Being a lawyer is a tough job. It's mentally and physically demanding.
The stakes are high a lot of the time. You have pressure to perform, and failing isn't really an option, although it happens. Nobody is perfect. Many lawyers we know are not happy in their professions.
Is it a majority? It's unclear, but it could be. Fortunately, our guest authors don't fit into that group.Jason was sitting on his porch one day meeting with his trust and estate lawyer, Margot Edwards (who is also one of the guest authors). While Margot doesn't normally make house calls, a certain global pandemic was in full force, and she did what any good attorney does: improvise. When Jason told her about this book, she immediately asked if there was a chapter on happiness. Jason responded there would be now! Thanks Margot.
We began to reflect on our careers and spoke to others. We asked the question of what has kept us happy (or not) all these years. When we were junior folks no one, not even ourselves, cared about this. It certainly was a different time, but happiness wasn't something we talked about openly. It was too close to the subject of mental health, which was extremely taboo at the time.
But times change and today we are fortunately moving in a direction where these subjects can be discussed. Being happy isn't just about you being happy, mind you. While that's massively important, being happy will also make you a better lawyer. Being happy will give your brain creative space to figure out problems. It will allow you to be more empathetic. It will allow you to be more humorous and perhaps make a client feel just a bit better in a difficult time.
Happiness is not just a selfish state of being, rather it will allow you to perform your best. And we won't even begin to discuss the impact it will have on your friends and family, which in turn will feed back into your happiness flywheel.
Not everyone is wired the same way and so telling anyone how to be happy is not an exact science. We are also not mental health professionals. Therefore, we solicited advice from our lawyer friends to share. You may find some, all, or none of it applicable to you, but our strong advice is to continually monitor your happiness and challenge yourself to make decisions that will maximize it. If you are a first-year at a Wall Street firm working a hundred hours a week, this can be difficult, but all the more necessary. If you are a public defender in the middle of heavy case, maybe even more so. Whatever the situation, we encourage you to regularly take time to check in with yourself.