Ed. note: Please welcome Vivia Chen back to the pages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, “The Ex-Careerist,” here.
Unless your perception of law firm life is warped by Suits, The Good Wife, or Ally McBeal, no person would think of law as a fun, sexy profession. And you certainly don’t go into it for its salubrious lifestyle.
Biglaw in particular runs on insecurity. Not only do lawyers work insane hours, they’re expected to perform with absolute precision. From day one, the message is clear: Miss a deadline (even if arbitrary) or make an error (however inconsequential), and your career is toast.
The culture of extreme perfectionism breeds fear and anxiety, yet it remains the industry standard. The question is what this is doing to lawyers’ mental state.
A recent study offers some answers. According to a survey of 764 lawyers by Krill Strategies, JC Coaching & Consulting, Ambitionprofile, and NALP, the price is “stress, depression, workaholism, resistance to feedback, and reduced engagement, motivation, and longevity.”
Among lawyers who scored high on the perfectionist scale, 50.6% showed elevated depression, compared to 7.1% in the low-perfectionism group. Perfectionist lawyers also tend to have shorter tenures at their firms: 5.3 years, compared to 8.4 years for low-perfectionists. And you guessed it: women reported higher levels of perfectionism and stress, suggesting that “that perfectionism may be a contributing factor to elevated turnover risk among women lawyers.”
It’s a troubling picture but is Biglaw aware of the problem? Does it care? I asked Patrick Krill, one of the authors of the study, those questions and more. Below is an edited version of our chat.
A chicken and egg question: Do more neurotic people flock to brutal professions like Biglaw, or is it the profession that turns normal people into crazed perfectionists?
Probably both. Historically, a high number of perfectionists go into the profession. It’s a disposition that a lot of people come pre-packaged with. But there’s also the work environment. It’s firm-specific whether it’s making someone’s perfectionism worse.
Isn’t it a given that Biglaw promotes an unrealistic level of perfectionism and that only the truly exceptional make it to the top?
We need to distinguish between perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism, which entails setting unrealistically high standards. Professional athletes have high standards but they don’t internalize failure like lawyers do. Maladaptive perfectionists have a very pronounced fear of failure and excessive self-criticism; they beat themselves up.
Even though maladaptive perfectionism has long been understood to be bad for people’s health, it’s almost a badge of honor for lawyers. What surprised me in the study is how clear it was that this trait is undermining lawyer’s success, and yet they’re not aware of it.
If you had to name one culprit that’s responsible for this miserable state of affairs, what would it be?
Fear. At some firms, fear permeates from the top down. It can be a management style where fear is the primary motivator. Fear is jet fuel for maladaptive perfectionism.
Subscribe to read more at The Ex-Careerist….
Vivia Chen writes “The Ex-Careerist” column on Substack where she unleashes her unvarnished views about the intersection of work, life, and politics. A former lawyer, she was an opinion columnist at Bloomberg Law and The American Lawyer. Subscribe to her Substack by clicking here:
The post Fear, Loathing, And Perfectionism In Biglaw appeared first on Above the Law.
Ed. note: Please welcome Vivia Chen back to the pages of Above the Law. Subscribe to her Substack, “The Ex-Careerist,” here.
Unless your perception of law firm life is warped by Suits, The Good Wife, or Ally McBeal, no person would think of law as a fun, sexy profession. And you certainly don’t go into it for its salubrious lifestyle.
Biglaw in particular runs on insecurity. Not only do lawyers work insane hours, they’re expected to perform with absolute precision. From day one, the message is clear: Miss a deadline (even if arbitrary) or make an error (however inconsequential), and your career is toast.
The culture of extreme perfectionism breeds fear and anxiety, yet it remains the industry standard. The question is what this is doing to lawyers’ mental state.
A recent study offers some answers. According to a survey of 764 lawyers by Krill Strategies, JC Coaching & Consulting, Ambitionprofile, and NALP, the price is “stress, depression, workaholism, resistance to feedback, and reduced engagement, motivation, and longevity.”
Among lawyers who scored high on the perfectionist scale, 50.6% showed elevated depression, compared to 7.1% in the low-perfectionism group. Perfectionist lawyers also tend to have shorter tenures at their firms: 5.3 years, compared to 8.4 years for low-perfectionists. And you guessed it: women reported higher levels of perfectionism and stress, suggesting that “that perfectionism may be a contributing factor to elevated turnover risk among women lawyers.”
It’s a troubling picture but is Biglaw aware of the problem? Does it care? I asked Patrick Krill, one of the authors of the study, those questions and more. Below is an edited version of our chat.
A chicken and egg question: Do more neurotic people flock to brutal professions like Biglaw, or is it the profession that turns normal people into crazed perfectionists?
Probably both. Historically, a high number of perfectionists go into the profession. It’s a disposition that a lot of people come pre-packaged with. But there’s also the work environment. It’s firm-specific whether it’s making someone’s perfectionism worse.
Isn’t it a given that Biglaw promotes an unrealistic level of perfectionism and that only the truly exceptional make it to the top?
We need to distinguish between perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism, which entails setting unrealistically high standards. Professional athletes have high standards but they don’t internalize failure like lawyers do. Maladaptive perfectionists have a very pronounced fear of failure and excessive self-criticism; they beat themselves up.
Even though maladaptive perfectionism has long been understood to be bad for people’s health, it’s almost a badge of honor for lawyers. What surprised me in the study is how clear it was that this trait is undermining lawyer’s success, and yet they’re not aware of it.
If you had to name one culprit that’s responsible for this miserable state of affairs, what would it be?
Fear. At some firms, fear permeates from the top down. It can be a management style where fear is the primary motivator. Fear is jet fuel for maladaptive perfectionism.
Subscribe to read more at The Ex-Careerist….
Vivia Chen writes “The Ex-Careerist” column on Substack where she unleashes her unvarnished views about the intersection of work, life, and politics. A former lawyer, she was an opinion columnist at Bloomberg Law and The American Lawyer. Subscribe to her Substack by clicking here:
The post Fear, Loathing, And Perfectionism In Biglaw appeared first on Above the Law.
