is life in the law half full or half empty?
A New York Times editorial on The Rise of Pessimism in our country caught my attention because it echoes much of the statistics and understanding lawyer life coach Ellen Ostrow shares in an informative and comprehensive interview she gives in The Complete Lawyer (hat tip to Stephanie West Allen of idealawg).
Addressing whether lawyers are healthy, Ostrow cites study findings that “the most successful law students were the most pessimistic. And it’s the most successful law students who are going into the big firms.” She goes on to link profession-wide pessimism to “depression, poorer health and shorter lifespan.” On the flip side, Ostrow contends that lawyers can counter their pessimistic tendencies, and the related side effects, through learned optimism.
This education ideally takes place on both the individual and institutional levels. We can up optimism for ourselves by carving out some “sacred time” each day to “maintain strong, supportive relationships with others, do work that engages [our] strengths and has significance beyond [our] income." Law firms can also counter pessimism in their midst through employee engagement initiatives that “give lawyers the greatest possible latitude to decide how, where & when work gets done.”
Also instructive on this last point is a Gallup Management Journal piece on The Impact of Positive Leadership [flagged at The Practice of Leadership blog]. It discusses the influence of "positive-to-negative interaction ratios (PNR) in our work [ ] life.” Research has found that “work teams with a PNR greater than 3:1 were significantly more productive than workgroups that did not reach this ratio.” The article goes on to highlight what leaders can do to raise workplace PNR through an infusion of positive emotions.
To jumpstart our focus on the bright side of life in the law, blogger Stephanie West Allen and consultant Don Hutcheson of the Complete Lawyer have teamed to survey our views on What’s Right About The Profession Of Law?
Hi, Arnie. The survey to which I linked at my blog was not focused on what is right with the legal profession as I had hoped it would be. It could have been called "What is wrong with the legal profession? or "How I feel about practicing law." I am going to put together a survey that does have the "what's right?" focus and post it at idealawg. Thanks for the Trackback.
Thank you for your post. Sometimes it seems the more involved we become in the legal framework of our society the more difficult it is to see the lighter side of life. As a litigator I feel like I am constantly exposed to the nastier elements and that twists my world view to the point where I feel the need to move out of the profession.
I am curious to know if anyone else reading this blog shares my observation of the generational differences that affect optimism/pessimism in the legal industry?
Specifically, I have found in my own work that lawyers from the so-called "mature" generation (parents of baby boomers) tend to have a much more optimistic relationship with the law firms they work for and with their colleagues. Baby boomers, in my experience tend to be the most pessimistic, and Gen X'ers seem to have a quiet stoicism about the law firms they work for, which I attribute to the fact that most of them, behind closed doors at least, don't really expect to be at their current firms five years from now.
I used to do alot of law firm management consulting and this was a very popular subject amongst law firm administrators who had to contend with these generational differences. If anyone's interested, speak-up with a comment and I'll see if I can dig-out my notes & share them with Arnie to suggest a future post.
Respectfully,
RJON ROBINS
www.HowToMakeItRain.com
Helping Small Law Firms Make ALOT More Money.