by Michael Geiselhart[1]
The plight of lawyers along many axes of mental, physical, and emotional health is a long-running story that has been discussed over decades and it has been documented in countless law review articles. Katya Cronin tells the story particularly well in her recent article: Value-Centered Lawyering: Reshaping the Law School Curriculum to Promote Well-Being, Quality Client Representation, and a Thriving Legal Field.[2]
As Professor Cronin points out, 74% of lawyers say that being a lawyer is bad for their mental health; 60% report feelings of anxiety or stress; and 30% suffer from depression—a figure that becomes even more stark when you compare it with the general population. Apparently, lawyers are five times more likely to develop alcohol-related problems as compared to the general population.[3]
Professor Cronin also accurately identifies the traditional villains that purportedly cause this immense emotional, mental, and physical suffering—the dreaded billable hour, the high demand for productivity, staggering amounts of law school debt, the lack of time for personal pursuits, etc.[4]
So far, so good: Professor Cronin is summarizing well-trod ground, and she brings the sources to bear, showing her work. But the truly insightful aspect of Professor Cronin’s analysis is that she goes further in this article than summarizing and reminding us of long-standing issues within the legal profession. Instead, she adds to the mix a cause that is not often talked about: the disconnect between lawyers’ personal values and the interests that they are asked to represent. Her thesis is that, where there is a disconnect between an individual’s personal values on the one hand, and the activities that he spends up to 80 (or more) hours a week doing on the other hand, that individual is likely to experience a type of moral schizophrenia.[5] Her analysis here is backed up by extensive citations to studies and research.[6]
Moreover, her conclusion is also in accordance with general human experience. This is because human beings are intensely moral creatures. So it stands to reason that when they spend a majority of their waking hours doing things that are either divorced from their moral convictions or actively contrary to those convictions, they will suffer.
What does Professor Cronin mean by the absence of personal values in the lawyering profession? She gives examples of the student who is interested in environmental law because he is “passionate about the environment,” and yet finds himself in a multi-national law firm defending a client who despoils the environment.[7] Another example is of a hypothetical student who is passionate about public service work but who is tasked with having to defend an alleged child abuser: “[s]he worries incessantly that her efforts—zealous as they are—could potentially help return a child to an environment where it may yet again be subject to neglect and abuse.”[8]
In both of these instances, these lawyers are contrasted with counter examples of lawyers who are pursuing work that is in accord with those lawyers’ personal values and goals. In these examples, the lawyers who are working against the grain of their personal value system are depressed; they are worried; and they experience far less job satisfaction than the lawyers whose job aligns with their personal morality and values.
Another innovative contribution of Professor Cronin’s analysis is that she traces at least some of this neglect of personal values back to the law school curriculum, which “de-emphasize[s] personal values, beliefs, and goals in favor of cold rationality, client demands, and external rewards.”[9] As evidence, she points to the “absence” of personal values in doctrinal classrooms, and she argues that those classes convey the view of law “less as a tool for achieving justice, and more so as an instrument” for achieving ends divorced from their personal values. She also cites the Socratic method as a culprit because “a Socratic dialogue is not a discussion where assertions of students’ personal views are welcomed.”[10]
This focus on the absence of personal values in much of the lawyering profession helps to explain the distinction in physical, mental, and emotional health outcomes between lawyering and other high stress professions. Indeed, other professionals, such as doctors, who are similarly overburdened with paperwork, bureaucracy, and burnout work hours, for example, do not suffer from the same levels of emotional, mental, and physical disorders as lawyers.
In other words, Professor Cronin tells a compelling story about what ails the legal profession. It is a diagnosis in which I fully concur.
But it is in her proposed solution that I find grounds to (ever so gently) disagree with Professor Cronin. In my view, her solution is an incomplete one. She suggests a focus inward—on personal values and fulfillment as such. For example, she argues that: “alongside teaching students to think like lawyers, to serve their clients, and to work hard, we also need to teach them how to fulfill a paramount duty to themselves—to choose careers, job opportunities, and clients aligned with their values and sense of purpose.”[11] In fact, she goes so far as to argue that “all lawyers would be best served to pursue a career that closely aligns with their personal values, whether those values are altruistic, hedonistic, or anything in between.”[12] This goes too far, in my estimation.
Instead, I believe that a focus on self-sacrifice in the service of others leads to a true solution to the mental, emotional, and physical issues ailing the legal profession. The duty that lawyers should be concerned about is less a “duty to themselves,” as Professor Cronin puts it, and more of a duty to others in the achievement of the common good. And this slightly altered focus (as I view it), in turn, will lead to a focus on ethical, spiritual, or religious growth of the lawyer. At bottom, what most lawyers suffer from is a detriment that comes from divorcing an ethical, spiritual, or religious framework from what they spend a high percentage of their time on earth actually doing on a daily basis.
Therefore, my own suggestion would be that law students are urged early on in their law school career to reflect upon their worldview, and in particular, the reasons behind that worldview—be it a religious tradition or a well-thought-out (albeit secular) ethical framework—and think about how they can integrate that framework into their daily practice. Ideally, this should include a focus on others—family, other people, the local community, etc.
My own experience in discerning the type of lawyer I wanted to be, and where I wanted to work, is a good example of this process. In the context of my own legal practice, my ethical framework is guided by the Roman Catholic faith. I have made a commitment to living out those principles. Those principles, as I understood them, required a service to others and a focus on the common good. In other words, it required an outward looking focus beyond myself and my own interests.
How does this relate to career choice (and hence, job satisfaction)? Early in my legal career, I noticed that what I liked doing most, and what I was most talented at, was working with, and mentoring, other attorneys. Most of these other attorneys were even younger and newer than I was. In other words, doing the legal work was not nearly as rewarding to me as teaching younger attorneys how to do the legal work and showing them how they could become competent, successful, and professional attorneys.
After practicing for many years as a government lawyer, an opportunity for teaching came up, and I had to have a serious conversation with myself about taking this opportunity. There were downside risks—I loved my government job; it was safe; and change is often difficult. But the thought kept coming back to me of aligning my legal practice with the values that I hold important, combined with what I am good at—and so I made the decision to become a teacher, leaving a career that I had otherwise enjoyed.
In my case, this integration of my personal values with my professional life has made all the difference. The important point, however, is that this was not simply a decision based upon my personal values. It was a values-based decision that was informed by an external and objective source of morality, not solely an inward-focused analysis of my own feelings and views on the matter. And it is this alteration in focus that I believe is the distinction between the approach that Professor Cronin suggests, and the approach that I posit.
There are at least two potential objections to my argument that Professor Cronin’s assessment of the disease afflicting lawyers is accurate, but the cure is insufficient. First, some might object that we live in a world that is deeply divided on almost everything, and that therefore, agreeing to a uniform system of values is impossible. A second objection is that imposition of extrinsic values might be counterproductive. Professor Cronin articulates both of these concerns in her article.[13] I will take both of these concerns in turn.
First, it is clearly true that there appears to be an increase in political polarization these days, and it is also clearly true that political polarization is downstream of very serious disagreements on morality. But I don’t think that we need to agree on the details of particular moral codes in order to agree with my broader formulation that a focus on values should be informed by an external and objective system of morality such as that represented by many of the major religious traditions of the world as well as mainstream secular ethical philosophies. The important thing is to agree on the importance of a moral code, of acting in conformity with that moral code, and having that moral code manifest in the practice of law—in other words, the legal career is (and should be) vocational in its character.
In other words, it is the infusion of morals from some sort of external ethical structure that is important—not all of the specific details of that moral code. Moreover, there is more than a sufficient amount of overlap with regard to the morals that I think are important, which are broad-based moral principles such as service to others, devotion to the common good as a general rule (even if we disagree on the details) and respect for the dignity, individuality, and uniqueness of each human person. This is probably why doctors and others in the medical field have better mental, emotional, and physical health than lawyers even though their work is just as busy: they are focused on service to others and that service to others is itself in service of an objective moral good: health. That is an objective moral good that both the religious and the irreligious can agree upon. In sum, the fact that people have vastly different sources of their morality or ideas about what that morality entails is not an insurmountable obstacle.
The second possible objection, which was mentioned above, is the idea that externally imposed value systems might be counter-productive.[14] Professor Cronin mentions this objection as one of her reasons for not going further in the advocating of substance behind the focus on morality.
The response here is similar to the response just noted: this difficulty largely goes away when we focus on the values that are widely shared among some of the most important sources of external moral authority. By this I mean the most widely held religious and spiritual points of view and traditional secular ethical standards. A focus on the service of others, the dignity of the individual, and the flourishing of society above-and-beyond the interests of individuals: these are goals agreed upon by the vast majority of adherents to all religious faiths, spiritual truths, and even secular values. The “imposition” of these types of values is unlikely, in my opinion, to be counter-productive.
How would my proposed extension of Professor Cronin’s principles play out in practice? No doubt it will differ based on the individual lawyer who is attempting this—a traditional Catholic lawyer, for example, will have a different reaction to a client who wants to arrange a surrogacy contract than a strongly atheistic client who does not object to such practices. And in fact, the atheistic client may have a firm secular commitment to helping such a client in that circumstance precisely because the Catholic lawyer will not take the case. But in both instances, the lawyers are living in accordance with a moral framework that will provide enhanced job satisfaction and hopefully help to turn around the truly depressing statistics that currently describe the physical, mental, and spiritual health of all too many lawyers.
Once more: the fact that the two lawyers in the example that I just gave have vastly different ideas of what morality requires in any given situation is not the main point. The main point is that both of them are living out the principle of a values-based decision that makes their work more meaningful. That way, even when they are both working 80 hours per week, both lawyers will feel that it was for a larger purpose that aligns with their moral code.
Professor Cronin’s article is an important contribution to this critical topic. Her diagnosis of the problem is compelling. Her solution of a focus on values-based lawyering is an important start on solving that problem. But a complete solution will require the additional steps of implementing a values-based system that is in accord with an external structure of moral authority, be it religious, spiritual, or ethical. We in the legal profession should be more straightforward about that. We should embrace values-centered lawyering.
[1] Assistant Professor of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Bowen School of Law.
[2] Katya S. Cronin, Value-Centered Lawyering: Refocusing the Law School Curriculum to Promote Well-Being, Quality Client Representation, and a Thriving Legal Field, 101 U. Det. L. Rev. 257 (2024).
[3] Id. at 262-263.
[4] Id. at 264-265.
[5] Id. at 273.
[6] See id. citing Deborah Rhode, Personal Satisfaction in Professional Practice, 58 Syracuse L. Rev.
[7] Id. at 259.
[8] Id. at 260.
[9] Id. at 261.
[10] Id. at 269.
[11] Id. at 258 (emphasis added).
[12] Id. at 277.
[13] Id. at 275-276.
[14] Id. at 275.
Michael Geiselhart is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis School of Law (JD) and the University of Georgia (B.A. and A.B.J.), his research and teaching concentrates on contract law, government contracts, and business associations. Prior to teaching, Professor Geiselhart was an Assistant District Counsel with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working with the Jacksonville, Memphis, and Little Rock Districts.
