Health / Wellness

New Survey Proves Lawyer Is The Loneliest Profession Of All

Do you think this is surprising news?

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Do you ever feel that you have nobody to talk to? That nobody really understands you? That it’s difficult for you to make friends? Do you feel isolated by others?

If you answered yes to these questions, you aren’t alone. Those are part of a series of questions on the loneliness scale from UCLA. A new survey in the Harvard Business Review by Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, a psychiatrist and chief innovation officer for a workplace consulting firm, and her team found that lawyers are the loneliest profession of them all. More than 60 percent of lawyers ranked above the standard on the loneliness scale. The next most lonely professions were 57 percent of engineers, 55 percent of research scientists, 51 percent of workers in food service, and 45 percent of workers in education and library services.

As Kellerman told the Washington Post, loneliness is not an issue employers can afford to to ignore:

Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, a psychiatrist and chief innovation officer for BetterUp, a workplace consulting firm in San Francisco, said employers who tackle the issue now — rather than brush it off as a personal matter — will save money in future. “Loneliness is an expensive problem that will affect their bottom line,” she said, “whether they realize it or not.”

There are many structural problems within the legal profession that conspire to keep lawyers lonely. The solitary nature of research, the long hours, and sheer exhaustion keep up the isolation in the industry:

Daniel Lukasik, a lawyer in Buffalo and creator of the Web community Lawyers With Depression, said he started a weekly support group for attorneys 10 years ago after realizing he and his colleagues routinely battled the grip of isolation. When he started his career in the 1980s, lawyers would go to libraries to do research and banter with others in the field. Now he can pull up a case on his smartphone.

“What that translates to is: You’re working all the time,” Lukasik said. “You get to the point where you’re too exhausted to socialize.”

This issue of isolation is not… well, isolated. It’s linked to larger problems in the profession like depression and substance abuse, as the ABA Journal notes:

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Houston-area lawyer Scott Rothenberg tells the ABA Journal that loneliness and isolation may be a root cause of many lawyer issues. “There are these disparate problems like depression and suicide and substance abuse, in many respects tied together,” he says.

Even lawyers working in big firms may feel isolated in a “cubicle-ized” culture, says Rothenberg, a member of the Texas bar’s board of directors. Social isolation may be even a bigger problem for the “silver tsunami” of older lawyers, he says.

This is a good reminder to all the lawyers out there to take a break from your all-nighter to socialize. It may seem like you’re goofing off, but it really can benefit both you and your employer.

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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