By: Cathy Killian and Candace Hoffman
The Lawyer Assistance Program is uniquely positioned at a crossroads of two very different professions: lawyering and mental health counseling. The LAP is staffed with two professional counselors, Cathy Killian and Nicki Ellington, and two lawyers, Robynn Moraites and Candace Hoffman. We four often tease each other about how differently we think about things. One group of us (say, the counselors) can be positively alarmed about something that did not even hit the other group’s (the lawyers) radar, and vice versa. Both perspectives are essential for successful client outcomes as well as to the successful operation of our program.
Some of us didn’t get the memo that “thinking like a lawyer is a technique, not a lifestyle.” Many lawyers have no idea that the way that we are taught to think in law school would contribute in any way to emotional problems later in life. But the research bears this out. Studies consistently show that law students enter law school with the same (or even lower) rates of alcoholism, depression, and suicidal ideation as the general public but graduate at rates that mirror those seen in the profession, which are 3 to 4 times higher than those seen upon admission.
So, we thought we would have some fun this quarter and deviate from our normal column format. We will highlight some aspects of lawyer thinking explored from both a counselor’s and a lawyer’s perspective, illuminating the pros and cons. Cathy Killian, LAP Clinical Director, will provide the counselor’s perspective. Candace Hoffman, LAP Assistant Director, will provide the lawyer’s perspective. Becoming aware of and examining our thinking is one way for lawyers to start to achieve a better balance in our professional and personal lives.
From the first day of law school, students are taught how to think differently. As Professor Kingsfield said, “You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.” Students quickly learn to identify the issues, decide the applicable rulings, analyze possibilities, and arrive at a conclusion, while painfully aware that failing to recognize all possible aspects could be disastrous.
Cathy: And students must do this in an extremely competitive environment where they are constantly being challenged by their professors, peers, and themselves. This continual and intense pressure creates neural pathways in the brain where their ability to think like a lawyer becomes ingrained and automatic. I prefer to view it as they enter law school with a head full of Play-Doh and leave thinking like a lawyer.
Candace: It absolutely does change the way our brains work, and it should, considering how much we invest in law school. I love talking about the great research on neuroplasticity in our CLEs. It’s amazing the ways we can alter our brains, creating new neural pathways. The thing is, it’s unrealistic to expect that we work so hard in law school to create these neural pathways and then expect the train to just magically “switch tracks” when we clock out at 5pm (if we are lucky enough to do so). And no one expects a doctor to ignore signs and symptoms of disease and illness in their family members and friends (in fact we might find them unethical if they do).
Cathy: But we can conjure up some “magic” to change tracks in our neural pathways by reframing our thoughts and having intentionality. Doctors may not ignore illnesses in their family members and friends, but they aren’t conducting a physical exam on them when they get home either (we might find them unethical if they do).
Candace: Very good point. And if you don’t have any tools to help your brain transition out of that three-piece suit at the end of the day, reach out to LAP for ideas.
Being taught to believe the legal system is a “supreme system of order,” law students develop a very logical and rational way to reason their way to a conclusion. It requires a specific and unique skill set, primarily grounded in deductive reasoning. They are critical thinkers who use the process of analysis to view all perspectives, then strategically think three or four steps ahead to reason their way to a solution. Law schools convey this as a superior way of thinking.
Candace: Yes, we become critical thinking assassins, and it’s not only helpful but necessary. When I used to prepare my cases for litigation, I would comb the files for every weak point that my opposing counsel could exploit so that I could come up with every counter argument. Only looking at the positive aspects of the case would leave me open to assault and not provide competent representation for my clients.
Cathy: But these positive professional attributes can become negative personal impediments. Critical thinking requires analyzing, conceptualizing, synthesizing, and applying facts, evidence, data, and as you said, every bit of information possible. It also requires ignoring your feelings while doing so. So, if you get really good at critical thinking, you can get really bad at identifying your feelings or processing them appropriately. For example, lawyers sometimes “stay in their heads” and analyze situations (outside of work) when they are meant to be feeling them, so they stay focused on problem solving rather than being present in their experience or someone else’s.
Critical thinking skills take a great deal of effort/focus to override the innate way our brains normally function – and how they evolved to function – so much so, it can be to the almost total exclusion of one’s feelings (as well as others’ feelings). In turn, being disconnected from one’s emotions can detrimentally impact one’s relationships and quality of life.
I see so many lawyers who, when they get to LAP, are literally unable to feel happy, excited, or motivated and instead are in a constant state of restlessness or even hopelessness. Being cut off from this emotional side of life, they have difficulty establishing and maintaining relationships. As a consequence, many lawyers find themselves completely isolated.
Critical thinking proves invaluable in lawyers’ professional lives, but it is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Emotional intelligence can be an expansion of, rather than a replacement for, lawyers’ current critical thinking skill set.
This ability to look at issues from all perspectives and being adept at scrutinizing them means lawyers can discern things that others could care less about.
Candace: I very much agree with this. It’s impossible for me to view a situation from only one perspective, or very rare if it does happen. In fact, I find myself uneasy when people declare things in “always” or “never” terms or employ extremely black and white thinking.
Cathy: The need to gather all that info can make it difficult to come to a decision in a personal context. You can spend years “researching” what kind of car to buy and still be undecided, because there is always one more person to ask or place to look. The non-lawyers in your life may view this as you being difficult or interpret it as a sign of insecurity or avoidance. Or they may just see it as you getting hung up on something nobody cares about but you.
Candace: I see that from your perspective, whoops did it again. It’s good practice for lawyers to have an end date or time to stop the research and pull the trigger. That’s easier to do with work – eventually the hearing is calendared or the contract is due. With our personal lives we have to be intentional, like Cathy always reminds us.
Lawyers focus on flaws and potential problems so they can plan accordingly, but still tend to remain skeptical about all possible solutions.
Candace: I love the scene in Home Alone where Peter McCallister tells Uncle Frank to think positive (about making it to the airport and on the plane in 45 minutes from their house in downtown Chicago), and he replies, “You be positive. I’ll be realistic.” I think we see more problems than the average non-lawyer, but don’t you wish you’d consulted with us before planning your trip where you ended up stranded with no back-up hotel and didn’t have the right cell phone plan for Indonesia?
Cathy: The downside is that once you provided me with the needed information to address all the potential issues that might occur in Indonesia, I’ll be switching planes to Switzerland where it’s safer to travel. On a personal level, realistic thinking is considering outcomes that are both negative and positive. Only considering worst case scenarios isn’t realistic, it’s just negative. I also think this ability to recognize worst case scenarios sets lawyers up for anxiety. Additional stress ramps up the internal posture from the possibility of these problems happening to excessive worry about the probability of these problems happening. It’s all about fear, but not the fear of what might happen, but the fear that we won’t be able to handle what might happen. Never a good belief for a lawyer to have. By the way, about 90% of things we worry about never happen.
Candace: Yes, another plug for sharing your fears with a trusted counselor (like LAP counselors Nicki and Cathy) or a trusted, supportive friend, because they can remind you of all the times you have handled situations just like the current one and been just fine.
Lawyers seek a clear precedent as an authoritative platform for subsequent decisions/actions and are reluctant to proceed without one.
Cathy: This dislike of situations with uncertainty can create a lack of spontaneity, avoidance of taking risks, and behavior that seems extraordinarily rigid.
Candace: Yes, most of us are allergic to the words arbitrary and capricious. We want something that shores up our reasoning, which again is necessary for our professional lives. I think we can divorce ourselves from this in our personal lives when we weigh the risk versus reward. For example, I don’t love taking risks with litigation, but when I weigh the risk of sky diving with the reward of the free fall, sky diving wins the day.
Cathy: I think that would only be true for the majority of lawyers if they had reviewed the research and civil litigation case histories on deaths from skydiving, found the fatality index rate was just .027 fatalities per 100,000 skydives, and were assured their family had the best skydiving personal injury attorney on speed dial.
Lawyers are defensive thinkers and thus “disagreeable” either by nature or training, looking to re-negotiate, amend, or convince you their perspective is correct. This requires them to be very good at active listening, and excellent at focusing on what appears to be the other person’s primary point.
Candace: With comedians and lawyers, you can’t take every response personally (at least at first blush). Julia Louis-Dreyfus asks Jerry Seinfeld in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee why his opinion on marriage changed. He had always said he would never get married and is now married to Jessica Seinfeld. She exclaims, “You said you were never going to get married.” Seinfeld replies, “I still feel that way.” He loves his wife and is very vocal about it, but that’s not his immediate reaction to Julia. His hardwiring as a comic is looking for the punchline, knowing that the truth or authenticity is under there somewhere, but it’s not pertinent to the goal at hand. We lawyers don’t get quite the laughs that stand-ups do or the pats on the back for falling back into our hard wiring, but people still want to bring their problems to us both professionally and personally when they want the right answer.
Cathy: What may merely be an automatic cognitive exercise on the part of a lawyer can be seen as controlling and condescending to someone on the receiving end in a personal situation. Initially their listening ability may be interpreted as engagement and even respect. But it can take a dark turn if they utilize the other person’s point as an entry point for destruction, kind of like Luke entering the Death Star. Defensive thinking is an asset in the courtroom or boardroom, but it really stinks in the family room. Speaking of Seinfeld, I doubt many lawyers would find much humor in Seinfeld’s #1 Key to Life…“Just pure, stupid, no-real-idea-what-I’m-doing-here effort always yields a positive value, even if the outcome of the effort is absolute failure of the desired result.”
Candace: Yes, says the man with one of the highest grossing sitcoms of all time.
Lawyers tend to question everything as a way to gather facts and information.
Candace: Yes, this is very true, however a little gentle questioning is great for people to strengthen their beliefs (which most claim to want to do). There is a balance of when to ask the question and when to file those away for a rainy day. Sometimes when talking with friends and colleagues, I will ask (without sarcasm) whether they want problem solving or commiseration. Another thing I think the most aware lawyers can or will do is start with “I could be wrong…” “For me this is how it has worked” and then give an alternative perspective.
Cathy: As one lawyer put it, “[She] deemed the way I questioned things as argumentative and adversarial when I wasn’t trying to be.” He was specifically talking about his wife…ex-wife, that is.
Lawyers have helicopter thinking, being able to see a situation in its overall context and current environment.
Cathy: However, in focusing so intensely on the bigger picture, they are unable to see anything but that point of focus. Being something of a research nerd, I often come across interesting and/or applicable studies. There is a Nobel Prize winning study conducted by Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois, and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University that exemplifies this concept. Subjects were asked to watch a video, which has two teams passing balls between each other, and to count the number of passes made by one of the teams. At some point in the video, a person in a gorilla suit casually walks through, beats its chest, and then walks off. The subjects were then asked how many times the ball was passed, and if they had noticed anything unusual. While seeing a gorilla appearing out of nowhere and out of context sounds incredibly obvious, half of the subjects didn’t see it and were astonished they could have missed it. I’m guessing lawyers with this “perceptual blindness” would also miss the gorilla, and likely argue that you were wrong.
Candace: Are you sure you are right? Only kidding, but this is an incredibly interesting study and while that may be true, I guarantee you any lawyers who participated in this study correctly recorded the right number of passes.
The precision of their thinking is also conveyed in the way they communicate. They choose their words carefully and structure verbal and written communication to narrow and intensify the focus of what they want to convey.
Cathy: Lawyers can use their ability to make articulation an artform for good or “evil.” They can manipulate their words as a method to manipulate people. It can morph into dishonesty (including by omission) or denial (including to themselves) or it can narrow and intensify the focus to get what they want. This is definitely true of a lawyer with substance abuse issues, and it can prove to be a huge impediment to their recovery efforts. As said in Alcoholics Anonymous, you are never too dumb to get into recovery, but you can be too smart.
Candace: It’s an easy transition to make as lawyers generally operate in the absence of absolute certainty. Fulfilling our ethical requirement of “zealous advocacy” virtually requires the lawyer to argue from the client’s perspective, however implausible, not from the truth. But whose truth? If eyewitness testimony has taught us anything, it’s that we all perceive things differently, but I digress. Yes, 100 percent we must be precise communicators/manipulators at work. Lawyers are skilled at manipulation or effective communication (two sides of the same coin), but internal denial can be combatted by having great support systems to check our motives, perceptions and internal beliefs with others who understand.
Cathy: Others who understand and will tell us what we need to hear – not just what we want to hear…like what happens in the LAP support groups. Group members come from a place of respect and caring, without judgement.
This skillful analytical approach requires focusing on real and tangible facts while putting aside emotional opinions or reactions. It is a purposeful discounting of the lawyer’s morals and values. Yale Law School Professor Stephen Wizner states, “The process of teaching law students to think like lawyers causes them to suppress the very feelings and moral concerns that they brought with them to law school, and…that brought them to law school.” Not only do lawyers learn to dismiss their own emotions, but they must also be able to help clients dismiss theirs and navigate through a decision-making process that transforms their often-overwhelming outpour of emotions into concrete decisions and definitive actions.
Candace: Yes, and I think that it is a benefit to learn how to artfully compartmentalize our emotions when helping a client reach the best outcome possible. The key I learned is to reintegrate at the end of the day and be intentional about acknowledging the effect it has. One of the greatest tools I employed while litigating was connecting with my colleagues and sharing some of the cases that were rife with abuse and neglect. It did not take away the reality of having to look at the darker side of humanity, but it did lessen the impact significantly. As for helping clients dismiss emotions, I think to some extent that is a skill that is incredibly beneficial in our professional lives and our personal relationships. To be in touch with our emotions is good, but to be ruled by them is not ideal. Because we have learned how to artfully compartmentalize, we can give great objective feedback to our clients and help them not make permanent decisions on temporary emotions. We can do the same for our loved ones (if we have confirmed they are open to it).
Cathy: The ability to disconnect from and mentally lock away values and emotions obviously makes it possible for lawyers to function well and to adequately represent their clients. But it can also make it possible for them to act out in destructive ways, become detached from all feelings, become emotionally unavailable (including to themselves), and experience burnout. One way to view healthy compartmentalizing is that’s it should only be temporary. We can put our personal feelings and values in that little compartment in our desk drawer where we keep our car keys, but like our keys, we need to take them with us when we leave. The reverse is also true. Lawyers need to be able to leave all the bad stuff they see behind at the end of the day so they don’t allow those feelings and experiences to impact their personal lives. However, neither of these buckets of compartmentalized feelings can stay locked up like a 12-year-old’s diary. We need to admit them, honor them and address them as Candace described or in whatever ways that work for us. It is incredibly difficult terrain to navigate, and most lawyers need some training on how to do this effectively.
Many believe this exclusion of emotions and specific personal aspects occur because it is viewed as “inconsistent with legal thinking.” Lawyer Jordan Furlong states that a purely analytical approach can “drown out your instincts, stifle your emotions, and numb your heart, but frequently neglects to enlighten and illuminate your soul.” Anthropologist and law professor Elizabeth Mertz discovered this detachment from emotions and values increases a lawyer’s tendency to isolate and makes them less likely to ask for support or help from others.
Candace: We attorneys will work the hardest to fix your problem because we are the fixers. The tendency to isolate is real. We do not want to appear weak or rely on others to fix something we think we should be fixing. Through the LAP community and support networks in the profession we are decreasing those mental and emotional barriers to reach out and get help. We have this beautiful blend of lawyer and clinician at LAP, and that is what in fact makes us so effective. Our incredible LAP volunteers who share their stories, whether in CLE or in the Sidebar column or podcast, or those that reach out to a lawyer who might be struggling, help break down that isolation. We are the most critical of ourselves, but when we sit across from another lawyer who has struggled with the same issues and is on the other side, we don’t have that same level of judgement for them. We can see that we are not alone. And then that isolated lawyer having seen the miracle of recovery can access those clinical tools that will help them make it over the bridge to stability.
Cathy: There is a pattern of abusive relationships worth mentioning. Hang with me here. Isolation is one of the most effective forms of manipulation in abusive situations. Without checks and balances from others, the abuser creates a sense of doubt in a victims’ perception of reality, causing them to question their own feelings, instincts, and even sanity. Their confidence becomes weakened, making them easier to control. The degree of power and control over the abused is contingent upon the degree of their physical or emotional isolation. This is the same dynamic that occurs within our minds when we isolate in an unhealthy way. We become a victim of our distorted thinking and detached from our authentic self. It sets the stage for a lawyer to measure their worth in terms of what they have achieved as a lawyer, rather than their value as a person. Perhaps it also helps to explain why even though medical students and doctors have competitive environments, enormous stress, and high educational debt, it is the lawyers who have the highest rate of alcoholism, depression, and anxiety.
Avoiding overidentification with the professional side allows for balance and more fluidity in thinking and behaviors.
Cathy: Thinking like a lawyer can be a positive quality if viewed as a “legal skill, not a life skill.” It should be a complement to the way a lawyer thinks, not a replacement for the way a person thinks. By keeping this perspective, the lawyer can inspire people instead of manipulating them. They can respond to change rather than resist it. They can make creative choices instead of strictly calculated ones. They can move from being rigid to being relaxed. They are aware of their values and live a life reflective of that. They adhere to the fact that being a lawyer is what they do, not who they are.
Candace: And lawyers like that are some of the best people you will ever meet. That balance can bring us to the very best parts of life.
Lawyer Steven Radke’s remarks to entering Marquette Law School students summarize it well…“Over the next few years, you will develop a highly tuned ability to make distinctions that do not make a difference to most people, a capacity to see ambiguity where others see things as crystal clear, and an ability to see issues from all sides. You will be able to artfully manipulate facts and sharply and persuasively argue any point…[But] your spouse is not the appropriate person on whom you should practice any of these skills.”
Through our own blending of diverse perspectives of staff and volunteers, the LAP can provide the guidance and support to help you establish and maintain a healthy and happy professional and personal life.