Biglaw

alt.legal: Spit In The Cup . . . Now Drink It (The Amazing Dr. Richard)

An interview with a lawyer turned doctor who knows the ins and outs of the lawyer brain.

By  
on

“Spit in a cup . . . now drink it.” Disgusted…?

So was I, when the request was made to me (along with many of most powerful Am Law managing attorneys on the planet).

So who made this outrageous(ly disgusting) request, and why?

The who was Dr. Larry Richard (Penn Law grad, 10 years as a litigator, and a Ph.D. in Psychology). Larry, who consults for firms all over the world, was keynoting a talk about the peculiarities of the lawyer’s brain (which, incidentally, is the name of his consulting company!).

The why, was to show (to prove) that each of us is a visceral, emotional, and feeling being — even us lawyers. No matter how much logical training we receive from our Ivy League institutions, we each harbor unconscious bias, taboos, and other irrational thoughts. To this day, I tell the spit story (too much, if you ask my wife), as it was self-evident proof (to me anyway) of my own irrationality. Try it yourself, and think about the following.

That spit in the cup, the good doctor explained, had, moments ago been comfortable resting in our own mouths — causing zero emotional angst.  Now, just moments later, and residing in a sterile Dixie cup, it has become unthinkable — inhuman even — to contemplate the oral reentry of this vile, revolting, disgusting substance! What was once part of us, is now a taboo contaminant — and I challenge you to use your powers of logic to convince yourself otherwise, and take a swig of the frothy brew.

But this column is about alt.legal businesses, not psychology!  So, today we are going to sit down with Dr. Richard and learn about the lawyer brain, as well as his own business serving lawyers. While we often talk to legal tech CEOs, it’s important consider another types of legal-industry problem solvers — in this case, a doctor of juris doctors.

Sponsored

Dr. Richard is using his understanding of the legal mind to help lawyers and law firms perform better, be less negative, and more resilient. If you are a practicing lawyer, read below for insight into what makes you so weird (yeah, it’s a lot).  If you are an alt.legal entrepreneur, find out what makes lawyers tick, and how you can help turn spit-in-a-cup into lightning-in-a-bottle.

Enjoy:

Joe Borstein: Lawyer depression and mental health issues have become a core topic in the legal industry (see here and here, which the audience should read!).

From your studies of the lawyer brain, is there something inherent in practice of law that causes the high levels of mental health problems we are seeing?

Dr. Larry Richard: How much time do you have!

Sponsored

There are lots of reasons lawyers are more prone to depression and other mental and emotional stresses. We will explore three.

First, the very nature of what lawyers do is that they look for problems. Admittedly, this is done for a good reason — to protect their clients. But it trains their minds to always suspect both people and data. Lawyers question the motives of others. They focus on the 5% that’s problematic instead of the 95% that’s working.

​Research shows that when we think negative thoughts, they precipitate negative feelings and ultimately negative hormones — cortisol, adrenalin, and a bunch of other nasty chemicals. Repeated training in looking for problems also tends to atrophy a person’s capacity to look for and notice the good things in life. So the end result — especially for those lawyers who don’t have a good way of protecting themselves from this negativity or of balancing it out with positivity — can be a steady descent into depressive thinking and ultimately, for some, into clinical depression.

JB: Interesting.  So to some degree the practice of law can create depression.  What about the lawyers themselves?

LR: Yes, that is reason two.

People who go into law, according to my research, are very low in a trait called Resilience.

When they are criticized or rejected, they feel hurt, wounded, get defensive, and become stressed out. High Resilience people generally let life’s adversities roll off their backs, but low Resilience people take these events much harder. And my data consistently show that 90% of lawyers score in the bottom half of the Resilience scale!

Finally, as if that weren’t enough, lawyers often are called to represent clients who may not be likable or whose values may conflict with the personal values of the lawyer. Some lawyers will decline to take on such cases, but many feel they have no choice. This dilemma can create an ongoing values conflict which can eat away at self-esteem and further amplify negative moods.

There are probably 4 or 5 other reasons why lawyers are more prone to depression, but it would be too depressing to answer your question in that much depth.

JB:  That’ll do!  Tell our readers about your personal transition from lawyer to doctor, and then to business owner?

LR: I come from a family of lawyers going back three generations. It seemed like the family business, and I never really considered any other career. I went right from high school to college to law school. And from day one, I hated it.

But I put my head down and plowed through. Earned my J.D. Tried a variety of jobs, mainly as a litigator, but finally after 10 years of increasing unhappiness, I had to face the fact that I was in the wrong career. So I quit.

I tried a couple of interim jobs, and did a lot of soul-searching. The end result — it became clear to me that who I am, at heart, is a psychologist. I decided to earn a Ph.D. and to study lawyers and the legal profession, which I did.

I got very curious about the personalities of people who go into law — I’ve always been curious about what makes us tick. What kind of person goes into law? Are we different from others? This curiosity has only grown over the years. It still fuels me today.

After graduate school, I worked as a solo consultant for a few years until I was recruited by Altman Weil. I became a partner there, and worked there for a few years until Hildebrandt recruited me away. Brad Hildebrandt asked me to create and head up a team focused on providing leadership skills and organization improvement skills to large law firms, and that’s what I did during my seven years at Hildebrandt. In 2011, Hildebrandt’s then parent company, Thomson Reuters, divested the Hildebrandt operation, and many of us left and hung out our own shingles. I started LawyerBrain, and I’ve never been happier.

JB: So this column is about legal entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Lawyer psychology aside, you have started a business serving the legal industry. Tell our audience about what’s unique about working with and for lawyers as a business.

LR: ​ There are two main challenges to working with lawyers, and they both stem from distinctive lawyer personality traits — Skepticism and Autonomy.

​Because lawyers are skeptical, sometimes they can be their own worst enemy. When a consultant gives advice in a law firm, you can expect more than the typical amount of pushback, scrutiny, challenges, etc. I’ve come to expect this and I prepare for it, but in comparing notes with my friends who consult to conventional businesses, we all get pushback — that’s human nature — but the level and complexity of the pushback we see in law firms is usually greater. I see it as just a fact of life that you have to accommodate to.

Because lawyers have high needs for autonomy, law firms tend to shy away from highly structured, hierarchical lines of authority. Instead, many decisions are made by committees or even by the full partnership. In most business corporations, a manager at a given level has a budget and a set of clear responsibilities and can generally make a decision to move forward on a project — or not — in a relatively quick time frame, but many similar decisions in law firms can take much longer because there are often no clear “buck stops here” decision-makers. That means the buy-in process is both more important and it takes longer to build. Again, this is just a fact of life in working with law firms — you come to expect a longer lead time in launching a project. 

The offsetting good news is that because lawyers are generally cautious and risk-averse, once you establish your credentials and competence, they tend to keep hiring you because they can count on your consistently delivering the high level of quality they’ve come to expect. I think there’s less “shopping around” than my friends who work with conventional companies report.

JB: So when selling to legal, they’re harder clients to obtain, but more loyal clients once you do?  A lot of our readers are trying to get lawyers to try something new (tech or service or other). What advice would you give them, knowing what you do about the lawyer brain?

LR: How do you get lawyers to try something new? The most effective strategy is to demonstrate that other firms are already doing it — especially if those other firms include firms they consider “peer firms” or better. Equally effective — show them that actual clients of theirs place a high level of value on the thing you’re trying to get them to do/try. These two strategies are variations of a principle in psychology known as “social proof” — it’s been well-documented as a motivating force.

Of course there’s always the chicken-and-egg question — how do you get that first firm to try something? There, the answer is more complex. There are a number of strategies, and we don’t have the space to cover them all. The most important one is “relationship” — the stronger and longer the trusting relationship you have with a firm leader, the more likely you’ll be able to encourage that leader to experiment with a new behavior/product/program/etc. Other strategies I can tantalize you with include reciprocity, endorsement, alignment with strategy, and competition. Each requires longer explanation that we don’t have the space for here, but you can get a rough idea about some of them by looking at a series of blog posts that I wrote on my What Makes Lawyers Tick? blog — look for the tag “Accountability” and there are 4 posts that address influencing strategies.

JB: Any last thoughts on legal entrepreneurship?

LR: Yes, I think the most important parting thought takes us back full circle to the idea that we lawyers are trained to look for problems (in order to protect our clients.)

This mindset can lead to “hardening of the smarteries” — my name for a type of myopia that limits us from thinking creatively and innovatively. And it’s innovation and creativity that we need most in order to successfully entrepreneur. The cure is simply to (a) become more mindful about our negative (problem-seeking) mindsets, and (b) to train our brains to hunt for the good stuff — i.e., to actively look for strengths, opportunities, good news, etc. — in order to re-activate and strengthen our brain’s positivity-seeking circuitry. This not only offsets and balances the negative mindset, but research shows that it also expands our field of view. It makes us more likely to see creative solutions.

Joe Borstein Joseph Borstein

Joe Borstein, Esq. is  Chief Revenue Officer for NAM (National Arbitration and Mediation), a leading provider of arbitration and mediation services, with over 2,500 neutrals across the country.  At NAM, Joe is charged with developing, implementing and overseeing the strategic goals for the company.  He leads the company’s business development initiatives and related customer service operations that are designed to provide law firms and corporate clients with a fair, fast and reasonably priced alternative to the court system.  

He is a frequent speaker and writer on global trends in the legal industry and, specifically, how law firms are leveraging those trends to become more profitable. If you are interested in entrepreneurship and the delivery of legal services, or alternative dispute resolution, please reach out to Joe directly at jborstein@namadr.com.

Topics

, , , , ,