We all know lawyers are pleasers. Everyone knows that. The weird thing is how it doesn’t feel that way from the inside. When you are a lawyer, and a pleaser, you don’t think you’re a pleaser – it seems more like you’re the only conscientious person in the world. You are the one who shows up on time, sits in the first row and hands your homework in on schedule, always perfect. Other people don’t, and that’s annoying. Thus begins a typical lawyer pet peeve – that other people never live up to their obligations. Stretch that out to the extreme, and you wind up doing a job where you bill 3,000 hours a year, just to set a good example for everyone else.
The odd thing is that lawyers simultaneously manage to feel a bit like imposters even as they’re pleasing, because pleasing isn’t the same thing as achieving. Achieving is an objective fact – you have accomplished something useful, good, of value. Pleasing just means you’ve convinced someone else that you’ve given them what they wanted, which might involve little more than smoke, mirrors and billable hours.
Lawyers are good at working hard, just like they’re good at racking up grades in school, which amounts to pleasing teachers. But hard work and good grades in school don’t mean you can play saxophone or or paint a portrait or write a gripping novel. It doesn’t mean you can design a computer or cure cancer either, especially since lawyers tend not to be much good at science and math (if you were any good at that stuff, you’ve have gone to med school and really pleased your parents.) Even if you are a lawyer good at science or math, it’s unlikely you’re designing computers or curing cancer because you’re probably an IP lawyer, who fled the lab bench for “money and prestige” (the magical lawyer incantation.) It’s a small wonder “imposter syndrome” thrives among lawyers. Don’t think you fooled me. We both know you aren’t really that good – you just run around trying to please everybody to distract them from the sense of defectiveness that haunts you, keeps you dancing so it won’t become obvious you’ve no idea what you want to do with your life. Everyone else seems to have somehow figured out what they want to do with theirs. Except lawyers.
So who do lawyers seek to please? Lots of folks. Pretty much everyone, except themselves.
For starters, you’re trying to please your parents, who probably are the reason you got into this business in the first place. Your kid brother may have fussed around after college, hanging out with artsy friends and not earning a cent. But you were better than that – you didn’t waste a minute getting down to work. Your eyes were on the prize, “money and prestige”(yes, there it is again, that same evil formula for unhappiness.) And it paid off – now you’re $200,000 in debt, hate your job, work around the clock and (perhaps worst of all) can’t even think of something you like to do anymore, except not work. (Your irresponsible brother, on the other hand, founded a start-up, and just bought a vacation home on Kauai.)
Above all else, lawyers kill themselves pleasing law firms and the partners who own them – the exact same folks least inclined to return the favor. Lawyers’ absolute dedication to pleasing their masters still shocks even me, even now. A lawyer blatantly abused for years by a massive law firm can break into a sweat at the prospect of telling his soulless overseers he’s planning to leave.
One lawyer recently told me he felt obligated to give the firm “several months notice” of his coming departure. I gaped in astonishment.
“Why?” I sputtered, dumbfounded.
“It’s only decent to provide them a heads up so they can smooth the transition,” he whimpered.
I reminded him this firm and its partners had exploited him for years, pocketing at least 80% of the client fees he earned, all while he served as an “at will” employee whom they wouldn’t have hesitated for one moment to fire if business turned slow.
“Do the math,” I told him. “They bill you at, say $600 per hour. You billed 2700 hours last year. That’s approximately $1.6 million. They paid you approximately $300k, including bonus, benefits, the works. They made $1.3 million, free and clear, from your labor. You walk out that door, they immediately start bleeding cash as a result – hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
He admitted that much was true, although it seemed like he’d never done the math before. I continued my screed:
“They’ll never offer you a raise to convince you to stay – at best, they’ll murmur soothing promises about working fewer hours. But last time they talked you into staying, you worked the same crushing schedule for another year. That’s why you’re leaving, remember?”
He admitted all that was true, but still felt he owed it to them. In reality, he was afraid of displeasing someone – anyone, even these exploitative brutes. If he displeased, he’d failed, and that awful feeling of not being good enough would well up like groundwater and threaten to drown him.
I tried more logic – it rarely works with lawyers, but always seems worth a try. I pointed out how bizarre it would be to continue working at a firm for weeks or months after informing them he was eyeing the exit. They might pile work on – why not, he’s leaving soon? Or hesitate to assign him matters, since what’s the use, he won’t be around to complete them? They might tell him to go right now, or whenever they have a replacement lined up. They might (as happened to one of my clients who, against my advice, told his firm he was leaving) refuse to pay his bonus, on the grounds there was no need to incentivize him to stay if he was already on the way out.
“I understand what you’re saying, and it makes sense,” he conceded, then mewled, “but I still feel guilty.”
Guilt. A familiar lawyer emotion. Often what made you become a lawyer in the first place. But what is guilt? Essentially, it’s you beating yourself up because you’ve made someone else unhappy, or merely might make someone else unhappy – you’ve displeased (or might displease), and therefore you must be punished. The punishment? Guilt.
Keep in mind that depression (the mental illness, depression) is a self-punitive phenomenon. Essentially, it amounts to you beating yourself up – anger directed inward.
That’s an important insight to “be cognizant of” (as a lawyer might put it.) Pleasers who fail to please others attack themselves, and that creates depression. One symptom of depression is the absence of appropriate anger. Ask a depressed person if she’s angry, and you’ll probably hear some variation of “only at myself.” That’s because, as a depressed person, you can’t get angry at anyone else, because you’re always the one at fault (employing pleaser logic, you have to be.) Pleasing is a one-way operation – you either please the other person, or you don’t, in which case you’ve failed. You must have stopped being conscientious. You must have stopped living up to your obligations. Somehow, you displeased (i.e., let them see what’s broken and defective in you) and you have only yourself to blame, and so you must be punished. That punishment is depression.
Furthermore, trying to please other people all the time is exhausting. There’s always a chance you’ll miss something, make a mistake, permit your attention to flag, just for an instant…and wind up under a bus.
That’s lawyer anxiety, in a nutshell.
What if you stopped trying to please? What if you drew a circle around yourself, pushed that circle back a few feet, and announced that, inside this circle, you get to be you? That circle is what therapists call a “self-barrier” and it’s another important concept to “be cognizant of.”
Law firms draw self-barriers around themselves – inside, are the partners, and all the money. Outside, is you, indebted and powerless. As I never tire of pointing out, if the firm were really, really upset about you leaving, they could do the unthinkable: They could permit you a tiny toe in the door of their self-barrier, where the money is.
I have seen law firms beg, plead, cajole, threaten and freeze out lawyers who decided to leave at inconvenient times. I have never seen a law firm offer money to stay. That isn’t done – it isn’t contemplated, for fear that contemplation might result in the horror of its coming to pass. On ancient stone tablets, stowed in a hollow carved from the viscera of a volcano, guarded by a dragon asleep behind a lake of fire, it is inscribed: No matter how good you are, you cannot be paid any more than everyone else in your year (no matter how useless they are.) Otherwise… it would be wrong. Against God, against nature. How, otherwise, could the partners eternally earn ten times as much as you (which is required to satisfy the bloodlust of the Zoroastrian demon, Aeshma, bearer of the bloody mace. Don’t ask.)
So they let you leave. And you feel guilty. You feel you failed by not pleasing them enough to convince them to make you one of them. Maybe if you were one of them, you wouldn’t feel so defective, so broken, so much like an imposter.
A slight digression. There exists a tv show (that I somehow located on Netflix), called “Extreme Homes.” It is not an intellectual endeavor – in fact it’s glossy and silly and might fairly be termed trash. The premise is simple: The producers comb the globe for wild, crazy, unique houses, then make flashy mini-documentaries about them, including the story of who lives there, and the how and why they built these kooky cribs.
The results are glorious. Each house, whether it’s a yurt or an underground hobbit dwelling or a tree house or an ersatz medieval castle, is (as we’re constantly reminded in the show’s voice-over intro) precisely what that owner wanted, a reflection of his authentic self. Sure, some won’t suit most tastes, but that doesn’t matter. They don’t have to please most tastes. They please the person who built them, the person who lives there. The owners of these houses have done the most un-lawyerly thing imaginable – they’ve focused their attention and talents and ambitions on pleasing themselves.
Your life can be an extreme home. The trick is to ignore what other people say, and build the damned thing. The way you want it. Your parents can roll their eyes and launch into lectures on responsible behavior. You might have to pay off some loans first, and you might have to start small – maybe a humble tee-pee then a yurt, then a hobbit village.
You’ll find, once you stop trying to please everyone else, that you have more fun, and feel less depressed, and anxious, too. If there’s a definition of “happiness,” it’s “living your life as an expression of your authentic self.” That’s not just pleasing – that’s an achievement. And it’s contagious. When other people see your new house, they might do some eye-rolling, but you’ll see respect in their eyes as well. Who knows? It might even bring you money and prestige (you could wind up on “Extreme Homes”!)
If your current home (yes, it’s a metaphor for your life, including your job) resembles a biglaw firm then, sure, that might qualify as “extreme” by certain definitions….but it still might be time to get building a treehouse or castle or igloo. Stop giving everyone else what they want. No, you’re not broken, or defective inside. You’re probably just kooky. So build a house (and a life) that’s kooky, too, one that makes your heart rate quicken.
If you build it, the rest will come, in time. Because you’ll be where you belong.
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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.
And now there’s a new Sequel: Still Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: (The Sequel)
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
The People's Therapist 
Really needed this today. I greatly, greatly appreciate your column.
This has really helped me connect and further hone some thoughts I’ve been having about myself and my evolving career dreams. Nice job and thanks.
Hit home for me. Even though I am not a lawyer, it sounds so true for my experience (as a high-achiever, a people-pleaser and a perfectionist – the worst combination)
It’s not as easy for someone who doesn’t come from a privileged background of private schools and psycho-therapist parents to create the life they’ve always wanted. Most of us are in survival mode, and weigh every decision with a cost-benefit analysis, and we have to look at real costs like losing our homes and health insurance, not just the psychic cost of not feeling fulfilled. Remember, Will, “You didn’t build this…” You’re smart, but so are a lot of other people. You had a series of very fortunate events happen, not to mention grade A safety nets, that have allowed you to create your “extreme home.” Many of us do not have those things. Your post makes those of us who struggle paycheck to paycheck to put our Walmart bought food on the table feel even worse. Like it’s our fault. Like there’s not a whole system rigged to keep us right here. Like if we just “wanted it” more, or had more faith, or thought more creatively, or….had the appropriate $200/hr therapist, we would then be able to build our own “extreme home” and live exactly as we want. What those of you who have been privileged to build your “extreme home” fail to acknowledge is that you’ve been able to partly because most of us aren’t.
Expressing personal creativity and originality in the way you live your life doesn’t require that you belong to some elite class. This is about your mindset, not your privilege. Plenty of wealthy people live crushingly inauthentic lives, and plenty of folks who are just getting by financially still manage to express who they are through the lives they lead. There’s a bigger issue here than just money or prestige (two concepts lawyers tend to obsess over to the exclusion of everything else.) Sometimes it isn’t just about the tiny room you live in, it’s about the art on the walls, the books on the shelves, the music playing and the conversation happening in that room. Those don’t cost much, but they require looking out at the world, and in at yourself, and embracing some authentic expression.