Can Lawyers Ever Be Happy and Successful?

CLEVELAND, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Hang on to your hats -- there really are happy lawyers.

Hard to believe when a Google search on "unhappy lawyers" spits back 438,900 hits: articles like, "Why are lawyers so unhappy?," "Those unhappy lawyers," "Why are so many lawyers unhappy?" and "Desperately Unhappy Lawyers."

Surveys find 70 percent of lawyers desperate to change careers. Others claim that lawyers have among the highest rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, hostility, paranoia, and addiction.

Piling on, the Times ofLondon last year asked, "Why are lawyers miserable?," answering with six reasons from "dehumanizing hours" to "mind-numbing work" to "the vortex of hatred that envelops lawyers."

In fact, an entire industry of consultants has sprung up to help lawyers either (a) cope with their misery or (b) stop being lawyers, thus freeing themselves from the golden chains of their high paid "slavery."

Then there is Stephen Ellis.

Ellis has been a successful -- and happy -- lawyer inCleveland for 36 years, and a partner with Tucker, Ellis & West, a full service 150-lawyer firm inCleveland,Columbus,Los Angeles andSan Francisco. He has distilled the formula for a happy -- and successful -- career as an attorney into a set of "truisms" - "Obvious truths that may even be cliches," he says, "but they are truths" -- for a commencement address at Case Western Reserve University's School of Law this past May inCleveland.

"The real darkness began to settle in the late 1980s when the media began to track the business of law, and much of the profession bought into the idea that our measure of our worth as lawyers should be simply how much money we make," Ellis says. "There's something about people, not just lawyers, that seem to believe that more money will make them happier, and of course it never does.

"People always think they need more so they're stuck on a treadmill where they can't win, or at least can't feel successful or fulfilled," he explains. "One feature of the race for money is that billable hours become the coin of the realm. Lawyers and their firms started to focus on billable hours as somehow the measure of a lawyer's worth."

Finding the Endless Fascination

But a growing number of lawyers are moving away from the number of hours billed as the basis of generating revenue and of evaluating each other. "Hours are being recognized as an irrational measure of the value of what we do," Ellis says. "Nobody calls a lawyer asking them to 'Please spend 20 hours on a project.' Clients want to pay us for solving problems, not how long it takes us to do it."

Ellis' firm has begun to move away from evaluating its attorneys by how many hours they charge clients. "This move has been hugely liberating for us," Ellis says. "When we stop thinking in terms of billable hours and start thinking in terms of solving client problems -- everything changes."

Then, Ellis says, "We discover again the endlessly fascinating puzzles that make being a lawyer fulfilling."

Here, then, are Ellis' simple truths to a happy and successful legal career:

This Way to Success and Happiness

- Be There: Most talk a good game; few come through. Clients want you to solve a problem -- so solve it. Don't compound it by being hard to find, missing deadlines, telling them what they know already.

- Don't Be Obnoxious: The toughest lawyer is not the most obnoxious lawyer. "It has been my 100% uniform experience that the S.O.B. bulldog only adds time, expense and stress to an otherwise inevitable result. You want to be tough? Have the best preparation on the facts, the law and the strategy."

- Be Enthusiastic: Because lawyers deal in rules, Ellis says, "It's easy to fall into telling clients all the reasons why they can't do something. But clients don't call us to be told 'Forget about it.' They want to find a way within the law -- and for we lawyers to be an enthusiastic part of what they are doing."

- Trust Your Brain: "If I don't understand what a client or lawyer is saying it's because the thing doesn't make sense, not because I am stupid."

- Be Determined: "The streets are littered with directionless geniuses with unexecuted good ideas. Great careers are built on day after day doing good work and being someone others count on."

- Get Involved: With a church, with a bicycle race with a community group. Three things will happen, Ellis predicts: "First, because lawyers are experts at analyzing facts and finding solutions, you'll improve the situation. Second, you'll expand your appreciation of your community, your contacts and your friendships by getting away from the law and lawyers. Third, you'll have fun."

Which leads to Ellis' last -- or first -- rule to a happy and successful legal career:

- Be Nice: "Cliche it may be, but being pleasant and friendly makes the day's good spots better and the rough spots smoother. And that makes everyone's life better -- for sure yours."

SOURCE Tucker, Ellis & West, LLP

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Copyright © 2008, NewsBlaze, Daily News

Tags: Legal, Law and Lawyers, ohio

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