Judges Archives - Page 41 of 41 - Lawyers With Depression

Summer’s Over and I Need Your Help

I am writing a book about depression in the legal profession. It will be the first book of its kind in this country. And it’s about damn time.

The book will address the causes and suggested remedies to deal with depression for law students, lawyers and judges. Given the shockingly high statistics about how many in our profession struggle with this affliction – – about twice the rate of the general population – – one might think that at least one book, if not several, had already been written on this topic. Nope – nothing.

I think part of the reason this is true is because of the shame and stigma attached to suffering from depression and being a law student, lawyer or a judge. This has been evident in our attempts to interview people for the book.

Law students have been a tough group to crack. A posting on the Facebook account of one law school got 750 hits in one day, but no response to contribute to the book.

Law students have higher rates of depression than lawyers – – about 40% of students will suffer from depression at some point in their three years at law school or about 60,000 of the 150,000 law students in this country. There are many reasons for such high rates of depression in law school and I’ve blogged about it before in my piece In the Beginning – Depression in Law Schools. We need some of these students to step forward and contribute their important stories because without them, the book might lack the authenticity we’re hoping to achieve. These stories will be offered as “portraits” in the book of law students struggling with depression and trying their very best to deal with law school and depression.The book aims to open a conversation with law students about depression rather than lecture them about it. The best way to do this is to interview real people with real stories.

Lawyers have a hard time talking about depression because they’re fearful that it exposes a major weakness to opponents and their employers. Lawyers are supposed to be problem-solving winners; not people with mental health problems that may or may not win. This pressure only serves to amplify the shame a lawyer feels when he or she is struggling with depression.

As they struggle to keep up at work, they repeatedly ask themselves, “What’s wrong with me?” and “Why can’t I just get this damn brief down?” They hate themselves for not being productive. But the lack of productivity is NOT a product of laziness. It’s a product of a disturbances going on in the brain; in particular the hippocampus which is involved with learning and memory and the amygdala.

Judges are supposed to be the cream of the crop. They are bound by the Judicial Code of Ethics and must remain above the fray. They are often lonely and dealing with burnout. Once they put on the black robe, they stop being “Bob Smith” and become “Your honor” or “Judge” whether in the courtroom or out in public. Check out my prior blog about judges and depression.

While there have been studies down on law student and lawyer depression, there’s never been one done on the judiciary. One retired judge that talked openly with us about his depression warned us to expect a “wall of silence” from the judiciary. That has come to pass. We need some courageous judges to summon some courage to talk about their own depression, the depression that seen in their colleague or the legal profession in general.

My book is meant to be a sort of handbook or guide for those in the profession who need help and understanding. It is also written for those who care about the suffering law student, lawyer and judge and want to help.

We want to hear from you and listen to your story. You can do it anonymously, if you wish. The book is likely to reach tens of thousands of people, if not many more. Were you to tell your story, some suffering soul who is in pain – – like you were before you recovered or are in now – – might see themselves in you and suffer just a little bit less, might feel a little less lonely. They may even gain a sense of hope. Please, tell your story and be part of this important project. Just click here to begin sharing.

Thank You.

More Evidence that Exercise May Help Treat Depression

From Time Magazine, an article about a new study which shows the power of exercise to treat depression. Read the Story

Lawyer Depression is Contagious

Catch a depressed mood the way you catch a cold? Not exactly . . . but similar. Can other people really be a source of the rising rate of depression in the United States? The scientific evidence suggests the answer is yes. Our social lives play a huge role in how we think and feel. After all, none of us are immune to the influence of others, for better or worse. How we react to others, and vice-versa, even has a measurable biological impact on our brain chemistry, as our newest brain research shows us. The evidence is rapidly mounting that depression is about much more than just an individual’s “bad chemistry.” Thinking of depression as a brain disease is proving to be too one-dimensional a perspective.

For attorneys, appreciating the social connection to depression is vital if the person is to be viewed – – and responded to – – realistically. Why are attorneys depressed? Go beyond biology as the cause and consider that law is a profession that:
• Often requires engaging in stressful, conflictual relationships.
• Often pressured by important and inflexible deadlines.
• Often is devalued by the general public and even may be misunderstood by friends and family.
• Often brings you into contact with some of the worst aspects of human nature.
• Encourages hazardous self-sacrifice for “the cause.”
• Encourages deceiving others as well as one’s self, a moral compass, in the push for maximizing billable hours.
• Demands full commitment to making efforts to achieve things one has no control over.
• Encourages rumination, a poor coping mechanism.
• Can sometimes be almost as costly in winning as in losing, increasing uncertainty about what’s best.
• Can be as emotionally high and low as professional sports (“the thrill of victory . . . the agony of defeat.”)

The social aspects of depression have been too long ignored in favor of biological explanations. It would be more helpful to come to terms with the reality that no amount of medication will make potentially depressing situations, like the stressful aspect of practicing law, go away.
The rising rate of depression is not unique to either Americans or lawyers, lending further support to the growing recognition of depression being spread across boarders through social means. Through the studies of cultures, families, and the social lives of depressed people, we have learned a great deal about the social transmission of depression. Negative people can bring us down and good relationships involving an enduring commitment can bring us up. We have also learned how children model their parents in unexpected ways that increase their vulnerability to depression. Thus, in a purely social sense, depression is contagious.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is the international watchdog of health issues around the world. Recently, WHO declared depression the fourth greatest cause of human suffering and disability in the world (behind heart disease, cancer and traffic accidents). The WHO statement tells us how prevalent and how serious depression is right now. Even more troubling, though, is the WHO prediction that by the year 2020 depression will have risen to become the second greatest cause of human disability and suffering. It is a safe prediction for WHO to make, for we already have a half-century worth of data showing that depression has steadily been on the rise for decades.

By focusing on biology alone, as we have done when we talk about chemical imbalances in the brain or calling depression a “disease,” the social dimension has been all but ignored. This allows the social conditions that cause and exacerbate depression in many people’s lives to go unaddressed. Drugs alone cannot address the social factors that underlie depression, a likely reason that drug treatment alone (without additional skill-building) has the highest rate of relapse of any form of intervention. Just as there will never be a pill that can cure our other social issues such as poverty or racisim, there will never be a pill that will cure the depression that is associated with challenging life conditions. This is not to say biology doesn’t matter. It clearly does. But to focus on biology to the exclusion of life’s circumstances, especially the social ones, that lead people in general, and attorneys in particular into depression, is missing a vital target of intervention. Too often, well-intentioned doctors write a prescription for an anti-depressant medication but go no further into treatment. The evidence is growing that this practice is, to put it mildly, less than ideal.

The new understandings about the prominence of social forces in depression require we as mental health professionals to change some of what we do as we try to educate people about depression. The familiar phrasing that suggests “depression is a serious medical illness requiring medication” is an educational approach it that clearly doesn’t work very well. Most of the attorneys who are depressed don’t seek help. For some, it’s because of the stigma of seeking help for an emotional disorder, but for others it’s because they simply don’t think of themselves as “diseased.” They may feel stressed, unhappy, overwhelmed, trapped, or hopeless but they don’t consider themselves “depressed.” In fact, most of the attorneys who suffer depression, still manage to function despite their condition. They show up for work, they give their clients reasonably good legal advice, they get their briefs filed on time, and they participate in family events. But, they are struggling to get through each day. They are what many clinicians refer to as the “walking wounded.”

We can do better than suggest to people they’re diseased and need drug care. Who can do more than continue to push the one-dimensional biological explanation at people for their depression? We can help them understand that depression is caused by many contributing factors of which some are indeed biological, while others are rooted in individual psychology (such as your temperament and style of coping with stress) and social psychology (such as the quality of your relationships and your culturally acquired views). Striving to convince people they’re diseased doesn’t empower them to actively change their lives in meaningful ways. We can teach better relationship skills, better problem-solving skills, better decision-making skills, and better ways to cope with an increasingly complex world. We can teach attorneys-to-be while still in law school how to develop realistic perceptions of life as a lawyer so they won’t get so disillusioned they flee the practice of law so soon after graduating. These are just some of the skills that have not only been shown to reduce depression, but even to prevent it.

Editor’s Note: Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and depression expert from Fallbrook, California. He is the author of Depression is Contagious: How the Most Common Mood Disorder is Spreading Around the World and How to Stop It. For more information visit his website at www.yapko.com.

Judicial Balance: Lessons for Law and Life

Wonderful site with plenty of posts and ideas about how judges can lead healthier and happier lives. Go to the site

Depression’s Negative Thinking

Years ago, when I had just been told I had something called “depression,” I was having a tough time accepting it – after all, I was a litigator, a good-slinger extraordinaire. The only thing that I thought could bring me down was a lucky pistol shot at High Noon.

During a talk with my therapist in the beginning of my recovery a decade ago, I told him all the negative thoughts I was having about my life. My counselor, a large, white -bearded older man with an Obi Wan Kenobi-like aura, gently told me, “Dan that is depression talking.” Somehow that got through to me; somehow I knew it was true.

My counselor, pillar of Jedi knowledge that he was, had helped me look through a sort of psychic telescope into the constellation that was my patterns of depressive thinking. All people who have struggled with depression must do combat with their negative thoughts. They must – usually with a therapist’s help – begin to see that THEY are thinking these thoughts and they’re not just HAPPENING to them.

Negative Thoughts – and Lots of Them

It has been estimated that we have anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 thoughts a day. If your ideas about life are predominantly downbeat, imagine how many negative thoughts you are generating daily—thousands upon thousands.

In the magazine Psychology Today, Hara Estroff Marano writes:

“One of the features of depression is pessimistic thinking. The negative thinking is actually the depression speaking. It’s what depression sounds like. Depression in fact manifests in negative thinking before it creates negative affect. Most depressed people are not aware that the despair and hopelessness they feel are flowing from their negative thoughts. Thoughts are mistakenly seen as privileged, occupying a rarefied territory, immune to being affected by mood and feelings, and therefore representing some immutable truth.

Compounding the matter is that negative thinking slips into the brain under the radar of conscious awareness and becomes one of the strongest of habit patterns. People generate negative thoughts so automatically they are unaware that it is happening; that it is actually a choice they are making.”

Lawyers are particularly prone to this type of pessimistic thinking which helps explain why their rates of depression are about twice that – twenty percent – of the general population.

In recent article in The Wall Street Journal wrote about this very topic:

“Martin E. P. Seligman, a psychologist and proponent of ‘positive psychology,’ observes that lawyers experience depression at rates that are 3.6 times as high as that of other employed people. They also abuse alcohol and illegal drugs at rates above what’s seen in non-lawyers. Why is this? In part, he says, the law selects people with a glass-half-empty attitude. His research has found that people who score low on an optimism test do better in law school. ‘Pessimism, he writes, ‘is seen as a plus among lawyers, because seeing troubles as pervasive and permanent is a component of what the law profession deems prudence.

A prudent perspective enables a good lawyer to see every conceivable snare and catastrophe that might occur in any transaction. The ability to anticipate the whole range of problems and betrayals that non-lawyers are blind to is highly adaptive for the practicing lawyer who can, by so doing, help his clients defend against these far-fetched eventualities. If you don’t have this prudence to begin with, law school will seek to teach it to you. Unfortunately, though, a trait that makes you good at your profession does not always make you a happy human being’’.

The Big Ten

For us to start making different choices about what kind of thoughts we think, it’s important to see the patterns, the way these false thought patters take place over and over again. Here are some examples of depressive thinking:

1. False extremes – “the tendency to evaluate [one’s own] personal qualities in extreme, black-and-white categories; shades of gray do not exist.”

2. False generalization – “after experiencing one unpleasant event, we conclude that the same thing will happen to us again and again.”

3. False filter – “we tend to pick out the negative in every situation and think about it alone, to the exclusion of everything else.”

4. False transformation – “we transform neutral or positive experiences into negative ones.”

5. False mind-reading – “we may think we can tell what someone is thinking about us, that the person hates us or views us as stupid. But such negative conclusions usually are not supported by the facts.”

6. False fortune-telling – “we expect catastrophe and the expectation itself produces hopelessness and helplessness.”

7. False lens – “we view our fears, errors, or mistakes through a magnifying glass and deduce catastrophic consequences. Everything then is out of proportion.”

8. False feelings-based reasoning – depressed persons “tend to take their emotions as the truth. They let their feelings determine the facts.”

9. False “shoulds” – “Our lives may be dominated by ‘shoulds’ or ‘oughts,’ applied to ourselves or others. This heaps pressure on us and others to reach unattainable standards.”

10. False responsibility – “when we assume responsibility and blame ourselves for a negative outcome, even when there is no basis for this.”

A common theme running through much of this type of thinking is a self-judgment of inadequacy and, as a result, the depressed person notices negative, misfortunate circumstances but ignores positive, fortunate circumstances.

Overachievers and perfectionist that they are, depressed lawyers may frequently receive positive feedback concerning his or her performance at work. For example, a depressed lawyer may have a caseload of one hundred cases. He might have the upper hand on 90%, but struggles with the 10%. This lawyer sees his struggle with the handful of cases as confirming what a loser he or she is, incompetent and unable to keep up “like everyone else.” The many positive comments made by colleagues or staff are not even remembered.

Because of the belief that he or she is inadequate, and his or her tendency to only notice negative experiences, the future is viewed as certain to be gloomy, dismal, and painful: “I’ll never make partner,” “I suck as a lawyer.”

Negative thinking sounds, to the outside observer, to be obviously false or negatively skewed. If so, just why do depressives repeatedly think like this over and over again? Are they idiots?

No, it’s because depressive thinking is “automatic.” It is not the result of thinking the situation through objectively – ironically enough, something lawyers are trained to do.

It just happens rapidly without any reflection.

So it’s the event itself that is sad, not life in general. And even if this thought or feeling arises, it is only temporary.

Depressive thinking leads to depression, leads to depressive thinking, leads to. . .

As we explain these thinking styles you will see how each helps to maintain depression, by altering how we perceive reality.

It’s these thinking styles that make it so hard to see an end to the depression, as they limit our possibilities of thought. Once these patterns take hold, the emotional arousal they cause begins to affect us physically.

If you are thinking now “Yeah, but you don’t know my life” – remember: there is nothing so awful that you can imagine that someone somewhere hasn’t survived without becoming depressed.

It is not your fault if you are depressed, but there are concrete, effective things you can do about it.

How to Kick Negative Thinking’s Butt

Again, Estroff Marrano offers some ways to combat negative thoughts:

Distract yourself. Engaging, pleasant activities, such as exercise or hanging out with friends, are best. Once you are feeling more positive, you will be better able to solve problems.
Stop that train of thought. Think or even tell yourself “Stop!” or “No!” when you start to ruminate.
Write it down. Tracking your ruminative thoughts in a journal can help you overcome depression by organizing those thoughts and relieving yourself of their burden.
Solve a problem. Even taking a small step toward solving one problem that is weighing you down will help with overcoming depression. Data show a strong link between goals you cannot achieve and depression-inducing ruminative thinking, so start problem solving.
Identify triggers. Figure out which places, times, situations, or people are most likely to cause a bout of rumination, and find ways to avoid those triggers or manage them better. Mornings and evenings are the times when ruminative thinking is most likely.
Meditate. Mindfulness techniques can help you get some distance from the thoughts that trouble you, while at the same time reducing stress.
Stop linking small goals to big goals. For example, you may need to challenge a belief that achieving big goals (such as happiness) completely depends on succeeding at smaller goals (such as losing five pounds).
Get therapy. Seek cognitive therapy techniques to help you question your thoughts and find alternative ways of viewing your situation.

Try, day by day, to chip away at the conclusion that depression just happens to you, or that it’s just a disease. Try to remember, that whatever it’s causes, negative thinking is a powerful fuel to help it arise and keep it going. Think about it.

Rumination in the Legal Profession

There’s always a lot going on in my head.

But then again, there’s a lot of racket coming from yours too.

Lawyers think for a living, after all. There’s always the mental hum of marshaling the evidence, resolving conflicting LexisNexis opinions or assessing the climatic shifts in office politics and how it affects the pecking order. As advocates, we give a lot of deliberation to turning our analysis into persuasive locution. Lincoln, reflecting on his life as a trial lawyer, wrote, “When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”

For lawyers with depression, there’s another kind of inner buzz. It’s called rumination.

We might be tempted to think of rumination as a form of worry, a rehashing of all the shit that can go wrong. But, it’s actually not. Worry focuses on potential bad events in the future.

Rumination, a cousin of fretful forecasting, is similar to worry except it focuses on bad feelings and experiences from the past.

According to book The Mindful Way through Depression,

“When we ruminate, we become fruitlessly preoccupied with the fact that we are unhappy and with the causes, meanings, and consequences of our unhappiness. Research has repeatedly shown that if we have tended to react to our sadness or depressed moods in these ways in the past, then we are likely to find the same strategy volunteering to ‘help’ again and again when our moods start to slide. And it will have the same effect: we’ll get stuck in the very mood from which we are trying to escape. As a consequence, we are at even higher risk of experiencing repeated bouts of unhappiness.”

In the First Person

I need a lot of time to get going in the morning – slurps of java, (the Starbucks “bold blend” varnish remover if I need a “stiff drink”) time to read the morning news, a sliver of time to plan my day — and sometimes, ruminate. When ruminating, it’s as if pieces of my past are painted on those little squares of a Rubik’s cube that I’m endlessly manipulating to solve.

Even though this style of thinking ends up making me feels crummy, in varying degrees, I like to ruminate. It some odd way, it seems to temporarily relieve me of any free-floating anxiety I might be experiencing.

Melissa Kirk writes,

“It feels good to ruminate. Why is this? Two things happen to me when I’m dwelling on a problem. The dwelling seems to stop the immediate pain or distress, the way rubbing a sore muscle can relieve the soreness temporarily, until you stop rubbing. Also, I feel like, when I’m ruminating, that I’m acting on the problem of trying to solve it. Rumination, then gives us the sense of taking action towards a situation that is distressing us, which relieves the distress in the short-term.”

This type of “mind rub” also skews the facts: I ignore the positive side of those past events and accentuate the negative. Indeed it is rumination’s focus on the negative that gives it its solution-less quality.

We usually don’t ruminate when we’re happy. When life is good, we savor everyday plentitudes of grace that have fallen on us whether earned or not. This type of looking back is really reflection, not rumination. When we reflect, we appreciate and learn from our past; no need to chomp on the bitter morsels of yesterday. Interesting aside: the origins of the word “ruminate” come from the Latin word to describe the process in which cows chew and regurgitate their food, or “cud,” over and over again – yummy!

We chew on our thoughts when we’re upset or in some kind of emotional pain or funk. Rumination is a way of responding to life that involves repetitively and passively focusing on the symptoms of distress, and on its possible causes and consequences. This plugs into depression because depression is passive. We feel scant energy and incapable of taking action when in a melancholic ditch.

According to The Mindful Way through Depression,

“We ruminate because we believe it will help us overcome the unhappiness of depression. We believe that not doing it will make our condition worse and worse. We ruminate when we feel low because we believe that it will reveal a way to solve our problems. But research shows that it does exactly the opposite: our ability to solve problems actually deteriorates markedly during rumination. All of the evidence seems to point to the stark truth that rumination is part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

According to research done by Susan Nolen- Hoeksema, Ph.D., many ruminators negative outlook hurts their problem-solving ability. According to her research, they often struggle to find good solutions to hypothetical problems. For example, if a friend is avoiding them, they might say, “Well, I guess I’ll just avoid them too.” Even when a person is prone to rumination comes up with a potential solution to a significant problem the rumination itself may induce a level of uncertainty and immobilization that makes it hard for them to move forward. Such depressive rumination most often occurs in women as a reaction to sadness. Men, by comparison, more often focus on their emotions when they’re angry, rather than sad.

Percolations in the Brain

According to a recent Stanford study by Sian Beilock, Ph.D., changes were discovered in the brains of depression sufferers when ruminating. MRI’s were taken of two separate groups: those with and those without depression. Each group was separately prompted with various techniques to promote ruminative thinking. The MRI’s of people’s heads disclosed that a lot is going on in our brains when we are ruminating.

According to an article in Montior magazine commenting upon Beilock’s work:

“People with major depression had greater activation than controls during the rumination task in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. Thought to be involved in mood regulation, the anterior cingulate cortex may be infusing more emotion into the depressed individual’s ruminations than controls. Depressed individuals also had greater activation in the amygdala, that almond shaped region deep in the brain that is a major player in negative emotional reactions. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, people with depression showed greater activation in the prefrontal cortex, where our working memory (a.k.a. cognitive horsepower) is housed. If depressed individuals spend a lot more of this neural real estate trying to regulate their thinking, they may have less brain power left over to do other important thinking and reasoning tasks. This may explain the cognitive deficits depressed folks sometimes show.”

Unplugging From Rumination

Here are some thoughts about how to deal with rumination.

First, need to learn that rumination doesn’t solve our problems – it insidiously perpetuates them. “We can’t,” wrote Albert Einstein, “solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” We can’t solve our depression by using the same ruminative thinking habits that may have caused it to begin with.

Second, we need to see why, if it doesn’t work, we keep doing it. We do so because it tricks us into thinking we are actually being productive and briefly reduces our anxiety.

Third, once we have seen that it doesn’t work and why we keep doing it, we need to make small behavioral steps and resolutions to change it. Yet, as Dr. O’Connor says, “We aren’t to blame for our depression. But, we are responsible for getting better.” Responsibility implies action, not just good intentions.

Depressives often hit a wall in their recovery when asked to change their thinking and/or behavior: they’re either too tired, frozen or can’t get out of their own way. Often, they are fatalistic: “The way I see the world is just the way the world is and my life is – screwed up.” They feel that life has dealt them a bad hand and try to solve unsolvable problems: “What did I do to deserve depression? Why can’t I ever get things done?” These thoughts just produce paralysis, not productive solutions.

Of course, there’s an element of truth to many of our ruminations. If there weren’t so, we wouldn’t endlessly cudgel ourselves over the head because we would quickly see just how silly ruminating really is. For example, would any of us ruminate about why we didn’t become a circus clown? We don’t because there’s not a scintilla of evidence in our past that we ever wanted to be a clown or had the opportunity to do so.

Rumination is more clever and seductive than that. The ruminative habit compels us to churn away at half-truths or things that actually did happen. For example, “why were my parents so screwed up?” Or “why did they leave me a legacy of depression or anxiety?” There’s truth in these questions. My parents were screwed up. My parents did leave me a legacy of depression.

It’s been written that the truth will set us free. The problem here isn’t with the truth, it’s what we do with it. Ruminators run with it in a destructive way when they cycle through these issues over and over again with no resolution in sight. With regard to our parents painful legacy for many of us, is there any answer that would ever satisfy us?

There is tragedy in this world, bad things do happen to good people and life is often unfair. Yet, as Helen Keller once wrote, “The world is full of suffering. But, it’s also full of the overcoming of it.” THAT is reality too. So, when we sit down to eat our daily fare of our thoughts and meanderings that make up our days, we might want to pick from the upbeat side of the menu.

And not chew on our food too much.

Judges and Depression

Loneliness is the most terrible poverty — Mother Teresa

I’ve written a lot on stress, anxiety and depression in the legal profession, but not about the judiciary. There has been much commentary, research and Law Journal articles about what ails law students and attorneys — but not about judges.

I guess that’s not surprising. In my work over the past four years, I have spoken with scores of judges from all over the country. It’s a noble, important calling in life. But it’s also very stressful, demanding and . . . lonely.

Here’s a clip from the new documentary A Terrible Melancholy: Depression in the Legal Profession. My good friend Judge Michael Miller talks about the loneliness of being a judge:

Isolation, Loneliness & the Judiciary

In an article for Judicature magazine, psychiatrist Isaiah Zimmerman culled through twenty years of notes he accumulated from treating state and federal judges. Here are the voices of the judges in their own words:

“Before becoming a judge, I had no idea or warning, of how isolating it would be.”

“Except for those very close, old friends, you cannot relax socially.”

“Judging is the most isolating and lonely of callings.”

“The isolation is gradual. Most of your friends are lawyers, and you can’t carry on with them as before.”

“When you become a judge, you lose your first name!”

“It was the isolation that I was not prepared for.”

“After all these years on the bench, the isolation is my major disappointment.”

“The Chief Judge warned me: ‘You’re entering a monastery when you join this circuit.’”

“I live and work in a space capsule – alone with stacks of paper.”

“Your circle of friends certainly becomes smaller.”

“Once you get on the appellate bench, you become anonymous.”

These weren’t isolated comments or small pockets of pedestrian sadness. Dr. Zimmerman notes that about 70% of the judges he interviewed came up with these observations on their own.

There are several things that contribute to a sense of judicial loneliness. The Code of Judicial Conduct imposes restrictions on judicial behavior both in and out of the courtroom. Judges must avoid the appearance of impropriety and thus must be cautious and keep an appropriate distance and bearing at social and bar events. There are good reasons to have these restrictions, but if a judge isn’t careful to live a balanced life, they can help trigger a profound sense of lonesomeness.

Loneliness isn’t just emotionally painful; it’s also dangerous to your health on multiple levels. According to an article by psychologist, Hara Estroff Marano, writes:

“Evidence has been growing that when our need for social relationships are not met, we fall apart mentally and even physically. There are effects on the brain and on the body. Some effects work subtly, through the exposure of multiple body systems to excess amounts of stress hormones. Yet the effects are distinct enough to be measured over time, so that unmet social needs take a serious toll on health, eroding our arteries, creating high blood pressure, and even undermining learning and memory.”

Given the pressures and isolation of the job, judges need to recognize the dangers associated with loneliness: unhappiness, discontent, health problems and perhaps . . . depression.

Judges and Depression

Judges are supposed to be problem solvers in black robes; not human beings with psychological problems of their own.

Given the position that judges occupy in our society, the stigma around disclosure to others –and perhaps getting treatment for clinical depression — is much, much greater.

One psychiatrist I know who treats judges told me that judges request very early or very late weekday or weekend appointments. Moreover, they ask not to be scheduled before or after another lawyer or judge and pay in cash so as not to attract attention or leave a paper trail.

For the first ten years of my career, much of my practice was spent litigating cases in state and federal courts in New York City. One of my best friends from those days is now a judge. When I decided to go public with my depression four years ago by writing an article for Trial magazine, my friend called me for dinner to catch up on things. He wanted to know how I was feeling and expressed concern about my plans to go public about my depression.

“Dan, why can’t you write the article anonymously,” the judge said. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” I replied. “Why should I have to write such an article anonymously? What do I have to be ashamed of? Depression is an illness no different than diabetes or heart disease. Would I write an article about those illnesses . . . anonymously?”

We kept in contact with dinners and phone calls over the next four years, but over time our conversations centered less on my depression and well-being and more on his. You see, my friend the judge disclosed to me that he was suffering from depression and had tried to commit suicide some years before.

I think he felt he could trust me. Moreover, I think my disclosure gave him implicit permission to talk about his pain and struggles; a hurt only his therapist and wife knew of. He spoke of the loneliness of his job and how he missed the collegiality of his old large firm. But, he said that on the balance, he’d rather be a judge and didn’t regret his change in vocation; a move from the courtroom to the chamber. He liked his job, enjoyed the intellectual challenge and the chance to do justice.

The statistics on lawyer depression are deeply troubling. They suffer from depression at a rate twice that (20%) of the general population. As such, about 200,000 of this nation’s 1 million lawyers are struggling with depression right now. No studies have been done on judicial depression.

There are 1,774 federal level judges in the U.S. Were you to plug in the 20% depression rate we see with attorneys to the number of judges, approximately 350 judges across America are suffering from depression. Even though there haven’t been any studies of judicial depression, why would we expect the 20% rate to be any different than that found with attorneys?

I couldn’t find any statistics on how many state judges there are in the U.S. New York State has 1,250. Were you to plug in the 20% depression rate we see with attorneys to the number of these judges, approximately 250 of the Empire State’s judiciary are suffering from depression.

This isn’t sadness or burnout, but true clinical depression. Sometimes, we confuse being down in the dumps with depression. They’re really not the same thing – not even close. Here’s how psychologist Richard O’Connor, best-selling author of the book Undoing Depression, distinguishes it:

“Everyone knows what depression feels like. Everyone feels the blues at times. Sadness, disappointment, fatigue are normal parts of life. There is a connection between the blues and clinical depression, but the difference is like the difference between the sniffles and pneumonia.”

Nobody’s Perfect

Perfection is also an indicator for depression. In his article Even Judges Get the Blues, Judge Robert L. Childers writes:

“Because of the weight of public expectation, judges generally feel that they should be perfect. Not only do they feel that they should be fair, impartial, and make the right decision 100 percent of the time, but the public expects this of judges as well, as do the lawyers who practice before them. This can create undo pressure for judges and, consciously or unconsciously, keep judges from admitting or recognizing the signs of debilitating disease.”

In an article from the ABA Journal, Perfectionism, Psychic Batterning’ Among Reasons for Lawyer Depression, the piece states: “Lawyers [and judges] are taught to aim for perfection, to be aggressive and to be emotionally detached. They ‘intellectualize, rationalize and displace problems on others’ . . . . They don’t take direction particularly well. They tend to have to have fairly elaborate denial mechanisms. And they tend to challenge anything they’re told.” In another article from the ABA Journal, it notes that when combined with depression, perfectionism makes it harder for a person to seek help. And in the worst case scenario, leads to suicide.

Loneliness & Depression

Depression is a multifaceted illness that has several different causes – some genetic, some physical and some emotional. In the depths of my depression, I felt very alone – like I was trapped at the bottom of a dark well.

Many with depression isolate themselves because it’s painful to be around others. I would hang out at Starbucks and do my work. I didn’t want others I knew to engage me; I didn’t want others to see the pain I was desperately struggling with.

I’ve found that loneliness and depression often travel the same road. This creates a lot of problems because the two can feed off one another.

According to psychologist Dr. Reena Sommer:

“Depression is a problem that often accompanies loneliness. In many cases, depressive symptoms such as withdrawal, anxiety, lack of motivation and sadness mimic and mask the symptoms of loneliness. In these cases, people are often treated for depression without considering the possibility that loneliness may be a contributing and sustaining factor in their condition.”

Generally, the debilitating symptoms of depression can usually be managed with antidepressant medication. But when the underlying loneliness is ignored or overlooked, the depressive-like symptoms will probably continue. Unless the reasons for loneliness and depression are separated out, it can easily turn into a ‘chicken and egg’ situation where depression leads to loneliness, and loneliness leads to depression.”

Turning It Around

While depression might not be our fault, it is our responsibility to get better. We need to start behaving and thinking in constructive ways. Here’s some food for thought:

Get help. You can’t handle this by yourself. It is a problem bigger than any individual person. The A. B.A. ‘s Commision on Lawyer Assistance Programs recently created a Judicial Assistance Initiative. Reach out to them and they can get you pointed in the right direction.
You may have to take antidepressant medication to help you. That’s okay. You may have a chemical imbalance that you need to address. For many, psychotherapy alone won’t help until they quieted down their somatic complaints — e.g. fatigue from sleep problems — so that they can have the energy and insight to work on their problems.
Whether you need medication or not, you will need to confront your negative thinking with a therapist. A lot of research suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy is a particularly effective form of treatment for depression. Interview a couple therapists before you settle on one.
Exercise. The value of exercise is widely known: It’s simply good for everybody. For a person with depression, it becomes not just about a healthy habit, but a critical behavior and habit – they absolutely need to work out. In his book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey devotes a chapter to the importance of exercise in alleviating depression. Please check this book out.
If you have a spiritual practice, do it. If you don’t, think about starting one. This could be anything from a formal meditation practice, going to Mass, or walking the woods. A lot of research suggests that people who have a spiritual practice do better with depression recovery. If you believe in God or a higher power (I am Catholic), you can avail yourself of help and support from Someone who is bigger than your depression. If you do not believe in God, maybe you believe in some other form of spirituality you can tap into. Spiritual growth and development, in my opinion, are very important pillars of recovery. Two books from my tradition include Seeing beyond Depression by Father Jean Vanier and Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach by Sister Kathryn James Hermes. Also see the wonderful guest article she wrote for my website.
Get educated. Read some good books on the topic. As part of your education, learn about the powerful connection between stress, anxiety and depression. On this subject, I recommend Dr. Richard O’Connor’s Undong Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection between Depression, Anxiety and 21st Century Illness. Dr. O’Connor suggests that depression is really about stress that has gone on too long. The constant hammering away of stress hormones on the brain changes its neurochemistry. This can and often does result in anxiety disorders and/or depression. Also see the article I wrote for Trial Magazine about the connection between stress, anxiety and depression. It is a companion piece to an excellent article written by Andrew Benjamin called “Reclaiming Your Practice.”
Build pleasure into your schedule. Judges, like all those in the legal profession, are busy and have the “I will get to it later” mentally – especially when it comes to things that are healthy pleasures. We have to jettison this approach to how we live our days. We must begin to take time – now – to enjoy pleasurable things and people. A hallmark of depression is the inability to feel happiness or joy. We need to create the space where we can experience and savor good experiences and feelings.
Practice mindfulness. In mindfulness meditation, we sit quietly, pay attention to our breath, and watch our thoughts float by in a stream of consciousness. Normally, we immediately react to our thoughts (e.g. “I am losing my mind with all of these deadlines”). With mindfulness practice, we can begin – slowly – to let the thoughts and feelings float by without reacting to them. If such an approach to depression seems far-fetched, read the best-selling book The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, for an excellent primer on how you can incorporate mindfulness into your day.
Remember to be kind to yourself. It sounds so simple. I tell this to depressed lawyers and judges all the time and they usually look puzzled. They often admit that they have rarely, if ever, thought about it and don’t know how to be kind to themselves. I believe that it first begins with a conscious intention – “I am not going to treat myself poorly anymore.” Such a simple refrain can help us. Depression is often built on poor mental, emotional and physical habits. We must learn to acknowledge that we are worthy of love from ourselves and others and that part of such love involves taking better care of ourselves.
Spend time outside and in nature. We humans forget that we are part of nature and the animal kingdom. We need fresh air and sunshine. Even more so when the darkness of winter strikes. If you live in a part of the country with long winters, load up on vitamin D and consider using a light box to help you.

If you or a judge you know might be suffering from loneliness and/or depression, please forward this article to them. Here’s a list of depression’s symptoms and a self-test from the Mayo Clinic.

The Need for Community

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My psychologist said something remarkable months ago: “You’re a real loner Dan.” I really never thought about myself that way – and I’m 48 years old! But after reflecting on it awhile, I found what he’d said to be profoundly true. It didn’t mean that I didn’t have people in my life that I love and who love me. I have the best wife, a beautiful daughter and great friends. Yet, I often didn’t see just often I isolated myself by choosing solitary activities. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It’s a question of balance. For me, the scales are tipping in the direction of reaching out and enjoying the fruits that only happen when really sharing with others.

And it’s not just lawyers that feel lonely. In a recent edition of the national publication for judges, Judicature, it was estimated that 70% of judges feel lonely. While there haven’t been any depression studies on judges, as there have been for law students and lawyers, one can only imagine their high depression levels.

I know that when I went through the worst of my depression, it was a very lonely experience. Not because people didn’t try to be there for me and help. Rather, it was because depression short circuits something in our brains that makes us essentially human: our capacity to engage with and feel connected to people. I’ve often said that being a lawyer can be a lonely job and believe that most lawyers, at least in their private thoughts, feel this way. When this loneliness in our jobs is compounded by the isolation we feel during a depression, it has a crushing effect. Oxygen disappears from the room only to be replaced by the vapor of melancholy. It feels like there is no escape and we are pounded into submission; a submission that on one level makes no sense because we are still carrying on with our lives – but just barely.

Lately, I’ve felt the desire to end my isolation. I have begun to recognize that what is most important in life, really, is family, friendship and community. It may sound trite and simplistic to offer this up, but such a simple truth has long eluded me in my life. My best friend, my wife, has seen me reach out to her more and it has only deepened our marriage. How many of us who have dealt with depression don’t reach out to the most precious person that we live with everyday? For some of you, it may not be your spouse. It could be anyone that you feel close to. If you don’t have someone like this in your life, it’s critical to develop one because a hour of therapy per week and a trip to the psychiatrist once a month simply is not enough support, love and encouragement to recover from and stay out of depression.

Think hard about your life. How much time do you spend with friends that you really connect with? What is your relationship life with your spouse and children? As lawyers, we often think and say, “Time is money.” However, the span of our lives is short and none of us is guaranteed even another day on this earth. If you are spending all of your time at the office and neglecting your need to connect with others, the cost is simply too high.

Why Are Lawyers So Unhappy?

“As to being happy, I fear that happiness isn’t in my line. Perhaps the happy days that Roosevelt promises will come to me along with others, but I fear that all trouble is in the disposition that was given to me at birth, and so far as I know, there is no necromancy in an act of Congress that can work a resolution there.” – Benjamin N. Cardozo, February 15, 1933

Law is a prestigious and remunerative profession, and law school classrooms are full of fresh candidates. In a recent poll, however, 52% of practicing lawyers describe themselves as dissatisfied. Certainly, the problem is not financial. As of 1999, associates at top firms could earn up to $200,000 per year just starting out, and lawyers long ago surpassed doctors as the highest-paid professionals. In addition to being disenchanted, lawyers are in remarkably poor mental health. They are at much greater risk than the general population for depression. Researchers at John Hopkins University found statistically significant elevations of major depressive disorder in only 3 of 104 occupations surveyed. When adjusted for sociodemographics, lawyers topped the list, suffering from depression at a rate of 3.6 times higher than employed persons generally. Lawyers also suffer from alcoholism and illegal drug use at rates far higher than nonlawyers. The divorce rate among lawyers, especially women, also appears to be higher than the divorce rate among other professionals. Thus, by any measure, lawyers embody the paradox of money losing its hold. They are the best-paid professionals, and yet they are disproportionately unhappy and unhealthy. And lawyers know it; many are retiring early or leaving the profession altogether.

Positive Psychology sees three principal causes of the demoralization among lawyers.

Pessimism

First is pessimism, defined not in the colloquial sense (seeing the glass as half empty) but rather as the pessimistic explanatory style. These pessimists tend to attribute the causes of negative events as stable and global factors (“It’s going to last forever, and it’s going to undermine everything.”). The pessimist views bad events as pervasive, permanent, and uncontrollable, while the optimist sees them as local, temporary and changeable. Pessimism is maladaptive in most endeavors: Pessimistic life insurance agents sell less and drop out sooner than optimistic agents. Pessimistic undergraduates get lower grades, relative to their SAT scores and past academic record, than optimistic students. Pessimistic swimmers have more substandard times and bounce back from poor efforts worse than do optimistic swimmers. Pessimistic pitchers and hitters do worse in close games than optimistic pitchers and hitters. Pessimistic NBA teams lose to the point spread more often than optimistic teams.

Thus, pessimists are losers on many fronts. But there is one glaring exception: Pessimists do better at law. We tested the entire entering class of the Virginia Law School in 1990 with a variant of the optimism-pessimism test. These students were then followed throughout the three years of law school. In sharp contrast with the results of prior studies in other realms of life, the pessimistic law students on average fared better than their optimistic peers. Specifically, the pessimist outperformed more optimistic students on the traditional measures of achievement, such as grade point averages and law journal success.

Pessimism is seen as a plus among lawyers because seeing troubles as pervasive and permanent is a component of what the law profession deems prudence. A prudent perspective enables a good lawyer to see every conceivable snare and catastrophe that might occur in any transaction. The ability to anticipate the whole range of problems and betrayals that non-lawyers are blind to is highly adaptive for the practicing lawyer who can, by so doing, help his clients defend against these far-fetched eventualities. If you don’t have this prudence to begin with, law school will seek to teach it to you. Unfortunately, though, a trait that makes you good at your profession does not always make you a happy human being.

Sandra is a well-known East Coast psychotherapist who is, I think, a white witch. She has one skill that I have never seen in any other diagnostician: She can predict schizophrenia in preschoolers. Schizophrenia is a disorder that does not become manifest until after puberty, but since it is partly genetic, families who have experienced schizophrenia are very concerned about which of their children will come down with it. It would be enormously useful to know which children are particularly vulnerable because all manner of protective, social and cognitive skills might be tried to immunize the vulnerable child. Families from all over the eastern United States send Sandra their 4-year-olds; she spends an hour with each of them and makes an assessment of the child’s future likelihood of schizophrenia, an assessment that is widely thought of as uncannily accurate.

This skill of seeing the underside of innocent behavior is super for Sandra’s work, but not for the rest of her life. Going out to dinner with her is an ordeal. The only thing she can usually see is the underside of the meal – people chewing. Whatever witchy skill enables Sandra to see so acutely the underside of the innocent-looking behavior of a 4-year-old does not get turned off during dinner, and it prevents her from thoroughly enjoying normal adults in normal society. Lawyers, likewise, can not easily turn off their character trait of prudence (or pessimism) when they leave the office. Lawyers who can see clearly how badly things might turn out for their clients can also see clearly how badly things might turn out for themselves. Pessimistic lawyers are more likely to believe they will not make partner, that their profession is a racket, that their spouse is unfaithful, or that the economy is headed for disaster much more readily than will optimistic persons. In this manner, pessimism that is adaptive in the profession brings in its wake a very high risk of depression in personal life. The challenge, often unmet, is to remain prudent and yet contain this tendency outside the practice of law.

Low Decision Latitude

A second psychological factor that demoralizes lawyers, particularly junior ones, is low decision latitude in high-stress situations. Decision latitude refers to the number of choices one has – or, as it turns out, the choices one believes one has – on the job. An important study of the relationship of job conditions with depression and coronary disease measures both job demands and decision latitude. There is one combination particularly inimical to health and moral: high job demands coupled with low decision latitude. Individuals with these jobs have much more coronary disease and depression than individuals in other three quadrants.

Nurses and secretaries are the usual occupations consigned to that unhealthy category, but in recent years, junior associates in major firms can be added to the list. These young lawyers often fall into this cusp of high pressure accompanied by low choice. Along with the shared load of law practice (“this firm is founded on broken marriages”), associates often have little voice about their work, only limited contact with their superiors, and virtually no client contact. Instead, for at least their first few years of practice, many remain isolated in a library, researching and drafting memos on topics of the partners’ choosing.

A Win-loss Game

The deepest of all the psychological factors making lawyers unhappy is that American law is becoming increasingly a win-loss game. Barry Schwartz distinguishes practices that have their own internal “goods” as a goal from free-market enterprises focused on profits. Amateur athletics, for instance, is a practice that has virtuosity as its good. Teaching is a practice that has learning as its good. Medicine is a practice that has healing as its good. Friendship is a practice that has intimacy as its good. When these practices brush up against the free market, their internal goods become subordinated to the bottom line. Night baseball sells more tickets, even though you cannot really see the ball at night. Teaching gives way to the academic star system, medicine to managed care, and friendship to what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. American law has similarly migrated from being a practice in which good counsel about justice and fairness was the primary good to being a big business in which billable hours, take-no-prisoners victories, and the bottom line are now the principle ends.

Practices and their internal goods are almost always win-win-games: both teacher and student grow together, and successful healing benefits everyone. Bottom-line businesses are often, but not always, closer to win-loss games: managed care cuts mental health benefits to save dollars; star academics get giant raises from a fixed pool, keeping junior teachers at below-cost-of-living raises; and multi-billion dollar lawsuits for silicon implants put Dow-Corning out of business. There is an emotional cost to being part of a win-loss endeavor. In Chapter 3 of my book, I argue that positive emotions are the fuel of win-win (positive-sum) games, while negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and sadness have evolved to switch in during win-loss games. To the extent that the job of lawyering now consists of more win-loss games, there is more negative emotion in the daily life of lawyers.

Win-loss games cannot simply be wished away in the legal profession, however, for the sake of more pleasant emotional life among its practitioners. The adversarial process lies at the heart of the American system of law because it is thought to be the royal road to truth, but it does embody a classic win-loss game: one side’s win equals exactly the other side’s loss. Competition is at its zenith. Lawyers are trained to be aggressive, judgmental, intellectual, analytical and emotionally detached. This produces predictable emotional consequences for the legal practitioner: he or she will be depressed, anxious and angry a lot of the time.

Countering Lawyer and Unhappiness

As Positive Psychology diagnoses the problem of demoralization among lawyers, three factors emerge.Pessimism, low decision latitude, and being part of a giant win-loss enterprise. The first two each have an antidote. I discussed part of the antidote for depression in Chapter 6, in my book

Pessimism, low decision latitude, and being part of a giant win-loss enterprise. The first two each have an antidote. Chapter 6 of my book details a program for lastingly and effectively countering catastrophic thoughts. More important for lawyers is the pervasive dimension-generalizing pessimism beyond the law – and there are exercises in Chapter 12 of my book, Learned Optimism that can help lawyers who see the worst in every setting to be more discriminating in the other corners of their lives. The key move is credible disputation: treating the catastrophic thoughts (“I’ll never make partner,” “My husband is probably unfaithful”) as if they were uttered by an external person whose mission is to make your life miserable, and then marshaling evidence against the thoughts. These techniques can teach lawyers to use optimism in their personal lives, yet maintain the adaptable pessimism in their professional lives. It is well documented that flexible optimism can be taught in a group setting, such as a law firm or class. If firms and schools are willing to experiment, I believe the positive effects on the performance and moral of the young lawyers will be significant.

As to the high pressure-low decision latitude problem, there is a remedy as well. I recognize that grueling pressure is an inescapable aspect of law practice. Working under expanded decision latitude, however, will make young lawyers both more satisfied and more productive. One way to do this is to tailor the lawyer’s day so there is considerably more personal control over work. Volvo solved a similar problem on the assembly lines in the 1960’s by giving its workers the choice of building a whole car in a group, rather than repeatedly building the same part. Similarly, a junior associate can be given a better sense of the whole picture, introduced to clients, mentored by partners, and involved in transactional discussions. Many law firms have begun this process as they confront the unprecedented resignations of young associates.

The zero-sum nature of law has no easy antidote. For better or for worse, the adversarial process, confrontation, maximizing billable hours, and the “ethic” of getting as much as you possibly can for your clients are much too deeply entrenched. More pro bono activity, more mediation, more out-of-court settlements, and “therapeutic jurisprudence” are all in the spirit of countering the zero-sum mentality, but I expect these recommendations are not cures, but Band-Aids. I believe the idea of signature strengths, however, may allow law to have its cake and eat it too – both to retain the virtues of the adversarial system and to create happier lawyers.

When a young lawyer enters a firm, he or she comes equipped not only with the trait of prudence in lawyerly talents like high verbal intelligence, but with an additional set of unused signature strengths (for example, leadership, originality, fairness, enthusiasm, perseverance, or social intelligence). As lawyers’ jobs are crafted now, these strengths do not get much play. Even when situations do call for them, since the strengths are unmeasured, handling these situations does not necessarily fall to those who have the applicable strengths.

Every law firm should discover what the particular signature strengths of their associates are. Exploiting these strengths will make the difference between a demoralized colleague and an energized, productive one. Reserve five hours of the work week for “signature strength time,” a non-routine assignment that uses individual strengths in the service of the firm’s goals.

There is nothing particular to the field of law in the re-crafting of jobs. Rather, there are two basic points to keep in mind as you think about these examples and try to apply them to your work setting. The first is that the exercise of signature strengths is almost always a win-win game. When Stacy gathers the complaints and feelings of her peers, they feel increased respect for her. When she presents them to the partners, even if they don’t act, the partners learn more about the morale of their employees – and of course, Stacy herself derives authentic positive emotion from the exercise of her strengths. This leads to the second basic point: There is a clear relation between positive emotion at work, high productivity, low turnover and high loyalty. The exercise of a strength releases positive emotion. Most importantly, Stacy and her colleagues will likely stay longer with the firm if their strengths are recognized and used. Even though they spend five hours each week on non-billable activity, they will, in the long run, generate more billable hours.

Law is intended as but one rich illustration of how an institution (such as a law firm) can encourage its employees to re-craft the work they do, and how individuals within any setting can reshape their jobs to make them more gratifying. To know that a job is a win-loss in its ultimate goal – the bottom line of a quarterly report, or a favorable jury verdict – does not mean the job cannot be win-win in its means to obtaining that goal. Competitive sports and war are both eminently win-loss games, but both sides have many win-win options. Business and athletic competitions, or even war itself, can be won by individual heroics or by team building. There are clear benefits of choosing the win-win option by using signature strengths to better advantage. This approach makes work more fun, transforms the job or the career into a calling, increases flow, builds loyalty, and it its decidedly more profitable. Moreover, by filling work with gratification, it is a long stride on the road to the good life.

Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., is the Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, the Director of the Positive Psychology Network, and former President of the American Psychological Association. Among his 20 books are Learned Optimism and The Optimistic Child. Here, from his book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, is his chapter entitled “Why Are Lawyers So Unhappy?”