Looking on the Bright Side of Law?

Learn from psychology researchers how you can balance your well-honed lawyerly pessimism with a spirit of personal optimism.

IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED (IN PSYCHOLOGY CIRCLES, ANYWAY) THAT OPTIMISTS HAVE A BETTER TIME.

Dr. Martin Seligman, director of the Penn Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, has observed that moderately optimistic people generally experience better life outcomes than their similarly-talented pessimistic peers: “Optimists do much better in school and college, at work and on the playing field. They regularly exceed the predictions of aptitude tests. When optimists run for office, they are more likely to be elected.”¹

Ample empirical evidence, gathered over decades in a wide range of professional and academic settings, demonstrates that optimists are less likely than pessimists to be depressed and anxious, even when confronted with financial setbacks. They earn better grades, enjoy better health, and demonstrate more tenacity in the face of adversity.² They’re less likely to smoke or become addicted to alcohol and drugs. They fall in love more easily and save more money for retirement.³

In every profession, optimists are more successful in life than their talents alone might suggest. Except for lawyers.

Surveying law students at the University of Virginia, Dr. Seligman’s research team found that pessimism was associated with better grades, earning a position on law review, and with securing better post-graduation job offers. Unable to discover a scientific explanation, Dr. Seligman speculated that the profession uniquely rewards a negative mindset.

"In law,” he said, “pessimism is considered prudence."⁴

If you’re a lawyer, this observation will come as no surprise; after all, building out a robust set of worst-case scenarios is fundamental to success in practice.

"The ability to anticipate the whole range of problems and betrayals that non-lawyers are blind to is highly adaptive for the practicing lawyer who can, by so doing, help his clients defend against these far-fetched eventualities. If you don’t have this prudence to begin with, law school will seek to teach it to you."⁵

But while pessimism might make for successful lawyers, it doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness; more than half of all practicing lawyers are dissatisfied with their jobs, and lawyers have high rates of depression.⁶

And it’s hard to turn off a pessimistic mindset when you leave the office. Spend 40 hours (and likely more) per week imagining about how badly things could turn out for your clients, and eventually you’ll start thinking about how badly things might turn out in your own life – and it’s not difficult to see why that could lead to depression and burnout.

In the words of Dr. Seligman: “Unfortunately, the qualities that make for a good lawyer may not make for a happy human being.”⁷

Because prudence/pessimism is rewarded in both law school and in practice, lawyers can’t simply choose to see the world through rose-colored glasses. Further, the nature of the legal profession complicates the mission of improving the lives of lawyers.⁸ New associates find the traditional law firm structure rigid and resistant to change, and suggesting (as Dr. Seligman does⁹) that firms should add affirming, non-billable tasks to a lawyer’s workload is probably unrealistic.

But even lawyers can make changes to their worldview in order to improve their quality of life. According to Dr. William Chopik, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at MSU and personality researcher, you can learn to see the world differently, but it takes practice.

"Optimism is trainable, but it’s not about going for a walk when you’re stressed and noticing the flowers,” said Dr. Chopik. “Saying just ‘look on the bright side!’ isn’t super helpful. That’s not going to change how you see the world."

Here’s a few things to consider if you’re a lawyer who’d like to incorporate a brighter outlook into your life:

PESSIMISM IS A TOOL.

A successful legal practice requires a problem-centric view. Pessimism will serve you in contract-drafting, fact-finding, discovery, and brief writing. But just because it’s helpful on the job doesn’t mean that you need to view every aspect of your life through the same lens. Simply put, you want to be a professional pessimist and a personal optimist.

The key is what Dr. Seligman refers to as “credible disputation,” treating pervasive pessimistic thoughts as though they come from “an external person whose mission in life is to make you miserable,” and then building a compelling case against those thoughts.¹⁰

Lawyers are uniquely well-suited to adopting credible disputation; for instance, if you start thinking “my colleague was promoted to a new role and I was passed over, I’ll never make partner,” you might self-counter that adversarial narrative with an arsenal of facts. “That colleague hired in three years before I did, he works in a different practice group, another position will open up for me when I’m ready, etc.” This mental flexibility allows you to retain functional pessimism within your legal practice, and to turn it off at the end of the workday.

Making a habit of self-argument takes a little practice – but not much. “It’s not instantaneous,” Dr. Seligman said. “But on the other hand, it’s not really onerous and difficult. It’s something that most people can acquire in a few days.” ¹¹

In other words, you survived 1L finals, RWA, and cold calls in Contracts. You can undertake some behavioral training (even if it’s accompanied by some homework).

LOOK FOR EXTERNAL EXPLANATIONS.

“It’s really a question of how you make sense of the world: how do you decide why things go right or go wrong?” said Dr. Chopik.

Pessimists tend to explain outcomes by looking within themselves: when something bad happens, they blame it on a personal failing, which is likely to recur. For instance, senior lawyers often make case decisions without consulting with junior associates, who assume that they were consciously excluded from the meeting. In that situation, you could feel as though your superiors decided that you weren’t worth including in a discussion, undermining your sense of intelligence and value.

Those are internal attributions – you assume that the negative outcome is the result of your own abilities – but that’s not the only valid conclusion that you could draw from the situation. Instead, the principles of learned optimism posit that you can learn to see alternative external explanations for negative outcomes. For instance, an external attribution for that situation would be that senior lawyers didn’t round up the whole team before making decisions because of time pressure, their own personalities, or the stressful firm environment..

Rather than feeling discouraged in your own abilities, an external attribution can free you from a depressive spiral of internalized blame and make you optimistic that a different outcome is possible when circumstances change.

LAWYERS CONTAIN MULTITUDES.

You know that you have more to offer your profession – and the world – than a well-honed ability to build out worst-case scenarios. Maybe you have a sustaining passion for justice and fair treatment under the law, standout verbal intelligence, leadership abilities, perseverance, or compassion.

Excelling in these areas does not require a pessimistic mindset; many of them are rooted in a sense of positivity and optimism. Consciously seeking out experiences (on the job and in your life) that reinforce those qualities can help you balance out the necessary pessimism of legal practice.

SPEND TIME WITH NON-LAWYERS.

Finally, according to Dr. Chopik, pessimists can drag down their fellow pessimists, while interacting with optimists can help you see the world in a more positive light. They seek the common ground in disagreements and engage in constructive conflict.

“Being in relationships with optimists has lots of benefits for pessimists,” he observes. “Optimists just seem to be more socially skilled.”

Given that lawyers, as a group, are inclined toward pessimism, he recommends seeking out interactions with non-lawyers.

“The people who you surround yourself with partially affect your outlook,” said Dr. Chopik. “People in other professions might offer alternative attributions or explanations for events, rather than lawyers, who are all trained to see things the same way. It can be helpful to break out of that reinforcing sphere.”

1 See generally Martin E.p. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your life (3d ed. 2006).

2 Id. at 1–5.

3 Manju Puri & David T. Robinson, Optimism and Economic Choice, 86 J. Fin. Econ. 71, 93 (2007).

4 Robert Lee Hotz, Except in One Career, Our Brains Seem Built for Optimism, Wall Street J., Nov. 9, 2007.

5 Christopher Shea, Why Do Lawyers Get Depressed?, wall Street J., Dec. 5, 2011.

6 Martin E.P. Seligman, Paul R. Verkuil & Terry H. Kang, Why Lawyers Are Unhappy, 10 Deakin L. Rev. 49, 52 (2005).

7 Id. at 56.

8 See generally Catherine Gage O’Grady, Cognitive Optimism and Professional Pessimism in the Large-Firm Practice of Law: The Optimistic Associate, 30 L. & Psychol. Rev. 23 (2006).

9 Shea, supra note 5.

10 Susan Shain, How to Be More Optimistic, N.Y. Times, Feb. 18, 2020.

11 Id.