The People's Therapist

I participated on a panel last year with an expert on “happiness studies” and naturally, as someone who works with lawyers, I found myself inverting the customary nomenclature. While the relevance of “happiness studies” to the legal profession might fairly be questioned, it would be foolhardy to minimize the implications of “unhappiness studies” with regard to lawyers’ lives. I would venture a step further, to aver that law, as a profession, holds immense promise for future “unhappiness studies” research.

Until that time, we’ll have to make do with insights provided by the “happiness studies” folks, and simply invert it all so things makes sense in legal terms. It might sound like some kind of “Mister Mxyztplk” version of happiness studies…but for our purposes, it’ll do the trick.

Here, then, Mr. or Ms. Lawyer, is the official explanation (at least, according to some of the happiness experts I’ve read or listened to) for why you’re so unhappy: There are three things missing from your life – three elements critical to happiness (think of them as vitamins, and yourself as having a deficiency.) Studies show that you need these three elements, or your life will suck. Well, that’s not exactly what studies show, but in all honesty, I haven’t bothered to read any of those studies because it seems like that would be a difficult and boring thing to do and in any case this stuff is pretty intuitive (intuitive being the polite word for obvious) and who knows with these psychology studies – half the time they aren’t reproducible and most were likely done by a psych professor milking his tenure track gig while he moonlights supervising waterboardings.

But I regress. Or digress. Or whatever.

Here then, is an explanation of the vitamins, in entirely random order:

Vitamin number one (again, the order is random) is autonomy, as in, control over your own life – i.e., the ability to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, the way you want to do it. Needless to say, these concepts are foreign to a lawyer’s experience. In fact, lawyers are the only people I’ve ever met who casually refer to “taking most of the weekend off” as though that were a perfectly normal thing for someone who works all week to say. Some of my lawyer clients have so little of vitamin number one that they interrupt psychotherapy sessions to repeatedly reply to email or even answer their cellphones (I sit, patiently observing, as they listen, go suddenly pale, and then, with a very small voice, begin to sound like obsequious lickspittles placating angry war lords – which is, essentially what they are.) The entire absence of personal autonomy in biglaw seems so blindingly “intuitive” that it’s almost embarrassing to point out as a fact worthy of statement – but here it is, summed up once more for ease of comprehension: In biglaw, you sell your life (i.e., all semblance of personal autonomy) for money.

I lost track, at Sullivan & Cromwell, of how many times I was told, “What did you expect? Why do you think we pay you so much?” There was often no detectable prompt to trigger this statement; it was just something people said to me for the heck of it, as in:

Me: “Nice weather we’re having.”

Them: “What did you expect? Why do you think we pay you so much?”

or

Me: “How was your weekend?”

Them: “What did you expect? Why do you think we pay you so much?”

(Of course, in this case you might argue there was some logical linkage, since their weekend might conceivably have been spent doing something not involving spending said weekend at the office, whereas, regarding my weekend, that outcome was not seriously at issue since I inevitably spent it, in its entirety or near-entirety, at the office…)

or

Me: “Hi.”

Them: “What did you expect? Why do you think we pay you so much?”

In psychotherapy terms, it was an “ego defense” – in other words, I think they were a bit self-conscious about keeping human slaves and this was a way for them to assuage said self-consciousness.

Next obvious question: Why does a total absence of personal autonomy create unhappiness? I guess for the same reason a circle is round, or a gestation crate on a factory farm is a bad place to live. It just is. I’m not sure if, even in my wackiest mood, I could manage to explain something so goddamned intuitive, even if (writing, as I am, for lawyers) it might actually require explaining. Something there is that doesn’t like being a slave, locked in a cage, doing what you’re told, unable to do what you want. And that’s how it is. I wish money were enough to make that go away, but disliking being a slave (well, okay, perhaps peon or indentured servant captures your status more precisely) remains a stubborn feature of human nature. Moving right along…

Vitamin number two is competence. It makes us happy when we feel like we’re good at something. If we feel good at something, we like doing it more, and yes, it feels good when we hear that we’re good at it. That makes us feel appreciated and a little bit celebrated. And in biglaw, I’m sorry, but that’s never gonna happen – at least 99% of the time. As a general rule, it is safe to say, lawyers don’t praise one another, they compete with one another. If you know more than someone else about anything in the legal sphere, the standard industry practice is to silently hold it over them, communicate disdain – radiate it, in fact – and let them know each and every waking moment that you are better and you could do whatever it is we’re talking about in half the time it’s taking them and, furthermore, that they are broken, wrong, incompetent, flawed, defective – take your pick – human beings. The rules are simple: A lawyer must never, ever, under any circumstances take the time to explain anything or show that miserable, useless little junior clown how to do anything. That would spoil the sport of grinding his ego to dust. Never explain. Never praise. Never thank. Constantly criticize. Rinse. Repeat. That’s biglaw. That’s how we roll. And guess what? It’s making you unhappy – at least, if you’re on the receiving end. And since there’s always someone above your head treating you the way you’re treating the person beneath you, all the way on up to the partners and the department heads and the name partner and the management committee and the client….Voila! We’re all unhappy.

Vitamin number three is sociability. Or sociality. Or maybe they mean the same thing. Whatever. Anyway, you need your peeps, your crew, your boyz, your crowd. You need other people. You need to feel surrounded by the people you feel at home with, who accept you, and maybe appreciate you a little, too. Once again, this isn’t what you’re liable to find at the average biglaw firm. In no small measure, that state of affairs is due to the resounding reality that, as one of my clients exuberantly shouted at me (via Skype) just the other day, at the top of her lungs, with a strangely blissful sense of emotional release more appropriate, perhaps, within the confines of a revival tent: “Lawyers are SUCH DICKS!”

Alas, there was no small measure of truth in her words, and as a result of this situation, you might find that you frankly aren’t so much into hanging out with other lawyers. Perhaps you’ve endured a lunch spent with a colleague bragging about how many hours he billed last month, or sat shoveling take-out lo mein into your mouth at 11 pm in a half-darkened skyscraper with a junior associate expressing her eagerness to work on some dodgy and unnecessarily convoluted derivatives contract because it’s “so much fun to wrap my head around!” I recall, at some weary juncture in my legal career, realizing with startling clarity that there weren’t any lawyers remaining in my acquaintance whom I would wish to invite to a party. I wasn’t even sure I would invite myself to a party at that point in my development as a human being. Happily, that wasn’t a period of my life when I was in any position either to throw parties or get invited to them.

But it matters, at least in terms of producing happiness, that you feel a part of a group you wish to be in. When I sign up for a weekend retreat with the group therapy institute, to spend hour after hour emoting and gibbering in psychobabble and kibitzing over bagels with a couple hundred other therapists, we might not all get along, but I’ve no doubt I’m down with my peeps. It’s New York City, I’m talking to therapists, we’re “putting our feelings into words,” there are many Jews and guys in tweed jackets and older chicks sporting chunky jewelry, lots of talking with hands and big, understanding eyes that gaze into your soul. I’m home.

With lawyers, not so much. In fact, if you are feeling among your people in a room filled with lawyers, congrats! You’re probably one of those odd ducks who really belongs in the field of law and isn’t even unhappy there. In fact, you’re probably not even reading this column right now. And you’re probably also receiving at least a small dose of vitamin number two, since someone’s praising you and grooming you to stick around (you could be one of the infinitesimal percentage of your class who won’t be gone in a few years time) and you might even start receiving your first tiny trickle of vitamin number one – the ability to decide when you want to do something, as opposed to doing whatever everyone else tells you to do, on their schedule (which somehow always means at 5 pm on Friday.)

It turns out dogs can produce their own Vitamin C. That comes in handy for them on long sea voyages. But we humans have to make sure we get our vitamins or we develop scurvy and bad things happen.

Some lawyers, apparently, are born with the ability to produce their own vitamins one, two and three – autonomy, competence and sociability. They flourish where the rest of us begin to notice anemia, coarse, brittle hair and bleeding gums.

You need to feel in control of your life, feel good at what you do, and feel surrounded by friendly faces. Otherwise, you’re going to be unhappy. And if, within the confines of biglaw, you lack the ability to extract the necessary nutrients from your surroundings, you might find yourself forced to leave before you wither up and die. You might even consider heading back to school to pursue another professional degree. Might I suggest the new-fangled yet red-hot field of Unhappiness Studies?
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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.

Please check out The People’s Therapist’s legendary best-seller about the sad state of the legal profession: Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning

And now there’s a new Sequel: Still Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: (The Sequel)

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

I’ve also written a comic novel about a psychotherapist who falls

in love with a blue alien from outer space. I guarantee pure reading pleasure: Bad Therapist: A Romance