BL1Y

[Ed. Note: This piece from BL1Y, a frequent Bitter Lawyer commenter and contributor, is the final part of a series we kicked of with Part 1: “Are Lawyers Wimps?” and continued with Part 2: “How Did Lawyers Get So Wimpy?”

Reunited is our roundtable of experts who are dedicated to identifying why lawyers become wimps and offer ways to correct it.  Here’s what BL1Y, PhilaLawyer, Dr. Rob and Law Firm 10 have to say.]

First, a final introduction of our panelists:

• BL1Y is an laid-off BigLaw attorney and author of the popular blog BL1Y.com.

• Philadelphia Lawyer (hereinafter PL) is a veteran litigator in Philadelphia and responsible for the cult-classic blog PhilaLawyer.net.  He’s the author of the bestselling book Happy Hour Is for Amateurs.

• Dr. Rob Dobrenski (hereinafter Dr. Rob) is a psychologist who practices in New York and is most famous for his blog, ShrinkTalk.net.  (And he gets a shout-out for recently landing his own book deal.)

• PL and Dr. Rob co-host the internet radio show “Here’s What to Think,” which airs on Mondays at 8:00 AM EST and is available anytime on Blog Talk Radio.

WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT LAWYER WIMPS? (PART 3)

Previously, on Lawyer Wimps…

LF10:  I work for a male partner who is a prototypical insecure wimp.  He’s scared shitless of somehow upsetting the other partners and firm management.  He’s filled with stewing resentment over having to pussyfoot around the top dogs.

PL:  Wimps don’t stand out uniquely in law.  I think law caters to them.  Look around any lawyers gathering.  Wimps are all over the place.

BL1Y:  If I saw someone on the floor having a seizure, I’d be as likely to think “medical emergency” as I would “must have just learned he was away from his desk when a partner called.”

Dr. Rob:  My lawyer is a dick and is overcharging me, but at least I know his name (thereby allowing me the chance to go to his house and break his knees with a brick, if I so choose).  You three are sitting here bashing your colleagues for being wimps, yet you do it behind a curtain.  How do you reconcile this?  Put another way, where do you get the balls/ovaries to engage in this hypocrisy?

And now for the conclusion…

LF10:  Sometimes the end has to justify the means.  My firm has a policy against writing books, articles and blogs without its knowledge and consent.  Since half the time I’m ripping into lawyers at my firm for being incompetent, ugly, adulterous assholes, I can’t imagine any scenario in which the firm would actually consent to my blogging.  So I have to bless the world with stories of my illustrious exploits from behind an impenetrable veil of anonymity. 

If that makes me just as wimpy as the losers I work for—and I don’t think it does—then so be it.  Probably isn’t the first or last time I will be guilty of hypocrisy.

BL1Y:  I will definitely admit that I’ve engaged in my fair share of wimpy lawyer behavior, but I don’t see my Internet anonymity as part of it.  Being anonymous, for me, is a pragmatic matter.  I want to be able to write about whatever I feel like without ruining my Google footprint in case I ever get another shot at a legitimate job. 

I think of being a wimp more so as when you wish you would act a different way but are too afraid to.  Like going sky diving or talking to a pretty girl at a bar.  I don’t really care about posting under my real name.  Using my real name would be more like talking to the fat girl.  I don’t get anything out of it, and it’s just going to cause a big hassle (good-looking girls are generally nice, but damn, fat girls can be incredibly mean).  Why bother?

Maybe it’s a little bit wimpy, but I think if I were really pussing out, I’d be too afraid to blog out of fear that someone would discover who I am.  And, I should note, I don’t really protect my identity particularly well.  I don’t know if you can discover my identity based on the information I’ve given about myself, but if you knew me in real life and stumbled on the blog, you’d put the pieces together very quickly.  I post links on Facebook all the time.  It’s not a huge secret; I just don’t want my blog to come up if you Google my name.

PL:  I’ve been asked this a bunch and left this to explain it for me: “The Privilege of the Grave”

That’s Twain, and any answer we can muster he’d offer forty times more astutely.  Not a knock on us.  Twain just happens to be, along with writers, polemicists and comedians, like Mencken, O’Rourke, Vonnegut, Thompson, Bill Hicks and Carlin—one of those voices that was Always Right.

We’re full of shit.  We live in a Matrix of jackasses herding themselves into walls, only to back up, re-organize and do it again.  Wall Street offers this up in glowing Technicolor.  The smart followed the “You’ll be gone, I’ll be gone” approach to blowing up a bubble they knew would collapse.  The fools, as they always do, Believed In It.  Both silently drive the herd off the cliff.

If you realize that’s how things work, the fatal flaw in human nature, and play the system for money, as most shrewd people do, you can cruise through it unmolested (until the psychic damage of realizing at the end you’ve nothing but a legacy of time sheets bites you in the ass).  But if you call it out, make fun of it… If you don’t take the Industry, the Court System, “seriously”… Well, you’re a man they can’t have around.  Your “personal brand” or “Google footprint” is shot.

You can use the machine for money or be the sucker who views it as His Life.  But you can’t say the Emperor has no clothes.  And you sure as hell can’t joke about getting twisted out of your tree at work and giggling at the neurotics running around wired on the Blue Pills.  They don’t think it’s very funny, and unless you can sell a million plus books—or have a staggering trust fund—you’ll need to Play The Game with corporate functionaries in some manner to make money, whatever the business or profession.  Everybody at the Country Club has a sordid shit in his closet.  You just can’t be honest about it.

Dr. Rob:  Fair enough.  And let me add that simply having this conversation has reaffirmed how smart it was to stay out of your field.  You three are truly miserable souls.

BL1Y:  Now that that’s over, on to the final part of our discussion.  Short of juricide, what can be done about lawyer wimps?

PL, in Part 1 you said that the guys who can go into court and argue the close cases aren’t wimpy at all.  Do you think the courtroom is more of a filter or a training ground?  Is it that wimps simply never make it in/get washed out quickly, or that trial advocacy builds confidence and assertiveness?

PL:  Training ground.  They had a motion court in Philly that could be brutal.  You stand in a room filled with lawyers and wait to argue in front of an often-irritated judge.  First time there you’re scared shitless, but after a while, you learn how the room works… I gets normal, run of the mill.  I think anyone can do just about anything if he or she is thrown into it.  It’s being willing to throw yourself into it that makes the difference.  You can’t control those arenas, and I think a lot of lawyers are, by nature, control freaks, so they don’t like that sort of thing.  They’d rather work with paper, where you feel like you control the argument. 

I guess it builds confidence.  I used to argue nasty motions almost weekly at one point, and it was fun to win.  After a while, though, you slide into a “Ruben Carter” pose.  Remember the Dylan tune “Hurricane,” the song they used in the long shot in Dazed and Confused where Wooderson walks into the pool hall?  “It’s my work he’d say, and I do it for pay, and when it’s all over, I’d just as soon be on my way…” It’s hard to say I cared near the end in Philly.  The process was so mindless, such an imbecilic dance toward such utterly irrelevant ends… A win was putting the money in your pocket—getting as far as possible from the toil, the people, the malignant, idiot culture of the Philadelphia litigation business, as quickly as one could. 

BL1Y:  Unfortunately, on the corporate department side there aren’t motion courts to cut your teeth in.  And, even on the litigation side, a lot of young attorneys won’t see the inside of a courtroom for years.  The closest many young attorneys will have to a trial-by-fire is sitting in a partner’s office, explaining some obscure line of reasoning in a case that doesn’t really matter to anyone.

And, to get that face time with your boss, you need to stop using email.  Personally, I loved email.  Email gives you time to think, to organize your thoughts, and to make sure you haven’t said anything stupid.  You have an electronic record to use as reference (incredibly useful when re-creating your week so you can fill out your time sheets), and it gives the other person the ability to read over your comments at their leisure.  But, the ability to fine-tune your comments in an email also creates pressure to get every little thing right, and this can drive a young attorney nuts. 

You’d use same critical eye you would use on a brief submitted to a court as you would on whatever short email you’re writing to a partner to answer a simple question.  Thinking that a minor mistake could be pored over by a red-faced partner can make you live in fear. 

When your heart races over the thought of pressing the Send button on any garden-variety intra-office email and having an error, you can be sure you’re a wimp.  Though email creates unnecessary fear, contrariwise, it serves as a crutch.  You don’t need to be able to intelligently talk about a subject when you can spend an hour editing an email on it.  There’s no pressure to perform on the spot, such as there is in court, and without that pressure, it’s very hard to grow, both in competence and confidence. 

With any luck, the only time a corporate attorney will see the inside of a courtroom is when they’re sworn in, but I think the partner’s office may serve as the next best arena.  A lot of assignments young attorneys get are small enough that they require just a short answer and don’t warrant a full memo.  So, instead of sending off an email with your answer, you have to try to meet with the boss in person, and failing that, at least pick up the phone and talk to him.

Of course, I’ve never tried this.  It’s pretty hypothetical on my end.  Rob, you’re the shrink here, what do you think can be done about lawyer wimps?

Dr. Rob:  It’s actually quite simple.  Stop taking yourself and your job so seriously, even if that means losing your career.  I’ve worked in nursing homes and with patients struggling with end-of-life issues.  None (zero, nada) of them have ever said that they’re glad they sacrificed their entire life to make partner—nor did anyone ever thank God they were able to afford a Beemer instead of just a Honda or consider themselves brilliant for when they agreed to take on an 80-hour work week so they could look like a douchebag in an Armani suit with a false sense of power and purpose.

Maybe losing your wimp status means quitting your job and finding something you actually like for a career.  If that’s not in the cards for you, then recognize that climbing the corporate ladder and being a small cog in the machine that perpetuates nothing but greed and false promises means absolutely nothing.  At the end of your life, you’ll only think about the people who cared about you and those who you positively influenced.  You’ll never consider if you made your billable hours in 2010.  Once you really get that, embrace the idea beyond “Yeah, yeah, I get it—now where’s that dinner I ordered and billed to my client?” and everything else falls into place.

BL1Y:  That’s a bit of a Catch 22.  The cure for being a wimp requires not being a wimp.  Any major life change is going to have a big hurdle at some point, but is there a way for lawyers who want to be less wimpy to make the hurdle a more manageable height?

Dr. Rob:  Some people need that “flooding” experience where they just pack it in and go balls to the wall with a new life.  Others start out more slowly. 

I had one client who started bartending on the weekends (where she got the time to do that as an attorney is still unclear) and ultimately opened up her own place.  There’s no right or wrong when it comes to chasing the dream.  Or even the non-nightmare.

Wimpiness is about fear.  In a cognitive sense, fear often involves a faulty prediction about how likely an event will occur, as well as how catastrophic it would be should said event occur.  In short, fear is often about overprediction and perceived inability to cope.

Say you assert yourself at work—what do you see happening?  Verbal abuse, more work, ridicule from peers, demotion, termination?  Now, how likely, as objectively speaking as possible, are these each likely to occur?  And I don’t mean just take a guess.  Accumulate some data; treat these ideas as hypotheses.  What have you seen from your “non-wimpy” peers?  Do they struggle?  Are they vilified, praised, promoted, in charge?  What about people who were wimpy at their firms and made some sort of change?  What did you see?  What about on various legal blogs?  What happens to these people?

If your answer to most of the bad outcomes is something like “highly likely” and that conclusion is based on reason and logic, then ask yourself, “How could I cope with this outcome?” If you got fired, what would you do?  Really think about that.  Would you move to a cheaper house/apartment, sell your car, move in with your parents?  How long would it take you to get another job, in or out of the legal field?  There are answers to these questions.  It’s unlikely there is a perfect solution, but when people have a plan in place for events that have not yet occurred, confidence rises.

BL1Y:  As inspiring as that may seem, a lot of lawyers are aware of how delicate a legal career can be, especially in the age of instant internet gossip, and then they’ll remember that there’s not likely another job waiting with the six-figure salary needed to pay down their student loans.  They’ll reach the conclusion that being a wimp isn’t just safe, it’s necessary for survival.  And they may be right.

Elena Kagan, a woman who is almost certainly going to be confirmed by the Senate as the newest Supreme Court justice, epitomizes lawyer wimpiness. 

Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSBlog said of Kagan, “I don’t know anyone who has had a conversation with her in which she expressed a personal conviction on a question of constitutional law in the past decade.”

David Brooks at The New York Times wrote, “She seems to be smart, impressive and honest — and in her willingness to suppress so much of her mind for the sake of her career, kind of disturbing.”

Maybe Kagan stays quiet out of prudence, but that isn’t chutzpah, it’s just consciously choosing to be a wimp.  And we reward her for it.  But, on the other hand, there’s Bob Woodruff.

What this whole wimps thing really seems to boil down to is that you need to recognize what’s going on and find ways to force yourself into not being so wimpy.  At the end of the day, do you want to be the next associate justice on the Supreme Court, or do you want to be a well-rounded human being with thoughts, desires, and an active sex life?

SCOTUS judge, of course—but only twice as many people get to do that as get to be President.  More people win the Mega Millions.  It ain’t gonna happen for you, so just stop being such a wimp already.  Sure, you may lose your job, but odds are if you’re reading an article about lawyer wimps on a site called Bitter Lawyer, you aren’t going to miss it.

Read Part 1 of this series: “Are Lawyers Wimps?”

Read Part 2: “How Did Lawyers Get So Wimpy?”

Visit the “defunct BigLaw” musings of BL1Y on his blog.

Listen to PhilaLawyer and Dr. Rob’s weekly web radio show “Here’s What to Think.”

Buy PhilaLawyer’s book about his lost decade in world’s worst profession on Amazon.

Check out PhilaLawyer’s previous posts on Bitter Lawyer.

Visit Dr. Rob’s blog, Shrink Talk.

Read the works of Law Firm 10 on Bitter Lawyer.

Check out other Bitter Exclusives.

Join Bitter Lawyer on Facebook.  Follow on Twitter.

Buy Bitter Lawyer merchandise.

Keep Reading ⇒

[Ed. Note: This piece from BL1Y, a frequent Bitter Lawyer commenter and contributor, is a continuation of a series we kicked of last week with Part 1: “Are Lawyers Wimps.” Reunited is our roundtable of experts—and friends of Bitter Lawyer—to help him dig to the bottom of what makes lawyers so damn wimpy.  Here’s what BL1Y, PhilaLawyer and Dr. Rob came up with.]

BL1Y:  While law school is, without a doubt, a magnet for those “too dumb for medicine—too ugly for sales,” in this context, it’s also a catchall for those too gutless for anything artistic, creative or entrepreneurial.  Meanwhile, there are also tons of people who go to law school with a genuine interest in being a lawyer (or at least what they think a lawyer is). 

I definitely went to law school because I majored in philosophy and English and had no idea what else to do.  But a lot of wimpy lawyers actually wanted to be lawyers from the start.

No matter the motivation, something happens in law school that alters our psyche.  People who were extremely outgoing and cocksure in undergrad are terrified of everyone at the end of three years: partners, mid-level associates, secretaries, the mail guy.  While I can beeline right over to the hottest girl in a club and start a conversation without a clue what I’m going to say (and more often than not, get blown out pretty quickly), I’ll still read over a casual e-mail to a partner a dozen or more times for fear of having a minor typo. 

Many think it’s the shock of going from being one of the smartest people around to being “average” in a pool of overachievers, but that doesn’t exactly explain it.  Law students weren’t impervious to other smart people before.  They were in honors programs and hung around other smarty-pants.  There’s something else that changes intelligent, ordinary people into scared little wussies.  But what?  That’s what I’m trying to find out.

First, another introduction of our panelists:

• BL1Y is an attorney laid off after a little more than a year working in BigLaw and is now author of the blog BL1Y.com.  Opinionated and measurably smart (but not intelligent in any gainful way), he has engaged in some pretty wimpy behavior.

• Philadelphia Lawyer (hereinafter PL) is a veteran litigator in Philadelphia and author of Happy Hour Is for Amateurs and the hilarious blog PhilaLawyer.net.

• Dr. Rob Dobrenski (hereinafter Dr. Rob) is psychologist, has been in private practice in New York since 2002, and is author of the blog ShrinkTalk.net.  Basically, he’s the Dr. Phil for people with an IQ above room temperature.

• PL and Dr. Rob are co-hosting a new internet radio show called “Here’s What to Think,” that airs Wednesdays at 8:00 PM (Eastern) available on Blog Talk Radio.

PART 2: HOW DID LAWYERS GET SO WIMPY?

PL:  Simple.  Law teaches you to look for danger at every corner, trust and believe in nothing.  That creates fear.  Also, the majority of lawyers who’ll criticize your work are the angry, anti-social, insecure types.  They view most gregarious social behavior as frivolous, as they’ve always felt awkward attempting it, and attempting it involves a risk and requires the ability to be self-deprecating, skill sets in which many of them are natively lacking.  Their interest in every social interaction is to appear the smartest, most contemplative person in the room.  And they craft associates in that image.

This goes to the heart of the old adage you’ve probably heard many times before: “Smart lawyers don’t make their money in the practice of law, but by learning to do deals and jumping to the business side.”

Lawyers aren’t taught to take risk, and if you don’t take risk, you can’t make real money.  Why do lawyers openly envy their peers who jump into non-legal businesses?  It’s not just the usual money difference, but the fact that the man who’ll take the jump has demonstrated he can deal with risk.  He’s got more balls than the lifers who remain trapped by the neuroses they’ve acquired in the profession.  They know that, and it bothers them.

Dr. Rob:  If PL’s first statement is true, that creates a colossal problem.  Society functions with what’s known as the “Truth Bias,” meaning we need to generally believe what we are told is true.  It serves an evolutionary purpose; it’s the basis for real communication and societal progress.  If we reject what most others say as false, communities essentially crumble.  So thanks for fucking up society.

Shrinks have a similar phenomenon regarding money and risk.  You’ll hear psychologists who take salaried positions complain incessantly about their poor income.  To do well in this field, you essentially need to move into private practice and form your own small business.  This involves risk—especially since mental health professionals are taught little to nothing about the interface of business and practice.  This is because we are taught by academics, most of who have no clue about “real-world psychology.” But if you stand pat in your first job or simply go from one staff position to another, you never really improve your financial status.  Psychology isn’t the biggest moneymaker out there to begin with, but the especially fearful, neurotic shrinks are definitely the poorest.

BL1Y:  In high school you have tests and quizzes all the time.  You get tons of grades and feedback from your teachers, and this creates a certain level of confidence.  Even if you’re not particularly smart, you’re aware of what you know and what you don’t know.

In college, this is scaled back a bit, but not terribly much.  Some classes only have a midterm and exam, but a lot have many more chances for feedback, especially things like foreign languages and creative writing.  In my deductive logic class, students could attempt proofs, plug them into the Logic Daemon and get an immediate answer, including details about any mistakes they made.

Law school is at the extreme far end of the spectrum.  Most classes have only one exam, and the only feedback students get is a single letter with no explanation.  You get a ton of feedback from the professor when called on in a Socratic Method class, though it’s generally negative—even if you’re giving the right answers, and that typically lasts only a fraction of a single class.  After that, you just float aimlessly to exam day.

What do you guys think?  Would this explain why so many very smart people end up entering legal practice with little or no confidence?

Dr. Rob:  Tell you the truth, I’d think the opposite.  If law students go into the program with confidence riding high, believing they are the cream of the crop (and I don’t know this to be true for sure because I didn’t take that path to true misery), then the lack of feedback and grades would, I think, enhance students’ reasons to see themselves in that light.  There’s no contradictory evidence until grades come out.  They get a full 15 weeks to bask in the false glow of greatness, assuming they are keeping up with their work at a reasonable pace.

BL1Y:  I think maybe I didn’t quite explain what I meant correctly.  By confidence, I didn’t mean thinking you’re good, but instead I meant being sure of your skill level.  There’s probably a word for this, but I don’t know what it is.  So, for instance, I’m not particularly strong, but I’m extremely confident in my strength.  If you ask me to carry a 50 lb. weight up a flight of stairs, I know I can do it because I lived in a fourth-floor walkup for two years and carried luggage up and down it several times.  If you asked me to carry a 250 lb. weight up a flight of stairs, I know I’d fail.

I do agree though that a lack of feedback can create some sort of delusion of intellectual grandeur, but I think many of these types of students may still be very afraid of being tested on their skills because they have no real idea what the result will be.

PL:  Skill?  What young associate has real skill?  They have analytical skill, yes.  The ability to give technically proficient responses, of course.  But that’s robot work.  Christ, the biggest problem with law in general is that it’s filled with people who are chock full of well-executed motion, yet utter shit in terms of forward progression…

“Hey, can you tell me how we can carve around this problem?”

“No.  But I can issue-spot five more potential problems that’ll likely never occur but will allow me to use general knowledge generally to look smart.”

Your point about associates being afraid of being tested on their skills is an excellent one.  Law school does kids a disservice by teaching theory.  In reality, court is to moot court as Naugahyde is to an Hermes saddle, and “success” is defined as much by how you sell and spin results to clients as what actually happened.  Those are business, rather than academic, skills. 

Solution?  Fire the tenured bow ties and leave adjuncts who’ve actually run practices to teach the kids.  School them in becoming practicing lawyers.

Hell, that could be a mission statement for all of higher education.  We need an update on George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote about teaching and doing.  Something along the lines of, “Those who haven’t can’t teach either.”

Dr. Rob:  A lot of academic shrinks have little to no knowledge of practicing, ‘real-world psychology.’ In graduate school, you learn nothing about running a practice, negotiating fees, dealing with insurance companies or even how to prepare an invoice.  I know that most people could figure that last one out on their own, but I’m trying to make a point here, and said point is as follows: I agree with PhilaLawyer.

And what the fuck is an Hermes saddle?

BL1Y:  I think you might be undervaluing the ability to give a technically proficient response.  Junior associates are rarely asked to tackle an entire client matter on their own, and are assigned smaller tasks instead.  It takes a lot of training and practice to do efficient research, to know you’ve actually completed your research, and to draft a well-written intra-office memo in a timely manner.  If law students graduated with the competence to write a passable memo on their first attempt, it’d be a huge step up.

But, even the people who do graduate with the smarts to do competent work are pretty unaware of their skill level.  Not counting summer work, your average law students writes maybe one memo and one brief during his/her three years of law school, and he/she will get shit for feedback and never really learned if is was a good job and how to improve.

And I’d like to echo Rob’s question, what the fuck is a Hermes saddle?

PL:  Hermes started out making saddles.  Their saddles are handcrafted, super-expensive things few people ever buy.  That analogy pops into my head every now and again when I run into an “Hermes tie” guy (someone who wears their high end print ties to telecast he can afford them, which I used to do it myself, and it’s pretty obvious… though most of mine are gifts).  Anyhoo… Fuck, I hate a merlot hangover… How does my wife drink that shit?  Where was I?  Oh, technical proficiency, right…

My point wasn’t that a junior anything should be able tackle a whole project on his own.  It’s that he simply ought to understand a case or deal in full, even when just starting out.  School teaches lawyers to tackle things in compartments, and this training narrows, rather than opens, the mind. 

They think, “Oh, I’d better get every imaginable cite on the issue, search the Congressional record and submit the densest piece of research, and that’s all.” There’s no thought about considering the broader elements of the case and taking a bit of initiative in figuring out which issue is most important and subtly focusing on that.  Instead, the emphasis is merely “answering the exact question asked.” Few would, say, see the tax ramifications of debt workout on the horizon.  They’d just get the matter settled and leave that to someone else, when it might be too late.  (I almost learned this the hard way myself.)

I guess that’s all fine if it’s a “bet company case” involving some monstrous Fortune 100 outfit who doesn’t notice the bill, but in any situation where one has to provide value, this sort of rote behavior caused me—the older associate the client thinks is honest—to get a phone call about the bill.  Yeah, I got them—because the partner would avoid them.  “Twelve hours to answer a motion to compel?!!  Four hours of research on discovery rules???  Who is this kid running the meter?”

I needn’t get into how this fucks up realization.  The kid hands in 2400 hours, and 700 have to be cut.  That fucks him in the end, and who’s he to blame?  Two crowds of people: First, the clowns who told him to go to law school right out of college, before he had a chance to work and understand how businesses operate, which would have given him a more businesslike, or value-oriented, rather than lawyerly, approach to his work.  Second, the professors who schooled him to think academically and failed to teach him about things like realization. 

All law’s mid-market now, as every client is demanding value.  It’ll be interesting as hell to see how the young associates cope with being asked for shorter, more efficient answers.  Hopefully, the trial-by-fire will make them better and three- or four-times faster.  Or perhaps colleges will start discouraging the naïve from tumbling out of Colgate with history degrees straight into law school.

BL1Y:  If I may be so bold as try to summarize PL’s point here: A lot of young lawyers are wimps because they not only lack the knowledge and skills to do their job, they don’t even fully understand what doing and/or what their job really entails.  I think that pretty much describes every single day I spent on the job.

So, what it looks like we have here, basically, is that law as a wimp minefield.  You can start as a wimp who ventures into law as a default-safe career, you can get beat down from the intense and adversarial environment of law schools and law firms and you can lose confidence in yourself from spending three years in a fog with no idea how well you’re doing.  Then, you can get out of the fog and realize you’re a young professional with few useful skills and little knowledge—and no clue how to apply either.

Before wrapping up this segment, Dr. Rob has a question he would like to pose to PL, LF10 and me.

Dr. Rob:  I recently got a bill from my lawyer for $225.  The invoice showed exactly what he did, in six-minute increments.  Most of the time involved listening to my voicemail, leaving me a voicemail, documenting that he both heard and left the aforementioned voicemails, looking for a pen, loading Microsoft Word onto his computer to create the invoice and then typing up the bill.  PL talks openly about the billable hour on his site, his book and on Bitter Lawyer, so I knew this was coming, but I’m pissed off nonetheless.

So, at the risk of failing out of anger management, I have a question for the three of you: My lawyer is a dick and is overcharging me, but at least I know his name (thereby allowing me the chance to go to his house and break his knees with a brick, if I so choose).  You three are sitting here bashing your colleagues for being wimps, yet you do it behind a curtain.  How do you reconcile this?  Put another way, where do you get the balls/ovaries to engage in this hypocrisy?

[To be continued in our third (and final?) segment, where we will discuss what might be done to either prevent wimps from being created or to rehabilitate the lawyers who have become wimps.  PL already tossed up one suggestion of actually teaching law students to be competent attorneys, but good luck ever getting that to happen… Until next time, please, please remember: Don’t combine alcohol and analogies.]

Read Part 1 of this series: “Are Lawyers Wimps?”

Visit the “defunct BigLaw” musings of BL1Y on his blog.

Listen to PhilaLawyer and Dr. Rob’s weekly web radio show “Here’s What to Think.”

Buy PhilaLawyer’s piquant book about his lost decade in world’s worst profession on Amazon.

Check out PhilaLawyer’s lively and candid posts on Bitter Lawyer.

Kick back on the couch and let Dr. Rob shrink your head.

Read the works of Law Firm 10 on Bitter Lawyer.

Check out other Bitter Exclusives.

Join Bitter Lawyer on Facebook.  Follow on Twitter.

Buy Bitter Lawyer merchandise.

[Ed. Note: The following piece originated when BL1Y, a frequent Bitter Lawyer commenter and contributor, frankly asked why the hell lawyers are such wimps.  Since “wimps” and “bitter” are, well, different, he needed more input than we could provide, so he put together a roundtable of some of Bitter Lawyer’s good friends to enlighten him.  This is part one of what he, PhilaLawyer, Dr. Rob, and our very own Law Firm 10 discussed.]

BL1Y:  When most people outside the legal profession think about lawyers, the word “wimp” usually doesn’t come to mind.  Maybe wimps of the pencil-necked geek variety, but certainly not intellectual or professional wimps.  However, just about anyone who’s worked at a Big Firm has found a lot of lawyers with underdeveloped backbones—at least when it comes to their job and professional relationships.  They don’t ask for clarification when a partner has written unintelligible notes on a memo.  They sit around for hours at night with nothing to do, afraid to pick up the phone and ask if it’s okay to leave.  They rarely speak up when given tasks above their skill level.

I recall a former coworker of mine being asked to translate a document from Portuguese to English.  The person who normally does that work was gone, so since she was listed as being conversational in Portuguese, the job fell to her.  Naturally, she didn’t think she was up to the task.  It’s pretty common for young attorneys to feel like they’re in over their head, but this was a special case.  Foreign language skills are outside the normal skill set lawyers are supposed to have, and even people who are fluent in a language aren’t generally skilled enough to translate a legal document.  People have a hard enough time understanding legal documents in their native language.

Completing the work as assigned would quite possibly constitute malpractice.  Any reasonable person would talk to the partner and make sure he understood that she couldn’t do a competent translation.  No one is going to be mad at you for being only conversational in a language that you claim to only be conversational in.  They’ll just ask you to do the best you can, but you had better make sure they didn’t mistake your skill level.  But, like a typical young associate, she had a minor panic attack over the thought of discussing her less-than-perfect Portuguese with a partner.

Actually, she probably had a full-on panic attack.  I’ve just seen so many lawyers freak out over things that I think of panic attacks as being the normal response to any bad turn of events.  If I saw someone on the floor having a seizure, I’d be as likely to think “medical emergency” as I would “must have just learned he was away from his desk when a partner called.”

In every field there are bound to be some wimps, but law stands out as an area in which wimps are the norm.  What makes this really surprising is these are people we wouldn’t normally expect to lack confidence and self esteem. 

BigLaw associates are people who went to some of the greatest universities in the country (Roll Tide!) and excelled there.  They went on to top law schools, where they were subjected to the Socratic method and forced to compete against the best and brightest—or at least the best and brightest of those who couldn’t think of anything better to do with their lives.  Still, it’s a pretty smart crop.  They’ve run student governments, engaged in debate tournaments, questioned the beliefs of brand-name professors, traveled around the world, and entered slam poetry competitions as the only white person in the joint.  These are people who should be confident in their abilities, but yet their hearts twitch whenever their phone rings at work or their Blackberries buzz while out to lunch.

And so, it is in that context that this panel prods at the heart of the lawyer psyche: Wimpiness.

Before going on, a bit about the panelists:

• BL1Y is an attorney laid off after a little more than a year working in BigLaw and is now author of the blog BL1Y.com.  Opinionated and measurably smart (but not intelligent in any gainful way), he has engaged in some pretty wimpy behavior.

• Philadelphia Lawyer (hereinafter PL) is a veteran litigator in Philadelphia and author of Happy Hour Is for Amateurs and the hilarious blog PhilaLawyer.net.

• Dr. Rob Dobrenski (hereinafter Dr. Rob) is psychologist, has been in private practice in New York since 2002, and is author of the blog ShrinkTalk.net.  Basically, he’s the Dr. Phil for people with an IQ above room temperature.

• PL and Dr. Rob are co-hosting a new internet radio show called “Here’s What to Think,” that airs Wednesdays at 8:00 PM (Eastern) available on Blog Talk Radio.

PART 1: ARE LAWYERS WIMPS?

BL1Y:  Let’s start this off by looking at the basic premise: Are lawyers actually wimps?  Every business and industry has some wimps, so the question is really are lawyer wimps more common?  The stereotype in movies and books is of lawyers who are afraid of nothing.  Lieutenant Kaffee goes toe-to-toe with Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men; Atticus Finch butts heads with his entire community and stands down an angry mob set on hanging his client in To Kill a Mockingbird, and Tom Hagan intimidates a Hollywood executive by leaving the severed head of a prized horse in his bed.  Strong, aggressive lawyers are more common in the media than the Sweaty Teddies (Scrubs) of the world.

But, you don’t have to look far to find real-life examples of lawyer wimps.  I’ve engaged in typical wimpish behavior from time to time, though I think my slacker tendencies were the only thing that saved me from becoming a complete pushover.  Bitter Lawyer has an entire Associate Abuse column with enough stories of lawyer wimps to make The Deep End not suck like a lawyer who is afraid when his coworkers find out he smokes; a staff attorney who won’t ask a colleague to stop stealing her chocolates; an associate who doesn’t speak up when getting ditched by a partner on the wrong side of town.  Every Christmas and Secretary’s Day sees a slew of letters across the legal blogosphere asking for advice about how much money is one employee required to give another employee so the other employee will do the job she’s already paid for.

So, are lawyers really more prone to being wimps, or do media perceptions and the demands of the job just make lawyer wimps stand out more?

PL: Yes and no.  Yes, the average paper tiger who sits around the office masturbating strategy is a wimp.  He’s cocksure in the comfort of the florescent cocoon, but throw him into trial (or any scenario where he has to think on his feet), and he’s sucking his thumb. 

The guy who’ll say, “Fuck it,” and take a close case into court is not a wimp.  (I say “close case” of course because it doesn’t take guts to try a hopeless cause.) I don’t care how smart you are, in trial it all goes to shit.  You’ll look like a fool a couple times, and you have to let that roll off your back.  Dickheads, egomaniacs, liars, shysters, parasites… that fits a lot of trial guys.  But wimps?  No.

Being an idiot about my approach to the career, I didn’t work on the deal side, so I can’t speak to who’s a wimp or not over there.  But I’d guess most are passive-aggressive sorts, like the rest of their brethren.  Law’s what you do when you’re “too dumb for medicine or finance, too ugly for sales.” It’s for leftovers, and leftovers are usually leftovers because they’re not overtly aggressive enough to get a job in a competitive, enjoyable profession.  Or they’re fuck-ups like I was.

Wimps don’t stand out uniquely in law.  I think law caters to them.  It gives a lot of them an ego where there’d otherwise be a vacuum of self-esteem. 

Look around any lawyers gathering.  Wimps are all over the place.  Non-wimps are the ones who stand out.  To have personality in the field is strange.  You almost feel like a fucking stand-up comic talking to a crowd of lawyers.  They’re so guarded, their personalities are paralyzed, atrophied.  Between the hazing from bosses and subconscious depression, I think a lot of them have a subtle form of PTSD.  Rob can speak to that…

Dr. Rob: As a non-lawyer, I’m going to assume that I’m the least miserable person here, which is really pathetic given that I currently have a light box shining on my face.  Just saying… [Dr. Rob has since parted ways with his light box.]

I’ve only worked with a dozen or so lawyers, but I agree that wimps don’t stand out uniquely in the field of law.  In fact, PL’s description of atrophied, paralyzed personalities is exactly what you see in the Shrink’s world: Guarded, secretive, often socially inept (which is ironic given our abilities in the office to make other people feel comfortable and willing to share).  But some of that has to do with our training.  It’s part of the Shrink’s Bible.  It was Freud’s way.

The small number of lawyers that I have worked with and know, however, does, in fact, speak to a sort of sub-clinical trauma as they moved through the field.  Most of them acknowledge that they knew the stereotypes and the jokes that would accompany the legal vocation, but they seem almost like a deer in the headlights with the recognition of the sheer enormity of the hours involved, the tedium, the fact that they could get “slammed” by a senior associate on a Friday at 5 PM—forcing them to cancel their weekends.  There’s this frozen moment of “What the fuck did I get myself into?” that blows their minds, something they never really appreciated until they got into the field.  Suddenly, money, power, esteem, respect all go out the window as they try to meet their billable hours.

BL1Y: Maybe wimps aren’t unique to law.  Other fields, like psychology, have an abundance as well, but it still appears that the population of lawyers is disproportionately wimpy.

We’re going to conclude this first segment with a contribution from a special guest, Bitter Lawyer columnist and self-proclaimed hottie LF10.

LF10: Lawyers—especially male lawyers—are total wimps.  Think about it.  They have Type A personalities, they’re pathologically risk-averse, they’re brainy, and they spend all of their waking hours sitting on their ever-expanding asses in front of computer screens.  This is synonymous with being an insecure pansy.

But here’s what kills me: I work for a male partner who is a prototypical insecure wimp.  He’s scared shitless of somehow upsetting the other partners and firm management.  But, of course, he has this completely aggrandized delusion of his utter superiority, so he’s filled with stewing resentment over having to pussyfoot around the top dogs.

So what does he do?  He acts out all of his built-up aggression on me.  The bastard bosses me around, yells at me, and abuses me until I’m reduced to little more than a puddle of tears.  But in front of anyone with more clout at the firm, he’s a meek little lamb.

And there’s another wimpy partner I work for whose pathological terror of confrontation actually puts his client relationships at risk.  The general counsel of his most important client has repeatedly voiced his dislike of a junior partner that he staffs his cases with.  Yet the partner doesn’t have the balls to just kick the junior partner off of his team—and trust me, the junior partner is a total loser with very little skill.  So there is absolutely no legitimate explanation for his behavior, other than the fact that he’s a total wimp.

[This panel will continue in PART 2: HOW DID LAWYERS GET SO WIMPY?]

Visit the “defunct BigLaw” musings of BL1Y on his blog.

Listen to PhilaLawyer and Dr. Rob’s weekly web radio show “Here’s What to Think.”

Buy PhilaLawyer’s piquant book about his lost decade in world’s worst profession on Amazon.

Check out PhilaLawyer’s lively and candid posts on Bitter Lawyer.

Kick back on the couch and let Dr. Rob shrink your head.

Read the works of Law Firm 10 on Bitter Lawyer.

Check out other Bitter Exclusives.

Join Bitter Lawyer on Facebook.  Follow on Twitter.

Buy Bitter Lawyer merchandise.

[Ed. Note: This post is by regular Bitter Lawyer commenter “BL1Y” and is also posted on his blog.]

Valentine’s Day: The one day each year that lawyers are expected to have feelings.  If you’re dating (or worse—married) to a lawyer, you know they need even the most rudimentary pointers to be able to express their love.  Still, love it blind, so if you care enough to impress the lawyer in your life this weekend—and you’re flummoxed about what to buy your special JD—avoid the following hazards and stick with our suggestions. 

WHAT NOT TO BUY YOUR LAWYER GIRLFRIEND:

SEXY UNDERWEAR

Just consider the average eating habits of a lawyer during the week: Bagel and cream cheese, morning latte, deli buffet lunch, afternoon soda, take-out dinner, evening latte, and then either a pint of ice cream or a couple glasses of wine to unwind.  All with little time for exercise.  Even if your lawyer girlfriend cleans up okay and isn’t completely embarrassing, she isn’t going to look good in lingerie.  Your gift is just going to make her insecure about her figure.  It’s a good gift if you think it’ll lead her to her dieting and working out more, but odds are that she won’t improve herself.  Becoming more self-conscious will just lead to her being inhibited in bed.

What to Get Instead: Candleholder for the bedroom (with candles and matches)

Not only are candles and candleholders a romantic choice, they’re also practical.  Everyone looks better in candlelight.  Get a holder for a larger candle, not tapers.  Tapers will end up on the dining table, not in the bedroom.  And be careful with scents.  Floral and weird “fresh” scents (Linen, Summer Breeze, etc.) will end up in the bathroom. 

It won’t set you back much, so you should supplement it by sending flowers, chocolates or a nice gift basket to her office.  (Harry & David offers a reasonably priced Valentine’s Day themed tower of treats.) Something that big and showy will make her female coworkers jealous—and might help the male coworkers get the hint that she’s off the market.

Pro: A candle on the nightstand can take three months of SeamlessWeb off your lawyer girlfriend’s ass.

Con: House fire.

WHAT NOT TO BUY YOUR LAWYER BOYFRIEND:

COUPONS

No sex coupons, no chore coupons.  No coupons for a blow job, no coupons to get out a fight—nothing.  Lawyers are neurotic, stressed out and incredibly anal when it comes to any interpretive issue. 

An ordinary guy is going to wonder about whether you really mean he can use them at any time, and whether or not you’re secretly expecting something in return.  A lawyer is going to experience the same hassle, plus the annoyance of trying to figure out exactly what your coupons mean.  Does “Good for One Quickie Anywhere You Want” refer to location or orifice?  Does “One Night of Passionate Lovemaking” mean you will provide the passion, or is he being given carte blanche?  Sexy coupons basically turn Valentine’s Day into an issue-spotting relationship nightmare.

What to get instead: Sexy photos

Take some NSFW pictures of yourself and send them to him embedded in an email.  He’ll get a nice distraction from work, and embedding it in an e-mail means there’s no incriminating browser history or downloaded files.  Go ahead and accept that he’s going to show the pictures to his coworkers—because part of the gift is boosting his reputation at the office. 

Pro: After he shows the pictures around, he probably won’t want you to hang out with his work friends for a while.

Con: It’s a “Reply to All” disaster waiting to happen.

If you don’t have a body good enough to pull off sexy pics, go with a bottle of nice liquor.  He’s going to need some booze in him anyway if he’s going to continue being in a relationship with a saggy, shapeless woman.  Patrón XO Cafe is a good choice if he likes coffee.  Avoid Scotch, unless you like making out with peat-mouth.  Or just get him this.

BONUS: A BL1Y VALENTINE DRINK RECIPE:

Lacy Panties

1 1/2 oz. Vodka

3/4 oz. Peach Schnapps

3/4 oz. Chambord

1 1/2 oz. Pineapple Juice

1 1/2 oz. Cranberry Juice

1 Egg White

Shake, serve up.

For those of you worried about the egg white, it doesn’t change the flavor; it just creates a nice white foam on the top (the “lacy” part).  If you’re lazy or incompetent, just get a carton of egg whites and measure out about 1 1/4 ounces.  Also, try not to die.  Raw egg isn’t particularly safe.

Check out BL1Y’s blog here.

Read more from BL1Y on Bitter Lawyer.

Check out other lists, tallies and scores to settle in Bitter by Numbers.

Join Bitter Lawyer on Facebook.  Follow on Twitter.

Buy Bitter Lawyer merchandise.

Keep Reading ⇒