You don’t have to be my age to know about the 1970s TV show, The Six Million Dollar Man, where an astronaut was badly injured and the military doctors infamously said (at the beginning of every episode) “"We can rebuild him; we have the technology!”
Steve Austin, the injured astronaut, was outfitted with bionic body parts at the astronomical cost of six million dollars. And not to be sexist, the show’s producers also created a catastrophic injury to his fiancée, Jamie Sommers, who then became The Bionic Woman. In those days, we had three TV stations, and the figure six million dollars was an almost mystical and unimaginable amount of money.
Then a few weeks ago, I read American Lawyer magazine’s summary of the performance of the 200 biggest law firms and realized that we have a new kind of Six Million Dollar Men and Women.
They are equity partners at US big law firm Wachtell, where profit per partner in 2019 was $6.5 million.
For a few minutes, I imagined what it would be like to earn $6.5 million per year, but then my brain reverted to 1973 and I thought—they could each get a human cyborg! But my brain returned to adulthood, and my life philosophy, and I asked if they were happy.
My knowledge of law practice issues only goes back to the mid-1980s, when I was in law school, which also happened to be the time when law firm managers used their knowledge and technology to create law firms that maximize billings and profits. The
American Lawyer magazine began tracking the 50 largest US law firms in 1985, and publishing their metrics, including compensation per partner. This may have been the beginning of the movement of law from a purely professional to a profit-maximizing business model.
Comparing key metrics between 1985 and 2018 is enlightening. The leverage ratio per equity partner (i.e. underlings who bill time per equity partner) has increased from 1.76 in 1985 to 4.47 in 2018, and profit per partner, has increased from $300,00
worth about $700,000 in today’s dollars, in 1985 to a high of $2.54 million in 2018.
Around the same time, lawyers’ stress, mental health and substance use became a subject of study. While it is tempting to try to attribute the mental health crisis in law to the “business-ification” of law, by the time that American Lawyer was releasing its 1985 Am Law 50 reports,
research into lawyer distress was already well underway.
At that time, I was a third year law student writing 100% final exams and, if we are being honest, we were stressed and at times a bit loony (if I can use a technical psychological term!😊) But no one told us that law school stress and law practice distress were significant enough that they were being studied. We were quietly going crazy, but were afraid to acknowledge how we felt because we thought everyone else had it together—the mental health version of Imposter Syndrome: “Everyone else is so together, but I am a stressed out mess. I don’t belong in law school. When they find out that I can’t handle it, they will kick me out….” And no one talked to us about the fact that lawyers were suffering from debilitating stress or that law school was grooming us to fall into some of the same traps.
I hope that the Six Million Dollar Lawyers at these large US law firms have solved the question of why many lawyers are dissatisfied and that they have found the secret to lawyer happiness. Wachtell sounds like a cool firm with a lower leverage ratio and a commitment to taking on only work that interests them. But what does 21
st century lawyer well-being research tell us about happiness?
The leading lawyer happiness research was conducted by Professor Larry Krieger whose 2015 study of 6200 lawyers ranked factors by the strength of their link to lawyer subjective well-being.
The four factors with a greater than 0.50 correlation (considered to be strong in this type of research,
Being the Best Lawyer You Can Be, edited by Stuart Levine, 2018) with lawyer well-being were all intrinsic:
- Autonomy/authenticity/ integrity--0.66
- Relatedness (connection to others) --0.65
- Competence--0.63
- internal motivation--0.55
The fifth highest factor, also intrinsic, was the extent that the lawyer felt supported at work.
Research going back to 1986 shows that law students enter law school with internal motivation, plans to make the world or at least the justice system better and to help people, but law school reshapes our motivation so that we attach more meaning to achievements like grades, landing jobs at prestigious firms and being invited to serve on law review. By the time we graduate from law school, we have our eyes fixed firmly on the prize—partnership at a successful law firm.
So what does lawyer happiness research tell us about the brass rings that we have been conditioned since law school to seek with all of our time and energy?
Making partner had a 0.0 correlation with subjective well-being, as did being invited to join law review while in law school--absolutely neutral to lawyer happiness. Senior associates’ subjective well-being scores were the same as those of junior partners, notwithstanding that the partners have crossed an important threshold and had an increase in compensation and security.
This leads to a discussion about the impact of money on lawyer happiness. Professor Krieger cites research showing that well-being and the emphasis on high income were inversely correlated. However, in his 2015 study, both an increase in income and a decrease in debt had moderate correlations with lawyer well-being, both around 0.19, some of which was attributable to young lawyers paying down student loans. In other words, money can’t buy you happiness.
Two common components of law culture were actually negatively correlated with lawyer happiness: billable hours (a -0.10 correlation) and alcohol use (a -0.12 correlation).
Canadian research reflects similar themes—the more successful a lawyer is, the poorer his/her health is. A 2018 study of both Canadian and American lawyers found that high-status lawyers had higher rates of depression than lawyers in lower status jobs. American lawyers in prestige jobs had poorer health while Canadian prestige lawyers did not have a health advantage.
This study linked two stressors, overwork and work-life conflict, with these outcomes.
I am not going to rail against billable hours. Billable hours are a measure that most lawyers believe is imperfect, but we haven’t found anything better for tracking productivity and measuring the value of services provided. The underlying issue is that lawyers tend to be competitive: we like to meet or exceed targets and to outperform others. This causes us to work longer hours which leads to work-life conflict. Billable hour targets are a symptom, not the disease.
But I will rail against alcohol culture! Assist has been helping lawyers struggling with addiction since its inception. It is the go-to stress relief mechanism in our profession, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problems causing stress and it creates a whole new set of problems.
What can we learn about lawyer happiness and how lawyer culture can be improved so that lawyers feel engaged and enthusiastic? Stop focusing on achievements like making partner or having higher draws than your competitors, I mean colleagues. Look instead at how you are able to be your authentic self and make autonomous decisions, build positive and supportive relationships with colleagues (and stop viewing them as the competition), ensure that you take the time to develop your skills so that you feel competent, as feelings of incompetence can lead to distress, and help connect lawyers to the internal motivation that drew them to law. As an added sweetener, throw in a management system that provides support for lawyer autonomy and integrity.
For all the Six Million Dollar Men and Women, and those who want to become them, I hope that you have wonderful careers and that you can succeed in high stakes practice while feeling your needs for autonomy, relationality and competence are being met.
But if you have a sense of disappointment in your legal career and feel that your professional life is not fulfilling your personal needs, there are always alternatives either through changing what you do or where you do it. Assist can help both with peer support and professional counselling.
As we near the end of phase one of COVID-19 and contemplate a return to a more conventional office-based practice, there is an opportunity for us to decide if we want to go back to the ways things have always been, or whether we want to start fresh to build a new legal culture that will minimize lawyer distress and perhaps even nurture lawyer well-being.
So as our work environments start to reopen, let’s look at how firms and legal employers can create a new law culture and how we as individuals can create work dynamics that allow us to be happy. The new law culture would support lawyer autonomy, build positive relationships among lawyers, enhance lawyers’ senses of competence, and would connect lawyers with their internal motivation that led them to law in the first place.
The new law culture would support lawyer autonomy, build positive relationships among lawyers, enhance lawyers’ senses of competence, and would connect lawyers with their internal motivation that led them to law in the first place,
and teach lawyers how to relax and have fun without alcohol front and centre
.
We can rebuild law culture! We have the technology….
Loraine
