The author has famously discovered that lawyers "overwhelmingly prefer thinking to feeling." They make decisions based on "logical analysis, principles, cool and impersonal reasoning, and cost-benefit analysis. This mode...tends to deemphasize harmony, personal relationships, and pleasing others."

Lawyers have a "preference for introversion...and objective analysis and lack of sensitivity to human, emotional, interpersonal concerns," which "may hamper relationships with clients."

"Their goals and bases for evaluating settlement offers reflect a materialistic bent." Their values are subject to change according to external pressures.

All this precipitates a "gap in understanding and communication between lawyers and clients...." No wonder there is a "public opinion crisis."

Rampant distress
"The amount of mental, psychological, and emotional distress within the legal profession is alarming," Daicoff writes, referring to a "rampant phenomenon of lawyer distress." Their "excessive feelings of anger and hostility may affect their interactions with other lawyers,...judges, and clients."

What causes this distress? "Job dissatisfaction, marital dissatisfaction, lack of social support, failure to use social systems as support when stressed, conflicts between...personal life and...career...., [and] the severe pressures of modern law practice," the pace of which "has become frenetic."

(Daicoff does not say whether the distress among legal professionals is greater than or different from the way accountants, financial planners, consultants, doctors, insurance agents, retailers, artists, electricians, teachers, or any other professionals feel about their careers or personal life. Are lawyers more stressed than others, or is everybody stressed out by the frenetic pace of modern commerce? Are lawyers so special in that regard?)

Justice
Okay, life is tough for the lawyer, and Joe Public doesn't sympathize. "Should we change?" the author asks. Her answer, apparently, is that it's too difficult. Lawyers are inflexible and have low tolerance for change. Besides, "many of the lawyer traits are actually essential and desirable in the practice of law. Objectivity and rationality in lawyers may actually be necessary for the evolution of justice."

The author does offer some vague (unrealistic in my opinion) prescriptions. For example, lawyers should "identify their strengths, values, and preferences, and then pursue the most appropriate way of practicing law based on those traits." The "legal profession" (whoever that is) should encourage "an ethic of care, altruism, humanism." Oh, and "be more responsive to client concerns, needs, and feelings."

Can lawyers become happy, find joy in their work, and learn to care about people? If so, how? Or should they simply accept their psychological profile and make the best of it? That, we hope, will be the subject of another book.

This book is nothing if not well documented, by the way. Fully 59 pages (about 28 percent of the book) are devoted to footnotes.

NAVIGATION

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Law Marketing Bibliography
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