Will Meyerhofer - Way Worse Than Being A Dentist: The Lawyers Quest for Meaning

Copyright 2011 by Will Meyerhofer, JD MSW.

Mill City Press, Inc.

212 3rd Avenue North, Suite 290

Minneapolis, MN 55401

612.455.2294

www.millcitypublishing.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Images are for inspiration.

ISBN-13:978-1-618423-05-4

LCCN: 2011939549

Typeset by Sara Pokorny

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATION:

To the Partners of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

For all that you do.

You varlet! You serf! You buggering knave!

Yes, I swear it! Ere this night doth wane, you will

drink the black sperm of my vengeance!

- from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,
by Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert

TABLE OF CONTENTS

RECITALS

WHEREASEvenDENTISTShave it better;

Dentists dont really have it that bad.

The myth is they couldnt hack medical school, took the easy way out, and sold their souls for a lifetime of rotting teeth, retreating gums, and the highest suicide rate of any profession.

In reality - compared to lawyers (at least in terms of career satisfaction) - dentists frolic through meadows of singing daisies. Dentists romp and gambol and cavort. They cut capers. And thats an average day at the office. For dentists, life is beautiful.

Drill, baby, drill.

Lawyers are the ones who hate their jobs, and as a result, their lives. The secret of lawyer misery just hasnt leaked out to the general public. Not yet.

Thats why I wrote this book. So everyone can share the news.

WHEREAS EVERYONEhates lawyers;

A lawyer joke:

Why wont a tarantula bite a lawyer?

Professional courtesy.

The whole world hates lawyers. That hasnt changed.

The big secret is that lately, lawyers also hate themselves. They hate being lawyers.

A video circulated recently through the legal community - the 2010 commencement address at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. It might give you an idea how bad things are.

The speech wasnt delivered by Ellen Degeneres or Alec Baldwin or even Jon Stewart or Rachel Maddow. It was delivered by a graduating student whose wife and children were killed by a drunk driver in his first semester. It might have lightened the mood a bit if theyd gone ahead and invited the grim reaper.

Here are a few snatches of the speech, to give you an idea of the frothy hilarity that ensued:

The road ahead will not be an easy one We face some very challenging timesInsecurity, uncertainty and constant change define our everyday reality. 43% of private practice law firms have had lay-offs, 33% have frozen hiring, 29% have deferred start dates for new hires and 26% have reduced salaries Compared to other professions, lawyers have the highest rate of depression and anxiety. And its getting worse.

Whoo-hoo! Go class of 2010!

WHEREAS You cant make THIS SHIT up;

A friend of mine, who used to be a senior associate at a big-shot law firm, then a partner at a less bit-shot law firm, then a legal head-hunter, then a law school careers counselor, taught me this golden rule of the legal profession: You cant make this shit up.

Hes right. You cant. Unless youre a lawyer, people think youre kidding when you talk about how bad it can get.

Heres a taste of some the websites out there for lawyers:

LawyersWithDepression.com

MyDebtorsPrison.com

DepressedLawyer.com

DaveNeeFoundation.com (named after a law student who committed suicide; addresses depression and suicide among law students)

ListlessLawyer.com

LaidOffLawyer.com

BitterLawyer.com

EscapeFromTheLaw.com

As you read this book, please consider that I am not making any of this stuff up. Either I experienced it myself, or my clients experienced it and told me about it and I wrote it down. Im just trying to keep it real.

WHEREAS youre reading THIS BOOK;

This book is not just for lawyers but its mostly for lawyers. The lid is coming off on the state of crisis in the legal profession and my columns and this book constitute a first blast of truth.

This book is also intended for the people who live with lawyers the people to whom they kvetch. The wife. The kids. The mom. The neighbors. Anyone who knows a lawyer is probably wondering whats going on and whether hes just an overpaid pain in the ass (or why he cant seem to find a job) or if theres something to all this meshugas.

There is something to all this meshugas.

WHEREAS Who the Hell is THE PEOPLES THERAPIST?!?;

Like all lawyers, I didnt know what I wanted to do after college, so I went to law school to get my mother off my back.

I was good at going to school. The recipient of a fellowship to a British public school and a magna cum laude English degree from Harvard, I sailed into NYU Law, earned good grades, published a journal article, summered at the ACLU - and wound up at a top New York City law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell.

In going to S&C, I told myself I was selling out and I did my best to play the part. I wore stodgy suits from Brooks Brothers and toiled day and night, doing CDO deals and M&A at places like Goldman, Sachs and AIG. I like to think I contributed, in my small way, to bringing our nations economy to its knees.

Meanwhile, I was a basket case. Biglaw was killing me. More about that later.

I finally did the impossible and escaped law, fleeing to a sweet job as a marketing exec at a dot com. Then came 9/11, and the dot com implosion.

At that point, I gave up on the business world and followed my dream to become a psychotherapist. Initially, I worked at a hospital, then opened a private practice, treating artists and poets, Williamsburg hipsters, starving actors - and very few lawyers.

I was loving life, and wrote Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy, a book about the importance of psychotherapy and conscious living. My agent suggested I start a blog.

From there, things moved quickly.

In early 2010, AboveTheLaw.com interviewed me for their regular Alternative Careers for Lawyers column. Emails poured in. I was deluged with appointment requests.

Eighteen months later, my posts generate thousands of weekly reads and are reprinted in Chinese by a journal in Beijing. My blog is approaching one million views. In my waiting room, hipsters are rubbing elbows with lawyers.

Thats my story.

WHEREAS, LAW is FUCKED;

The problem with law is that it started out as a real profession and ended up a cynical sell-out.

Things looked pretty good, at first. Young Abraham Lincoln learned law the old-fashioned way, memorizing Blackstones Commentaries by candlelight, leaning on a split-rail fence -or trailing behind a hoary curmudgeon, riding the circuit on horseback, pleading countrified cases before crotchety judges.

It was folksy. It was sincere. It was old-fashioned Americana, like a leather football helmet, or bobbing for apples, or dancing do-si-do, or sitting on a porch swing and holding hands. That kind of thing.

Even with the advent of law schools, there remained something crusty and collegial and all-Ivy about law. John Houseman would peer over his reading glasses at you, testing your mettle. You needed to have what it took grit, pith, probity, a firm chin, bushy eyebrows - to join the ranks of Atticus Finch and Perry Mason (which is what all lawyers were like back then.)