I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.
~ Leonard Cohen
I have a friend who is a Dermatologist. I will call him Howard. Howard knows a great deal about skin cancer, so he worries about contracting skin cancer. He wears long pants, long-sleeved shirts, and a hat all summer, and covers any exposed areas with sunblock. Some say that Howard is obsessive about that.
I, on the other hand, know quite a bit about all of the different things for which people can be sued. So when I practiced law, I worried about that. Obsessively. In my experience, most lawyers are like me in that regard.
The difference between my fears and Howard’s fears is that Howard’s concerns about contracting skin cancer do not impact how he practices dermatology. My fear of getting sued did impact how I practiced law, how my clients perceived me, and how well I slept at night.
I don’t know if the stress of practicing dermatology got under Howard’s skin the way the stress of practicing law got under my skin. I am guessing that it did not, because Howard is still practicing medicine in his mid-seventies, and I had to get out of law in my mid-sixties to try to hold onto what little mental health that I had left at that time. And for those of you who are wondering, no, your mental health does not come all the way back when you retire.
In my first year of practice, a lawyer named Fred told me that there was no point to worrying about my files, because as long as I could afford the deductible on my professional liability insurance, there was nothing to worry about. At the time I thought that Fred was crazy, but I now see the value of trying to get out of the mindset of constant worry.
Now, Fred achieved his equanimity by limiting his practice to simple matters which were, for the most part, handled by law clerks. His attitude towards practicing law made him a hell of a nice guy, but perhaps not the best lawyer in the world. For those of us who want to contribute to the profession and our clients at a higher level, the challenge of remaining healthy is more difficult.
I have no answers. Only questions. But I do wonder why, as a profession, we are so accepting of excessive levels of stress, addiction, and mental health problems, and even extoll and reward those who suffer it the most.
Howard’s professional education gives him the tools to protect himself from skin cancer. Our professional education also gives us tools to protect us from professional liability. We draft retainer letters and reporting letters, manage client expectations, communicate risks to clients in writing, and try to remain current in the law. But paradoxically, the need to work so hard at limiting the risk of a professional liability claim seems to greatly increase our risk of suffering burn-out and ill health.
I got no answers.
I should have been a Dermatologist.
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.