Health / Wellness, Law Schools

Why Law Schools Are Failing Future Lawyers By Not Talking About Human Suffering

Legal education glosses over the fact that as lawyers, we’ll regularly meet with clients in crisis.

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sad unhappy young woman law studentEd. note: This post is by Jeena Cho, a Legal Mindfulness Strategist at Start Here HQ. She is the co-author of The Anxious Lawyer (affiliate link), a book written by lawyers for lawyers that makes mindfulness and meditation accessible and approachable. Jeena offers actionable change strategies for reducing stress anxiety while increasing productivity, joy, and satisfaction through mindfulness practices.

Lawyering is hard.

Being human is hard. This human condition is — as Buddha said:

“the [first] noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering.”

Perhaps they should’ve taught this in law school — as lawyers, we are in the suffering business. Clients rarely come to see a lawyer with happy news. They often come to see us during their lowest, darkest, and scariest moments.

Yet, for the most part, legal education glosses over the fact that as lawyers, we’ll regularly meet with clients in crisis, clients who experienced some type of trauma.

In Torts class, we’re asked to review the facts, write them into a concise statement, frame the issue, recite the rules, run the analysis, and come to a conclusion — my client should win. 

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Nowhere are we taught that the act of sitting with someone who is suffering — someone who has been unjustly treated, physically, emotionally, psychologically, or financially harmed, or lost dignity, limbs, or loved ones — is really deeply painful and hard work.

Instead, we are regularly told nonsense like, we’re lawyers, we shouldn’t have emotions.

Continue reading over at Jeena’s blog…

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