Finding Connection on the Road to Specialization

• Publication year: 2023
• Pages: 16

52 Colo.law. 16 Finding Connection on the Road to Specialization Vol. 52, No. 1 [Page 16] Colorado Lawyer February, 2023

January, 2023

WELLNESS

The road to specialized careers can feel like a cross-country road trip—sometimes, you're surrounded by travelers forging similar paths through bustling cities; other times, you feel like the only car on the road. While there are countless roads to career specialization, we all share the ups and downs of traveling toward our destination.

It's no secret that the journey into the legal profession is highly specialized and demanding. It's also no secret that anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns can arise out of the enormous levels of stress and pressure commonly associated with demanding professions like the law. Underlying the intersecting experiences of sacrifice and demand is an elusive topic due for a day in court: professional isolation.

This article explores how and why feelings of loneliness and isolation often occur on the road to specialization in the legal field. It also offers methods to combat isolation and boost community and connection among legal professionals.

How Workplace Dynamics Promote Isolation

Within the legal profession, career demands are consistent and time intensive. In 2015, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal Systems described how competing priorities minimize opportunities for professional development.^[1] For example, lawyers who are expected to maximize their billable hours necessarily become less involved in bar associations, inns of court, and other organizations and groups that bolster community and collegiality.^[2] Technology compounds this issue by increasing access to information and limiting communication to electronic transactions, creating a "lone, time-intensive profession."^[3]

The Colorado Supreme Court further explored the divide between competing priorities in its 2021 well-being report.^[4] The report highlighted numerous factors that create isolation within the legal field, including escalating billable hours requirements and the nondiverse and hierarchical nature of the profession. The report emphasized a greater need for community, mentorship, and assistance, noting that professional development and mentoring solutions are essential to increasing collegiality and decreasing isolation within the profession.

The report also highlighted the importance of allowing employees to be their authentic selves at work. The report included recommendations for promoting work-life integration, such as encouraging dialogue and self-expression in the workplace and increasing representation through diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.^[5] These recommendations challenge a historical pattern of encouraging employees to compartmentalize themselves into two separate beings: the personal and the professional, never should they meet.

While setting healthy professional boundaries is crucial to avoiding compassion fatigue and burnout, compartmentalization can dissuade us from appropriately sharing how we feel out of fear of appearing weak, thus leaving us to judge or attempt to suppress our own emotional responses in unhealthy ways. Compartmentalization can also discourage meaningful discussions that alleviate imposter syndrome and feelings of being misunderstood, out of place, "othered," or even "not good enough." Meaningful discussions can foster normalization and productive self-reflection by allowing us to compare personal and professional experiences, strategies, and techniques that provide clarity and new ideas, especially when shared with colleagues...