My client was a nursing student, who had to pass an important math test before she could receive her degree.  She failed her first attempt, and her second was coming up.  She was getting the jitters.

I pointed out that her approach to this situation – all or nothing – didn’t make sense.  That’s because the likely outcome of this set of circumstances – like most everything in life – lay along the contours of a bell curve.

If you look out into the future, you are confronted with an array of foreseeable outcomes, some good and some bad.

My client, for example, might fail her last two tries at this exam, and be delayed in her attempt to finish her nursing program.  That seems a remote possibility, because in past years only 8% of the class failed all three times, and to date she has scored near the top of her class.  That bad outcome, while possible, exists on a narrow tail of the curve.

Out on the other tail, amid the unlikely positive outcomes, she might discover the school mis-graded her first test, and she already passed.  That would be nice, but it’s a slim possibility.

The big, fat center of the bell curve, where the most likely outcomes reside, predicts she’ll pass during her second or third try.

As things turned out, she passed on the second try – with flying colors.

People tend to ignore the bell curve.  You prefer to see yourself as the hero of your own adventure – the blessed, untouchable protagonist who sails into success.  Or you go too far the other way, towards powerlessness, and go martyr, seeing yourself as the unlucky recipient of a cruel fate, singled out for suffering at the hands of the gods.

Neither is true.  The future is a set of foreseeable outcomes that lie on a bell curve.  You can look into the future right now, from where you stand in the present, and forecast the most likely outcome, and the less likely best and worst outcomes.

If you look at things realistically, there’s no reason to “lose it” if the actual outcome isn’t what you’d wish for.  You merely fell onto a different place on the curve – but you’re still on the bell, and it’s still a foreseeable outcome.

Treating the future as foreseeable can be empowering.  You are not all-powerful, and you are not helpless – you are doing your best in a world where you metaphorically roll the dice each and every day.

An old friend of mine was recently diagnosed with inoperable cancer in his abdomen.  The doctor provided a gloomy prognosis.  My friend, who is Irish, a scholar and a bit of a fighter, decided to take that prediction with a grain of salt.  The fact is, you never know with cancer.  Like everything else in life, the final outcome is a matter of statistics and probabilities.

On one tail of the bell curve, he could drop dead tomorrow.  That happens, and he knows it.  The cancer could attack his liver or trigger a heart attack or who knows what.  But it’s unlikely – probably as unlikely as being hit by a bus tomorrow, which also happens.

On the other hand – at the other tail of the curve – he could live another 50 years.  That seems unlikely, but it happens, too. I read an interview recently with Robert von Bahr, of BIS, the Swedish classical music recording company.  Mr. von Bahr was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2008, and had surgery, but was told his chances of long-term survival were about 4.5%.  After the surgery, his doctor came to him, looking flabbergasted, with the results of a biopsy of the cancer.  It turned out the tumor was benign.  This particular outcome occurs in approximately 1 in 20,000 cases and the doctor had never encountered it during his career as a specialist in pancreatic cancer.  But it happened to Mr. Bahr, and so his cancer is entirely cured and he could live to see his 100th birthday.  He said he was as surprised as everyone else – he hadn’t realized that also happens, but apparently, sometimes, it does.

My friend will probably find himself in the big fat center of the curve, like most people.  Right now, he’s taken up residence on the luckier tail – chemotherapy has shrunken the tumors, and last week his doctor improved his prognosis.  Of course, that could change.

There are things we can control in this world – and others we cannot.  It boils down to the famous serenity prayer from the 12-Step movement:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Instead of “losing it” or feeling like you cannot handle the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it makes sense to adopt a more accepting approach.  Like everyone else, you’re riding a bell curve, and you can end up, at some point, on one of the narrow tails.  Sooner or later, you probably will.

So try to relax – and don’t act surprised when something “totally unexpected” happens.

You might think of your life as aiming at a target – a goal – and firing off after it, like a cannonball.  Human beings like goals – we feel happiest chasing a dream.  It lends life purpose.

In reality, when you fire a cannonball into the air, it traces an arc, a parabola.  Yep, a bell curve.  That’s the shape of life – a narrative arc.  We peter into this world crawling on our hands and knees, soar to undreamt of heights…then peter back down on the other tail of the curve.  Eventually, we crash back to the earth (or explode in mid-air – that also happens.)  Stability, stasis, flat predictable lines – none of that is part of life’s equation.  It’s more like calculus, which might leave you scratching your head while you chase a moving target, attempt to fathom the nature of the infinite, and compute an infinite regression.

Complicated stuff.  You might be in for some surprises.

Best to sit back, and enjoy the ride.
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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.

Even if you’re clerking for an obscure political hack (which is the norm), as a clerk you qualify to skip out of biglaw hell. The deal – as you probably know – is thus: you get to work non-law firm hours for a year, then return to the firm as though you’d suffered with the other monkeys. If you finish two clerkships, you double your fun and skip two years of Hell-on-Earth – then return with a third year’s salary!

Clerking gigs can be hard work – you could be researching and writing twelve hours a day. But you’re not putting in weekends (usually), and thanks to the court calendar, there are slow times built into the schedule. Your judge could turn out to be geriatric and losing his marbles (not a rare occurrence) or simply a lunatic – but you’re still doing substantive, important work – rather than, say, researching an un-busy partner’s attempt at a treatise or frying your brain with doc review.

Clerking is a sweet deal – one good reason to do litigation instead of corporate. As a clerk, you might learn something. That’s probably not going to happen as a junior doing corporate.

Yes, there’s a catch, and it’s a whopper: Most clerkships – a whole lot of clerkships – require relocating to the middle of freakin’ nowhere.

If you’re like most educated people, you’ve absentmindedly noticed at some point that the United States occupies a wide tract of land. There’s a lot of that stuff in the middle – the zone with the empty square states they use for missile practice, and those ones in the South where they sprayed black people with fire hoses and sicced dogs on them (as featured in your high school history textbook)(unless you went to high school in the South.)

Yeah, those places.

I am scrupulously non-partisan in these columns – no one can gull me into revealing my sympathies. But I will say this: the frightful wasteland situated between the civilized portions of our nation is dominated by a political party whose platform includes a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw gay marriage. Yeah. They want to alter the founding document of our nation to bash gays. Feeling all warm and fuzzy? Get used to it. If you clerk, and your judge is posted in fly-over country, then so are you.

Welcome to the “real” America. Welcome to the wackadoodles. Welcome to wackadoodleville.

How bad does it get?

Before we start describing where you’re going, remember what you’re leaving behind. A clerkship in the land of Wal-marts and trailer parks, whatever else it entails, spells one year without your spouse, life-partner, steady friend with benefits or whatever. Whomever you’re with – if you’re traveling to Lubbock, Sioux Falls or Tupelo – they’re probably staying home.

Don’t underestimate the effect of a long distance separation on a relationship. You can tell yourself it’s only nine or ten months, not even a year, really. And you can talk on Skype all the time. And you can have sex, sort of, on Skype. But long distance living is about the worst thing that can happen to a relationship. You make the sacrifices for monogamous commitment yet reap none of the rewards.

It’s going to be worse for you. She’ll be in NYC or LA, where, if she does cheat, it will be worth the effort, and, if you break up, she can meet someone else. For you… not so much. A name like “Witchita”  or “Baton Rouge” or “Clarksville” (wherever that is) sounds cool in a blues song, but the reality of most of these places is a burg where the available women at the local T.G.I Friday’s attend mega-churches, consider evolution a hoax and think Sarah Palin is a right-on woman (in the case of Witchita, you’ll also be visiting the corporate headquarters for Koch Industries.) What will you be doing at a local T.G.I. Friday’s? That’s where you’ll be seeking female companionship after you discover there are no other options.

First, you’ll have to find the T.G.I. Friday’s, which will be located in a strip mall amid anonymous suburban aridity. There’s no downtown in most of these places. Back in the 70′s and 80′s, the white people fled to the suburbs, along with the jobs. The poor black people who were left had no jobs, so the middle of the city became a “slum.” The answer? Slum clearance. Bulldoze the whole mess, then build a few skyscrapers and a football stadium. That’s what’s there nowadays – a few skyscrapers, a football stadium and forty acres of parking lot.

Which brings us to another issue. Other than watching tv, there is exactly one extra-curricular activity available in your new home – watching football. Opera, classical music, modern dance, ballet, jazz, theater, galleries, lectures, readings, art museums – those pastimes are reserved for communists and homosexuals. You can drink – it counts as a cultural activity – and you can watch football. That’s it. There are movie theaters in the malls, but you will need a car to get there and you’ll find a megaplex with sixteen theaters showing “Fast and Furious VIII”. No one – no one – will know who Helena Bonham Carter is. Pause, and contemplate that for a moment.

It gets worse. Americans aren’t supposed to admit this – at least white Americans – but despite what Justice Scalia says (with his astonishing legal acumen), it’s possible the issue of race hasn’t entirely melted into insignificance in this great land of ours. You know how black people are kind of mostly poorer than whites and America kind of has the highest incarceration rate in the world and a vastly disproportionate percentage of those people behind bars kind of happen to be black, and white people and black people kind of mostly live in different places and kind of don’t really see each other too much, like, socially? You know? That gets worse in the hinterlands – a lot worse. A client clerking in West Dipstick saw a famous black comedian perform at the local theater. It was something to do – a rare occurrence. The place was packed, the show was great – and he was the only white person in the theater. It was weird, having a tiny bit of fun – his first in months – while experiencing first-hand the secret poison of American apartheid.

Another annoying aspect of living in a state famous for “hollers” and “corn licker” is the classic trademark of people who live someplace no one else wants to: profound defensiveness. New Yorkers don’t rush to defend New York against detractors. They assume you’re an idiot if you don’t love it and New York is better without you. But if you’re from East Bumptruck, you’ll tackle anyone to the ground who so much as hints he might not like it there. That gets old fast. Especially when – as is usually the case – the judge hires a local clerk for appearances and that’s the guy foaming at the mouth because you hinted the nightlife in South Bumbledunk isn’t all that.

I heard about one clerk who ended up finding the closest airfield in her rural nowhere (it was in one of those “I” states…Idaho?  Iowa?  Illinois?  Is there another one?) and taking flying lessons. I guess it was something to do. Oddly enough, she’s not the first person I’ve heard of stuck in the sticks who took up flying. It kills time – and affords you the illusion of possessing a means of escape.

My advice on surviving the boondocks?  Do what you can to survive. I’d read about a thousand books, download Merchant Ivory films and pray for sweet release. That might not be your thing. Maybe you can find an airfield. Or take up knitting.

What you’ll need more than advice is someone to listen as you vent your misery. Good old Skype. Thanks to the internet, I listen to law clerk misery direct from the heartland, every week.

I feel your pain. Personally, I’m willing to venture to Brooklyn for day trips to take in local color, but cross the Hudson? Only if I’m flying to L.A. or San Fran. I don’t mess with fly-over country.
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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.) 

Why is psychotherapy conducted exclusively face-to-face, rather than in writing?  I find that I express myself much more clearly and precisely in writing, after having had the chance to ruminate on my response — it’s one of the reasons I’m pursuing law as a career.  I’ll bet this is something I share with other lawyers and law students.  Having time to consider my response also reduces the risk that when I happen to have my precious hour in session, I’ll be guarded and not in a very sharing mood, and the hour will be unproductive for the both of us.  Having the written word as an intermediary allows me to present myself much more honestly.

Thanks,

M

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.

A vacation might help, if you could achieve the impossible and take one. My client pulled off a week – seven whole days! – at a Caribbean resort, only to return feeling like a condemned prisoner.

“It made things worse,” she lamented. “Now I remember the outside world.”

Sometimes it’s better to live without that distraction.

You’re in it for the money.  Biglaw creates money to toss into the maw of a bank. But no one can stand this abuse forever. Change – any change – might be good, right? How about another firm? Working in a different building – working with different people – different acoustic ceiling tiles, different vertical blinds, different sound-absorbent beige carpeting, different cheap wood veneer bookshelves, different anonymous windows to stare out… Anything different counts as change, doesn’t it?

The omnipresent worry: out of the frying pan, into…someplace worse.

Could anyplace be worse?

Isn’t that what you said about law school?

Another client took the leap and fled his firm – couldn’t take it any more. Guess what? It was worse. Two months later he was begging to return to the frying pan.

Yes – it actually happened. He returned to his old firm, proving forever there are places worse than the-frying-pan-you-know. There’s the-frying-pan-you-don’t-know.

This guy was a fifth year groping for an exit from hell. Nights and weekends of endless grind congealed into a determination – no más. Anything was better than this. This – whatever this was – was killing him.

An escape hatch appeared in the form of a nearby firm (five blocks away) celebrated for “associate satisfaction.”

(He didn’t realize at the time that “associate satisfaction surveys” actually measure relative levels of associate intimidation – intimidation with regard to filling out “associate satisfaction” surveys. A melted cheese sandwich provides “satisfaction.”  Working in biglaw typically does not.)

My client was in the throes of acute law-induced discomfort, and the switch sounded feasible. A partner from his current firm was now working at the new place, talking it up. He took the leap.

Literally within minutes of switching firms, my client knew he’d made a mistake. They didn’t even pretend – there was no question of being taken out for lunch. The piling on of work began the first hour. Other associates avoided his eyes when he passed them in the hall. He worked straight through the first weekend, then every weekend that followed. Eventually, he missed his best friend’s wedding – partner’s orders – to spend all day taking notes at a meeting that partner couldn’t be bothered to attend.

That was the breaking point. He called a partner at his old firm – swallowed what he laughingly referred to as his “dignity” – and pleaded for his job back.

Two weeks later, he’s in his former office, at his former desk – more certain than ever there’s no escape.

At least at this hellhole – the original hellhole – he works for a partner who isn’t an especially bad person (in biglaw terms.) Sure, the work is piled on without mercy, but there isn’t as much arbitrary torment. That’s a fine distinction, but it can be crucial – the gulf between working for (1) an egotist who never gives your existence a second thought; or (2) a sadist who makes sport of inflicting pain. Option (1) is the “lifestyle” job.

My client still works fourteen hour days and nearly every weekend. He still hates what he does.  But now he appreciates his “lifestyle” job.

So what next? Stay in the frying pan? Try another frying pan? The legal profession provides an array of frying pans to choose from (or it used to, back when jobs existed. At this point, you should probably shut up and be glad you have a frying pan so you can keep making loan payments.)

A client at a big Midwest firm says she’s losing her mind. One day she looked around the table at the assembled staff of the “Securities Litigation Group” and thought: I don’t like these people. I don’t want to work with these people. I don’t want a life containing these people.

She’s got a clerkship coming up. But then what? How do you stay and “build a career” when you don’t like anyone you work with? She refers to them as “those douchebags.”

She could leave Chicago and move back to New York.  That was the plan, until, while researching New York City firms, she stumbled upon a passage, on one firm’s website, extolling their “emergency child care services.”  The concept made her queasy.

Because what – really – are “emergency child care services”?  ”Child care services” would mean a friendly, convenient daycare center downstairs – but this is America, and friendly, convenient daycare centers are an evil plot hatched by wild-eyed European socialists, right?  No firm would ever pay for actual childcare.  Only  ”emergency” childcare.  Well, the most common “emergency” at a law firm is the weekly “emergency” of being kept all-night or all-weekend working for some lunatic.  That would be when the “emergency childcare” swings into action.

She imagined someone driving out to her house to stay with her kids.  That was scary enough, until she asked herself the next question: Who? Who does a law firm choose to provide “emergency” childcare? A sweet older Jamaican lady from an agency? In her dreams.  More likely, a hard-bitten, moonlighting secretary from Staten Island, or a heavily indebted twenty-something hipster taking a break from doc review.  She pondered the scene: “Hey, kids. Your mom will be pulling another unplanned double all-nighter.  I’ll be staying with you again this weekend. Who wants to hear a bedtime story?”

Maybe it’d be better to stay in Chicago with the douchebags. The frying pan she knows…

Yet lawyer after lawyer tells me the same story: they don’t want the frying pan they know. Any frying pan – even an equally bad frying pan – would suffice. Just, please – make it a different frying pan (and maybe give me a week or two off – a week or two without a Blackberry, a week or two without partners, a week or two without law – before I hop into the next frying pan.)

One client concocted creative, near-convincing rationales to prefer another firm – it’s smaller and supposedly gentler (although smaller means fewer partners so she might get stuck working for a beast – and might not be able to go back to a big prestige firm after leaving to a smaller firm), the hours might be better (although they’ll probably be the same), and they take smaller cases, so there won’t be as much document production (although there’ll still be document production, with fewer people to help out.)

She knows that’s window dressing. The truth? If she stays where she is, she’ll lose her shit. Then she’ll get fired.

It is an indisputable fact that a new place – any new place – is not the old place. You have to do something. At very least, you have to try.

Of course you know the actual problem isn’t this place. It’s biglaw.

A client surprised me the other day. Last year, she fled a nightmare firm – a legendary sweatshop – for a new place. So far, things are marginally better. They give her work and ignore her. She keeps a low profile and (so far) can work evenings to avoid weekends. So far as she’s concerned, this amounts to “satisfaction.”

But now it’s getting slow. She recognizes the signs, and wonders how much longer they’ll keep her around.

I expected to talk with her about networking, headhunters, changing cities – the stuff she talked about last time she needed to flee a frying pan. She didn’t.

“If this job falls through, I’m through,” she announced.

“Meaning, what?  You’ll look for something at another firm?”

“No. I mean that’s it for law.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. She’d had enough. I don’t know what that means, in practical terms – I don’t think she does, either. She’s batting around the idea of becoming a headhunter or taking some sort of job at an e-discovery contractor.

There comes a point when you review all your options – all your options.

Frying pan. Frying pan. Frying pan. Fire.

Given the state of frying pan, “fire” might be worth a shot.
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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 can also heartily recommend my first book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

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

“You’re the guy who made me vegetarian!” she announced between gasps.

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

It turned out she’d worked as a paralegal, years before, at Sullivan & Cromwell.  I didn’t feel guilty about not remembering her.  We only toiled together once – a grueling all-nighter preparing for an M&A closing.

We ordered take-out burgers that night, and I opted for a veggie burger.  She asked why I wasn’t eating meat.  At first I played it down – mumbled something like “don’t feel like it.”  Carnivores can grow testy if you fail to consume meat in their presence – they take it as a personal affront.  I’ve learned to tread lightly.

But she persisted, with genuine curiosity, so I told her the truth:

“You don’t have to go there – no one’s asking you too,” I said.  ”But if you do go there, you’ll stop eating meat.”

That was it.

Ever since that night, she told me on the sidewalk, she’d been vegetarian.

All it took was going there – well, having someone tell you there was a “there ” to go to, then making the trip.

No, I’m not going to spell out where “there” is – you know perfectly well and I’m not here to preach.  I’m here to talk about consciousness-raising, not vegetarianism.  Specifically, consciousness-raising around alcohol.

You know, alcohol – those lambent elixirs stored in gleaming bottles; the all-American can of beer that pops open to seal friendship and inaugurate cherished memories; the cork shooting from a pricey bottle of champagne to harken in merriment and delight.

Yeah.  Ethanol.  Ethyl alcohol.  Let’s tackle the popular mythology surrounding this stuff. We can start with what I call the Maya Angelou rule.

Some clients tell me they can’t imagine meeting a stranger without a few drinks in them.  It “loosens you up” and “lets you be yourself.”

I asked one of these clients who he would most like to meet in the whole world, and he answered, without hesitation, Maya Angelou.

I asked him if he minded, when he met Dr. Angelou, if she’d had a few drinks.

You might or might not appreciate her poetry – but you probably reserve a modicum of respect for who she is, and I’m guessing you’d prefer that your meeting – your chance to share a few words with a celebrated poet – not occur after she’s been drinking.

The idea is distasteful.  That’s because Maya Angelou is  synonymous with dignity – and drunkenness isn’t.

You probably don’t want your meeting with President Obama to occur after he’s had a few drinks, either.  It would be shocking – and disappointing – to meet someone like that – someone important, impressive, dignified, a role model, etc. etc., after he’s been drinking.

That’s why you don’t want to make your first introduction of yourself to a stranger after you’ve “had a few drinks.”  Not unless you want to look foolish.  Because that’s how people look when they’ve been consuming alcohol.

There were two direct roots of my choice to be vegetarian.  First, I had good friends who were vegetarian.  They didn’t proselytize – they lived their lives and didn’t eat meat.

The second input was a bowl of chicken soup I ordered at a diner.  I remember staring at a piece of skin floating on the top and thinking, “that’s skin.”

Enough said.

I’ve always had friends who don’t drink.  These aren’t necessarily all people in recovery, who became sober after realizing they were alcoholic – some were simply people who decided not to drink.  Their behavior – their choice – affected me.  It made me stop and think.  That’s a healthy thing to do.

If you wish to go further, and experience a major eye-opener, try arriving at a place or event where you would ordinarily drink – and choose not to.  You’ll see what alcohol actually does.  You’ll go there.  It isn’t pretty.

No one is at his best after he’s been drinking.  They’re often at their worst.

A client once arrived for a group therapy session drunk.  He showed up late, and kept repeating – too loudly – “hey, loosen up, guys – this is the real me!”  It wasn’t.  We were all, without exception, embarrassed.  In fact, we were horrified.  It was awful.  He dropped out of group, which was probably for the best, since they weren’t eager to have him back, and it wouldn’t have been appropriate to let him return to any of my groups until he’d done a lot of work on himself – and maybe attended a twelve-step group like Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the best place to go when you think you might have a problem with alcohol.

I’m not a “perfect” vegetarian.  I’m not vegan.  I wear leather.  I eat fish and seafood sometimes, despite misgivings about the over-fishing of the oceans and the cruelty and waste involved in the seafood industry.

I make compromises, and I live with them.  But I’ll never think about meat and the exploitation of animals the way I did before I “went there.”

It’s the same with alcohol.  You might decide to drink in moderation.  Maybe you drink a glass of wine or a beer now and then.  I do.  For many people, that works just fine.

But if you’ve “gone there” with alcohol, you know the truth, and you’ll never buy into the myths again.  At very least, you’ll drink with your eyes open;  you won’t think alcohol is a magical elixir from heaven – or that it’s going to help you “be yourself.”

Alcohol isn’t necessary – it isn’t even a positive good.  In fact, it does enormous harm.  Perhaps it has its place in moderation.  But let’s all go there, and stop kidding ourselves.  There’s a big problem with the role this stuff – ethyl alcohol – plays in our collective lives.

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Please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist”

I also recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”

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

One group wants me to teach a workshop for young attorneys on “health and wellness.” Well, okay. Whatever. I can do that. How much?

They offered the same course in a different city last year, using another therapist-who-is-also-a-lawyer (I wasn’t aware others existed, but I’m not threatened.) To make things easy on myself, I asked how that other (lesser) therapist-cum-lawyer contrived to occupy her “workshop.”

“Oh, she gave them a list of pointers for ‘self-care’,” I was told. “You know, get enough sleep, exercise, eat right, that kind of thing.”

Piece of cake – except I’m not sure they need me to dispense said epiphanies. Richard Simmons manages to preach an identical gospel while everyone performs jumping jacks in lavender leotards.

No matter. Giving advice is what people expect therapists to do.

It’s like “sex therapy.” Remember “sex therapy”? Be honest: Did Ruth Westheimer ever teach you anything you didn’t already know? Yet you found it deeply, mysteriously satisfying each time she chirp-chortled that phrase – “with a firm greep on dee head of dee penis.” Tearing your attention from a tiny Israeli woman in her sixties discussing penises is like trying not to ogle a car wreck. Why fight the hunger?

Nevertheless, the truth remains – dispensing advice isn’t what therapists do best, or even well. As we used to say in HIV prevention circles, the real question isn’t – don’t you know how to use a condom? The real question is – why do you think you didn’t? Everyone knows how to use a condom. You know what’s good for you. If you aren’t doing it, that’s either because (a) you don’t want to; or (b) you haven’t figured out who you really are yet.

I can’t make you do something you don’t want to do. I also can’t tell you who you are.

So what use is a therapist?

I help you wake up. You take it from there.

Therapy isn’t about change – it’s about awareness. I’ll help you talk to yourself so you figure out what you’re really thinking and feeling. What you do with that information is your business.

My secret agenda should be obvious. Any time you gain awareness, it’s going to produce change. If I tell you you’re standing in a pot of water over a fire, you’re going to jump out. But the jumping part isn’t my job. It’s yours.

That said, it’s fun to give advice, and advice columns remain ever-popular. Remember Dear Abby and Ann Landers? Well, here’s The People’s Therapist’s advice column. You probably won’t “take” this advice any more than you “took” Dear Abby’s or Ann Landers’. Still, it makes for entertaining copy.

So, here’s how you – and every lawyer – can achieve three important goals:

• Not go crazy
• Not get dumped
• Not get fired

First: How not to go crazy.

You’re not going to like the answer: Physical exercise.

That’s it. Advice columnists always tell you the same thing – get off your ass. They beat this drum for a reason – it works. But you’re lazy like that, so you’ll probably go on Lexipro instead. Your choice.

Why do you need 30 minutes of cardio exercise at least twice a week to not go crazy at a big horrible law firm?

Oh, come on. You know why. Blah blah blah releases endorphins…blah blah blah relieves anxiety…yadda yadda soothes depression. If you don’t already know this stuff, pick up an issue of Cosmo.

Keep something else in mind – as you plod along on a treadmill to the Violent Femmes, you’re away from that god-awful office – as completely away as you might get for a while. Cardio exercise is like meditation, except it actually distracts you since you have to focus on gasping for breath and not stopping.

See how irritating it is to be on the receiving end of advice? That’s why Dr. Ruth and Richard Simmons morphed into self-parodies. Even as clowns they get annoying.

Next: How not to get dumped. The goal here is preservation of relationships in the face of biglaw, which permits no time for relationships.

And here’s the trick – take the time anyway. Reserve a weekend every two or three months and get away together – without the kids – to a cute little inn.

That’s it. Except – as you’ve probably noticed – you’re a lawyer, so taking a weekend off – being able to plan in advance and then actually do it – is impossible.

You have no choice. Do this, or you’ll end up like most lawyers, losing that girlfriend, divorcing that wife and ending up with no relationship except hook-ups with the tax associate who comes to your office and releases a forlorn sigh, like she isn’t into you either, but what are the options?

Before arriving at that juncture, try to avoid squandering the one meaningful element in your god-forsaken existence. Just do it. Move mountains. Reserve that weekend, drive her up to a little inn with frilly bedspreads and a porch swing. Go antiquing. Look into her eyes – not at the Blackberry – and listen to what she has to say. Then have sex – with each other.

It’s worth it. Even if you get fired.

…which brings us to: How not to get fired.

This one’s easy: see a therapist every week.

I know – seems a tad self-serving. But if you’re going to get fired in biglaw, it’s probably because you’re secretly hoping to get fired. That’s because you’re angry and hate your job. Which is where awareness comes in.

You think you are a rational, logical person who owes a bank about $150k and has no choice but to remain at a miserable grind you loathe. That is correct.

However, you also contain an Id – an unconscious child – and he’ll arrange to get you fired. For the most part, he lays low – you’ve got him under control. Then, when you’re completely burnt out and the partner announces he wants you to work all weekend, that little kid will pop out – surprise! – utter something inappropriately heartfelt in front of that partner – and get you canned.

He can be sneaky, too. When your guard is down, he’ll broadcast his misery – arranging for you to come in late every day or complain about your fate a little too forcefully before unsympathetic ears. That’ll also get you shown the door.

I’m not saying getting fired from a big law firm is a bad thing. But – if at all possible – you should get fired on your own terms. Quit if you want to. Or push things a bit and shoot for those delicious three months severance. But don’t fall asleep at the wheel and let the kid drive, or you’re asking for regrets.

That’s where therapy comes in. Sit the kid down and give him a listen. Let him get it all out. You’ll return to the firm refreshed and relieved. Relief will also be registered by the people who were about to fire you.

Final piece of breathtakingly obvious advice:

Biglaw is toxic for most human beings. If you’re unhappy and can afford to – get out.
========

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 can also heartily recommend my first book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

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

Dear Will,

I’m a recent law school graduate studying for the bar exam. I just got into another argument with my boyfriend of four years, and I’m feeling frustrated and upset.

Our relationship tends to break down when I’m going through a period of heightened stress — writing my law school admissions essays, studying for finals at the end of each semester, and now, studying for the bar. I know I can get moody and depressed during these times, but I’m up front with him about my state of mind, and I wish he could be more understanding.

The problem is that, on the one hand, I’m starting to feel like the girl who cried wolf, since these periods of stress have happened regularly throughout our relationship. On the other hand, I still feel hurt and upset when he loses patience with me, like I can’t rely on him during tough times.

Any thoughts or advice you can provide would be much appreciated.

Thank you,

L

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.
========

Please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist”

I also recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”

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

At first glance, that seems counter-intuitive. I’m writing about your fellow attorneys, after all, and they’re in miserable straits. I feel sorry for them. I want to help. But then, I’m a bleeding heart psychotherapist. I even felt sorry for them back when I was a lawyer, too – incontrovertible proof I was never “cut out” for the profession.

With lawyers, it’s not a question of “compassion fatigue” – they never show enough compassion to develop fatigue. It’s more like a birth defect – compassion deficiency.

My solution? The same trick Jerry Lewis used for his telethons. I’ll fabricate a poster child – a Jerry’s Kid – a cute, lovable little spokesperson for suffering, misunderstood, mistreated lawyers!

What would my Jerry’s Kid – ahem – Will’s Kid – look like?

Let’s call him Tim – Tiny Tim. (Cue violin music.) (Cue photo montage.)

Okay. Here’s the narration:

Tim’s parents aren’t well off. They’re plain-spoken, hard-working American middle-class folks who aspire for something better for their oldest child – little Timmy. That translated into a lot of pressure on Tiny Tim to go to the best college he could – and the best law school, too. That’s why Tim – who only ever wanted to play his trombone – ended up attending Harvard, then going to Columbia Law School.

(music swells)

And that’s how Tiny Tim – “T.T.” to his friends – ended up $240,000 in debt.

Timmy did well at Harvard – and held his own at Columbia Law, too. He counted himself among the lucky 50% of the kids in his class who managed to find a job – and at a great big white shoe law firm! Timmy was proud to be accepted at Nasty, Vicious & Ruthless LLP. Even after they deferred his start date, Tiny Tim wasn’t discouraged – he stuck with his dream of devoting his heart and soul to commercial litigation.

(music turns quieter, introspective)

Then, only four months after T.T. arrived at the firm, his dreams came crashing down. NV&R announced they were imploding – half the partners were leaving, the remainder merging with another firm. Tiny Tim was “let go” after a fabricated “bad review.”

(cut to image of Tiny Tim, smiling bravely through his tears)

As a first year lawyer with four months experience, Timmy found it impossible to locate another law firm job. Headhunters averted their gaze when he asked for help – other lawyers never returned his calls. His loans, all the while, grew and grew and grew. T.T’s parents – rock-solid Americans who believe if you work hard, you’ve earned a right to a fair chance – don’t understand how America changed during the Bush years. Now – as little T.T. has learned – you’re either born rich, or you’re essentially fucked.

(cut to long shot of Old Glory, flapping in the wind)

In desperation, T.T. did hourly contract attorney work for a mid-size firm. It was mindless doc review, and would have paid about $65k per year. But now that work has dried up.

(camera pans across rows of empty cubicles at a deserted law firm)

Tiny Tim knows he’ll never pay off the loans – that’s a pipe dream. But he’d like to keep making payments so he won’t have to go underground to avoid the police. A friend has a lead on a gig doing insurance defense in Baltimore. It’s drudgery, and pays $55k. But now it looks like that might fall through, too.

(cut to mid-shot of Tiny Tim, trudging home through Jackson Heights in suit and tie, carrying his pitiful little lawyer’s briefcase.)

Tim is living with friends in Queens, sleeping on a sofa in their living room, but he’s struggling to make interest payments, and the bank calls every day. Timmy’s girlfriend finally broke up with him last month after he spent too many evenings weeping. For the past few weeks, he’s been selling blood to raise cash. Now, to make loan payments, he might have to pawn his trombone – the last thing in the world that provides him joy.

(cut to a close-up of Tiny Tim, playing a long, sad note on his trombone)

Can you help Tim? He cries all the time. He hates his life. He hates law. He really, really hates law.

You know what that’s like. Open your heart. Support Will’s kids.

(end of infomercial)

Did it work? Is a tiny little spot in your heart beginning to defrost?

I doubt it. And even if you were thinking – heck, poor little loser, I’ll send him a hundred bucks…there’s another problem with “poster children.” They’re unfair to the people they’re trying to help.

This issue arose around the famous Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethons, which featured “Jerry’s Kids” – adorable tots battling motor disorders and other disabling ailments. The cute kids helped Lewis – and the MDA – raise millions for research and services. But there were problems.

First – most people with muscular dystrophy (actually a range of muscular diseases) are adults, not kids. It’s misleading to think the battle is to help adorable little children – it isn’t.

Second – the telethon was framed around “finding a cure” when finding cures for all these diseases might not happen for generations, if ever. What’s needed now is support and services for real people – help with their symptoms and with mobility.

Back to lawyers.

First of all – as commenters never tire of pointing out – lawyers, even young ones, are not helpless children. They’re adults. They got themselves into this mess. Most of my clients rightfully see themselves as victims of a scam – and I agree with them. People make mistakes. Lawyers who got suckered into massive school loans before the recession struck made a mistake. You can blame them – or pity them. Neither does them a lot of good.

Secondly, they’re not looking for a “cure” any more than most folks living with muscular disorders. They’re looking for a little help taking care of themselves. That might start with a bit of support from their fellow lawyers.

In “No Pity,” his book on the movement for civil rights for the disabled, Joseph P Shapiro writes that people living with disabilities are tired of being presented as either Jerry’s Kids or “super-crips” – those paraplegic guys who run marathons in wheelchairs or blind dudes climbing mountains. Most disabled people, like most lawyers, are neither poster-kids nor super-heros – just regular folks dealing with a tough situation. As Shapiro writes “…people with disabilities want neither pity-ridden paternalism nor overblown admiration.”

The same thing is true of lawyers. Tiny Tim doesn’t need your condescension – he’s not a child. He can own his bad decisions. But he can’t turn into some sort of superman, either. How would you propose he pay down $240k in debt on $65k/year?

What Tiny Tim – and a lot of other lawyers in his situation – could use, is your support – even if it’s only symbolic. For starters, how about knocking it off with the “blame the victim” comments – the whole “it’s your own damn fault, nobody made you do it” school of crank attacks? Yeah, it’s his mistake – but we all make mistakes, and have to do our best to put the worst of them behind us.

And another thing – let’s all gather, collectively, and admit the government’s decision to make school loans bankruptcy-proof was a monumental blunder that’s damaged a lot of lives.

People have a right to do stupid things. They sometimes fall for scams and lose all their money – or worse, end up deep in debt. But the law scam is different. If you fell for Bernie Madoff, and lost millions – lost every cent you earned over a lifetime – at least you could file for bankruptcy protection, walk away bruised but intact, and get a fresh start.

Tiny Tim doesn’t have that luxury.

I work on a regular basis with kids in their twenties who are nearly a quarter million dollars in debt because of one mistake – they wanted to make their parents happy and fell for a scam that the trusted adults around them – their own professors – encouraged them to buy into.

Now they’re trapped beneath a mountain of debt, with no hope of paying it off. Just finding a job is next to impossible in this climate, and many of them were never interested in law anyway, they just thought it might be a ladder to success. They want to play trombone.

It’s not only the unemployed lawyers who make great candidates to be “Will’s Kids”.  Some guy – he said he was young and heavily in debt – cancelled on me three times in a row last month – three early morning appointments – because he had to work all-nighters each time. He works at a firm notorious for under-staffing cases and working associates to death and said he needed the morning slots because he has to be in early. The cancellations always came in around 2 am. I’ve never met the guy, so the Will’s Kid poster would have a blank silhouette. But I feel for him. There are plenty of guys like him out there, at big firms, hating their lives.

If you can’t open your wallets to help Will’s Kids – at least knock it off with the hard-ass routine. It could have happened to you. Maybe it did happen to you. Maybe it’s happening to you.

So have a heart, huh?
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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 can also heartily recommend my first book, Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy

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

There are contemporary accounts of Freud that mention he rarely listened to music, and only permitted himself to be “dragged” to opera on rare occasion – and then only if it was Mozart.  And there is a quote from a not-terribly-reliable memoir by Freud’s nephew, Harry, in which he claimed Freud “despised” music.

Freud wrote about his own response to music in the introduction to “The Moses of Michelangelo”:

I am no connoisseur in art…nevertheless, works of art do exercise a powerful effect on me, especially those of literature and sculpture, less often of painting…[I] spend a long time before them trying to apprehend them in my own way, i.e. to explain to myself what their effect is due to.  Wherever I cannot do this, as for instance with music, I am almost incapable of obtaining any pleasure.  Some rationalistic, or perhaps analytic, turn of mind in me rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why I am thus affected and what it is that affects me.

This is a fascinating observation.  Freud is essentially saying that, because music is such an abstract art form and he cannot analyze the source of music’s effects upon his emotions, he doesn’t trust those effects and so avoids music as an art form.  That might explain why Freud wrote so seldom about music, although he wrote at length about works of fiction or theatre or painting or sculpture.

It is not the last word, however, on whether Freud actually enjoyed music.  His friend, Theodor Reik, wrote that he’d gone out to hear music on at least two occasions with Freud, and that it wasn’t only the mystery of music’s effects on the emotions that troubled Freud, but a fear of actually giving himself over to those mysterious effects. Reik felt that Freud’s resistance to music amounted to:

[a] turning-away…[an] act of will in the interest of self-defense…[and the] more energetic and violent, the more the emotional effects of music appeared undesirable to him.  He became more and more convinced that he had to keep his reason unclouded and his emotions in abeyance.  He developed an increasing reluctance to surrendering to the dark power of music.  Such an avoidance of the emotional effect of melodies can sometimes be seen in people who feel endangered by the intensity of their feelings.

What draws me to this discussion in Sacks’ book is that it reveals the “hidden” Freud, the struggle between the serious, scholarly author of countless books, the “father of psychoanalysis” – and the man who, like everyone else, was filled with secret, overwhelming emotions – perhaps triggered by something as innocent as a beautiful work of music – that he could only struggle to comprehend.

Every therapist contains this dichotomy, at some level.  We are all therapists – and also people.

Freud had immense pressures placed upon him to be “serious” and “scholarly” and “reputable.”  After all, he was trying to create a new science.  He had to attract patients and earn a living to feed his family – and recruit proteges and followers who could be trained and then relied upon to practice this new science in a way that did him credit and perpetuated his work after his death.

Keep in mind, too, that the new science Freud was founding didn’t look terribly reputable on the surface – he was working with people suffering from mental illness, including women with the mysterious malady of “hysteria” and he was writing about dark emotions, dreams and sexuality – provocative subjects that could easily have gotten him into trouble if he didn’t present himself with the utmost seriousness.

Freud had to learn to disguise his very humanness, all while studying and writing about the emotions that make us human.

I’ve always been fascinated by Freud’s final days, in England, where he fled to escape persecution by the Nazis.  Among a stream of celebrity visitors who made the pilgrimage to see him, there were two in particular during that time who caught my attention, both for the odd responses that they had to Freud, and he had to them.

On July 19, 1938, Salvador Dali was brought to visit.  The Surrealist painter was excited to meet the great psychoanalyst, whose theories were – at least in Dali’s view – the basis for much of his Surrealist vision.  Dali did his thing – his “schtick” you might say, and Freud – a skeptic of the Surrealist movement – commented afterward that Dali was a bit of a caricature:  ”I have never seen a more complete example of a Spaniard. What a fanatic!”  Dali, apparently, was simply flattered by the attention.

In January, 1939, Virginia Woolf accompanied her husband, Leonard Woolf, to visit Freud.  Leonard Woolf was impressed by Freud, but found him “not an easy interview.  He was extraordinarily courteous in a formal, old-fashioned way – for instance, almost ceremoniously he presented Virginia with a flower.  There was something about him as of a half-extinct volcano, something sombre, suppressed, reserved.  He gave me the feeling which only a very few people whom I have met gave me, a feeling of great gentleness, but behind the gentleness, great strength.”

Virginia Woolf’s opinion was much more curt, and rather unpleasant:  ”a screwed up shrunk very old man:  with a monkey’s light eyes.”

The reality, of course, was that there was another Freud, whom none of these famous visitors recognized – a human being dying in great pain from cancer of the mouth and jaw.  For some time, Freud had worn an awkward prosthesis to replace his upper palate, which had been surgically removed due to the spreading cancer, and it was fatiguing and uncomfortable for him to greet any visitor for more than a short time.

The fact that he had the fortitude to greet visitors at all, let alone pay them courtesies and attempt to converse, was a testimony to his enormous strength, and perhaps an ability to hide his own struggles and concentrate on the concerns of others, at least for the short duration of their visit.

In September, 1939, a few months after his meeting with the Woolfs, Freud asked that his own life be ended through a physician-assisted suicide via morphine injections.  That wish was granted on September 23, when he finally died from an overdose of the drug.  He was 83 years old.

Beneath his scrupulous courtesy and scholarly gentleman exterior, the Freud whom Dali and the Woolfs visited in England was a man staring into the void, preparing for his own death.  No one knows exactly what went through his mind during those final days.

Whenever we speak of Freud, and our impressions of the man he was, we must consider how much we cannot know about any other person – especially someone so complicated, and multi-faceted.  We must keep in mind that there were at least two sides to Freud – a man who probed his own psyche unrelentingly in order to explain all of human emotion, and another, secret man who lived his life, and faced his death, alone, tossed and turned by feelings he might never have fully comprehended any more than any of us can fully comprehend ourselves.  There are always surprises.

Sometimes a clue can stare at us and we don’t see it.  The word “freude” in German means “joy.”   The word “dream” comes from the Middle English word dreme, which means, “joy” and “music.”  Perhaps Dr. Freud was filled with hidden joy.  This man who did so much to explore and explain the nature of dreams may also have permitted himself to drift at night into secret places filled with joy and music.
—
The paperback version of my first book – Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy - which discusses Freud, psychotherapy and other issues of a philosophical nature – is now available on Amazon.com.

Please take a look at my second book, Way Worse Than Being a Dentist, too, which is a bit different.

The terrific new cover is by Christine Sullivan, of cstudiodesign.  I hope you’ll take a look.

Headhunters!

They were having a convention and asked if I wanted to drop by, and, you know, say hi.

Vague images flitted through my mind – guys in suits dancing in a conga line wearing hats with silly horns.

I don’t often get invited to shindigs. I’m a therapist. Mostly, I visit my office, my dog and whoever’s sitting in the other chair. Or I sit at my desk and write columns. Ask me to a party? Hell yeah, I’m down. I’m all over it like a tall dog in a cheap suit. You looking to turn it out? Count me in.

I never say no to headhunters, conga lines and hats with silly horns.

So I went. And it was fun.

Here’s the newsflash about headhunters – they’re good peeps.

At very least, they’re more fun than lawyers. In fact, many of them were lawyers, but had to get out because they were too fun.

They can also teach you stuff you need to know – not just pointers on beer pong and naked Twister.

Behold three key lessons acquired whilst getting down with my bad self in the company of legal search consultant party animals…

FIRST: They aren’t the enemy.

I’m not sure why you thought they were the enemy. Except I used to.

As a snotty-nosed first-year at Sullivan & Cromwell, I received weekly phone calls from headhunters and I knew exactly what to do. The routine is simple – you hang up. You announce, in a snooty voice, that you aren’t interested. Then you slam down the receiver. It’s like slamming the door on a door-to-door salesman. It’s his just and inevitable fate, because he’s a little person and you’re at a top NYC law firm.

Then – in your second or third year – it dawns on you your ultimate career destiny might not lie with Sullivan & Cromwell – and the headhunter you slammed the phone on could have been your ticket out. He’s also a former second or third year – or fourth or fifth year – from a top firm himself. He got out – and is currently doing a whole lot better than you are.

That’s why he’s calling – you idiot.

You hung up on him and it was fun. But now you’re stuck in hell and it’s looking like that might be your fate in life – that or unemployment. Take your pick.

The toughest-skinned headhunter takes umbrage at being treated him like a vacuum cleaner salesman. Even vacuum cleaner salesmen find it irksome.

But hey – aren’t headhunters sleazebags in it for the money?

And you’re not?

Sure – some headhunters are better than others. Some are more honest and scrupulous. I spoke to plenty of them at this convention cum erotic dance party. A few looked me in the eye and admitted they weren’t all the same. A surprising number turned serious and swore they would never place a candidate in a position they felt was “a bad fit” – even if it meant picking up a fee worth over twenty grand.

Do I believe them? Yes.

A good headhunter knows burning candidates – and clients – doesn’t make long-term sense. An unhappy candidate won’t last the six months or so required to earn a fee. If the candidate storms off in a huff, it burns bridges with the client – and damages the headhunter’s reputation. That makes it impossible to get more placements.

Additionally, all headhunters aren’t evil. Remember – they’re no longer lawyers, they only work for them.

No one bad-mouths real estate agents – or hardly anyone. But given the choice between a real estate agent and a headhunter, I’d take the headhunter any day. A real estate agent is more likely to rip you off, because he can get away with it and move onto another clueless homebuyer.

Stop bashing headhunters.

If you were a big-shot partner looking for a job, you’d already know that. You’d also have made the logical leap that these folks are out there to help you. That’s the only way they earn a living. They’re not out to waste anyone’s time.

SECOND point: They really, really hate it when you aren’t serious about exclusivity.

Why do headhunters “cold call” nasty little associates at law firms? To make money.

It works. They might call on a day the Kool-Aid’s wearing off. The day the partner smirks and yet again hands you an assignment on Friday afternoon due Monday morning. The day he hands back your brief covered in red ink and says he “expected better” even though you only put in his changes. The day you haven’t billed an hour in two months but everyone else looks busy.

On that day, you could use a supportive voice on the other end of the line, offering steady insider advice. You could use a means of escape.

At that point, you’re going to break down and send this headhunter – the one who happened to call – your resume, and agree to let him submit it to a few law firms or other places to try to get you a job.

Stop right there – at that moment in time – and think.

After you give him that permission, you shall be represented exclusively by that guy, at least for those jobs. That might not be a bad thing. But a week later, when a really nice lady headhunter you like even better calls, and you break down in tears with her and she says exactly what you need to hear and you realize she’s the best headhunter in the whole wide world…well, you’ve already gone with the other guy. It is a fait accompli.

Maybe you forgot you ever told the first guy he could send in your resume. Maybe you weren’t listening closely when he asked. Or you didn’t think he meant all twelve firms. Or you thought you could change your mind and go with the nice lady.

You can’t. It will be a major drag for the nice lady when she re-submits your resume to the firms and finds out you – more or less – lied to her, and made her look like an idiot by re-submitting a candidate already represented by her colleague.

Don’t do it. Stop, use common sense, and have lunch with a few headhunters before you decide on the one you want to use. That’s all they’re asking.

FINALLY : They don’t have any jobs for you unless you’re at the top of the market.

You already know this – you just haven’t stopped and thought it out and acknowledged it to yourself. So let’s do it. It is rather ironic – now that you realize headhunters are your friends, you won’t be meeting any any time soon.

They only want to meet you if they think they can place you. According to the consensus I was hearing from the party people singing “Dayyyyyyy-O!” and bending before the limbo pole at the convention – at this juncture in our nation’s history, there are no legal jobs out there for anyone but the upper-upper-crust.

One guy told me in serious, hushed tones: “Look, if you’re Joe Schmo, there’s no work. If you’re top of your class at Harvard or Yale, there’s work. That’s what the firms want.”

Another put it differently: “Either you got the resume or you’re S.O.L.”

(“S.O.L.” is a technical headhunting term.)

Sorry, guys. Headhunters are looking for two things. First, partners with at least a few hundred grand in portable business. (Duh.) Second, brilliant associates from top schools with superb credentials in specialized areas sought after in specialized regions of the country.

I overheard dudes from the Bay Area parleying with New England prepsters about relocating labor specialists. I listened in while gals from Houston put out the buzz to fellas from Chicago for senior oil and gas in-house types willing to travel.

Headhunters aren’t clowns you hang up on. They’re pro’s earning more than you, doing a serious job.

Trust me on one final point: Unlike your lawyer buddies – they know how to party.
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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 can also heartily recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”.

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

Can you explain the long term effects of psychological trauma? Four years ago I experienced two deaths in my family, sudden deaths by accident. I’ve never suffered from depression before the deaths of my kids, but truthfully just haven’t really bounced back as much as I’d have liked to.

I’d be interested in hearing what your thoughts are on depression after a traumatic death/grief and if that trauma makes one more susceptible to depression in general, what if any are other factors involved- (a second opinion if you will)? My therapist mentioned medication recently as a possible option since I have experienced two bouts of depression lasting three and five weeks respectively both occurring since Christmastime.

What factors should I be considering in making my decision regarding medication?

Thanks,

J

Here’s my answer:

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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Please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning”.

I can also heartily recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”.

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

Now – 9 months later – I went back on Steven’s show, and caught up with Matt, and heard how things are going for this newly-minted corporate 2d year.

Here’s the show – Steven always does a great job, and it was especially fascinating to catch up with Matt and talk about how his views have changed now that he’s been working in biglaw for more than a year.

Thank you, Steven, and thank you, Matt, for another terrific experience on Talk Radio One.

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Please check out The People’s Therapist’s new book, “Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning”.

I can also heartily recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”.

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

“Here’s how it works,” she explains. “There’s the have’s and the have-nots. Either you have a job offer, or you don’t. If you don’t, it sucks. You feel like an illegal alien.”

Unfortunately, she’s a have-not. Yes, she’s working to correct that situation – trawling small firms in her hometown, attempting to milk connections. But “have-not” might as well be printed on her forehead. Around her peers, she says, it’s the body language that betrays have-not status. As a have-not, you don’t talk much, keep your eyes down, and behave generally like the undocumented guy lugging tubs of dirty dishes back to the kitchen. The aroma of failure – let’s say it, loser-hood – clings to the fabric of your clothes.

Some thoughtful charity – maybe it was Oxfam – threw a fund raiser dinner some years back, with the worthy goal of educating socialites about world hunger. The guests were divided the way the world is divided. Behind velvet-ropes, at a small central table, a handful of diners savored a gourmet meal. Across the ropes, a larger group picked at bowls of plain rice. Further out, beyond non-velvet barriers, a sizable fringe of outsiders observed the others and listened to their own empty stomachs rumble.

It was just like law school – at least at the good law schools. At the second and third tier joints, it seems like everyone’s a have-not. If the personal experience of poverty derives from comparing oneself to one’s peers, then maybe everyone feels less impoverished at the lower-tier schools, where no one gets a job, everyone’s in massive, crippling debt – and the whole class occupies the same boat.

From what I can gather, at some of the more prestigious schools the have/have-not ratio is about 50/50. Maybe at your school it’s 30/70. Whatever the precise figures, I’m guessing there are a few empty stomachs rumbling out beyond the non-velvet barrier. As Heidi Klum puts it with characteristic pith: You’re either in, or you’re out.

My have-not client wound up in law for an odd reason. She stumbled on a bizarre aptitude for the LSAT. It was her friend who was studying for the test, but she took a sample one for the heck of it and scored 178. By some stroke of fate, that unlucky fluke resulted in her current educational and financial incarceration.

Now she could kill that guy. He crashed and burned on the LSAT and – as a result – is debt-free, working for a company developing green energy alternatives.

Naturally, having a weird aptitude for an aptitude test didn’t translate into possessing actual aptitude. She got B’s on her first year exams. By the time the cavalry arrived with her second year A’s, it was too late – she was already a have-not. Firms can pick anyone they want – and they want perfection.

Feeling a little…imperfect? Welcome to Have-not-ville.

As I talked to Ms. Have-not, I remembered another client, who’s starting his 3L year as a “have.” From the moment this guy got his offer, everything changed. He positively glowed, and strutted around like a self-satisfied bantam.

I offered congratulations, but couldn’t quite adjust to the new mindset. In my day, everyone got jobs – that’s why you went to law school. If you were any good, the firms took you out to lunch and laid it on. I remember a partner from Shearman & Sterling pitching me over the phone to come back after the summer program. I humored him, then impudently hustled off to Sullivan & Cromwell.

In those days, the law school have/have-not divide was limited in scope. For about two weeks, my best friend, a Latvian, hated my guts because I had an offer and he didn’t. But that was it – two weeks. He ended up with exactly what he wanted – an offer from a maritime law boutique, and eventually returned to Riga.

That was then. This is now.

My client, Mr. Have, was in full-on gloat mode. It got a little creepy. That gleam in his eye announced the arrival of compassion fatigue:

I’m in. Those other bastards aren’t my problem any more than kids in Gambia with intestinal parasites are my problem. Times are tough. I got mine. You’ll have to work something out on your own.

That’s my best attempt to recreate his internal monologue. In reality, Mr. Have jabbered on and on about stuff that, in my day, never would have crossed my mind. He announced he could date again – any girl would want to go out with someone with a big firm job. He could plan. He could live. He had a future. He wasn’t unemployed. He could look his parents in the eye. He could breathe easy.

No kidding. It sounded a little nuts.

I envisioned the reality of big firm life interacting with this guy’s future. He wasn’t in for a picnic – his trophy, his grand prize, was an offer from a faceless biglaw sweatshop. Working late nights and weekends, the usual abuse from partners – all that can be taken for granted. But it could play out different ways. He might get assigned to some hideous litigation that goes to trial and consumes his life. He might endure endless doc review. He might end up slumped at his desk surfing blogs until he gets laid off. That last scenario seems the most likely.

He doesn’t care. He only needs a job – a golden ticket out of the slums.

Another client tried to explain the logic of the situation, at least as she saw it. She was recently laid off as a 3d year, after two years at a biglaw hellhole.

“It seems fair,” she explained. “The firm somehow or other hired a bunch of 1^st years and now they have to try to find them work. I got my two years of big-law salary, and funneled every cent into loans. Now I’m down to $80k. I’ll have that $80k for the next thirty years – but at least it’s only $80k. Those first-years should get the same chance.”

That’s the ultimate trophy, the grandest prize – two weird, unpleasant years to live like a pauper and pay obeisance to the equivalent of a mortgage until it resembles a car loan – a car loan on a Mercedes-Benz S-Class.

Under the circumstances…that’s nothing to sniff at. $80k beats $180k. Owing $80k, you can (maybe) escape law and get on with your life. You can’t do that owing $180k.

So, sure, in the back of my mind I wonder how my “have” client is going to like biglaw. But I can see why he doesn’t care. He won the lottery by getting in. Now he can pay down part of his loans. That’s a rare luxury.

My have-not client might not savor such luxuries. Even if she snags a small firm job in her hometown, she’ll be earning $60k, not $160k. That won’t make a dent in her loans – not for decades. They may congeal into perma-debt, and out-live her.

I imagined introducing Mr. Have to Ms. Have-not. Not a pretty thought. But that’s how things are right now at law schools: un-pretty. Each interaction with a peer affords an opportunity to stare into the face of a have – and remember your status as an Untouchable. You can listen in on so-and-so’s tales of “summering” at Yadda & Yadda – like it’s a beach resort, not an anonymous meat-grinder. Then cringe whilst two Have’s compare notes on Yadda & Yadda versus Malice, Evil & Rancor – like 1950′s coeds sparring over Vassar versus Wellesley.

You – the have-not – crouch beyond the fence – you don’t even get a bowl of rice. You watch. And listen to your stomach growl.

Gather round Have-nots, Dalit caste of the legal world. I do not shrink away from your smell of loser-hood. I cast no reproach upon your expressions of despair.

Look into my eyes. I’ll tell you what I told Ms. Have-not:

You are young, capable, motivated and unique. Your value is infinite. An offer from a law firm means exactly nothing to what you are worth as a human being.

Please – do not buy into this bullshit.

This entire process makes me sick, and it’s wrong. You’re going to get through it, and put it behind you. It’ll be a war story. Trust me, your life can still have a happy ending.

Do not let yourself be treated this way.

Do not forget who you are.
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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 can also heartily recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”.

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

I haven’t worked at Sullivan & Cromwell since 1999. A statute of limitations must cover misdeeds perpetrated in that dim, dusky epoch. But I’m not betting the farm on it.

I will, therefore, tread with caution as I recount events that occurred in the life of a close friend who practiced at Sullivan & Cromwell during that time, someone whose tenure at this august institution coincided precisely with my own. A dear, personal friend.

It is possible this person occasionally misrepresented his billable hours.

I know. You’re sickened. Awash with a visceral revulsion.

Could I be saying what you think I’m saying!? Not that. It’s unthinkable.

I shall not shy away from the painful truth. I’ll say it: my close personal friend cheated on his hours. At least I think he did. I only think, because he was so sloppy in keeping track of his hours it wasn’t clear what they actually were.

For example, never, so far as I recall, during my entire legal career – all 2 or 3 years of it – did my close personal friend ever bill a “point 25”. I don’t think he knew what a “point 25” was. He just billed an hour, or maybe on a rare occasion, a half hour. Generally speaking, he was assigned to one, maybe two active deals at a time, so he billed the entire day, from the moment he walked in the door to the moment he left, to the client and matter number for whatever deal on which he was working – or occasionally not-working. Then he added an hour or two to “round it up.” He perpetrated these outrages at least a week following the events themselves, and was mostly operating from hazy recollections.

The horror!

My close personal friend can’t go all Adolph Eichmann on this one, either. He wasn’t “just following orders.” He did, however, have a strong suspicion he wasn’t alone – that there were other malfeasors of his stripe roaming the halls. Call it a hunch – but it’s one I can confirm from the experiences of another close, personal friend – a psychotherapist – who has spent years listening to lawyers spill their guts concerning such nefarious doings (Note: I would never imply that one of my own clients would commit or contemplate such a deed.)

Permit me to take the gloves off. Here’s the bottom line on cheating on your billables: Get used to it. If you don’t cheat on your hours, you will never make partner at a big law firm. This is a hard and fast rule.

Law firms don’t broadcast it to the masses, but the truth is they like it when you pad your hours, and it doesn’t require an advanced degree in economics to figure out why. Biglaw is about billable hours. If you take longer to do something, they earn more money.

Look at it this way – when a biglaw partner prepares a bill, he can always shave down your hours. But he can’t really crank them up, can he? That would be cheating. It would be far more…convenient…if you (nudge nudge wink wink) generated a plump pile of billable hours to start with, right?

You may have noticed firms habitually encourage clients to pursue lengthy, drawn-out, costly litigations instead of settling for the obvious compromise they’re going to end up accepting eventually anyway. Same idea. It’s a form of “churning” – you pump up the time something takes…and make more money. That’s why law firms simply adore going to trial. There’s a delicious little temporal slice – a few weeks, no more – when you can basically bill the client for anything and they’ll pay it. That’s because they have to. It would be…awkward…to say no.

Do you still harbor doubts that firms love billables – any billables? Don’t be naïve. One of my close-personal-friend-the-psychotherapist’s clients recounted a meeting in a conference room where a partner congratulated the associate with the highest billables for the previous month – an absurd 350 hours. The other associates on the case exchanged looks. They all knew the guy – they were in the room with him most of the month, doing precisely what he was doing, as he was doing it. They saw him arrive. The saw him depart. They watched him work. They’d all worked the same number of hours – and it wasn’t no 350. His extra 30 or 40 were what we might politely refer to as “a flight of phantasy” or “poetic license.” He got away with it, too. It took balls, and the other associates respected those balls. In their own weird, pusillanimous, scaredy-cat way, they admired him.

The hours these glorified peons toiled already smacked of absurdity as well as insalubrity. No one can put in twelve hours of quality anything every single day for a month. So what, if this guy tacked on a couple more fictitious hours each evening? What’s the harm of heaping a little extra absurdity upon existing absurdity? If they possessed the cojones, they would have done it too – they acknowledged as much by letting him get away with it.

In the end, it paid off. He was blushing, she recalled, but nonetheless, he rose to take a little bow. Then they moved on and that was that.

Why do law firms want you to crank up billable hours, even if you’re confabulating?

Because, in the end, no one at the firm gives a hot damn how long it took you to do something. They want to charge the client as much as possible and make a lot of money.

How about the client?

Surprise! He doesn’t give a rodent’s posterior how many hours anyone at the law firm took to do anything. He just wants to win.

My close personal friend vividly recalls his participation in a private conclave in a corner office at S&C, watching one partner pow-wow with another over a bill to a client.

“There’s no way I can charge these guys more than $400k for this deal. Tell people to pull back on the hours, cut it down.”

Then he took a pen, crossed off the hours, and made up the necessary numbers to get to $400k, which was what the client was willing to pay.

A client wants something done – a deal closed, a case won. He doesn’t care how many hours you bill. He cares whether you did it, whether it worked – and how much you’re charging. If he thinks it’s worth it – he’ll pay. Otherwise, he won’t.

At this juncture in legal history, clients are mostly balking at paying for junior associates. They consider them clueless, expensive and someone else’s problem. A senior partner told me a client flipped out because a junior accompanied him to a deposition.

“Train him on your own dime,” were the client’s exact words.

He had a point. Why should law firms train juniors at their client’s expense? It’s not their fault law schools don’t teach anything useful. The firms aren’t to blame either.  In any case, they’re avoiding the problem by hiring seniors and mid-levels willing to sacrifice seniority for a junior’s paycheck.

Okay – so why do you have to cheat on your hours to make partner?

If you’re making partner it’s because you’re good at three things. One, law. Two, schmoozing. Three, surviving the hell of a big law firm.

The first thing – being good at law – means you work quickly and get stuff done without making a production out of it. That means you have low billables, which would keep you from becoming partner.  You could do more work than anyone else – and work all the time, but that would interfere with your second key skill…

Two – being a major schmoozer – means you need to be out doing non-billable stuff like marketing your ass off and taking people out to lunch and going to conferences…which means you have low billables, which would keep you from becoming partner.

Three – surviving the hell of a big law firm – means you have to sleep and maintain at least a semblance of a life so you don’t burn out and lose your mind. That means you have low billable hours etc., etc.

So you fudge. You lie. You make it up.

An associate client at a big mid-town firm had an uncomfortable phone call with a partner from his firm. The partner my client works for directly had billed an insane number of hours to the other partner’s deal, and the other partner was afraid to bill the client for them. He called the associate.

“Is it possible these numbers are correct? Could Joe have billed that many hours?”

My client did what he had to – he played dumb.  “I don’t know – he might have been working off-site,” he offered brightly.

There was an awkward silence while it sank in. Joe wasn’t backing down. It took nerve to triple his actual hours and bill them to another partner’s client – but what was the other partner going to do about it? Call him a liar? He had limited alternatives. He could try to ram it down the client’s throat, or he could wuss out and lower the bill. Those were the two choices.

Meanwhile, Joe the lying, cheating, pants-on-fire liar is a big-shot partner with stratospheric billables. This makes for satisfying partner meetings and fat distribution checks.

That’s how it works.

Remember – lie all you want on your billables, but don’t brag about it. Not because you’ll get caught. That’s not the risk. It’s more like you don’t want everyone else to start thinking it’s okay for them to lie on their billables. Then your billables aren’t going to look as good. Get it? Lucky for you, most lawyers are uptight nerds too terrified to remove that label from their mattress (the one it’s illegal to remove.) And yes, some of them break a sweat calculating each and every “point 25” expended to make a photocopy.

Let’s keep your creative time-accounting our little secret.

It’s interesting to note that, during my entire time at S&C, I was hounded by criticism for every move I made, but no one, not one person, ever chewed my close personal friend out for the fact that his time sheets belonged on the fiction – not the non-fiction – best-seller list.

If you’re going to make it at a law firm, you’re going to have to stay out of their way, and make them money.

Go ahead – tell that little white lie. Believe me, no one will blink. If they do, it’ll be more of a wink, followed by a knowing smile.
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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 can also heartily recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”.

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

It begins with the standard set-up. You feel trapped. Hate your life. Nerves shot. Self-esteem shredded. You know the drill: biglaw.

That’s when the dæmon lover appears. It doesn’t end well.

There’s biglaw hanky-panky and biglaw sexual harassment. There’s also biglaw romantic infatuation. It’s the one you talk about least because you least feel like talking about it. Once you reemerge on the other side and wish it never happened, you never feel like talking about it again.

It’s no coincidence life-crushing, soul-annihilating infatuations collide on a regular basis with the lives of young associates – any more than cars colliding with deer on an expressway is a coincidence if you locate the expressway in the path of the herd’s migration. Life-crushing, soul-annihilating infatuation is the logical outcome of life-crushing, soul-annihilating law firm existence.

The firm swallows your life, denies you sleep and vacation, works you into the ground, and subjects you to an endless stream of criticism. You got there in the first place because you’re a pleaser – the kid who earned “A’s” to please teacher. Now you can’t please anyone.

Enter the dæmon lover. He gets you when you don’t love yourself – when you hate yourself. That’s infatuation – not falling in love, but hating yourself so much you try to escape your own identity by merging into someone else.

For some reason, he’s British. I’m not saying he has to be British, but three of my clients – by some stroke of fate – ended up obsessed with British guys at their firms. Oh, and I did, too. So we’ll make him British.

If you’re American, there’s something about a British guy that says…here’s someone smarter, more tasteful than me. The accent conveys it. You pick this message up watching tv and movies. In a romantic comedy, when the guy meets a dream girl, she’s always tall, thin and white (this is Hollywood)…with a British accent. If he’s a dream guy, he’s Hugh Grant, with the British accent telegraphing effortless, jovial confidence. Oh, I’m sorry – I didn’t mention I’m Prime Minister/a billionaire/a genius CEO entrepreneur? How curious – I feel a perfect fool! Did you know, by the way, that you have the most beautiful eyes? Oops! I’ve spilled my canapé down your cleavage! Let me fetch something to tidy that up…

Superior. Cool under pressure. Charming. Confident. Everything you aren’t six months into your saison en enfer. And he’s so…approachable. A tiny life raft, an unflustered, un-freaked out, un-panicked bit of flotsam on which to cling once the ship’s prow sinks beneath the waves. Think back. Remember unflustered? Un-freaked out? Un-panicked? Recall a time when you slept through the night? When you went out with friends in the evening? Enjoyed “weekends”? Remember back when people used to be nice to you? Your little Hugh Grant impersonator represents a lost world – the antidote for your now.

Okay, deep breath. Before I continue to limn the romantic nemesis destined to toss your heart into the workbowl of a Cuisinart (equipped with the slicing blade) and press “pulse” – let’s talk about how embarrassing this is. Especially in retrospect. You might call it the final humiliation. You’re adjusting to having your ass handed to you by a sociopathic partner each and every day, and grasping that you’re in debt up to your eyelashes and cannot escape the worst job you’ve ever experienced. Then – one evening – you go home, settle in bed…and you’re smiling a little at the thought of that cute English guy you keep eyeing in the firm gym.

It turns out his office is down the hall from yours. He’s short-ish, with a snubby nose and hair that flops in his eyes. He smiled at you at the CLE training. Today you had lunch together and he winked while you tried to concentrate on blathering about law firm gossip. He’s so…terrific. He seems to like you.

Maybe life will go back to being worth living.

I wonder what it would be like to kiss him.

Yeah – it’s embarrassing. Recounting this stuff makes you feel a little more useless, stupid and pitiful – more nauseous, retarded and pile-of-vomit-like – than before.

Fast forward to emails and texts exchanged at all hours, mostly about nothing. You grow accustomed to two-finger typing silly messages at 1 am, giggling in your office like a fifteen-year-old. There’s one almost sort-of kiss.

Then somehow you awaken from the anesthesia and realize he’s got a girlfriend – or a boyfriend, in my case – so he’s not yours. In fact, you’ve made a fool of yourself – or was he leading you on, or torturing you, or what? Something happened – you’re sure of it. But now he’s acting all innocent, like he never realized you felt that way about him. He’s pulling away. Then he isn’t. Then he is again.

You hate him. You love him. He’s an asshole, a psycho. But you need to talk to him. You’re not going to text him. Then you do. He doesn’t reply. Then he does. Then he doesn’t. You think about him – a lot. You’re always thinking about him. You miss him. You need him.

Somewhere in this mess you realize if you can’t have him, you need to be away from him, so you can remember who you are – or were. It’s hard to remember life on the other side of the looking-glass.

His office is down the hall from yours.

Incidentally, he succeeds effortlessly at the firm – or appears to. You’re sinking like a lead balloon.

It doesn’t end well.

You leave the firm at some point. Or he does. Probably you. And you never see him again, or you do, but it’s a glimpse as he’s crossing 34^th Street at Seventh Ave and you only think it was him. In any case, he was with a girl. Whatever.

I’ll skirt over the hours passed lying in bed staring at the ceiling and wanting to die. The wondering if you can tell your friends – the friends that remain, post-the-law-firm-killing-off-of-your-social-life. You know what they’ll say. They will only put up with this crap for so long.

So you go see a therapist, and find out how infatuation works, and why life at that god-awful firm stressed you and regressed you and left you vulnerable to seduction by a rejecting love object – someone a bit like your father – in fact, a bit like the firm.

Years later, maybe, you’re doing something satisfying and interesting for a living – something that speaks to who you are. Your life partner actually loves you – digs you, vibes on you, “gets” you and adores you. You return the feeling.

Then the thought sails out of nowhere and slams you like a body check: How could you have hated yourself enough – forgotten who you were sufficiently – to cling to someone who only used you to stroke his ego? And suddenly it’s perfectly clear. You didn’t want to be with him – you wanted to be of him, to appropriate him – to step into his skin and his life and his self-confidence and escape to a place where you didn’t hate every day, fear everything and fear everyone.

On the spot, you make a solemn vow: Whatever happened years ago with the dæmon lover – it won’t happen again. You’re a different person now.
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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 can also heartily recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”.

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

“Pay whatever you can afford,” I tell them.

Naturally, they get what they pay for. If I’m a little sleepy, or staring at the clock – who are they to complain? Come to think of it, why do we have to talk about them all the time anyway…

Just kidding.

But let’s be real – are things any different with the the high-fidelity first-class traveling set than they are with folks flying “comfort class”? I ask myself that question a lot. I do it to stay honest.

For one thing, my wealthy clients – mostly partners at big firms – pay a lot more, which means they literally pay my rent. That means something. Therapy can feel conspiratorial, too – you tell your therapist everything. So when I’m on duty in the Platinum Elite Lounge, I’m aware I’m also pow-wowing with a supremely powerful boss making life-shattering decisions affecting my clients on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

But I have to be everyone’s therapist. That’s my job. I’m consciously working two sides of a divide.

The following is not an unusual scenario: I spend fifty minutes with a JD two years out of law school who’s making $25 per hour doing doc review – all to eke out monthly payments on a $170k financial carcinoma euphemistically termed a “school loan.” Five minutes later, in the same chair, I face a senior partner who brings in $2.8 million every twelve months. I witness abrupt social discordance at least once a week. Welcome to my world.

One of my wealthiest clients, a hypothetical composite who claims half of a large law firm as a personal asset, explained to me an especially profitable element of his firm’s business:

“You see, we get these kids in to do doc review, and we pay the company that recruits them $35/hr. The kids get $25, and we bill the client $70. That’s about it.”

It turns out there’s a sweet spot between handing doc review off to a junior associate – at $350/hr – and wiring it to some faceless drone in India to have it done for – what? – $20/hr? For $70 – the sweet spot – you’re saving the client real money but – and he insists there are studies to prove it – by hiring an out of work American JD, you’re still guaranteed high-quality, reliable service.

Do the math. The firm’s pocketing $35 every single hour – every single $25 hour that one of those kids spends chained by debt to a computer monitor, assessing corporate detritus.

Of the firm’s thirty-five bucks, a fair chunk goes directly to my client (hypothetical composite that he is), since he “owns” the account and the matter – a massive securities litigation – generating the doc review.

For each one of those dozens of doc review galley slaves slowly dying for $25/hr, my client – I’m guessing – pockets about $10/hr. That would add up fast.

Needless to say, he doesn’t have school loans. He does possess several gracious homes.

Okay. So what is The People’s Therapist doing sitting in the same room with this guy?! Even if he is a hypothetical composite – doesn’t it amount to consorting with the enemy?

For starters, Mr. Hypothetical Composite is not the enemy. He’s just a person. And what I’m doing is psychotherapy – just like with you. Let’s say he has problems with his kids, or marital issues or stuff he wants to work out from his childhood before his elderly father dies – well, then that’s what we’re talking about. Just like with everyone else in my office.

Even as I struggle to write this piece, I envision the comments and letters I’ll receive. Half will excoriate me as a wild-eyed Communist. The other half will tear into me for selling out.

Neither is the case. Trust me. I’m just a therapist.

Do I hate watching young people exploited by the law schools and the big firms? Of course.

Do I care about my wealthy, powerful law firm partner clients? Yes. And not just because they can pay hefty fees and help me make my rent. Because they’re people.

I guess my point here is that we need to do more than vilify one another. We need to understand one another – and understand the system and where we fall in it.

That sounds like a platitude. But psychotherapy is about consciousness and this is an element of consciousness.

I’ll put it this way: I sometimes cringe when an incredibly wealthy partner waxes on about philanthropy. While he’s contemplating a foundation to benefit the arts, I’m imagining what his little doc review army would think…probably that they could use five more dollars per hour in their pocket – or maybe a charitable foundation to benefit victims of school loans.

But hey – it’s not like government supports the arts in this country….We could use more foundations to benefit artists.

And at the same time, when I sit with a naïve 1L rhapsodizing on the theme of her cuddly law professor’s quirky personality, I also cringe, and imagine the loans she’ll face in a few years’ time – probably without a job.

We could argue forever about how the world ought to be – how much wealth the rich should be permitted to amass before they pay taxes, how low the poor should be allowed to sink before we reach down a helping hand. It isn’t my place to attempt to define injustice.

But I do wish we were all a bit more conscious of how the “other half” (or other ninety-nine percent, or other one percent) lives. At very least, let’s open our eyes and own that law students, scammed into buying degrees with tens of thousands of borrowed dollars, are being worked like cattle. Meanwhile, wealthy partners are pocketing millions upon millions and wondering how they can possibly give back in a meaningful way.

The Occupy Wall Street protest is situated only blocks from my office. I’ve spent time walking through their encampment, pondering its message, which boils down to: “Something is wrong with this picture.” It’s not too different from Warren Buffett’s message, when he reminds us that, as a candidate for the title of richest man in the world, he pays a lower tax rate than you or I.

I’ll add to the growing chorus: There’s something wrong with this picture. Both sides are sensing it – your half (whichever it is) and the “other half.” Both sides appear to yearn for a solution.

I’m in the middle, between the two halves, trying to help you understand one another. It’s a little like couples counseling. I don’t think the junior associates out there seek a Communist overthrow of our government. And I don’t believe every wealthy managing partner wants his name on the door of a Dickensian sweatshop. Here’s my job: I’ll repeat what you’re each telling me, out loud, so you can both hear it. Eventually, you’ll begin to understand what the other half is saying.
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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 can also heartily recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”.

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

“Damn, it’s cold,” grumbled one of my American companions.

An Englishman behind us stumbled over a patch of frozen volcanic ash. “There’s a clue in the name, mate,” he offered helpfully.

Some things are so obvious they really don’t need to be explained anymore. Like it’s icy in Iceland. Like it sucks working at a big law firm. You kinda ought to know that by now…

…which is why interviewing 2L’s feels so heart-breaking.

I should know, I’ve been listening to senior and mid-level associates for the past month, telling me how much it sucks interviewing 2L’s.

Why? Because if you hate them, you’re interviewing someone you hate. And if you like them…then you feel a moral obligation to clue them in on the hellish misery they’re clambering to claim for themselves.

It’s hard not to hate law students, especially from the vantage point of a senior or mid-level associate. They’re clueless, and yes, many conform to the worst stereotypes. There’s always the tall dork who wears a suit to class and raises his hand to ask obvious, meandering questions. There’s the girl with hair dangling over her face, who trails the professor after class to smarm, in her peculiarly nasal voice, over the subtle charms of today’s lecture. We all hate them.

One of my senior associate clients reserves her remaining tolerance for part-time law students. “At least they’ve got a clue,” she says. Maximum disdain is reserved for the full-timers who slid into law school directly out of undergrad, scribbling their name on loan documents like so many fevered lemmings racing to be the first off a ledge.

The worst story I’ve heard so far came from a mid-level associate, miserable and deeply in debt, who interviewed the obnoxious 2L son of a huge corporate client’s CEO. While this over-privileged sack of ordure grinned in his preppy suit and barely bothered answering her questions, she returned to an old fantasy of firing a pistol into her mouth in the firm’s dining room, taking special care to splatter the head of litigation.

(Hey, it’s her fantasy. And yes, as her therapist, I strongly disapprove.)

Anyway, CEO, Jr. knew and she knew and everyone else knew he already had the job. She left the interview feeling dirty. That was an extreme case.

On the other hand, sometimes you meet a law student you like – someone you want to help. That’s when you face the real agony.

One client was asked by a friend at the firm to assist a woman he’d called back. Her grades weren’t great, but she was older, and smart and together – not your usual 2L – and he plain liked her.

“So I meet with this woman, and he’s right, she’s terrific. And that’s the weird part. All I could think was – how can I warn you away?”

He knew perfectly well she’d hate it at the firm. Everyone hated it at the firm. He described the place as “utterly toxic” and “filled with assholes.”

He ended up doing what most associates with a heart do in these situations – hinting broadly something might be rotten in the state of Denmark. To his way of thinking, that was all he could do – and what he had to do. But she didn’t seem to hear. At one point she actually told him she was “looking forward to becoming a part of the firm.” He stared back in disbelief.

I reminded him none of that mattered.

Why?

Okay – here’s the big reveal: Because they already know.

At least, the smart ones do. C’mon…2L’s aren’t entirely cloaked in ignorance anymore – how could they be? Half their class (at least – probably more like three-quarters) won’t get jobs, and they know it. The news is out. Firms aren’t hiring big classes of juniors anymore. As one senior partner told me recently: “those days are over.”

2L’s don’t care about your warnings. They know how bad it is. At very least, they’ve heard the stories.

Why don’t they care?

Duh. Now you’re acting clueless. $180k in school loans ring a bell? That’s why.

At this point no one’s pretending there’s any difference between law firms. No one’s pretending they’re excited to be a part of Evil & Evil. They simply need an offer – any offer. They need to pay loans.

Here’s a tougher question. I was debating with a junior partner client whether a 2L with average grades at an average law school isn’t better off quitting now, and giving up.

Sound insane? He’s nearly done, you insist – only that final, pointless third year, and the bar exam, and he’s set! But stop, and think it through. That final year costs at least $60k. That’ll take two years – minimum – to pay off. He probably won’t get a job, either. If he does, it’ll be insurance defense at a sweatshop in East Dubuque – earning about $60k, working day, night and weekends.

See my point? It makes sense to quit – “take a leave of absence” – and save the $60k. Then you’re only looking at $120k in loans, not $180k. That’s a big difference. And it’s not like the JD’s gonna do you any good. You won’t earn any more with it – but you will end up deeper in debt, stuck in the worst job in the world.

If you’re going to take the leap and “tell them,” then tell them the whole truth. Yes, your firm is a hell-hole. They already know that – and they still need the money.

Tell them they should drop out, prontissimo, and do something – anything – else.
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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 can also heartily recommend my first book, “Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy”.

(Both books are also available on bn.com.) 

The new book is available as an ebook or paperback via Amazon and BN.com and as an ebook in the Apple ibookstore.

Sorry for the wait.

“Straight allies” – a concept every lawyer needs to understand.

As an LGBT person, you face a stark reality – there aren’t many of us. It might not seem like it, but we’re a tiny minority. And it’s a myth we recruit straight people to be gay – we would, but it’s impossible.

“Straight allies” are the folks who aren’t LGBT but – because they’re caring, patient, loving, open-minded and plain decent – they help LGBT people persevere in the struggle for equal rights.

What’s this got to do with lawyers?

You need some allies, too – allies who aren’t lawyers. It’s key to your survival.

Look around – all you see, probably, is lawyers – lawyers and more lawyers. That’s because you spend 90% of your waking hours at a law firm, where that’s all there is to see.

At some point in your day, or your week, or maybe your month, you’re going to have to see someone who isn’t a lawyer. And that person is going to have to put up with you. It may be your spouse, your romantic interest, your buddy from college or a member of your family.

That’s your non-lawyer ally. And you know deep in your heart it’s not a fun job. Whoever he is, he’s putting up with a lot – helping you keep it together.

One of my clients complained to me that he regrets coming back from work every night and grumping at his wife. I reminded him she might not be savoring the experience either. But it went further than that. The following week she blew up at him and gave him an earful of what being a non-lawyer ally is like.

Based on that earful – and other earfuls like it – here are a few tips for getting along with your non-lawyer allies:

Just because you hate your job, don’t assume she never wants to talk about hers.

Being a lawyer sucks, and your ally hears about it all the time. She’s probably committed to memory every detail of what you hate about your job. If she’s your life partner, she watches you get up every morning looking like you’re marching off for a root canal – then stands back and observes while you storm back at night and either stare into space for hours, or snap and grump and pace like a foul-tempered guard dog.

She’s done a lot of listening, and a lot of empathizing. She’s tried problem-solving, and realized it doesn’t work. And she’s tried absorbing. She’s learned to tolerate being in the room with someone who’s frustrated and angry and scared and sad.

How about her?

When my client’s wife blew up at him, she reminded him all she ever heard him say about her was that she loved her job – like it was an accusation. And yes, she did love her job, as a creative advertising professional. But her work could be trying, too, and she had good days and bad days just like anyone else. Sometimes she wished she could come home and find a supportive someone to blow off a little steam with, or bounce an idea off. Instead, she sat waiting – bored and tense and filled with dread – until he stormed in. Then she listened to him grump.

Just because you’re living your life on hold, waiting for the end, doesn’t mean she never wants to have fun.

You might be committed to a life of suffering right now. Most lawyers are. Maybe you’re counting down to the exact moment when you’ll have that all-important one year at the firm on your resume so you can flee, or you’re senior enough to call a headhunter about an in-house position, or you’ve paid down your loans to a major milestone, or whatever event occurs in the future that will permit you to live like a human being again. You’re hunkered down, holding your breath, waiting for something awful to end.

That’s fine. But she wants to go out for dinner once in a while – or see a movie.

Life goes on in the outside, non-law world. People work from nine to five, and then they lead active, healthy private lives that include friends and cultural events and time spent relaxing.

Just because you’ve decided to say farewell to all that, and pretend it doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean she’s on-board.

A relationship is about positive shared experience. That’s basically all a relationship is – time spent together. If there are good times, you grow closer, and more committed to the partnership. If you have bad times, or simply don’t see one another, the partnership frays.

You can’t take your non-lawyer allies for granted.

I don’t have any easy answer to the question, how am I supposed to spend time with my non-lawyer ally when I never leave the office? But there is an unavoidable reality here: if you ignore your non-lawyer allies, they will eventually give up on you.

That means you stop hearing from friends. Even your family members might stop calling, once they’ve realized they get voicemail and their calls aren’t being returned.

It’s toughest for a spouse or life-partner. Dating a lawyer can feel like a long-distance relationship – all the disadvantages of commitment, with none of its pleasures. Why make the sacrifice to be faithful to someone when they’re never around? You end up doubly alone.

If this column achieves nothing else, let it be an alarm bell that reminds you there are people in your life from the world outside law. They might mean a lot to you, and you might be taking them for granted. They can be your allies, and help you survive this. They “get it” – as much as any non-lawyer can – and they may reach out a hand to help. But they’re also suffering, thanks to your decision to pursue law – and it’s only decent on your part to acknowledge that they’re making sacrifices, too.

If they’re going to stick around, and be there for you, you’re going to have to acknowledge their help, and also be there for them sometimes. Fair’s fair.

Otherwise you could find yourself living a life filled with lawyers, and nothing but lawyers.

No one wants that.
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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 and support.  

This series will go on hiatus for the summer of 2011 so TPT can work on a book.  It will return to weekly publication in September.  

If you enjoy these columns, and are wondering how to pass the long, hot summer – please check out The People’s Therapist’s first book.