Tag Archives: unhappy attorney

Could You Be a Highly Sensitive Person Masquerading as a Tough Lawyer?

Highly sensitive people (HSPs) perceive much higher levels of sensory input than the average person. This innate trait can make lawyering a difficult or miserable experience, unless you work in a highly supportive, collegial culture. Most legal environments are not that. If you suspect you’re an HSP lawyer, changing some aspect of your job is likely necessary.

Three Days & Three Ways to Lower Lawyer/Pandemic Anxiety

I cannot keep track of, well, anything lately. Even though I don’t feel acutely stressed, my brain is shrieking (and performing) otherwise. This time of pandemic is somehow blowing all my brain circuits. I am mentally and emotionally wiped out. How about you?

Being Different in Law’s Perfection-Obsessed Culture

The legal industry as a whole must fix its fetish with perfection. In the end, calling out colleagues on their weaponized perfectionism benefits everyone, especially lawyers who are different from the norm. It doesn’t require money to address. You don’t need anyone’s permission. It’s a step you can take within the next week.

Top 3 Limiting Beliefs Most Lawyers Cling To—Do You?

People often mistake their thoughts and beliefs as actual truths. Yet it’s often not so. Our beliefs are not necessarily the gospel from on high, let alone the entire truth. But so many lawyers fervently believe that work can’t be fun, that they can’t make money doing something they love, or that they have no marketable skills aside from law.

Who’s Designing Your Life, You or Your Law Job?

Whatever your career stage, it’s not too late to design your life. How do you want it to look? Discerning that answer is crucial to designing a satisfying life & career. Or, go ahead and shove the question aside, and let the forces around you shape your life instead.

5 Simple Ways to Ratchet Down Lawyer Anxiety—But You Won’t Like Them

World and national events. have heightened our anxiety, for sure. But the bigger problem may be that our work tools dictate a frenzied mental pace–one that far outstrips our actual ability to deal with that pace. All those little islands of downtime that we used to have–waiting rooms, lines, the commute–are now filled with chatter and productivity. Without downtime, our brains get stressed, and we get anxious.

Get Out: Old, Burned Out, Few Skills

Will this be easy? No. But neither is living with your stress level. Stress kills us by triggering health problems that might have lain dormant. Plus it robs us of joy. Who wouldn’t want to trade poor health and misery for a chance at something much better?

Get Out: Artist in a Lawyer Suit

Dear Jennifer, I’m three years out of school. I lasted 18 months at my big law job, where they inexplicably placed me in IP litigation despite the fact that I’d never indicated any interest in IP law and had no experience in IP law. I jumped ship with no plan, and miraculously landed in aContinue reading “Get Out: Artist in a Lawyer Suit”