Vol. 10, No. 2, Pg. 32. Restoring the Foundations: 12 Steps Toward Personal Fulfillment in the Practice of Law.

• Author: By the Hon. Carl Horn

South Carolina Lawyer

1998.

Vol. 10, No. 2, Pg. 32.

Restoring the Foundations: 12 Steps Toward Personal Fulfillment in the Practice of Law

32RESTORING THE FOUNDATIONS: 12 Steps Toward Personal Fulfillment in the Practice of LawBy the Hon. Carl HornNationally, at the state bar level and in our local bars, there is an increasing realization that law is a profession in crisis. Much of the public views lawyers as self-interested profiteers thriving on the problems and even the tragedies of others. Rather than positive associations with "justice" or other higher purposes, lawyers today are more often seen as greedy troublemakers, willing to make any claim or argument to line their own pockets.

Putting the best possible face on it, this might be called our "public relations problem."

UNHAPPY LAWYERS

Lawyers themselves are also increasingly unhappy. According to survey after survey, finding personal fulfillment in the practice is ever more elusive.

ABA surveys in 1984 and 1990, for example, found a 20 percent drop during those six years alone in the number of lawyers describing themselves as "very satisfied." In the 1990 survey, 22 percent of all male partners and 43 percent of all female partners reported that they were dissatisfied. For solo practitioners,-the reported dissatisfaction rate rose to 43 percent of all men and to an astounding 55 percent of all women.

In 1989, responding to survey and anecdotal evidence of lawyer discontent--including eight suicides in the Mecklenburg County Bar over a seven year period--the North Carolina Bar Association created a Quality of Life Task Force (Task Force). Following one of the most comprehensive surveys ever taken by any state bar, the Task Force issued its report in June 1991.

Like the ABA surveys, the North Carolina Bar Association report makes for sobering reading. Reporting what it described as "a severe level of dissatisfaction with law practice among some attorneys and lost dreams and idealism among many others," the statewide survey found that:

* 24 percent would not become attorneys if they could make the decision again.

* Only 54 percent wished to remain in law practice for the remainder of their careers.

34* Over 24 percent reported symptoms of depression "at least three times per month during the past year," with 11 percent reporting that they had considered suicide at least once a month during the past year.

* A full 43 percent agreed that demands of work did not allow them "to have enough time for life outside of work."

I wish I could report that 1991 was the nadir of lawyer dissatisfaction and that the wise and comprehensive recommendations of the Task Force have had their intended effect. Unfortunately, according to 1996 North Carolina State Bar President John S. Stevens, "lawyer burnout" continues to be "a pervasive malady afflicting our profession."

Nor are North Carolina lawyers more melancholy or unhappy than lawyers from other states. In a 1995 front page article in the Los Angeles Times, headlined "Miserable with the Legal Life," it was reported that a quarter of all California lawyers were then on inactive status with their State Bar, compared to 10 percent in 1980. A 1997 CLE program in South Carolina, titled "Secrets They Never Told You In Law School--Substance Abuse, Depression and the Practice of Law," suggests a similar experience there.

IN SEARCH OF ROOT CAUSES

Why? Why is what was once assumed and understood to be a high and noble calling now widely held in such low regard? And why are so many lawyers increasingly unhappy with their lives in general and with their profession in particular?

Recent survey results and commentary suggest several root causes for both our external "public relations" problem and our internal sense of dissatisfaction and "burnout."

* The law has gradually evolved from the dignity of a profession to a "value-free" and dollar-driven business. This is perhaps the most important point made by Sol M. Linowitz in his 1994 book, The Betrayed Profession: Lawyering at the End of the Twentieth Century. Anyone who has not read it should do so.

Linowitz, whose distinguished career included service as general counsel and chairman of Xerox (and, along the way, as an Ambassador in three different presidential administrations), decries the transformation of what was once a high professional calling into an increasingly unprincipled business. Linowitz writes longingly of the traditional role of the lawyer as a public servant--as an "officer of the court" committed to higher concepts of justice, truth and yes, peacemaking. In clear and sharp contrast is the sometimes shameless posturing of those in the law business who would never think of turning down a fee-paying client.

Illustrating the traditional--and increasingly rare--role of the lawyer as an independent-minded professional, former Secretary of State Elihu Root once mused: "About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling...