The Lawyer, the Addict
“The psychological factors seen to erode during law school are the very factors most important for the well-being of lawyers,” Lawrence Krieger, a professor at Florida State University College of Law,
and Kennon Sheldon, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, wrote in their 2015 paper “What Makes Lawyers Happy?” Conversely, they wrote, “the factors most emphasized in law schools — grades, honors and potential career income — have nil to modest bearing on lawyer well-being.”
After students began law school they experienced “a marked increase in depression, negative mood
and physical symptoms, with corresponding decreases in positive affect and life satisfaction,” the professors wrote.
And when it’s happening, she said, they are so busy themselves, “they just don’t see it.”
When asked what the American Bar Association is doing to help combat mental health and substance abuse, Linda Klein, its president, said the A. B.A.’s requirement for continuing professional development and education “recommends
that lawyers be required to take one credit of programming every three years that focuses on mental health or substance abuse disorders.” She added that “by requiring lawyers to attend such programs periodically, the hope is that these concerns will be reduced.”
It’s difficult, though, to imagine that one class every three years would have prevented Peter — or anyone else — from becoming an addict.
Within the first year of law school, students’ motivation for studying law
and becoming lawyers shifted from “helping and community-oriented values to extrinsic, rewards-based values.”
Young lawyers in treatment at the Center for Network Therapy, an ambulatory detox facility in Middlesex, N. J., frequently tell Dr. Indra Cidambi, the medical director,
that the reality of working as a lawyer does not match what they had pictured while in law school.
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