One day a fellow student came to class in my master’s counseling program with a t-shirt bearing the legend, “Call me Cleopatra--Queen of Denial.” I’ve been looking for that darned shirt ever since. It’s a funny treatment of a vital topic. Two recent books describe the prevalence and price of our professional denial.

The Lawyer’s Myth--Reviving Ideals in the Legal Profession by former judge and professor Walter Bennett1 and LawyerLife--Finding a Life and a Higher Calling in the Practice of Law by Judge Carl Horn III2 describe the problem in poignant and powerful terms. In my next column, I will describe their (and others’) recommendations for personal and professional healing.

First to the challenge--and if you looked a bit cross-eyed at the word “healing” above, then you have likely been inculcated with the professional cynicism which I will address. The books and articles detailing the rampant distress throughout our ranks just keep coming.3 The prevalence of such reports would belie the claim that such concerns are just a lot of hand wringing by a small cadre of doomsayers and touchy-feely types. Both Bennett and Horn recount, both broadly and anecdotally, this disease within the core of our profession.

In a striking passage, Bennett suggests that “the driving force behind these changes in the profession” is greed--but not as we might understand it.

Human nature being what it is, this may be true in part. But the greed driving the legal profession is more than greed in the traditional sense of greed for more money and material possessions. It is greed to be first, to be at the top of the curve, to be better than everyone else. Money, enough of a goal in its own right, is the leading measure of this type of success. And greed for one-upsmanship success is another manifestation of the hierarchical thinking that seems so ingrained in the legal profession from law school grading systems to the rating of law schools and law firms.4

As Bennett states, the focus, time and drive to achieve such mastery imbues us with a reverence for the values underlying this quest--and as he further notes,

People trained to excel under this paradigm, who have paid the hard price for “making it,” are less likely to take a critical perspective upon the greater picture--at least not until it is frequently too late.

From the words of Arizona lawyer and real estate developer Bruce Warnock, while he was investing 12-hour work days six or seven days a week, his daughters and wife had been developing largely without him. “I felt a little like Rip Van Winkle. Where had the years gone since I rocked them to sleep?”5

The focus, the professional myopia which exalts billables; high production and the single minded pursuit of the client’s interest at the expense of any other concern, renders so many of us physically exhausted, spiritually pinched and emotionally bereft. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke of the passion for the law--which is squeezed out of many of us. The quest for “justice” and a “calling” to service--which brought so many of us to the law (because it was a natural part of our value system), are goals that have eroded in the present environment. We create (or don) time tested methods of denying these realities...first by selectively deciding what is reality and then leavening that attitude with a large measure of professional cynicism--without question the greatest spiritual hazard of today’s practice of law.

For many of us, the denial goes on because God forbid we should expose any “weakness” to our peers, our supervisors, or our adversaries. We are not depressed (although we have not been particularly happy for a long time); we do not have a drinking problem (a half-bottle of wine or two to three shots of scotch each night just helps us wind down after an intense day); we do not lose sleep to anxiety (well maybe we do--and have for months--but it will pass); our spouse is happy (we have a great life-style--we don’t talk much, but we’re both incredibly busy and we really enjoy our vacations and connect then); our kids are great (they go to a great private school, are on select soccer teams and lots of kids have ADHD these days and the medication works wonders).

Denial is a tenacious psychological defense. It’s not that we choose not to see the unacceptable parts of our reality, it’s that we are deeply invested in our vision of reality. Denial is particularly pernicious with lawyers because we are so good at analytically deconstructing any statement or view that happens to be in our cross-hairs. If the statement or view is particularly threatening the scalpels really come out.

And what if we shed this denial? What would be the consequence?

Well, change would have to follow. That, of course, is why we embrace our denial so fervently. Who wants the discomfort and risk of seismic personal change?6 At the same time, who can afford to avoid it? What pot of gold sits at the other end of this rainbow that can possibly replace the pot of tangible gold so many of us have striven for, and achieved? Bennett and Horn provide thoughtful and, yes, healing answers.7

While I will address their comments in greater detail at a later time, Judge Horn’s suggestions are offered as a list that can be reproduced here and may, at least, stimulate some thought (each suggestion is followed by a lengthy explanation and examples in his book).8 His “twelve steps toward the fulfillment in the practice of law” are: (1) Face the facts (see above discussion); (2) Establish clear priorities; (3) Develop and practice good time management skills; (4) Implement healthy life style practices; (5) Live beneath your means; (6) Don’t let technology control your life; (7) Care about character--and conduct yourself accordingly; (8) “Just say no” to some clients; (9) Stay emotionally healthy; (10) Embrace law as a “high calling”; (11) Be generous with your time and money and (12) Pace yourself for a marathon.

As Horn and others note, it’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to our personal well-being. Yet there’s no denying that many of us face constant challenges to our hearts and spirit through this work we have chosen. For those of us who have practiced for 20 years or more, the landscape has transformed before our eyes. The proliferation of “lawyers’ distress” studies, which really began with the first ABA report in 1990, and “reclaiming our personal and professional lives” books, the first of which may have been Yale Dean Anthony Kronman’s The Lost Lawyer (published in 1993) were virtually unheard of before the last decade.

Denial is often described through the child-like statement, “If I close my eyes, you won’t see me.” If we close our eyes, though, and look inside, deeply, we may actually find those vital parts of ourselves that have been discarded or neglected in our striving. Those treasures always remain to be re-discovered.

1. University of Chicago Press, 2001
2. ABA Books, 2003
3. The ABA's 2000 study, the pulse of the profession; Patrick Schlitz' On Being a Happy Healh and Ethical Member of an Unhappy Unhealthy and Unethical Porfession, 52 V and L. Rev. 871 (1999); The Trouble With Lawyers, Dick Dahl's lengthy treatmen in The Boston Glove Magazine (4/14/96); Lawrence Krieger, Institutional Denial About the Dark Side of Law School, and Fresh Empiracle Guidance for Constructively Breaking the Silence, 52 J. Legal Ed. 112 (2002)
4. Bennett, supra, at 81
5. HOrn, supra, at 81
6. See William Bridges’ Transition--the classic treatment of the pain and rewards of profound change.
7. As do Benjamin Sells (The Soul of the Law); Steven Keeva (Transforming Practices) and Deborah Rhode (In the Interests of Justice-- Transforming the Legal Profession).
8. These have been reprinted, as well, in the ABA’s GP/Solo and Law Practice Management magazines.