundred bucks per month.

The ultimate get-away? Leave the USA behind. Head South of the Border – or just across the border. There are lots of off-the-beaten-track spots to explore. I’ve been hearing about Costa Rica, Australia, and India from lawyers I work with.

If your immigrant parents fled another country for opportunity in the USA – well, now might be time to flee back! You already speak the language, and the banks will never find you. Sure, you can no longer work in the USA – the money-lenders would descend like rabid hyenas – but you’re technically not a criminal. You can maintain citizenship and pop in for visits.

Some lawyers are picking a random spot – any spot – on the map. It only has to be far away from biglaw and all-American debt slavery. There’s loads of space in the Northern Territory of Australia!

Farm livin’ is the life for me…

Can it happen? Can you give it up, buy a rustic cabin way over yonder and live like Grizzly Adams (or Crocodile Dundee)?

Once you’ve tasted biglaw, plodding through snow to an outhouse doesn’t sound half bad.

Speaking personally…Dah-link I love you, but give me Park Avenue.

But the honest answer is I don’t know if you can pull it off.

Eva Gabor seemed to adapt. Maybe you can too. And maybe you can convince the wife and kids to come with.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

It never occurred to me I’d be deluged with lawyers as clients.

It never, ever occurred to me I’d be deluged with partners as clients.

It never so much as crossed my mind they’d be so unhappy.

It turns out being a partner can be…not all that. For many of my clients, the job boils down to evil middle management.

Permit me to explain.

Biglaw associates resemble the low-level evil henchman in James Bond movies – those omnipresent guys in jumpsuits who all look the same and do what they’re told. They drive around evil headquarters in little golf carts, manipulate dials in the control room, shoot at James Bond (always missing) – then get shot themselves. Presumably – like biglaw associates – they’re mostly in it for the money, rather than a genuine penchant for evil.

I felt like an impostor at S&C – only pretending to be a genuine low-level evil henchman. I was more like James Bond after he bonks the real low-level evil henchman on the head, then reemerges strolling through evil headquarters sporting that guy’s jumpsuit.

I was an impostor – trying to look like I drank the Kool-Aid, going through the motions. I wasn’t even a clandestine agent, battling evil, like 007. The plan to blow up the moon wasn’t my problem. I just wanted a way out of that crummy job – one not involving a fatal dunk in the evil piranha tank. Somewhere in that evil-lair-secreted-in-a-hollowed-out-volcano there had to be a door marked exit.

Most of the partners I work with are looking for the same thing. The difference is, as a partner, you’re not an impostor pretending to be a low-level evil henchman – you’re an impostor pretending to be evil middle management.

“Preposterous!” you sputter, outraged. “Partners never condescend to be middle anything! They crouch, smugly, at the pinnacle of the evil pyramid! With one wiggle of their evil little finger…they manipulate human life!”

It can look that way from the bottom rung, whence a partner appears as far removed from a low-level evil henchman as a junior associate from a positive bank balance.

From the vantage of the pyramid’s sub-sub-basement, all partners appear interchangeable – the unifying feature being their utter dissimilarity from anyone like you. A partner’s one of them – evil incarnate, possessing his own evil headquarters – his own creepy evil white cat (for stroking purposes) – and his own weird evil European accent (with which to mutter, “Come now, Mr. Bond…”) A partner doesn’t have to drink the Kool-Aid – an iv bag of the stuff dangles by his bedside.

If only that were true. After getting all up-close and personal with a bevy of partners, I’ve caught wind of a terrifying reality: All partners are not the same. Most are nothing more than evil middle managers.

It turns out – I swear on a stack of Books of Mormon – there’s only one guy per law firm who actually owns an evil headquarters.

He’s also the one guy who gets to stroke a cat and mutter diabolical threats. At most, there are six or seven guys (yes, they’re always guys.)

The other, lesser partners aren’t diabolical geniuses – or low-level evil henchmen. These so-called “partners” only get to act like they personify evil – they’re hardly Dr. Evil himself. They’re more like the bland guy sitting in the wrong chair in the evil boardroom when Dr. Evil presses that discreet little button – the one that activates the steel wrist straps and the trapdoor in the floor.

I’ve worked with partners so traumatized by the situation, it’s shaken their faith in global organizations dedicated to evil.

It’s dispiriting.

Here, in a nutshell, is how you end up in evil middle management:

Over the course of years of slave labor, you make yourself indispensable to a rainmaker (your “rabbi”.) He elevates you. Then two things happen: First, you acquire the title of PARTNER and all the rights, privileges and immunities (and status and money) thereunto appertaining; and second, the ink begins to dry on a binding contract with Beelzebub.

Mr. Rabbi doesn’t share his clients with you. You’ve never spoken to them. He elevated you to do his work, transforming you into a glorified senior associate (glorified = overpaid.) Since the downturn in 2008, there are no longer any actual senior associates at the firm – they’ve been fired – so the actual partner reduces your points (partner-speak for money) and increases your workload.

It’s getting to where you’re not even overpaid, let alone glorified.

Don’t like it? No problem. Do what they keep telling you to do: Find your own clients. Generate business. Pull your weight. Do some marketing.

There are issues. First, you don’t know how to market. They didn’t have a class in “marketing” at your evil law school. Second, when you try marketing – which seems to mean pointless research, then taking people you hardly know out to lunch – you feel like an idiot. Third, it doesn’t work. They don’t suddenly call with a pile of overpaid legal stuff for you to do.

This is not entirely surprising. In a domestic market containing, at minimum, twice the lawyers the entire planet could possibly utilize, clients aren’t sitting around waiting to be asked to hire over-priced outside counsel. Many are bringing work in-house to cut legal bills – or strong-arming outside counsel to trim prices.

You could offer to reduce your fee – slide your price to bring in work – but your rabbi won’t hear of it. It would “degrade the firm’s brand” – which means it might affect his fee. He’s got his own book of business, and doesn’t give what we’ll euphemistically refer to as a “hoot” about your book of business. You’re competition.  He’s content having you do his work.

That’s evil middle management. You’re a partner, but you don’t feel like it. Your friends and family assume you’re rich and powerful. Your car mechanic tacks on made-up charges when you take your Benz in for a tune-up. Obscure charities guilt you into tickets to their annual ball thingamabobs. Even your therapist considerately slides his rate up for you.  : )

The truth is you’re rich-ish – or used to be, or were heading in that direction. But you earn a tiny fraction of the rabbi’s take and that keeps declining. And power? You hold none whatsoever, beyond the ability to torment associates – which isn’t as much fun since they fired all the associates.

Things get worse as the recession deepens. The plan to build your own book of business seems more and more like a pipe dream.

You have no actual idea what’s going on at your firm, since no one shares information. The other partners in your group tell you nothing. Without warning, five of them took off from the LA office last month. You found out by reading AboveTheLaw.

Scarier still, the rabbi isn’t sending you as much work. You hear about partners at other firms – and your own – getting pushed out. First, they’re hunched at their desks, playing computer solitaire – then they’re no longer with the firm. You recall that discreet little button.

There are additional indignities. Your secretary is fired. You come in and she’s not there. Yeah. That happens.

But you’re a partner! You can say to heck with it, and take off. If this is how they treat a co-owner of the firm, you’ll go somewhere else, where partnership still means something.

Nice try. You’re a service partner. You have no book of business. No other firm is going to greet you with open arms. They will buy a book of business – and probably overpay, since it will be inflated with clients who aren’t actually portable. But no book of business? No evil headquarters.

How about going in-house? Sure, you’ll take a pay cut, but a senior vice president job would be cool, or even general counsel. You could frame it as a lifestyle choice – something you’re doing for the wife and kids. You’ll work nine to five, get a company car, attend conferences. Might be refreshing.

It would be…if everyone else hadn’t thought of it, too. Service partners are lining up for those jobs.

Where to go?

Nowhere. You’re stuck where you are. Let’s face it, resigning your partnership isn’t a step you’ll take lightly. You worked your ass off for the ultimate lawyer honor – to become a would-be diabolical genius. You don’t give that up.

One client – a mid-level associate – recounted being taken aside by a female partner, and given a speech about the meaning of partnership. The partner intended to inspire.  She came across as unhinged.

“She said making partner was better than I could imagine,” my client recalled. “It was the greatest day of your life. It was better than sex. It was better than getting married. It was better than having a child.”

“At some point, she got this weird look in her eyes – it creeped me out. I listened with a frozen smile and thought, I’ve got to get out of here before this happens to me.”

Okay, so some partners are a little…touched. Evil genius is a difficult job description. And maybe it isn’t better than sex. But you shouldn’t under-estimate the degree to which making partner is played up in the world of biglaw. It’s the beginning of everything – wealth, power, respect. You become a real person – someone who can hold his head up. You go to private clubs, buy bad-ass apartments and vacation on Mustique in a rented villa. You’re “in” – a made man – sitting at the table with Dr. Evil (no one mentions the discreet little button.)

The truth is, I hear a lot more partners talking about resigning their partnership than I see actually doing it. One guy who did resign from a major firm was literally covered in shingles and having a nervous breakdown when he quit. He couldn’t get out of bed or stop crying. (No, he wasn’t my client.) I got the feeling he felt obligated to reduce himself to that state to earn permission to do the unthinkable – or convince his wife (who wasn’t terribly sympathetic.)

To make partner, you elevated the goal of earning major bucks into the focus of your life for an endless string of god-awful years. Along the way, you picked up a spouse and kids and a mortgage. It ends up like everything else in biglaw – all about the money.

If the rabbi’s happy and has work for you, then you still count as a partner at a big law firm. You are evil middle-management. You can wear the fez and dark glasses each day and maintain the facade. You’re a partner. You were elevated.

Meanwhile, you daydream about killing the rabbi with an ax. You hate handing your life over to that condescending windbag.  You moan to your wife about how you can’t take it anymore. How many partnership meetings can you attend in the evil boardroom, watching him toy with that discreet little button…wondering if you’re sitting in the wrong chair…

Partner isn’t a title. It’s what you do. Unless you go out there and – by some miracle – bring in business, you’re not really a partner, equity or otherwise. You’re someone who gets called a partner for working for a partner.

Even if you have a book of business, it can be tough. I worked with a junior partner with a growing book of business.  He hates the grind.  Being on-call 24/7 triggers anxiety attacks. He debates quitting, going “part-time,” trying for a government job or taking the leap and starting his own firm. With a book of business, he’s got options.

Other partners have fewer options.

One service partner client discovered her rabbi was defecting to a notorious sweatshop. He offered to bring her with, but she couldn’t stomach it, and stayed behind.

Work dried up. Now she’s at another firm, on her own, unable to drum up business. In-house jobs aren’t materializing. She talks to her husband about moving to the country, giving the whole thing up, getting out of law…

Like many partners, she’s looking for an exit – one not involving a fatal dunk in the evil piranha tank.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

For some background on Dan and his work, click here.

As always, it was great to talk with Dan – he takes his time, asks good questions and knows what he’s talking about.  We explored issues around depression, talked a bit about my books, and related everything to law, lawyers and the environment of a law firm.

You can read the full interview here.

My thanks to Dan, for arranging and conducting this nice long talk about topics that fascinate and concern us both.

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If you’re interested in learning more about the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of psychotherapy, you might enjoy my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”

My second book takes a humorous look at the current state of the legal profession, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist”

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

For information on my private practice, click here.

“I study. Then I study some more. Then I go to sleep. Then I get up and study again. It’s the same for everyone.”

At least, I proposed, the subject matter was interesting.

She demurred. “Yeah, I guess…but – really? I mean…Property law? Contracts? Torts?”

Her demurrer was sustained. She had a point.

Maybe it’s your turn to demur. The subject matter of law school – law itself – not interesting!?? That’s unthinkable. It has to be the school’s fault – my client must be attending some fourth-tier degree mill, with sub-par teaching and a dull-witted student body…

But the school’s not at issue here. She’s attending one of the top places in the country. Not that it would make much difference, since every law school essentially teaches the same thing, first-tier or fourth-tier.

Then it must be her fault. If she doesn’t appreciate the study of law – if this Philistine isn’t drawn to the greatness of legal scholarship – she doesn’t deserve her seat at an exalted institution.

I’m not convinced. This young woman projects intelligence, and turns heart-felt-y and passionate discussing her real interest – international human rights law. Unlike most law students, she did an internship and reads books, so she knows what international human rights law is (even if, like most law students, she vastly over-estimates its significance.)

It’s possible things will get better next year, when she takes a course on international human rights law. On the other hand, law school courses have a way of making topics less interesting than they were before you took them.

Maybe the fault doesn’t lie with any particular school, or any particular student. Maybe it lies with the myths surrounding law school itself.

Let’s gather for a moment, and contemplate the inconceivable: Maybe law school is just…well…not that big a deal. Maybe it isn’t engrossing or life-altering or – much of anything. Maybe the whole schtick – law school as the turning point in a young lawyer’s existence – is oversold. The legal industry itself is a bubble recently popped. Perhaps the mystique surrounding law school is due for puncture.

Ask yourself – is the subject matter taught in law schools really so engrossing? Or were you taught to believe the subject matter taught in law schools is really so engrossing?

It would make sense, in the greater scheme of things, if the whole “law school experience” were massively over-hyped. Lawyers remain, after centuries of skill-honing, master bullshit artists – especially with regard to any matter touching upon their own significance. To judge from their own press, you’d think lawyers were free-lance philosophers rather than the guys who draft purchase agreements to keep holding corporations from paying taxes, or file minutiae-laden briefs to sustain Big Pharma’s eternal patent infringement battles.

Lawyers incline towards the hoity-toity the way heliotropes incline towards the sunny-sunny. Phrases such as “precise intellect,” “formidable legal mind” and “brilliant analytical prowess” get tossed about like so many croutons over a caesar.

I doubt accountants speak of a “formidable accounting intellect” or dentists praise one another for “brilliant dental prowess.” I hope not.

It follows logically that the legal world’s fetish for pretension trickles down to the law schools, and the law students themselves – who soak up all that pomposity and behave during their first year as though their cosmic entireties lay balanced each hour on a fulcrum between existential completeness and the barren void. They take it so seriously you want to smack them. No, the professor doesn’t want to stay late after lecture and argue some point of tort analysis. He wants to go home and play that new level of Angry Birds set in outer space, just like you should want to do. He’s only pretending he cares that much about tort stuff because that’s what law school is about – pretending law is the most fascinating thing in the entire world. Maintaining this illusion plays a key role in keeping law professors, and law schools, earning big bucks.

Remember the official schtick beaten into every law student’s cranium: Law school is where they re-make you. Law school is where you learn to think like a lawyer.

In case you were wondering, here is the formal definition of to think like a lawyer: verb, 1) to display a neurotic tendency to hostile, oppositional behavior; and/or 2) to obsess over unnecessary, pointless detail.

The extravagance of lawyer egotism is matched – if not exceeded – by lawyer humorlessness. The result is a professional edifice so laden with pretension that, if anyone so much as farted, the whole rig might tumble Earthward, accompanied by giggles.

For better or worse, in a room full of lawyers, no one could ever loosen up sufficiently to launch such blessed mirth. So, once again, The People’s Therapist steps into the breach – and does what he must.

Without further ado – and just in time for exams! – I present The People’s Therapist’s Three Key Rules to Surviving Law School…

Rule number one: avoid your classmates.

A 1L client refuses to so much as avail herself of the “study break” events planned by extracurricular groups at her school. Spending time with classmates pointlessly spikes her anxiety level.

“I’ll be chatting with the one friend who’s cool – shooting the breeze. Then some idiot from our section walks up and suddenly it’s like: Have you done your outline for Torts yet? Oh my God, do you think there’ll be a question on fault liability?”

Ignoring your classmates is an essential key to surviving law school. For starters, eschew “study groups.” Those other people will get you riled up and distracted, and they won’t help you do any better on the exam. And by the way – hello! – you’re competing against them. What’s the point of pretending you’re not?

Go home and study. To heck with those other people. Shun them like plague victims.

I had exactly one friend in law school. Later on, after spending time in the company of real live lawyers, I still had exactly one attorney friend and it was the same guy. That’s when it clicked, and all became clear.

(In the interests of receiving no more than my usual quota of hate mail, I’ll try to put this delicately.)

Lawyers, as a group, are pompous, uptight, miserable, or boring. That begins in law school.

(Of course you’re the exception, so yes, you can relax.)

Rule number two: use commercial outlines.

It’s that simple. One client, who attended a tippy-top school and earned lousy grades first year, told me his big mistake – embracing his professors’ snobbery against commercial outlines. He bought outlines second and third year and, predictably, his grades shot up. Unfortunately, no one cares about second and third year.

Law school is about first year. First year grades. That’s it. And that means memorizing commercial outlines from day one, then practicing essays until your fingers bleed.

The professors are charming and eccentric and amusing, but it’s rare to find one who can deliver a coherent lecture. More common are coots mumbling into their notes, or psychos who fetishize wasting class time tormenting students with the “Socratic method.” That’s another bit of schtick, where you call on people at random with confusing, arbitrary trivia questions and try to humiliate them until they cry. At least for the professor, it’s fun – and easier than preparing a lecture.

In terms of the content of the classes, law schools – all law schools – hit you with one thing – a pointless tsunami of legal doctrine. Doctrine, doctrine and more doctrine. More “three-pronged tests” than you can shake a three-pronged stick at.

For actual, practical legal skills, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Schools don’t teach that stuff. Neither does anyone else.

Happily, there’s nothing on Earth better-suited to the task of cramming an assload of pointless legal doctrine into your head than a commercial outline. They do the trick because that’s what they’re for.

A guy in my NYU section skipped lectures and crammed commercial outlines all semester. The following year he transferred to Yale. You can do it too! Just memorize everything, and practice those damned essays until you reflexively plop out something shiny and nice on command. If it’s a teensy bit shinier and nicer than what the people sitting next to you plop out, you’re golden.

(By the way – in case you’ve never contemplated the horror of grading those exams, an old friend of mine is a law professor, and he took me there. He sits on the floor with a big pile of the hideous things, dips into a few, divides them into A B and C piles, then keeps reading and sorting. The awful process takes weeks, is admittedly rather arbitrary, and the sheer drudgery of it almost justifies his bloated salary.)

If you want to act all holier-than-thou about using commercial outlines, I invite you to go ahead and read the sacred “cases” in your “casebook.” But be forewarned – the old ones were penned in Saxon dialect during the Bronze Age. I defy anyone to elucidate, without a commercial outline, what Marbury v. Madison is trying to say. Might as well be carved in stone with hieroglyphs.

(Of course, as an attorney, I am eminently qualified to discourse at length on the crucial role this seminal work of jurisprudence played in weaving the fabric of our democracy. But somehow I sense you’d rather I not.)

More recent cases remain dense, self-indulgent and circumlocutory. Of particular note are those super-annoying and utterly impenetrable “concur in part but dissent in part” Supreme Court decisions that make you want to pull your hair out trying to deduce the bottom line.

Buy an outline and save yourself the agita. Deciphering recent high court decisions is as fulfilling as trying to coax Antonin Scalia over his terror of homosexuals, or teach John Roberts how it feels to be poor. A pointless exercise.

Rule Number Three: Don’t kid yourself this is either a big deal, or going to be a lot of fun.

It’s isn’t and it isn’t. The only thing that matters to anyone in law school – including you – is your grades. Each semester amounts to a waiting period before you take exams.

A client told me he could strangle the Supreme Court Justice who advised his class (at a hot-shot law school): “Grades don’t matter anymore. You’re here. Now you can relax.”

Doh! He landed at the bottom third of his class and is still looking for a job.

Don’t fool yourself. It’s all about grades – which means it’s all about exams – and the difference between an A and a B on a law school exam can be measured under an electron scanning microscope. So good luck.

As for the material itself – there are two kinds of law students.

If you cherish and adore Civ Pro – if the subtle distinctions between subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction ignite your mind with radiant epiphanies – then kudos to you. Maybe you were born to be a lawyer.

For the rest of us, Con Law is the most interesting course, first, because there isn’t much competition – Torts, anyone? – and second, because Con Law boils down to a self-gratifying debate over values disguised as an intellectual debate over legalities. Here’s the big insight: In any Con Law case that you actually care about, Republican judges vote one way and Democrat judges vote the other way. That’s why elections matter. The rest is so much pontificating.

Con Law isn’t merely bogus – it’s also useless. It might make you feel like a better, more educated citizen, and perhaps that’s a legitimate purpose. Most Americans don’t realize there is a Constitution, or know what one is – but – as a nation – we all adore pondering the meaning of liberty. I suppose the few of us with the money to purchase a higher education ought to possess a smattering of familiarity with the foundational documents.

On the other hand, the staggering loans you’re taking out to pay for that education are real – and you’ll never get paid for patriotic navel-gazing. Maybe half a dozen times per year, a law suit actually raises an issue in the US Constitution – something like gay marriage. Then it gets voted down along party lines, and that’s that. The chances that you’ll ever litigate an issue under the First Amendment parallel the chances that you’ll win the Mega Millions – or that my client will wield the authority of international human rights law to wipe evil dictators off the globe. Not gonna happen.

You study Con Law because it’s part of the schtick – the law school gestalt. You play along and savor the ambience of hushed libraries and leather-bound tomes. The exam, and your grades, are all that matters. Then passing the bar. Then year after year after year after year in hell, paying loans.

If you’re attending Yale, you might spend third year in a seminar with a federal circuit judge, mulling “Law and the Experimental Films of Southeast Asia.” One client – a Yale grad in her 60′s – experienced paroxysms of nostalgia recalling a long-ago seminar on the “history and philosophical underpinnings of injunctions.” Yes, an entire semester plumbing the etiology, phenomenology and epistemology of injunctions.

Whatevers. It’s still law. It’s still a bit boring, and a bit pointless. You’re not splitting the atom – you’re fussing over fine distinctions, splitting hairs, exhausting exhausted arguments.

I invite you to savor a lively discussion of injunctions – among yourselves – while I grab a beer from the fridge and watch reruns of “Fashion Police.”

Law school is oversold – the law-school/law-firm establishment makes it out to be a life-altering peak experience. It’s not. The intellectual challenge is more like philosophy lite. You might find it rather ho-hum. If you do, you’ll be following in the well-worn footsteps of those who went before.

Basically, it’s college all over again – but less fun.

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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

Dear People’s Therapist

I have been a fan of your blog for a long time, and thank you for running the blog!  I have the following question:
My mother-in-law is obese.  My father-in-law just passed away a year ago from diabetes.  My husband wants to talk to his mother to get her to lose weight because he doesn’t want to lose her (she is almost 60 years old).  We tried hinting but it got no where.  We tried inviting her over to our house for healthy dinners but because I’m Chinese and my husband is Caucasian American, our Chinese diet of vegetables and tofu is not exactly her cup of tea.  We tried analyzing the situation and decided that she doesn’t eat much during meals but she snacks a lot on junk foods.  My husband wants to know how can he talk to his mother about her losing weight and not hurt her feelings or sound like we don’t like fat people (my husband and I are the only skinny people in the family)??

Thank you very much!!

Y

And here’s my response:

To submit a question to Ask The People’s Therapist, please email it as text or a video to: wmeyerhofer@aquietroom.com

If I answer your question on the site, you’ll win a free session of psychotherapy with The People’s Therapist.
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If you’re interested in learning more about the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of psychotherapy, you might enjoy my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”

My second book takes a humorous look at the current state of the legal profession, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist”

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

For information on my private practice, click here.

Your ultimate goal? Something better. A place where you might actually do good. Few lawyers receive that opportunity. Many, exposed to goodness, would burst into flames.

That’s why you’re taking the high road, escaping the pervasive cynicism and greed. You’ve got your sights set on a not-for-profit institution, dedicated to the promise of a better tomorrow.

Will it work? Can a lawyer escape pervasive cynicism and greed?

Seems unlikely.

Let’s talk about the the not-for-profit track – its ups, downs and in-betweens.

Right off the bat, we have to discuss salary. I know – you want to escape all that – the obsession with filthy lucre. But there’s a stark reality you must grasp before reporting for duty at a not-for-profit: You will earn bupkis.

Maybe that’s okay with you – like Hebrew National, you answer to a higher authority. On the other hand, if – like most young lawyers – you’re sitting on a zillion dollars in bankruptcy-proof loans, an extended period of earning zilch could prove…inconvenient.

This aforesaid stark reality also explains one of the dirty little secrets of the not-for-profit world: It’s a magnet for rich kids. If Mom and Dad have already paid off the $200k you blew on an undergraduate degree and law school, then bought you the cutest little one-bedroom in Chelsea and a brand new Prius…well, the logical next step is to save the world. It’ll be fun!

Not-for-profits are bursting at the seams with eager-beaver trust-afarians – and it doesn’t stop there. Sometimes Mom and Dad (and their friends) sit on the board. Sometimes the charismatic founder and Executive Director is a grinning, twenty-something former college lacrosse star, just back from Burning Man. You can’t hold it against him if he wants to donate a snippet of grandaddy’s styrofoam factory fortune to making the world a better place. But his white-boy dread locks and penchant for calling you “bro” in the hallway make you wince.

I’m merely acknowledging a reality. It can grate a bit, in the not-for-profit world, if you’re not in possession of a trust fund. It can feel disempowering when the Director of the One Love Institute for International Human Rights flies business class to a conference in Burkina Faso on theories of poverty and doesn’t appear to grasp that her plane ticket could feed a village there for a year. It doesn’t help when, upon her return, as she’s hopping a flight to her family’s cottage on Martha’s Vineyard, she gushes about how she adores Coney Island – a topic you awkwardly brought up because that’s where you go to the beach, via subway.

The situation might not rise to the level of “class warfare,” but working with rich kids can grow annoying – and make almost anything other than working for rich kids start to seem not so bad.

Yes, your friends in biglaw are tormented by sadistic partners and slave night and day to do the bidding of plutocrats. Yes, they despise their lives.

On the other hand, associates in biglaw can afford to take cabs, have dry cleaning done, eat out in grown-up restaurants, and buy grown-up clothes. You can’t.

Typically, your great hope for financial salvation – if you’re at a not-for-profit and not-rich – is qualifying for a loan repayment program. The mission – if you decide to accept it – is to stay continuously un-gainfully employed and cope with life as a pauper for about a decade. If you make it, your loans disappear and you achieve every young lawyer’s ultimate dream – zero net worth.

Sounds good. But there’s a leap of faith implied in this set-up.

First, not-for-profit jobs are hard to snag. It doesn’t seem like they should be. These outfits pay next to nothing, and beggars can’t be choosers. They should be drooling at the prospect of hiring someone like you – and a few years ago, they might have been. Even with the rich kids, openings existed for talented young people bringing a wealth (of commitment) to the job. But the dynamics changed after the crash of ’08. Now half the profession is out of work, and it no longer requires much wheedling for biglaw to seduce its victims – they’re lining up for mistreatment like mendicants with bowls out. Yes, your peers – and you – are the beggars who can’t be choosing. Even a $45k not-for-profit job looks good, juxtaposed against living on the street.

Second, even if you can find a not-for-profit job, you have to manage to keep it, and not-for-profits rarely provide steady, reliable employment. As I understand it, you need at least three years at a not-for-profit to qualify for loan repayment. That can be tough to pull off. Over and above the issue of nasty office politics (i.e., it’s easy to get fired), there’s another factor: Not-for-profits are typically funded by grants, which run for a stated period. If the grant runs out, or the project is finished,  or there’s “mission drift,” or they decide to head in a different direction, or the weather turns rainy – you can wind up out of a job.

At that point, you join the miserable hordes of the lawyer-underemployed, which is all fine and good – misery loves company and, like everyone else, you can try to dig up some doc review work or give up on law and tend bar…except for that other factor: Your hopes for loan repayment are on the line.

To put matters baldly, if you bet all your chips on a not-for-profit (and loan repayment), you may find yourself up a creek in sore need of paddling apparatus.

At this point it’s worth addressing an even profounder question. If you can actually pull off the feat of situating yourself in a not-for-profit and live with the attendant financial risks, what will you actually be doing there?

That’s easy. Protecting the rights of the little people – the prisoners and the disabled and the schoolchildren from poor neighborhoods, the international victims of international human rights whatchamacallit – those people. In other words, you will be doing big things. Big, change-the-world things. That’s the best part of working in not-for-profit. Instead of writing a brief defending evil, polluting, discriminating, harassing mega-corporations, you write a brief for the good guys. That means a lot.

Unfortunately, it also raises a potential pitfall of the not-for-profit world – stupid ideas. Even when you mean well, and are working for the good guys, when you’re trying to accomplish big things and change the future of humanity, it’s possible to go off the rails. Every so often – and if you’ve worked in not-for-profit-land you know what I’m talking about – you get saddled with a truly misguided project. Once it’s funded – once someone’s written the thousand page grant proposal and (against the odds) won the grant – the whole thing is frozen in concrete. Even if it kinda doesn’t really make any sense.

That’s when you find yourself opening the outreach center in the neighborhood that doesn’t really need an outreach center – or searching for plaintiffs to defend the rights of people who have more serious rights to worry about defending, or don’t need to go to court to defend them since they’d be better off protesting or meeting with the appropriate people and working out a deal (lawyers don’t work out deals – they sue people.)

You have to do what it says in the grant. You can’t go to your boss and say this isn’t working, it doesn’t make sense. You have to shut up and do it. She probably knows it doesn’t make sense, just like you – but grants are what makes the wheels go round. Maybe she’s not a trust fund baby either and that grant for a misguided project is paying her rent.

Another not-so-inspiring situation arrives when the ideas aren’t stupid, but the clients are corrupt and awful. When you’re a public defender working with street criminals you can’t expect to like each and every client. But there’s something about working for peanuts and putting in long hours to lend your voice to a struggle – then finding out the person you’re struggling for is annoying or stupid or in it for the money and exploiting you. It can be a turn-off, and it happens. Not all the time – but it can be useful to admit, it happens.

All of this stuff contributes to a key attribute of not-for-profits. For want of a better word, I’ll term it bitchiness. Not-for-profits have a reputation for being…bitchy. I don’t mean that in a sexist sense – the men at not-for-profits are bitchy too.

Why are not-for-profits often such damned unpleasant places to work? It might be because everyone there is hungry for attention. After all – if you work at a not-for-profit, you possess some not-inconsiderable claim to sainthood. You’re ignoring the temptations of biglaw, with its fatcat salaries and fancy offices and black cars home at night. You’re working hard for almost nothing – sacrificing all because you care about the little people. If the world were a just place, someone should hand you a plaque. At least they could feature you in the donor newsletter.  But they didn’t. And that pisses you off. Because that other guy at your level, who hasn’t been there as long, got in the newsletter. Which is why you hate him.

It can get to you, working for the good of the planet with no one paying attention. Your Executive Director is a community hero – the focus of a stream of accolades. But you’ve seen her in action, and everyone knows she’s a useless, spoiled princess…

Welcome to not-for-profit bitchery. It resides in a league all its own.

And don’t think the usual office bullshit – sexual harassment, competitiveness, interdepartmental chill – doesn’t exist at not-for-profits. It only grows more intense, and snippier, in these claustrophobic confines. There are times when everyone there seems to have gone martyr at once, and you wish you could go “for-profit,” double all their salaries and tell them to knock it off with the whining.

Not-for-profit administration is typically a nightmare. That’s because no one wants to be the admin at a not-for-profit. They want to save the world – not manage the budget and benefits and vacation schedules and ordering office supplies and making sure the mail server is working. If you want to do that stuff for a living, you’re probably already doing it at a for-profit company and earning more.

To heighten the delights, not-for-profits compete with one another like sons of bitches, and they’re all fighting for the same dollars. If someone manages to do something major – win a case or get some piece of legislation passed, then everyone else swoops in to gobble up the credit, like sharks feasting on a bait ball.

Then there are the donors – the real bosses. I remember my summer at the Gay and Lesbian Rights Project at the ACLU, circa 1995. Word had it Barbara Streisand’s assistant phoned in each week for a lengthy personal update from the Executive Director.  Babs was paying the bills, so Babs got a personal update.  At least Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue laid low after cutting their checks.

Raising money is the raison d’etre for not-for-profits. Without the money, there is no institution – the cart is placed firmly in front of the horse. Everything – everything – becomes about appearances. If you do something impressive, you have to convert it into marketing materials and flood the airwaves with it to raise cash. If something doesn’t pan out – a project turns out to be useless or misguided – well, you still have to make it look impressive and heroic and world-changing. You have no choice. It’s that – or everyone’s out of a job.

Yes, there are committed people out there doing good, and enjoying fulfilling careers working at not-for-profits.

But the not-for-profit world isn’t an all-purpose answer to the problem of unhappy lawyers. It presents challenges of its own. You might find yourself gazing wistfully at the other, for-profit side of the fence, where the grass begins to assume a verdant hue.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

I conjure a map from blank parchment.  It returns the favor – conjuring a New World from my collected observations, and serving as a trusty guide.  The expanse charted in shorthand on the map permits me to “rack focus” (as they say in film-making) – alter my gaze to take a fresh perspective, observe an unaccustomed vista. The map, as it develops, assumes a shape of its own.  Disparate regions are drawn together by common threads – the length of a river’s course, a shared coastline or mountain range.  My attention drifts to objects on the edges of boundaries, features I might have missed.  The elusive “big picture” – awareness, the ultimate goal in psychotherapy – begins to coalesce.

The first step in the process comes as a question, from the therapist.  The phrasing of that “first question” gets debated when therapists gather.  I trained with a colleague who invariably asked the same thing at each first session:  “So what brings you here today?”  That feels twisty and indirect to me.  I usually start with “So how are you?” or, depending on my mood, or yours, “So how’s it going?”  Sometimes there’s serious upset taking place in the here and now, that needs attending to right away.  Before I sketch the background – the mountains and the sea and the rivers – I need to know if there’s a battle occurring on that stony plain, a castle under siege, a forest caught fire.

This is an historical map.  I am mapping a quest – an epic voyage.  You are the hero. Ours will be the sort of map with crossed swords to mark battlefields and mythic beasts to guard those unexplored zones at the edges of awareness.

The first question doesn’t matter much, because your unconscious feelings function like a compass.  Wherever you start, you’ll find yourself where you need to be.

I have a good sense of direction, too.  If I sense we’re drifting off-course, I’ll lean my elbow on the tiller.

Your compass is guided by emotion, drawn to it as to a magnetic pole.  If I detect an increase in feeling, I might grow cautious, slow our pace and sniff the breeze, comb the sky for a cynosure – fear, anger, sadness, hurt.  Emotions guide our way.

A primary goal is to map the kingdom in which you were born and raised, to appraise its sovereign, and the manner of his rule.

Who was the elusive Wizard in your childhood kingdom?  How did one attain his Emerald City to beg an audience?  Why were witches left free to wreak havoc in the land?  When did you notice the man behind the curtain, operating levers and dials?

A good fantasy novel includes a map, preferably printed or folded behind the front and back covers.  A superior work of fantasy transports you someplace new, a land that grows familiar as you explore and memorize the features printed on that geographical survey.  It becomes, in time, an atlas to your imagination.

Children love maps and fantasy and the promise of magic, and they live within a world resembling the worlds depicted in those maps.  Everything is new to a child – they are small, helpless voyagers, stumbling upon all that’s around them for the first time.  A child comprehends there are vast reaches he has never explored –  mysteries he has yet to fathom.

Your first kingdom may have encompassed, as mine did, half a dozen front- and backyards in a suburban enclave.  One of your first acts may have been to  map these surroundings in your imagination.  Perhaps your private demesne included a series of trails through an empty lot where you played, or the path back to a dam you once constructed in a creek in the woods, or a mystifying secret passage around a wooden fence and under a hedge that magically linked two otherwise unrelated ball fields.  A wonder and a mystery.  Children start early with cartography – it is a in-born trait, an instinct innate to our species.

As you study a map, you wonder.  What is that place like?  What does it feel like to stand there and look around, to wake up in that city, to gaze from that prominence up at the nighttime sky?

In psychotherapy, I examine your personal map, pose those questions, and ask them of myself.

What was it like to live in your child-world?  How did it shape your expectations?  Do you rely still upon that map, even living elsewhere and in a different time?  Do the traces of a lost world remain, like ruins beneath the dust you tread, a palimpsest, guiding your passage in unfelt ways?

We construct a map, together.

Familiarity dulls a map-maker’s art.  You cannot accurately map your own backyard after too long a stay in the same house.  You must stand outside and recall its outlines.  You require a new perspective and fresh eyes or you’ll miss the details.

Imagine you are riding in a street car in a strange city, describing what you see into a cell phone.  The person on the other end knows the city well – and he is trying to discern, from your naive descriptions, where you must be – the buildings and shops and corners and streetlights and signs enciphered by a foreign tongue that glide past – groping for a landmark to anchor his mental sketch of your surroundings.

Someone related that image to me as a metaphor for psychotherapy – I don’t remember who.  He said it could be credited to Freud.

I don’t know if I agree with it entirely.  Can I truly recognize the landscape of your human journey, sufficiently that, if you provide me a description of where you are, I can place you on a familiar map?  Perhaps.

But the sense of dislocation rings true.  The sense of being lost, struggling to find your way by discerning details around you and relating them to an outsider.

In psychotherapy, we grope in the dark, you and I, on a linked journey.

You have to get lost to arrive someplace new.

Keep talking.  You’ll find your way.

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If you’re interested in learning more about the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of psychotherapy, you might enjoy my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”

My second book takes a humorous look at the current state of the legal profession, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist”

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

For information on my private practice, click here.

The standard story is some variant of the following: You are either out of work or loathe your work. You have $180k in loans. You have either no income or an impermanent income paid to you in exchange for any joy life might offer. You see no hope.

Let me spell out the critical element here: You are one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in debt.

Just to fully drive the point home: that’s bankruptcy-proof debt.

You’ve yelled at your parents, but it’s not really their fault. You’ve wept and wailed and gotten drunk and stoned and consumed a script of Xanax. You’ve tried sleeping and pretending you don’t have to wake up.

Then comes the pilgrimage. Perhaps I can heal with a laying on of hands.

Okay, here’s the feedback I’ll receive for what I’ve written so far:

You’re exaggerating. You’re bringing me down. Law isn’t so bad. I love law.

Yeah, well good for you. I’m not exaggerating.

It’s their own damn fault. No one made them go to law school.

Yes. They. Did. Stop kidding yourself – the entire system is engineered to lead smart, conscientious kids exactly where it leads them. And get off it already with the no sympathy/blame the victim routine.

How bad are things? How many times can I pose that (at this point rhetorical) question?

Young lawyers look me in the eye and ask, how am I supposed to carry on with my life? What they mean is – how is one supposed to live a life worth living – a life that satisfies one as a human being – trapped in the hell of law and law school loans?

Sometime, I ask them what they would be doing with their lives, if they didn’t have loans. Here are some of their answers:

Teach yoga and healthy nutrition.

Play drums.

Become a park ranger.

Design clothes.

Open a bluegrass bar.

Write a science fiction trilogy.

Open an antiques store.

Become a family therapist.

Work in a bakery.

Study Marine Biology.

These answers shouldn’t surprise anyone. Young lawyers – like most young people – yearn to take a risk on something mad, creative and unknown. To learn something new. To follow a passion. But you can’t pursue those things – or, at least, it’s darn tough – when a bank is dunning you for a missed interest payment.

What can you do to escape the debt trap? I keep fielding that question. I still don’t have a decent answer.

You could try to find a day job – something bearable that will permit you to pay the minimum on your loans for the next 30 years, and still live a meaningful life. Can it be done? Maybe. It tends to boil down to concentrating on hobbies while working your way through a string of mind-numbing legal gigs (often doc review.) That might work, so long as mind-numbing legal gigs (often doc review) remain available.

Some of my clients reject the day job route. They insist the loans can never be paid – to do so would consume a lifetime, and in the attempt, you’d lose years better spent building a meaningful existence. I’ve met lawyers who plan to move abroad where the banks can’t find them. Others talk about going underground – staying in the USA, but relocating with no forwarding address so they can work under the table or using an assumed name.

It’s amazing, but true – the law school loan nightmare is turning American kids into the equivalent of undocumented aliens. Remember those “Dream Act” kids, the American 20-somethings who, after living in the USA since infancy, have to hide in the shadows thanks to vicious anti-immigrant laws? They’ve got company – young lawyers hiding from banks thanks to vicious bankruptcy laws.

For better or worse, I’m a psychotherapist. I’m not an expert in hiding from governments or banks. I have no advice to provide in that department.

So, the pilgrims ask – what’s left? What can I do that might make a difference?

In this respect, they sound like my online comment-writers, who are typically blunter:

All you do is natter on and on – bashing law. You’re like a broken record. If it’s really so bad, then how about providing answers?

Everyone wants an answer.

Well, okay. Here’s an answer. I call it the “It Gets Worse” Project.

Dan Savage responded to the suicides of LGBT kids by creating the “It Gets Better” Project. You post YouTube videos telling kids what they need to know: if you survive the homophobic hell of high school, it gets better – being LGBT can be fun.

The “It Gets Worse” Project performs the same service for young people at risk of career-suicide. You post YouTube videos telling kids what they need to know: if you survive the hell of law school, it gets worse – debt-slavery sucks.

Is this project going to help you? No, it’s too late for that. It might make you feel better, but the plan is to protect young people’s lives from the law school loan racket. That’s something. It could make a difference.

Ready to post a video?

It wouldn’t take much – you know what to do. For about five minutes, you tell the truth.

Do I expect a lawyer to take that risk? I’m not betting the farm on it. A proposal for forthright candor in a public forum appears unlikely to take the legal world by storm. Look up “lawyer” in the dictionary. The entry reads: “risk-averse.”

Still… it could happen. Here’s why: Sometimes you have nothing to lose. That’s when the impossible happens, and change becomes inevitable.

Last year I told a guy at the Occupy Wall Street protest I admired his courage for camping in the cold to make a point about social inequality. His reply said everything: “I haven’t got a choice, friend.” He believed our society was way off course, and only way to correct it was to be where he was, doing what he was doing.

That conversation took me back to the 1980′s, and the ACT-UP protests. Americans were dying of AIDS by the tens of thousands, while the government mostly ignored it. (Ronald Reagan memorably refused to utter the word, “AIDS,” for most of his presidency.) For better or worse, my friends in ACT-UP had nothing to lose. They refused to die quietly, and insisted on telling the truth, in hopes of saving lives.

When you have nothing to lose, you stop being so damned risk-averse.

There’s a growing population of lawyers with nothing to lose. It’s not like there are jobs out there for kids with so-so grades from so-so law schools with no experience and eighteen months of unemployment on their resume (which describes the majority of young lawyers.) Maybe you’re damned if you do…but you’re already damned if you don’t, so who gives a damn anyway?

Ergo, let’s do something. Let’s prevent more naïve young people from falling victim to the same scam that left you in this mess.

If you lack the chutzpah to post a personal video – how about a collective one, like those “corporate” videos inspired by “It Gets Better”? How about a “Survivors of Sullivan & Cromwell” It Gets Worse video? (Let me know – I’ll be there.) Maybe “Unemployed Doc Reviewers of Los Angeles” or “Unemployed Graduates of New York Law School”? Maybe the “We Owe Over Two Hundred Grand Club”? Use your imagination.

If someone somewhere summons the moxie to post an “It Gets Worse” video, the movement could gather steam. That could lead to further direct action against the fraud being perpetrated by law schools. I envision tuition strikes, mass drop-outs, maybe an “Occupy Law School” movement. The little Michael Moore in me would glow with pride.

I’d settle for a video. A voyage of a thousand miles begins with a single footstep…yadda yadda. C’mon, people – we’re talking about crying “Stop!” before another youngster blithely signs another loan for another sixty grand and in the process wrecks his future.

You did everything you were told and played it safe. Look where it got you. Take a risk for a change – speak the truth.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

This is the situation: my boyfriend of three years is an overachiever. He attended the best schools and now works in NYC. He’s in finance, from his personal office he sees most of Central Park, and I love him very much. As for me, I am currently studying for the Bar Exam. I’ll probably pass, but it’s not like I’m very confident about it. I do not have either the background or the grades to make it to a big law firm, and I am uncertain about what to do with my career. When I’m with my boyfriend, I can’t help but to compare my situation with his, and even though I don’t want to admit it, I’m jealous. My boyfriend never pressured me, and he is 100% behind me, but I still feel like a loser. How to deal then when people in your entourage succeed and you feel you’re the only one having to catch up?

Thank you, S

And here’s my response:

To submit a question to Ask The People’s Therapist, please email it as text or a video to: wmeyerhofer@aquietroom.com

If I answer your question on the site, you’ll win a free session of psychotherapy with The People’s Therapist.
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If you’re interested in learning more about the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of psychotherapy, you might enjoy my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”

My second book takes a humorous look at the current state of the legal profession, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist”

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

For information on my private practice, click here.

Aspirational purchase meant you bought the book not because you were going to read it, but because you aspired to read it. You might even convince yourself you were going to – but in all likelihood it would serve as a pretentious coffee table tchotchke, an impressive (if un-cracked) spine on a decorative bookshelf, or a useful device to prop up a little kid’s butt so he could reach the cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.

An aspirational purchase is intended to impress – you want to be seen buying it. It tends to be something conservative as well. And long. And difficult. “War and Peace” is the classic aspirational purchase, but you might also pick up something with a political message that makes you look wise and open-minded, like “The Satanic Verses” (which, for the record, I actually read.) (No, I’ve never plumbed War and Peace. However, I embrace the fact that plenty of you certainly have read it and, yes, loved it and desire for me to acknowledge you’ve read it and how much you loved it – to which I reply, in advance, how very nice for you.)

Law school is an aspirational purchase.

You choose law because it’s more impressive than an internship or “assistant” job – which is how you’d have to start out in an ordinary career. With law you jump directly to the land of the grown-ups without passing Go. From the moment you graduate, you have a “profession.” That means (at least in theory) you wear a suit and people take you seriously. You’re an “attorney” – not someone’s assistant.

Law is conservative, too. It’s about the least imaginative thing you could do. A law degree establishes (at least in theory) that you are serious and focused and down-to-business. No more staying up all night partying for you. It’s time to retire that giant plastic bong with the “Steal Your Face” decals and step up to adulthood, dude.

Law is also difficult – or it appears difficult – an interminable slog through tedious lectures and exams, culminating in the bar exam – a difficult, interminable slog that exists for no reason other than the apparent requirement that there be a difficult, interminable slog at the end of a difficult interminable slog.

You can wrap also yourself up in saving the world, as a lawyer – or attempt to. I used to assure people my destiny was to become a “civil rights lawyer.” That lasted one year – until the ACLU lawyer at my summer internship told me I needed “big firm” experience. (This was not heartbreaking news; my classmates were stampeding to big firms and the thought of the money produced an instant adrenaline rush.)

Book stores love aspirational purchases. The books themselves are all the same – “classics” or merely obvious choices no one so much reads as aspires to read. Delightfully – from the marketer’s point of view – buyers seldom grasp that giant, fancy editions of books like “War and Peace” can be printed in quantity for next to nothing, especially because most of these titles reside in the public domain. But you can charge a lot, since they look thick and impressive, especially if you bind them in leather with gold print to produce something Alistair Cooke might clutch while introducing Masterpiece Thee-ah-tuh.

A law degree, similarly, costs next to nothing to manufacture. The “product” a law school shills consists of standardized lectures any lawyer could deliver in his sleep, coupled with the systematic grading of a pile of exams. There’s no originality involved. I haven’t practiced law in more than a decade, but I’m confident I could deliver a Contracts lecture tomorrow to a hall filled with bored 1L’s and they’d never notice the difference. Just give me a store-bought outline and a half hour to refresh my memory.

Law schools are cheap and easy to run, but the top ones (and many non-top ones) charge over $50,000 per year for tuition, room and board. As a rough calculation, if law school ran all year long, that would be nearly $1,000 per week. Since it actually only runs about 8 months of the year, let’s say law school costs around $1,400 per week. If you have seven lectures per week, that means you’re paying $200 per lecture.

Two hundred dollars per lecture. Roughly one hundred dollars per hour to sit drowsing with one hundred other weary souls, each of whom is also paying one hundred dollars per hour for the privilege.

That’s obscene – a bit like charging someone $35 for a fancy-looking leather edition of a public domain chestnut like War and Peace that costs $3.25 in paper, ink and delivery charges.

Who would be fool enough to buy it?

Well, it’s an aspirational purchase.

At New York Law School – hardly a first-tier operation, and typical as law schools go – an average student graduates with $125k in debt. They recently expanded the size of their classes. No wonder they’ve built a shiny new building and boast one of the top ten endowments in the country. They are earning mad bank – but it’s blood money, since their graduates wind up jobless and in debt up to their eyebrows. One of my clients spotted a notice recently on an ad for paralegal positions: “No J.D.’s.”

Yeah – it’s that bad.

Aspirational purchases – whether “War & Peace” or law school – are a rip-off, because the buyer doesn’t know what he’s buying. He acts on impulse, and chases an aspiration – a fantasy – rather than reality.

You aren’t going to get around to reading “War and Peace” someday when you retire. If you didn’t get to it in college, then sorry, that massive Russian tome from the 19^th century isn’t going to get read by you or anyone you know, any more than that law degree is going to earn you a massive salary – or prove “versatile” if you decide not to practice. Those are fantasies.

Aspirational purchases are usually “point of sale” items. You stack them up near the cash registers, so buyers, who are especially impulsive when bored and waiting in a lengthy queue, are liable to toss it in at the last moment. Hmmm…you ponder, standing in line holding the latest Stephen King…there’s “The Selected Poems of Robert Browning”…and there’s “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” and there’s a Dove Raspberry and Dark Chocolate Swirl Bar. Why not grab all three, while I’m here – just in case?

That’s called an “up-sell” and it’s what marketing is all about. Some clever marketing exec (like me) just convinced you (semi-consciously) to buy not merely what you actually wanted (the Stephen King), but a whole bunch of additional junk you neither want nor need.

Law school is also a point of sale item. Your early twenties resemble the checkout line. You’re out of college and killing time, unsure what you’re really looking for (besides a little romance, some excitement and a way to pay the bills.) You’re impulsive, and tend to make big mistakes because you want to do something – anything – and it seems important to get started right away. Law school sits there, staring at you, until you think – hmmm, I wonder if that would work…it’s something to do…

For the record, when I went to law school, I possessed no inkling what a “civil rights lawyer” did, or was. After my primary goal mutated into becoming a “corporate lawyer” (i.e., making money) I had even less idea what I was getting myself into. How did I pick corporate? Simple. Litigation seemed a non-starter, because I hated Civ Pro and loathe arguing. Corporate – whatever it was – was the remaining option. I had the vague sense I’d end up with a BMW and a secretary.

I repeat: I had no idea – none – what a “corporate lawyer” did. It sounded cool, and I wanted the money. The rest I’d figure out when the time came.

That, in a nutshell, defines an aspirational purchase: I grabbed something on impulse because I thought it sounded cool.

Do not do as I have done. Take your time. Figure out who you are, and what you want.

Aspirational purchases are a scam. Leave them behind, for suckers who don’t know any better.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

There’s room for argument, but so far as I’m concerned, there are two chief meanings.

The first is a bit technical.  It means I integrate the two leading schools of psychotherapy – psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral – into one eclectic approach.

Huh?

You can think of the two schools as vertical versus horizontal.

Psychodynamic work is vertical.  It involves digging down into your past, looking for the root sources of your behaviors.  When I work psychodynamically, I’m wondering when you started thinking or feeling a certain way.  I want to make you aware of how the environment in which you grew up shaped the person you are.

If you always seem to expect honesty to be received with punishment, and so avoid telling people what you really think, I’ll wonder where that pattern started.  Maybe you had a punishing parent, who responded harshly to being told the truth because she had trouble tolerating the reality of a situation.  You may have observed that response to you when you were a kid, spotted a feedback loop of sorts (telling truth = bad response), and formed expectations.  These expectations let you to adapt a strategy for survival (avoid telling truth = avoid bad response.)  These sorts of strategies – learned behaviors – may continue to take over unconsciously today and lead you to sabotage your conscious goals in life.  To address that situation, you need to understand where and when they started, so you can decide if you’d like to abandon learned behaviors which have become maladaptive to your life as an adult.

Cognitive-behavioral work, in contrast,  is horizontal.  I’m not so worried about the source of the behavior – I’m dealing with the here and now, trying to make you more conscious of your current thoughts and how they’re controlling your actions.

If you have a phobia about flying in airplanes, I will likely employ cognitive-behavioral techniques to make you conscious of the thoughts – predictions – that are frightening you.  These thoughts are like tapes that play in your head – if you become aware of them, you can turn them off, and play another tape that will soothe you instead of freaking you out.

You might have a fear of plunging from a great height if a plane crashes.  Once you understand that thought, you can reality-test it.  Yes, it could happen that you would plunge in a plane accident, but it is exceedingly unlikely, since you’d most likely die quickly or fall unconscious – and in any case, it might be a risk worth taking, once you balance the enormous benefits of air travel against the very small risks of a crash.   You could learn to formulate counter-messages to address frightening thoughts, perhaps something like “I’ve chosen to take a tiny risk because I want to see the world.  I’m okay with that small risk, and can relax now and accept that I cannot control everything, and there is risk involved in all aspects of life – risk that need not lock me up in fear.”

Some psychotherapists – especially in the past – fought over the superiority of psychodynamic versus cognitive-behavioral approaches.  That’s mostly old-hat at this point.  The two techniques are considered tools in a toolbox – options for treatment, depending on what the therapist thinks is most likely to be effective and useful for the individual client in question.  They are often complementary – two great psychotherapeutic approaches that taste great together.

Modern psychotherapy at its best is integrative, and eager to accept diverse, worthy approaches.  Speaking for myself – I’ll use anything that works and helps my clients.

The second meaning of “integrative” with regard to psychotherapy refers to the greater purpose of the entire exercise – to integrate the unconscious into the conscious ego.

Huh?

You were once a child, and you obeyed adults – probably your parents – who taught you “right” from “wrong.”

Nowadays you are an adult – or you live consciously as an adult.  But within you there is still that little child, and he can take over sometimes, when you are under stress and “regress” into earlier patterns of behavior.

Think of the time you were stressed out and lost your temper.  Or you weren’t thinking and gave in to an impulse to eat a huge ice cream cone.

That’s not the conscious adult acting – that’s the child taking over.

Similarly, the parent voices you grew up with can take over when you’re not paying attention.  These can be punishing voices that tell you no one at the party will like you, or that you should just shut up because no one wants to hear what you think.  You may have heard these voices when you were very young – and they started playing in your head on their own.  Now, if you’re not paying attention, you might let them control your behavior.  That might be the voice that keeps you too scared to open your mouth at a business meeting, or shuts you down at a social event.

In psychotherapy, we aim to make the child’s voice and the parent’s voice conscious, so you know they’re there – and you know what they’re saying.  You hear them – and put them into words, speaking them aloud in the therapy room.  At that point, they become part of your conscious world – something you can examine in an aware, rational way, and decide how to handle, perhaps by choosing to heed an old voice, or cast its message aside and move in a new direction.

Once the unconscious has percolated up into the conscious realm, it can be integrated into your aware self.

That way you can be your “best self” – your fully-aware, fully-conscious, most authentic self – the person you truly are and want to be.

Voila!  Living consciously.  Discovering your best self.  The ultimate goals of integrative psychotherapy.
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If you’re interested in learning more about the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of psychotherapy, you might enjoy my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”

My second book takes a humorous look at the current state of the legal profession, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist”

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.) 

For information on my private practice, click here.

I told her to calculate the return on investment for the final three semesters.

She crunched the numbers.

“Debit-wise, I’ve burned $80k in savings and I’m looking at another $100k of borrowed money. On the credit side, I might find a low-salary doc review gig.” She pretended to scratch notes. “So… big loans, interest payments, inadequate cash flow…opportunity cost of eighteen more wasted months learning legal mumbo-jumbo followed by the bar exam…”

“In other words…” I egged her on.

“I’d be totally screwed.” She affixed the cap on her pen. “Thanks. I’m convinced.”

I posed the question we were dancing around: “Why are we having this conversation?”

My client laid out the background: “My dad’s a lawyer. My mom’s a lawyer. My little brother’s taking his LSAT. This is what my family does. If I quit, I feel like I’m failing.”

She added: “It seems like it was different in my parents’ day.”

That’s because it was. A generation gap has opened in the legal world. On one side there are lawyers over-50, for whom law still looks like a safe, reliable ladder to the upper-middle-class. From the other side – where their kids are perched – law more closely resembles un ascenseur pour l’échafaud.

My client’s parents live in a time warp – a world trapped in a snow globe. Mom’s worked for 25 years as an in-house lawyer for a state college – safe, not terribly stressful (or interesting) work, with a decent salary, good hours and benefits. Dad’s worked for decades as general counsel for a local business. It’s no wonder that for them – and their generation – law still epitomizes a safe, low-stress career with good pay and benefits.

These over-50 types can’t imagine how bad it gets nowadays for someone calling himself an attorney. Their Weltanschauung doesn’t encompass windowless warehouses packed with contract lawyers logging 18-hour shifts of doc review for hourly wages, no benefits. Mom and Dad haven’t seen young partners at top firms getting de-equitized and struggling to snare in-house positions. If they knew that reality, they’d also realize their own sort of safe, steady work with benefits, a decent wage and reasonable hours constitutes a pipe dream for a kid graduating law school today.

Another client of mine – a 20-something from a decent school entering her third year in biglaw – summed up her reality thus:

“Really? I spent myself into life-long debt, endured hours of property law lectures, analyzed Erie problems on brutal exams, crammed for the bar…all so I could waste two years on doc review, then wait to get laid off (with the de rigueur bad review and zero career prospects) so someone younger and cheaper can take my seat? Really?”

If she’d studied computer science, or gotten an MBA or just quit school after college, she might have become a better-paid “e-discovery provider.” As a JD, it’s strictly “e-discovery peon.” In any case, five years from now a computer program will do doc review all by itself. As one client put it: “that’s when attorneys start living in cardboard boxes on the sidewalk.”

This isn’t your grandfather’s biglaw.

It’s astonishing, the degree to which misguided Ozzie and Harriet nostalgia still convinces’ parents to pour money into law school – and only law school – for their kids. They steer their kids towards law at the expense of other degrees – any other degree – which might lead to an actual future. It’s lunacy – but I see it all the time.

One client’s father insisted he would pay his son’s tuition – but not for urban planning, only law. The kid had to get a “practical” degree, that “guaranteed him a future.” It took this twenty-something a year – with his shiny new $180,000 JD – to score a low-paying six-month fellowship at a not-for-profit. Six months later – one day for every thousand dollars his father blew on this “practical” degree – he’s back on the street, scratching for whatever he can find, which is to say, not much.

Another client’s rich uncle wouldn’t consider funding his nephew’s start-up – just law school. No wild-eyed schemes for uncle – he wanted the safe route to success for his young charge. But the kid wasn’t naïve – he saw his friends graduate from law school with zero prospects and wanted none of it. On the other hand, given uncle’s obduracy, he had no choice. The kid finally took the tuition and used his law school dorm as an office for his start-up.  After the first month or two he gave up on Law entirely, and started cutting classes. He got kicked out after a few months, but the plan worked – uncle has plenty of money, and the kid  got a few months free rent for a place to live and an office for the new business (which is progressing nicely and may soon turn a profit.)

There’s still a generation out there that thinks “safe, reliable…” and – don’t laugh – “worth the money” when they hear “law school.” These folks cling to the notion that it’s reasonable to expect your children to do what they did: finish law school, put time in at a firm, and settle into upper-middle-class contentment. It’s no different from the smug Tea Party graybeards who protest “big government handouts” while luxuriating in Medicare. If you grew up amid – and still enjoy – abundance and opportunity, it’s tough to grasp the reality of a new, younger generation for whom health insurance – and a steady job – are aspirational goals.

The generation gap in the legal world is symptomatic of a larger malady. The US has become a nation defined by the ever-widening gulf between rich and poor. The wedge creating that gulf is the collapse of social mobility. As Sarah Palin might say: How’s that “American Dream” thing workin’ out for you?

Not so good.

Even at the top – the elite biglaw shops – there’s a change. These institutions aren’t merely hierarchical anymore, as in a pyramid of command. At this point, it’s more like aristocrats and serfs. The aristocrats are the one’s with the ear of the king – the client – the Mr. One-Percenter with billions who generates business.

In the old days, if you lacked polished manners and connections with the super-wealthy, you might have become a “service partner.” Nowadays, they’re a dying breed. Good lawyers are a dime a dozen, and with more money concentrated in the hands of ever-fewer ultra-rich clients, you can either bring in a big fish, or you are expendable.

As one of my clients put it: “If you’re coming from a lower middle-class background, like me, you’re never going to fit in at my firm, because you’re never going to bring in any work.” She’s shy and bookish, and grew up in the Mid-West without much money. That never used to be a problem – she’s entirely professional and a fine lawyer. But no more.

The other day a partner at her firm proposed she learn to play golf. “He said it would help me ‘nurture client contacts’. Can you see me playing golf? I grew up in Nebraska. ‘Schmoozing’ meant knitting sweaters and baking pies for church socials.”

Back when the USA wasn’t owned by Super-PACs (thank you, US Supreme Court!), the practice of law – like medicine and other professions – was an engine of social mobility. You could work your way up as a lawyer and lift yourself out of the blue-collar world. Now firms are returning to their old role as closed preserves of the elite, resting atop sweatshops populated by disempowered laborers – just as our country as a whole is returning to its Gilded Age status as a plutocracy of billionaire monopolists.

How much have things changed? Earning a JD nowadays is typically an express train back into poverty – real poverty, as in worrying about a place to live and food to eat. Massive loans that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy are no joke, and while Law may no longer be a ladder to the upper-middle class, it can be (while I’m mixing metaphors) the empty elevator shaft you hurtle down on the way to the bottom: a new, professional-degree-bearing underclass. If you owe $180k of non-dischargeable debt and are out of work with little or no income, you disappear off the social map. You experience indentured servitude – what the esteemed sociologist and Harvard professor, Orlando Patterson, terms “social death.” His book on the topic is entitled “Slavery and Social Death.” If you don’t even have a job, you’re not even an indentured servant: You’re more like an outlaw.

If you manage to squeeze into a top Ivy League school – and somehow find the money to pay for it – then adapt to life with the elites, you might rise to riches like the hero of a Horatio Alger story. You might also win the Super Lotto – they both happen, but most commonly to people you hear about, not to you.

Otherwise, if you really want to borrow a small fortune and blow three years of your life on law school, prepare for horrors out of the Nineteenth Century. That was the last time our social safety net frayed this badly, making it frighteningly possible for just about anyone to fall into the terrible gap between this nation’s naïve view of itself – and a far harsher reality.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.

If you enjoy these columns, please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

I also heartily recommend my first book, an introduction to the concepts behind psychotherapy, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

(Both books are also available on bn.com and the Apple iBookstore.)