The Lawyer, the Addict
July 20, 2017 4:17 PM   Subscribe

The Lawyer, the Addict (New York Times). Tragic and thoughtful piece about one of the brightest stars in the Silicon Valley legal industry, drug abuse in the profession, and the mental health tolls of a professional culture of overworking.
posted by naju (40 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
A lawyer friend of mine moved from a private firm to a government job ten years ago because a) he was working insane hours all the time, and b) he looked around the office and realized most of the older (i.e. over 35) guys were on their second heart attack and third wife (or vice-versa) and were doing coke because that was the only way they could keep up the pace.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:27 PM on July 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


At this point Big law hours are just not amenable to a healthy work-life balance. It exacerbates all sorts of unhealthy tendencies. There's a reason for the crazy rates of alcohol abuse in the profession. I remember a talk from a lady who made partner in at a midsize! firm whose clever solution was just to skip sleep and work through the night once a week. She was very proud. It's absurd. The billable hour method is just so blitheringly stupid a metric. It didn't used to be so brutal, but the greedy drove out the sane.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:00 PM on July 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


I really wonder about the model of big law in general going forward as they to eat their young and replace them with contract lawyers and more tech.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:02 PM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


whose clever solution was just to skip sleep and work through the night once a week.

And here I am thinking "oh, only one night a week? Sounds nice..."
posted by naju at 5:05 PM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


If I saw someone billing at my husband's funeral, that Blackberry/Blackberry equivalent would end up tossed over the picturesque cliff into the Pacific Ocean.
posted by praemunire at 5:18 PM on July 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


I went to a good law school. I don't make a lot of money, but I go home at 5 at the latest.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:22 PM on July 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I remember a talk from a lady who made partner in at a midsize! firm whose clever solution was just to skip sleep and work through the night once a week. She was very proud.

Sleep deprivation is also, aside from potentially being the result of stimulant use, the sort of thing some people fall into doing as self-medication for mood disorders without even properly realizing that's why they're doing it. One thing I noticed when I was in law school was that a lot of people who'd developed really bizarre or unhealthy coping strategies... there was so much spin. I'm not a chronic insomniac, I'm a super-productive person who works all night! I don't have an eating disorder, I just don't have time to leave the law library for meals! I'm smoking all these cigarettes to focus! I broke up with my girlfriend and moved in with my parents so I wouldn't have to spend time on stuff like cooking and laundry! I'm just doing all this drinking because, hey, if you want to work hard, you have to play hard!

And this was at a third-tier school where virtually nobody was going into BigLaw. It's definitely crazy all the way down. I knew a lot of my fellow students fairly well, and I wouldn't have dreamed of admitting at the time that I was seeing a psychiatrist. But I at least was seeing one; I doubt most people were. I... am now happily a web developer, thanks. Tech has its own problems, but you can get good jobs that pay decent that don't require this of you.
posted by Sequence at 5:22 PM on July 20, 2017 [18 favorites]


And that's why I'm in-house.
posted by atomicstone at 5:26 PM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


I went to a good law school. Most of my classmates work insane hours, and a lot of them were talking about relating to this guy. And it's not just big law. I'm in public interest and we work crazy hours for barely minimum wage.

A friend pointed out how telling it is in cases like this that the obituaries in these kinds of situations always talk about what great, effective lawyers (workers) people were.
posted by likeatoaster at 5:34 PM on July 20, 2017 [14 favorites]


Definitely seen that same level of workaholism in-house, for what it's worth. It's less common though, true.
posted by naju at 5:44 PM on July 20, 2017


And, of course, it's not just lawyers. Teachers, doctors, roofers: it's easy to develop a habit and hard to break it. It's not too hard to hide it, usually. Alcohol addiction should be mentioned here, too.
posted by kozad at 5:44 PM on July 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


And, of course, it's not just lawyers.

Yeah. I read this in the Sunday paper and my overwhelming reaction was annoyance that she chose to make the presumption that his profession drove him to addiction. There's still a widespread assumption in our society that wealthy smart people wouldn't be addicts if only for some kind of extenuating circumstances. Her ex-husband was an addict because he was an addict, not because he was a lawyer.
posted by something something at 6:05 PM on July 20, 2017 [15 favorites]


Sleep deprivation is also, aside from potentially being the result of stimulant use, the sort of thing some people fall into doing as self-medication for mood disorders without even properly realizing that's why they're doing it... I'm not a chronic insomniac, I'm a super-productive person who works all night! I don't have an eating disorder, I just don't have time to leave the law library for meals!

Yes, yes, yes, 100% accurate. We need to recognize this kind of behavior as an addiction in its own right. I have gone 24 hours without sleep, refused food, and thought that it's because I wasn't tired or hungry. I'm not even a lawyer, but the academic environment I'm in encourages this kind of behavior, too. Especially around exam season, students share memes about how little they sleep, and how much they study. There's little nods and winks about taking cocaine or amphetamines to study hard. It's overwhelming, but it's accepted as normal -- if you can't keep up, that's your problem. By all accounts, law school sounds many times worse.

This is such a heartbreaking article.

...he would joke that the perfect drug for him would be the combination of an antidepressant, a pain reliever, and a stimulant.

Holy shit, I've thought the exact same thing. I think I won't be applying to law school next year.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 6:10 PM on July 20, 2017 [18 favorites]


There's still a widespread assumption in our society that wealthy smart people wouldn't be addicts if only for some kind of extenuating circumstances. Her ex-husband was an addict because he was an addict, not because he was a lawyer.

I don't think she was trying to make that argument, except in the sense that she admits she didn't think smart, wealthy people could be addicts -- that's self-reflection. I'm not 100% on board that some people are just addicts and some people aren't. You may certainly be inclined to addiction, but your environment can certainly make the difference between the kinds of addictions you engage in. A high-stress, demanding profession that expects nonstop work (to the point that people were emailing through the guy's funeral) does not automatically transform a healthy, wealthy, and wise person into an addict, but it certainly doesn't help. I know sober lawyers. I know wealthy addicts who aren't in high-pressure jobs. If we reduce it only to "he was an addict because he was an addict," we overlook that the culture in which these people work is incredibly damaging to people's health.

It is never a mistake to not go to law school.

That's what my sister (lawyer) says, too...
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 6:17 PM on July 20, 2017 [28 favorites]




Definitely seen that same level of workaholism in-house, for what it's worth. It's less common though, true.
posted by naju at 8:44 PM on July 20

Sure, but my experience is chaos and crazy hours surrounded by valleys of quiet. Makes it manageable. And almost fun.
posted by atomicstone at 6:22 PM on July 20, 2017


I really wonder about the model of big law in general going forward as they to eat their young and replace them with contract lawyers and more tech.

I'm a permatemp contract lawyer at a BigLaw firm. For Reasons, I get paid overtime for over 40 hours/week, and double time for over 12 hrs/weekday or over 8hrs/Saturday or Sunday.

I cannot explain how much the prospect of having to pay more for extra work from me and my peers changes the equation. They don't ask for overtime work unless they are desperate, and double-time work is a once-or-twice a year kind of thing. And since I'm not an employee, I can always say, "Sorry, I have plans with my husband this weekend. Good luck with the project."

Meanwhile, some of my former peers have taken full-time salaried positions (managing the contract attorneys), and the firm uses that salary to demand crazy hours from them. Like the firm expects them to stay until 3am to finish a declaration, then come in at 8am to train new contract attorneys. People keep asking me if there's any chance of advancement to a permanent position at the firm, and all I can say is "There is, but I don't want it."

I don't expect this particular situation to last forever in the face of ever-smarter technology and competition from overseas lawyers, but right now, it's honestly a lot better in terms of pay and quality of life than a lot of the alternatives.
posted by SockISalmon at 6:33 PM on July 20, 2017 [19 favorites]


I work in Big Law, and of the 20 or so associates I've seen come and go in nearly 20 years in my particular practice area, none are still working in Big Law. Even the single associate that made partner said fuck this and went in house at a client. I'm planning on quitting at the end of the year (it's the only thing keeping me going right now). Big Law is a dumb, brutal business and I tell all the young people I know who are seriously contemplating law school to not get sucked into the Big Law deathtrap. It's absolutely asinine to work 70+ hour weeks for years, to never have weekends, to never count on an uninterrupted vacation. Particularly so if you don't own the business.
posted by longdaysjourney at 6:51 PM on July 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Now that I've RTFA...wow, that bit about his last phone call. RIP.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:01 PM on July 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Lawyers are notoriously unhappy. The article says that drug abuse among lawyers is understudied, but general mental health among lawyers is pretty well studied and (as the article notes) bad overall.

Yeah. I read this in the Sunday paper and my overwhelming reaction was annoyance that she chose to make the presumption that his profession drove him to addiction. There's still a widespread assumption in our society that wealthy smart people wouldn't be addicts if only for some kind of extenuating circumstances. Her ex-husband was an addict because he was an addict, not because he was a lawyer.

I don't really agree with this. There may be genetic and personality factors that contribute to addiction, but environment is extremely important, too. This is why depressed places, not bustling ones, become hubs of opiate addiction. In the '70s and '80s, inner cities caught drugs because they were already socially devastated, not because the people living there were inherently "addicts." (The "rat park" study is a charismatic illustration of this view. ❤️ to the ratties.)

The notion that people are essentially addicts helps some folks recover from substance problems, and more power to them. But it's not literally true.

The focus on lawyers can invite a "but he was such a good boy"-ism (wealthy, educated, etc.), and that is unfortunate. The suffering of professionals is not more important than the suffering of others. But this corrective shouldn't undermine the broader point that unhealthy environments are a cause of addiction, and that the legal profession is an unhealthy environment.
posted by grobstein at 7:05 PM on July 20, 2017 [42 favorites]


"I really wonder about the model of big law in general going forward as they to eat their young and replace them with contract lawyers and more tech."

One thing I've seen, as my peers have risen to the partnership make-or-break point, is several lawyers my age who were refused partnership because they don't bring in enough/any business. And the reason they don't is that from the time they started working at 25 until the time they're up for partnership, they've been working 80-hour weeks. And some of these older dudes are like, "When I was 32 I brought in the country club as a client! I brought in a small manufacturing company! Kids today, so lazy about business development!" But those guys worked 8 to 5 and could join the country club and golf and be a member of community charities and so on. I know lawyers who've been penalized for community service on their own time (not pro bono hours, just like "serving on the zoning board" or whatever) because of the perception they weren't working hard enough at the firm. And then they reach partnership age and they have zero business development because they have literally no contacts outside the firm and its existing clients because they have never been given the time or freedom to develop a life outside the firm. It's actively discouraged.

(And, on top of that, a lot of firms don't want to take on small-scale businesses anymore so there's not the chance to develop that small manufacturing concern into a long-term, possibly-growing client like there was in 1960.)

What 30-something has the contacts and the clout to bring in a Fortune 500 company as a client, unless they already have rich parents?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:11 PM on July 20, 2017 [46 favorites]


That was a hard read, and hit home in some ways for me. I worked for years in an absolutely toxic work environment where 60 hour weeks were pretty much the norm, and 80 wasn't uncommon, and from first-hand experience, ain't nobody regularly working 80 hour weeks that isn't abusing something, legal or otherwise.
posted by KGMoney at 7:16 PM on July 20, 2017 [8 favorites]


I went to law school and was a (not super successful) lawyer for a while, and then I changed careers and now I'm a public high school teacher. This is the part of the article that horrifies me, that I wish we could get people talking about:

Some research shows that before they start law school, law students are actually healthier than the general population, both physically and mentally... In addition, he said, law students generally start school with their sense of self and their values intact. But, in his research, he said, he has found that the formal structure of law school starts to change that... Rather than hew to their internal self, students begin to focus on external values, he said, like status, comparative worth and competition. “We have seven very strong studies that show this twists people’s psyches and they come out of law school significantly impaired, with depression, anxiety and hostility,” he said... “The psychological factors seen to erode during law school are the very factors most important for the well-being of lawyers,”... Conversely, they wrote, “the factors most emphasized in law schools — grades, honors and potential career income — have nil to modest bearing on lawyer well-being.”

Do you know what education policy and (many) charter school bigwigs are advocating for public school students and teachers now? 'Rigorous' testing, where everything begins, ends, and revolves, around student test scores.

Not just for the elite schools - if anything, the opposite. And why? So that students can be competitive and in the job market.

Basically they want school to be all about grades and future income. It's like, if you went looking for a toxic model to create dysfunction among children and teenagers - many of whom are not starting out with anywhere near the advantages that most law students are - you could not find a more perfect model. It's like, if their plan *works* and these kids start churning out these great test scores, in that 'best' case scenario, this is what we are setting kids up for. It's chilling.
posted by Salamandrous at 7:21 PM on July 20, 2017 [48 favorites]


My father was a lawyer, both of my brothers are lawyers. I still get asked when I'm going to law school - though these days it's more asking why I didn't. I usually tell them that knowing that many lawyers means that I know it's a bad idea.

(the other family professions available were teacher or social worker, and for some reason people still wonder why I chose 'none of the above'. . . )
posted by dinty_moore at 7:48 PM on July 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


If I saw someone billing at my husband's funeral, that Blackberry/Blackberry equivalent would end up tossed over the picturesque cliff into the Pacific Ocean.

A lawyer friend of mine told me a story from her firm a few years ago: They entered a team in a 100km charity trailwalk. What was reported to the firm was not how much they raised for charity, but that the team of 6 managed to bill 30 hours while doing it.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:24 PM on July 20, 2017 [13 favorites]


My brother is a land and water resource lawyer and has excellent work-life balance; he kayaks just about every weekend.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 12:41 AM on July 21, 2017


I get a little jaded about these Sad Lawyer stories about how hard it is to have more work than you can do at an incredibly high hourly rate. Impeccable credentials, $600/hour doing non-litigation patent work gated behind having an undergrad science degree, no shortage of clients, a happy family, picket fences.

This is a sad story, for him and his family, as it is when anyone loses their life to addiction. But I'd rather worry about those of us who can't get jobs or can't find clients such that we can even do the workaholic thing to pay our bills.

The only lawyer more worried and unhappy that a lawyer with too much to do is a lawyer with nothing to do. No one writes about the addiction and misery of unsuccessful lawyers, or those barely getting by with little hope of ever getting out from under, but that's what drives most of the stats cited by all these articles. Not people making upwards of half a million dollars a year.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:47 AM on July 21, 2017 [8 favorites]


What was reported to the firm was not how much they raised for charity, but that the team of 6 managed to bill 30 hours while doing it.

This charming anecdote would be better found in an MPRE question.
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:53 AM on July 21, 2017 [2 favorites]


No one writes about the addiction and misery of unsuccessful lawyers, or those barely getting by with little hope of ever getting out from under, but that's what drives most of the stats cited by all these articles.

Have you watched Better Call Saul? You should watch it, at least the first season.

I read this in the Sunday paper and my overwhelming reaction was annoyance that she chose to make the presumption that his profession drove him to addiction.

I'm a public defender -- a notoriously difficult job with basically no resources, where we sustain a lot of abuse and get no appreciation, and ppl work 60 hrs/week normally unless they are in trial, and then they work more. Probably 90% of my office is seriously abusing at least alcohol (like drinking to excess every night) because the work is so hard. This is comparable to the BigLaw jobs people are discussing, but it is flat out not the same or similar as being a teacher or a roofer. Large sections of the legal profession (with some exceptions like in house counsel) chew people up and spit them out, but most people don't realize it until they are already on the other side of the $200k sunk cost.
posted by likeatoaster at 5:47 AM on July 21, 2017 [13 favorites]


I've seen Better Call Saul. Better yet (worse yet?) I've seen struggling lawyers firsthand. In fact, I am one. I don't need to watch HBO to have an idea what it feels like to watch a practice fall apart, thanks. Watching the first season was intensely uncomfortable, it's not that hard to imagine winding up in the back of a nail salon next to the water heater.

When I say "no one writes about it," I'm talking about these kinds of hand-wringing think-pieces on those at the top of the profession, which cite statistics driven by those at its bottom.

I'm a public defender -- a notoriously difficult job with basically no resources, where we sustain a lot of abuse and get no appreciation... Probably 90% of my office is seriously abusing at least alcohol (like drinking to excess every night) because the work is so hard.

My hat's off to you. I don't think I could do it. There was at least a good documentary on the challenges faced by PDs a few years back, that touched on some of the personal burden. I'd like to see more of that talked about. And less about how hard it is to make huge amounts of money. You're making $750K and you're miserable? Work less. Hire someone.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:31 AM on July 21, 2017 [6 favorites]


And even Saul manages to sustain the really grim portrayl of Jimmy's broken career for about two episodes before it starts putting him back into the high-end milieu.

A show in which he just continued to scrape by doing no-fault auto and workers comp, or what have you, until drinking himself into an early grave behind a pile of student loan bills wouldn't attract the same interest.

These kinds of stories still give people the wrong idea about why most lawyers are unhappy: it's usually not a surfeit of success. It's having to work like that forever, just to get by or hold onto a job. Not to remain one of the Masters of the Universe.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:13 AM on July 21, 2017 [11 favorites]


Quite a surprise to scroll down and see that this guy graduated from my small, IP-focused law school (five years before I attended).
posted by schoolgirl report at 7:29 AM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I worked for 7 years in a NY BigLaw firm in a corporate specialty. I started having panic and anxiety attacks. The lowest point came when I almost wasn't able to make an appearance at my wife's baby shower because I was so wracked by anxiety. I was pushed out of my firm and eventually found my way to a 9-5 compliance position. It has no prestige and I make much less money, but all my anxiety melted away and I started remembering what it was like to be happy. I realized I had been miserable for so long I forgot it was possible to feel any other way.
posted by Falconetti at 7:56 AM on July 21, 2017 [10 favorites]


No one writes about the addiction and misery of unsuccessful lawyers, or those barely getting by with little hope of ever getting out from under, but that's what drives most of the stats cited by all these articles.

I don't think so, actually. Biglaw can't drive the stats by itself, because Biglaw doesn't comprise enough of the profession. But people who aren't working as lawyers, who may never have actually had lawyer jobs since graduation--I don't think these people are even being reached by surveys of the profession.

And I've seen plenty of handwringing pieces about those kids. Maybe not in the identical context of addiction, but "miserable young law school graduates with lots of debt unable to find jobs" has definitely gotten significant media attention in the last few years. As well it should have.

I always tell interns and the like that they need to learn to draw their own internal lines concerning what they'll give, because otherwise the firm will just take everything. But a lot of young lawyers in that demographic are people without genuine passions who are good at reading, writing, and pleasing institutions. That's how they ended up in law school in the first place. It's hard to fight to defend a self you haven't already developed to some degree.
posted by praemunire at 9:14 AM on July 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


I missed out on a biglaw job thanks to the 2008 crash. I was in an intern class at a firm that usually made permanent offers to 90% of the class, but that year the number was more like 20%. In hindsight, I think I dodged a bullet. More recently, I left a pretty well-regarded midlaw firm for the government, and reflect on the decision happily when I leave the office at 4:30 almost every day. I remember a lunch presentation one of my law school professors put on about how to survive in biglaw -- it focused on carving out time for yourself because nobody else is going to do it for you, etc. But he ended it with a big caveat - he left biglaw just before Blackberries invaded the space, and he admitted that much of his advice might be irrelevant now. He was mostly right. The combination of a stressful job that is, in one way or another, customer-service orientated with 24 hour accessibility is absurdly stressful.
posted by craven_morhead at 9:57 AM on July 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


But people who aren't working as lawyers, who may never have actually had lawyer jobs since graduation--I don't think these people are even being reached by surveys of the profession.

Sometimes I wonder who is being reached, incidentally. I've worked in-house, midsize national, and small boutique, and have received zero requests to fill out surveys. Maybe I'm just kneejerk ignoring them or they're going in my spam folders.

There was at least a good documentary on the challenges faced by PDs a few years back, that touched on some of the personal burden.

Got a link? Sounds like an interesting watch.
posted by naju at 12:21 PM on July 21, 2017




A good friend went to law school, and kept encouraging me to go. "You'll be a great lawyer" they would say. "I'd be a miserable human, dominated by my worst traits" I think.
posted by petrilli at 5:36 PM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Grobstein's link is the one I had in mind.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:58 PM on July 21, 2017


Yeah, without prejudice to the people who do defender work -- who I think are heroes -- I think we screwed up in how we structured the rights of defendants. The right to a state-provided attorney won't do much for you if jurisdictions don't allocate funds for those attorneys to do a good job. It's very expensive to defend a case and the economics barely allow defenders to do it. Similarly, most of your procedural rights are worthless if you can't defend them. The backlash to the revolution in defendants' rights helped spark a huge explosion in criminal penalties, and on balance I'm not sure defendants are better off than they were in, like, 1960, before Mapp, Miranda and Gideon.

I speculated about this a while ago.
posted by grobstein at 8:25 PM on July 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I trained as a civil litigator at a Magic Circle firm in the City of London and was appalled by the 2,500 billable hours target. Very few of my intake group are still practicing lawyers. I've been able to carve out a career in lobbying which I love but this would not have been an option with $150k+ in debt hanging over me. US BigLaw associates must feel trapped in an abusive relationship from which there is no escape - not even bankruptcy. Against that backdrop, I'm not surprised drug abuse is as common as it is.
posted by dmt at 6:03 AM on July 22, 2017


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