There was a certain notorious (and supremely fabulous) prime time show about lawyers and the courtroom that permeated television for much of the eighties and nineties that I still love to binge watch today. You know what I am talking about. There is always a marathon of it on some channel every July 4^th holiday. You know if you are not out busy, you are watching it all day. Hell, I even bought a few seasons on DVD (yes…I said DVD) so I could watch them anytime I wanted. I usually liked to put it on late at night when I was done with the work I took home and I wanted to treat myself. It was and still is a fabulous show. The lawyers were always smart, quick witted, in shape, self-righteous, scotch-drinking, and always totally devoid of personal lives.

Let’s face it, the personal lives of attorneys, I mean how we ACTUALLY live and handle our day to day lives as practicing attorneys, has either been totally absent from modern media story telling or completely fabricated. Think the ruthless drug dealer’s lawyer that snorted cocaine off their glass coffee table while watching scantily clad, buxom women prance around their outdoor inground pool. This is the way we as attorneys are portrayed with no real in between. I could go on and on about how horrible this is, but the point I am trying to make is that this type of generalization can and does take a toll on us. We do have the potential to make a lot of money in our respective fields. And this earning potential is part of the reason why I think that non-lawyers really could care less about how we, as attorneys, feel about what we do and who we are. What do we have to complain about, right? We have all the money and these flashy lives, so how in the hell can we have the audacity to complain about anything? This is not about complaining. This is about revealing that we are not a monolith, and that our work can and does have an affect on us and how we live and feel. I do love my work. I have always loved what I did as an attorney. However, it is not easy work, and the level of our quality of life is always assumed to be high due to our earning potential. I don’t think that is enough or fair, quite frankly.

The statistics about our lives also tell a different story, and not a good one. We are not well. According to a 2017 ABA comprehensive report on attorney well-being, we are suffering from higher rates of alcoholism, depression, and increased rates of suicide. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t work hard in law school, go into debt with student loans, suffer through the bar exam, and cut my teeth for years in District Court to accept that as my future. With this dire outlook, you would think that the work we face is unbearable. But the thing is, I don’t think it is. I love being a lawyer. I love working with clients and encountering legal problems and issues and figuring out a way out of them for the people that come to see us. I like going to court and interacting with all the court personnel. The work is challenging and good, but it can also have the horrible side affect of stressing us out and leading us to the bottom of a bottle. I don’t think we should resign ourselves to that. We need to be more open about how our work affects us and what we can do to combat the negative effects of it. Because we don’t talk about it to one another, and we should.

I know what you are thinking. We are constrained by the Rules of Professional Responsibility and the attorney client privilege. We can’t really rip the veil off of our work totally because we cannot abrogate our responsibility to our clients by talking about them and their matters. I am a believer that we can still be honest about our lives in our profession without catching a charge with the State bar disciplinary board, or talking trash about our clients. We can talk about what we do and how we do it without talking about who we are doing it with. Let’s not be so damn secretive about how we truly feel and how we live. Let’s be more honest and open about our experiences practicing law. I am a firm believer that doing so is not a weakness, but a strength, because it allows us to channel that energy we utilize in hiding how we really are doing toward pragmatic practices tailored to help us better enjoy and feel fulfilled by our work. So, in order to stand in my truth, I want to step forward and TRY this out. Try to talk about life as a practicing small town attorney. Try to talk about how I feel about my work and interacting with other attorneys and clients. What are the things I try to do to keep sane and keep interested and involved in the work. How I try to keep my work from totally devouring the other parts of my life, and what are the things about my work that remind me why I love it so much. What is a better practice when it comes to our lives?

Our lives don’t have to be so damn hidden and distressing ….if we stick to talking about OUR lives and what we want out of them.