Lawyer Resilience, 0317 ALBJ, 78 The Alabama Lawyer 146 (2017)
| Author | Prof. Pamela Bucy Pierson, J. |
Prof. Pamela Bucy Pierson, J.
About once a week, I travel in a time machine.
I see someone age 10, 15, 20 years. Since 1987, I have taught approximately 6,000 law students at the University of Alabama School of Law. Everywhere I go– law offices, bar meetings, gas stations–I see former students. Most of them I met in Criminal Law on their first day of law school. Many I have not seen since they graduated from law school. It is always wonderful to catch up. It is also interesting to see how differently they age. Some have not aged at all while others look much older than their years.
What makes the difference? At first I thought it must be how well (or poorly) they had taken care of themselves since I saw them last: do they exercise, have they put on a few pounds? This does not seem to be the key factor. A number of my former students who appear to be in good shape physically have not aged well at all, and some who do not appear to have missed many meals or to have spent much time in a gym have aged quite well. In a similar vein, I assumed that genetics was at issue, but I know a number of the parents of my former students and familial history does not seem to be the key. For a while, I thought the difference must be whether someone had suffered personal tragedies, but again I saw that this did not appear to the differentiating factor. Some of my former students who have experienced extremely difficult personal situations have aged the best. I also thought that the difference must lie in the kind of practice someone was in, but this does not seem to be the key factor. Some of my former students who are in what most of us would view as high-stress, unpleasant practices have aged the best, while others who are in prestigious or seemingly enjoyable jobs have aged the worst.
Finally, I realized what made the difference. It was how my former students told me about what they were doing. To a person, those who were excited when they told me about their job, the case they had just finished, the clients they were working with or the bar program they were working on had aged well. Those who were down, dejected and weary when they told me about their job, talked about how soon they could retire or how they are looking for another job had aged poorly.
That enjoyment of one’s work would be the decisive factor in who ages well and who does not makes sense given who comes to law school and what their expectations are. With few exceptions, every student I meet on the first day of law school is eager and excited to be in law school, full of energy and, even if nervous, abundantly confident that he or she is embarking on a meaningful path in life. This is a realistic expectation. By virtue of what we do, lawyers make a difference in others’ lives. It can drain the life out of any of us when this expectation is not met.
After seeing too many of my former students beat down, worn out and used up by their practice of law, I wondered if it would be possible to capture the wisdom of experienced lawyers about career decisions and pass it along to others. One way we have tried to do this at the law school is by developing a video library of interviews with lawyers who share their advice–honest, wise and often humorous, about how to practice law in a way that is personally and professionally fulfilling.1 Over the past four years, I have also collected data through a research project on “stress hardiness” in the practice of law. With the help from the Alabama State Bar, I have gathered information from lawyers and law students in a brief, online, anonymous survey. This study, IRB # 16-OR-280: “Stress Hardiness in Law Students and Lawyers,” is one of the first to examine the topic of stress hardiness in lawyers. With 530 respondents, it is also one of the largest. In this article, I share some of the findings from this survey and advice from our video interview library.2 Resilience is the ability to bounce back from disappointments and setbacks. More than intelligence, wealth or health, resilience tracks success and happiness in life. One aspect of resilience is managing stress. Lawyers cannot be resilient without good stress management skills because there is stress in the practice of law. As one lawyer said:
“Being a lawyer is very stressful. This is true for any profession where you care about what you are doing, when other...
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