Law People : Law Practice Management, Organizational and Personal Dynamics; Talent Management : Ronda Muir of Law People Management, Inc.

According to a recent article in the ABA Journal, "Law schools need to do more than teach the legal basics--they also have a moral obligation to produce healthy and satisfied lawyers."  Specifically, Michael Serota, a recent law grad, suggests in his opinion column in the New York Law Journal that law schools "help students identify their professional values and make individual career decisions that correspond to those values."

Serota cites the Peterson study finding unusually high rates in lawyers of depression and other signs of distress, such as heart disease, alcoholism and drug use (see also our entry The Depression Demon Coming Out of the Legal Closet), and four ABA studies conducted over the last 25 years confirming chronic professional dissatisfaction--one out of every four lawyers is dissatisfied with her job. The Peterson study found lawyers suffer from the highest rate of depression of all professionals after adjusting for socio-demographic factors and are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from a major depressive disorder than the rest of the employed population, as well as being more likely to develop heart disease, alcoholism and drug use.  Professor Susan Daicoff has noted approximately 20% of the entire profession suffers from clinically significant levels of substance abuse, depression, anxiety or some other form of psychopathology. Let us add to these studies various others that have identified very high rates of suicide, divorce and mental illness among lawyers.  According to Serota, researchers have also found that mental illness and distress are responsible for the majority of attorney malpractice and disciplinary proceedings.

These findings point to a massive amount of individual suffering across the country, as well as significant costs to society in the form of increased health and malpractice expenses and a plethora of poorly or under-served clients. This circumstance is one clearly worth addressing, and one that can in fact be remedied.

We are often asked if the culture or pressures of legal workplace environments cause these mental health problems.  We believe that pervasive personal traits in lawyers--such as high levels of pessimism, competitiveness, introversion and conflict-avoidance and low levels of resilience and sociability--as well as ignorance about how to manage their implications underlie many of these disheartening statistics. And we have good evidence that those traits are already in place when students enter law school. The law school environment of similar personal types simply intensifies those attributes and can exaggerate their negative tendencies. 

Further, most law students enter law school with a different vision of how they are going to practice law than law schools (and most of their law firm clients looking for talent) envision, resulting in the poor alignment of values that Serota notes.  Research done in the area of positive psychology has determined that promoting the use of personal strengths is a means to higher job productivity and satisfaction.  As is the alignment of personal values with that of the workplace.  Unfortunately, research by Sheldon and Kasser found that as early as their first semester of law school, students begin to shift from focusing on their internal value systems (that which gives them pleasure and meaning) toward an increased emphasis on external values (such as grades and competition), leading to decreased satisfaction and overall well-being. 

Using strengths and aligning values requires, of course, understanding one's strengths and values and how well they match with those of the profession and individual firm one hopes to join.

Unfortunately, the level of this kind of awareness among lawyers must be one of the lowest of all professions.  And even fewer lawyers, if aware, know how to affirmatively use that information for greater productivity and satisfaction.

Thus, it is not surprising that studies find, for example, that within six months of entering law school, students experience significant decreases in well-being and life satisfaction, and substantial increases in depression, negative affect and physical symptoms. 

The American Bar Association, the Association of American Law Schools and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching have all devoted substantial time to making recommendations as to how law schools might address these concerns. We and other consultants to the industry offer our viewpoint and suggestions.  See among others our entry Growing Leaders at Harvard and Other Business Schools. 

Law schools have responded by doing little, if anything.  Staff members with little training in the underlying psychological issues continue to offer ad-hoc, after-hours "career counseling" that doesn't help students recognize or address the personal challenges of lawyering. "By ignoring the topic of professional satisfaction in their curricula, law schools create an institutional misconception that the personal challenges of lawyering are peripheral to the practice of law. But because the individual is part and parcel with the professional, personal problems will necessarily affect the professional environment," Serota asserts. 

Does the mandate to educate lawyers include educating them in how to ply their trade with satisfaction and in good health? Will law schools ever put in place programs that further those ends? Lots of different perspectives on this one--see the comments.   

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In a recent interview about her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dr. Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, explained how a person's mindset can account for success. 

She identifies two major mindsets--fixed and growth.  In a fixed mindset, we think we know our strengths and weaknesses, believe that they are "fixed" and think we should only attempt undertakings that use those strengths.  This type of person often cites genetics or background as limiting factors to their productivity.

With a growth mindset, we believe that we can grow into the skills needed for success. That is, we have the attitude that with analysis and persistence and feedback, we can stretch and extend our abilities over time.  The basis of these differences in mindset lie in one's sense of control and optimism--attitudes that have long been associated with greater success and sense of well-being.

Dr. Dweck's research on athletic performance is intriguing--the more athletes believe that their success is a function of effort and practice (as opposed to "natural talent"), the better they do.  Even more importantly, the more they believe that their coach thinks their success is a function of effort and practice, the better the athletes do.  

She also points out that in India and Asia, the common belief that children are blank slates at birth who can learn anything help people there succeed.

Her research also has relevance to those of us practicing law.  As measured by various assessments, lawyers are highly pessimistic and also have low resilience to setbacks (an indication of low sense of control). When gauging ourselves, and particularly in mentoring others, it is important to focus on the process--how much time and energy is being put into the effort and how persistent the person is.  Encouraging those traits will pay off with better performance over time than praising how "smart" someone is or how "natural" they are at something.  In fact, that type of praise is shown by Dr. Dweck's research to actually lower productivity--trapping the person in the narrow range of their perceived ability and making them fearful that they can't always live up to that talent or go beyond it.

Lawyers are also not inclined to take risks and therefore are less likely to proceed, whether personally or as a firm, when they are not certain they are likely to succeed.  In this time of fast-paced changes, however, Dr. Dweck points out  the disadvantage of such a fixed mindset.  With law practice undergoing tremendous transition, that reluctance can put both a person and a firm at the back of the evolutionary process that will produce better services. 

Dr. Dweck has developed an assessment to determine one's mindset and strategies for changing a mindset from a fixed one to one of growth, both of which we can offer as a part of your complete professional development plan, whether for one attorney or a large group.

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In addition to the factors we pointed out as relevant in evaluating the Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination, recent studies provide some additional insight into the impact of minority judges just in time for consideration of Kagan’s SCOTUS nomination.

The ABA Judicial Division reported this spring on two studies conducted by the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, one of which examined 40% of reported racial harassment cases from six federal circuits from 1981 to 2003 while the other reviewed over 500 Title VII sexual harassment and sex discrimination cases. In the second study, plaintiffs were at least twice as likely to win if a female judge was on the appellate panel.

In the racial harassment cases, African-American judges were significantly more likely to find for plaintiffs (46%), compared to Hispanic (19%), white (21%) and Asian American (33%) judges, a finding which both supports and refutes the idea that those who have experienced being a racial minority may be more sympathetic to minority plaintiffs. While Kagan is Jewish and results for that ethnicity were not reported, the general conclusion remains that diversity breeds diverse trends.

Does this mean that the law is so variably applied as to preclude justice? 

One of the authors of the study, Professor Pat Chew, takes the position that the rule of law in these cases remains intact—all judges, regardless of their own profile, took the same procedural steps to reach their decisions, while taking different approaches to interpreting the facts. She compared these disparate results to those obtained when controlling for judges’ political affiliation—a factor that also significantly affects outcomes.

In a federal court system where 20% of judges are women and 15% are members of minorities, the decisions currently being made are obviously more reflective of those of white males than the spectrum of American ethnicity and gender. But in an increasingly diverse world, that is likely to change.

These kinds of studies always segue into an examination of the feeder systems for the judicial system—law firms across the country. The stats there, particularly as a result of the Great Recession of 2009, are not encouraging for the future. While large firms lost about 6% of their total lawyers in 2009, 9% of Asian-Americans, 9.7% of Hispanics and an astounding 13% of African-Americans (and 16% of African-American non-partners, or roughly 1 in 6), lost their lawyering jobs there. While some firms have been able to register gains (see “Diversity Scorecard 2010”), these statistics on overall loss of diversity show what a major setback has occurred in those firms where the resolve to improve law firm diversity is fragile. See “Law Firms Must Act to Offset Diversity Setbacks.”

At a time when the number of non-whites in the workplace will start to outstrip whites, building an environment that acknowledges and addresses the challenges that diversity presents is a priority for all firms. Understanding differences in the “interpretation of facts,” as the studies above noted, is an important part of understanding diverse perspectives—and succeeding in court. 

Another factor that invariably impacts the rise of minority lawyers is a firm’s compensation system, and specifically origination credit. We already are documenting the difficulty that women partners have in capturing their share of origination. See “Female Partners Bullied Over Compensation.” Helping minorities and women realize their share of law firm success in the increasing diverse world where firms will be forced to operate should be on every firm’s agenda.

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