Will Meyerhofer was your typical high-achieving Biglaw associate. He went to law school because he didn’t know what else to do with his Harvard English degree. He graduated from NYU Law in 1997 and went to work for Sullivan & Cromwell in New York.
“I did my part in destroying the nation’s economy,” he told us. After two years doing securities and M&A work — working for clients like AIG and Goldman — he decided to leave Biglaw, and become a psychotherapist. “Law fundamentally shaped me. It made me ask important questions that led me to therapy.”
He’s certainly not the first Biglaw attorney forced into therapy…
It wasn’t a huge leap for him. His mother and brother are social workers, and his dad was a therapist — he died when Meyerhofer was a teenager. His life insurance policy paid for law school, leaving Meyerhofer blessed with no law school debt, though “he would have preferred to have had Dad.” After a brief detour into business, working as a marketing executive at BarnesandNoble.com, he started taking classes in social work, getting his MSW from Hunter College in 2004.
Even at Sullivan & Cromwell, he had become an unofficial therapist. When working late on deals, colleagues would come into his office, close the door, and seek advice for stress, difficult relationships, and strained marriages. These days, his sessions are somewhat more formal. He has over 60 patients who come to individual and group sessions at his Financial District apartment, A Quiet Room. He has a sliding scale for payment, ranging from $10/hour for a 19-year-old to $200/hour for Wall Street types. “Therapy should be there when you need it, not when you can afford it,” he said.
He blogs about his work at The People’s Therapist, though he goes to great lengths to disguise the identities of his clients, obscuring details and switching their gender and sexual orientations.
Given his insight into the world of law and lawyers, we asked him to psychoanalyze you. Find out why lawyers are bad at therapy, why law firms are toxic environments, and why our comments section can be such a nasty place, after the jump.
Continue reading “Biglaw Attorney Turned Psychotherapist Analyzes the Legal Profession”
Think back to first-year contracts class, specifically, discussion of the U.C.C. and non-conforming goods. Then check out this article, from BBC News:
Another salary shoe has fallen in Chicago. 
Industrial gas supplier Airgas has sued its former law firm, 
