Are lawyers unhappy? I have often wondered about this question. I’m not the only one. There is even a song titled ‘Don’t be a Lawyer’ in a TV series. The lyrics go like “The job is inherently crappy, that’s why you’ve never met a lawyer who’s happy. It’s a guaranteed soul destroyer. Don’t be a lawyer.”

I was surprised to find a whole section dedicated to this in one of the books I read few years back written by the famous psychologist, Dr. Martin Seligman (also known as ‘father of positive psychology’). He highlights three main reasons for lawyer unhappiness.

➡ Pessimistic explanatory style

Lawyers have to think of the worst case scenarios keeping in mind the best interests of their clients. While it is a good skill to practice law, this thinking style is often carried forward and applied to their personal lives. Instead of a more positive outlook, even in personal life, we can unconsciously focus on the worst case scenarios.

➡ Low decision latitude in high stress situations

Lawyers are always dealing with high stress situations but they have little to no control over taking decisions, especially junior lawyers who work on due diligence, research, filings etc. They don’t believe they have much of choice in their job. Even otherwise, lawyers have to work with the facts they are dealt with. High job demands with less control leads to more frustration.

➡ Looking at their job as a win-loss game –

The job is inherently adversarial in nature especially litigation. Whether we like it or not, the judge will decide whether we win or lose a case. A win-loss game is associated with negative emotions as opposed to a win-win game.

So what can we do about it?

Thankfully, Seligman also offered few ways to counter lawyer unhappiness.

➡ Learned optimism

Every time you have a catastrophic thought or imagine the worst case scenario in your personal life, imagine that the thought is from an enemy (the opposite counsel maybe?) who wants you to be miserable and use your lawyer skills to think of all the evidence you can to counter that thought or scenario to win your case.

➡ Expand the decision latitude

Providing more control to junior lawyers over their work. For eg. provide them with the complete picture of the transaction, involve them in transaction discussions, encourage them to share their ideas, introduce them to clients, etc.

➡ Leverage your signature strengths

Signature strengths are character strengths that are most essential to who we are. Identify signature strengths of your team members for eg. originality, creativity, fairness, social intelligence, kindness, leadership, humour, etc. and set aside some time during the regular work hours for them to be a part of some other firm projects where they can use these strengths for eg. library project, well being project, teaching project, pro-bono cases, etc.

The legal profession has its own set of challenges that can affect happiness levels of lawyers. Although we cannot change some aspects, we can be aware of those and intentionally try to build our work lives in a manner that brings us joy and happiness in our work and personal life rather than let ourselves become unhappy lawyers.

Are you already implementing these? Would love to hear the ongoing initiatives in this area!

References: Seligman, Martin. (2004). Authentic Happiness. Atria Books.