Emphasis on Money Can Be Source of Depression in Law School

Law Schools

Emphasis on Money Can Be Source of Depression in Law School

Posted Mar 13, 2008, 08:47 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Stress during law school can cause anxiety and depression, especially if students focus on the need to make money and land a big-firm job, according to an article published online as part of an ABA group’s effort to tackle the problem.

Law schools need to acknowledge the problem of student depression and make counselors available to those who need them, according to the new initiative by the ABA Law Student Division.

Law schools don’t always see the elephant in the classroom—the depression and anxiety suffered by many students, the group’s chairman, Daniel Suvor, told the National Law Journal. “It's something that no one talks about," he said.

The division wants to designate March 27 as National Mental Health Day at law schools. As part of its online toolkit for schools, an article (PDF) advises students to focus on the right priorities—and money isn't one of them.

Two of the most common sources of stress—high debt and a heavy workload—are unavoidable, says the article by Florida State law professor Lawrence Krieger. But even more damaging are attitudes about the need to be in the top 10 percent of the class and land a job at a big firm upon graduation.

“Scientific research for the past 15 years has consistently shown that a primary focus on external rewards and results, including affluence, fame and power, is unfulfilling,” Krieger writes. “These values are seductive—they create a nice picture of life but they are actually correlated with relative unhappiness. Instead, people who have a more ‘intrinsic’ personal/interpersonal focus—on personal growth, close relationships, helping others or improving their community—turn out to be significantly happier and more satisfied with their lives.”

Krieger says research shows that only two motivations for choosing a job create satisfaction: to do enjoyable work, or to do work that supports the person’s fundamental values or makes a higher goal possible.

“If you primarily seek to do your best, improve yourself and your community, and be caring or respectful towards other people, you will be able to attain those goals and hence you create only manageable demands on your system,” he writes.

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Posted by MSG - 5 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes ago

And we need a study to tell us that? Duh!
Posted by Improvilaw - 5 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 11 hours, 11 minutes ago

We have known all of this for a long time, but the culture of law school teaches students, time and time again, that being disconnected from the law school community and studying to get the best grades possible is the real ticket to success. And success is defined as taking a job at a huge firm. People aren’t rewarded for working to make their schools better places - they are rewarded for getting a 3.9, working in BIGLAW and donating $$$$ to the school. Law schools like to pay lip service to “balance” and “community” but they really don’t do anything real to encourage either one.
Posted by Mike Hunt - 5 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 47 minutes ago

I agree with post #2. Law schools are very money hungry, worse than my uncle! The shameless bastards are always sticking their hands up my derriere looking for a buck. I wasn’t top 10%, not even top 1/2 of the class (after all only 1/2 can be in the top 1/2); but I still managed to get a decent government job, and tho I’m not bringing home the big bucks, I have a life, and am not depressed. Too many people in the top 10% have turned into neurotic a-wipes! Who cares if they have $1M in the bank or a big home on the river? I’m happy with my $130K condo with a pool, where I can go sit and enjoy myself (and chat up some pretty coeds from time to time--all in good fun). The focus on money is the problem. Make a buck, spend a buck, I say. Enjoy life, stop worrying about even trying to be the next David Boyes. He is very smart, and the rest of us aren’t as smart.
Posted by JSD - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes ago

Maybe if law school weren’t so *&%$@ing expensive, students wouldn’t be obsessed with how they are going to pay for it when they get out.

Every day I am more and more glad I went to a second tier state school. I made it out debt free with a lot of options. Other students should do the same.
Posted by Kip Dillihay - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 22 hours, 10 minutes ago

I completely agree with the previous posts, especially post 4, because as a recent graduate the main worry myself, and my fellow classmates, had and will have for an extremely long time is worrying about paying back the money it cost us to go to ang graduate from lawschool.

I believe, if there weren’t all of the financial worries and the stress that causes people wouldn’t be focused on making so much money if we didn’t have to pay back so much for our student loans. I know I felt these pressures from the first moment I began law school and continue to feel them today. Now, I wouldn’t say I am anywhere near to being depressed, but I do remember sitting at home thinking for hours about how to overcome all of these financial constraints, which has a direct impact on my decisions about where to work, live, etc.
Posted by msg - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, 54 minutes ago

I would like to add another comment - that is this: what I said in a few mere words (am I am an attorney) was said by 4 more people in multiple paragraphs who I presume are attorneys. Most of you need to learn to state the obvious in as few words as possible. That is why judges (especially the Supreme Court) hate your briefs). Briefs are meant to be brief! Get it?!
Posted by Unemployed - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes ago

Doing your best and being a good person have little to do with getting a job when the job market is so competitive. The better the credentials, the more plentiful the job opportunities. The job market is tough, so excellent credentials are necessary for a fighting chance to do what one wants unless you go solo. I agree students should keep things in perspective but perspective doesn’t get you work if your credentials aren’t appealing to the employers.
Posted by LLM - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, 35 minutes ago

And we needed you to tell us that? Duh!!
Posted by ADM - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, 16 minutes ago

Lip service. Hypocrisy. Law.
Posted by msg - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 21 hours, 10 minutes ago

Great work ADM! I assume your briefs are top notch!
Posted by LLD - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 20 hours, 14 minutes ago

msg - perhaps they have longer briefs, but they seem to write error free unlike you.
Posted by CB - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 19 hours, 54 minutes ago

It’s not just the law schools being “money hungry” that’s raised the price of law school to ridiculous levels. For many private universities, law schools are “cash cows”. My law school had an addreditation issue with the ABA because so little of our exorbitant tuition was actually spent at the law school. The vast majority went into the University’s general fund. This is true all over the U.S. These 2nd tier private law schools are gouging all of us and creating a generation of lawyers that can’t sleep at night because they’re worrying about our debt. Granted, we took on that debt voluntarily, but at 22 and without knowing a thing about the world and spurred on by lies and promises from our law schools.
Posted by Mike Rotch - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 19 hours, 49 minutes ago

I know a certain Torts professor at the law school I attend who could use this sage bit of wisdom. Perhaps I should forward the article along to the b*tch.
Posted by susanna - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 19 hours, 22 minutes ago

I wonder if there is any correlation between depression in law school and the cost of tuition...the higher the cost, the more depression?
Posted by msg - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 19 hours, 11 minutes ago

This is so hysterical. The anger from so many of you display over typos. Well sorry folks - no spell check in the add comments section. I wonder if there is any correlation between between depression, graduating from an expensive law school and then hating the grunt work you all do for 8 years before making partner (if ever), and the anger some of you seem to have? Can we have a study please?
Posted by RGL - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 18 hours, 40 minutes ago

Dear msg,

You are the one that brought on the ire against the typos by launching the first salvo attacking the brevity of some of our posts. Don’t dish it, if you can’t take it!
Posted by Sandy Ogilvy - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 18 hours, 22 minutes ago

I thought you might be interested in this (assuming you haven’t seen it already).
Posted by FJA - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 18 hours, 18 minutes ago

I went to to law school to be a prosecutor. Three years later--and another left to go--and $130,000+ later, I’ve had to postpone that goal. There’s no way their starting pay will even come close to paying my mortgage and minimum student loans. So of course...I’m obsessed with getting the highest paying job I can so I can shed this burden in short order. And yes, It’s led to a great deal of anxiety, depression, and unhappiness. I’ve been grinding my back teeth for a month now and I can’t seem to stop. There are days I wish I never left my old career but it’s way to late to go back now. I’ll make the best of it and will likely become a prosecutor in the end. But I promise you this: I will be donating very little to my money-grubbing school.
Posted by Anon - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 18 hours, 14 minutes ago

It costs me $20 in interest just to be alive. How can I not be depressed?
Posted by K. Woods - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 17 hours, 50 minutes ago

It’s nice to say, “Focus on personal growth,” but it’s hard to ignore how expensive law school is. Watching your debt get larger and larger is serious and depressing. Until that changes, law students will always strive for the big firm jobs. The six-figure salary is the quickest way out of the crushing debt....
Posted by Slappy Johnson - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 17 hours, 21 minutes ago

These issues are talked about amongst law students and practicing attorneys, not the actual people who need to be told about it- those considering law school in the first place. They need to be told there is a 90% chance they won’t make"big law” $$ despite what the law schools are telling them. They need to be told 50% of attorneys stop practicing after 5 years of practice because they hate it or can’t financially do it. Lastly, they need to be told that if, after hearing this, they still want to give it a shot, know that its a tough profession in which to make it, regarless of how smart you are. You can’t expect to graduate law school and be rich the next day or even in the next five years.
Posted by public interest law student - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 17 hours, 6 minutes ago

We don’t need counselors, we need more scholarships so we don’t have HUGE student loan debts we have to pay back. Administrators will be amazed how the depression and anxiety disappears when we don’t have to worry about money.
Posted by EW - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 16 hours, 59 minutes ago

Glad to see more attention drawn to this.

Also agree with post 14.
Posted by P - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 15 hours, 53 minutes ago

Yes all this advice is obvious, but like many have implied, it is easy to get sideswiped by pressing money issues related to law school. I pay about 1/3 the average tuition at my school, but I have still had a run in with law school related depression. The schools need to make a better effort to reach those who need help (before they end up spending their days ripping on peoples’ mistakes in an online posting board).
Posted by growupandstopwhiningyouspoiledbabies - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 15 hours, 14 minutes ago

If 9 of 10 of folks aren’t going to get the top 10% jobs and that is what matters to you, why not matriculate at a school that is cheaper and provides financial aid? That way you can be in the bottom 90% but afford it. Get this: Neither the world, nor your law schools owe you a living, decent or otherwise. If you cannot get that idea squared away, find another pursuit.
Posted by Mike Rotch - 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 3 hours, 39 minutes ago

Dear GUASWYSB: Maybe the world and law schools do not owe a living… but they do owe the duty of telling the truth and not misleading folks into believing a fairytale. The line is fuzzy in some places, admittedly, but there are certain ethical standards which the profession espouses which would be nice to see the law schools themselves play by as well.
Posted by Joe Reisinger - 5 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, 11 hours, 29 minutes ago

Part I

Hats off to law student Daniel Suvor and professor Lawrence Krieger for speaking out on such a serious issue and to ABA reporter/writer Debra Cassens Weiss for bringing it to our attention. That’s where the accolades stop!

What a terribly pathetic point of view to de-emphasize law student focus on money! When I started law school in the 1960’s the focus was definitely different. A large minority of my peers were in law school to avoid the draft (remember Vietnam?), a very few were there to “make money” and the vast majority of us of pursuing some socially redeeming agenda to help rid the world of social injustice. I went to law school as a result of having been arrested and pled guilty to a crime I didn’t commit. We could look down our arrogant noses with great piety at those MBA students across the street in hot pursuit of the almighty dollar. Little did we know that IF passed the bar and survived beyond “junior associate” we would have to be answering to those “money grubbers”. After years of training yourself to intelligent respond to a professor’s question of you think about this case versus that case, it is a painful awakening for most newly hired lawyers to learn three lessons:

1. Except as filler for cocktail chat, no one – and especially clients – cares what you think; ,

2. Whether working for a firm, yourself, the government or a non-profit, your assigned work will only be on what the client determines is worth paying for; and,

3. The vast majority of clients are only interested in money – that’s probably why you were hired in the first place. To say you should not have an interest in what makes your profession possible (and possible for you to get clients) is absolutely ludicrous.

An interest in money is what drives the development of any understanding of business savvy. Having now defended lawyers (mainly for their malpractice insurers) and prosecuted attorneys (mainly for upset clients) I’m well aware that business savvy in the legal profession is extremely rare. In fact, so rare as to be sufficiently newsworthy to warrant an entire article, see: The Strategic Lawyer, ABA Journal of July, 2005.

In law school we become highly skilled at looking to the past for determining what is of significance today, i.e., the doctrine of starie decisis. By contrast, all of business looks to the future to in determining what is significant today. Is it any wonder that the legal and business communities don’t see eye-to-eye on most things of importance, e.g., adherence to rules of ethics, attorneys fees, degree of attorney interest in the client’s cause, etc? Instead of exacerbating this disconnect, law schools and bar associations should be striving to eliminate this division. Unfortunately, that’s never going to happen until our profession suffers (financially, mentally, etc.) to the point of finally pulling its collective head out of the sand, and commits to making lawyers more valuable to themselves, their communities, and the world of commerce.
Posted by Joe Reisinger - 5 months, 3 weeks, 3 days, 11 hours, 12 minutes ago

Part II

Having once attended the California Bar association’s one day “ethics school”. The course promised to teach lawyers how to efficiently run their practices in a way that kept them out of trouble. The bar’s “expert” was a very nice lady whose experience consisted of a number of failed jobs, followed by six months at trying to make it as contract lawyer in Los Angeles before giving up and going to work for the bar. As evidence of the bar’s poor managerial abilities, she ended up “teaching” those things she was never able to do for her self. Unfortunately, this “blind-leading-the-blind” is so ingrained in our professional DNA that trying to awaken those in authority to provide the needed education is like trying to explain air to a bird or water to a fish.

While the article by Florida State law professor Lawrence Krieger raises needed awareness, it also bears one screaming omission. There is no input from those who are most professionally impacted over the long term by over or under stressed law students, i.e., the employers like litigation supervisors, corporate compliance officers, contract administrators, etc. Arguably, those now old lawyers who weathered the stress of enduring law school at a time when failure carried a high risk of getting shot at in Vietnam, under stand something of valuable stress. Some of these old warhorses, would undoubtedly argue that the stress of law school in miniscule compared to the stress of trench warfare of litigation where a very skilled, well financed, team of experts on the other side are diligently trying to cause your failure. Others who have weathered the battles of law school, clients, courts, opponents, tax collectors, divorces, children, deaths in the family, etc. and are still coherent, undoubtedly have gained some practical survival lessons about handling stress. The stress is never going to go away, and if handled too publically in practice, skilled opponents are likely to use it to their advantage.

The biggest elephant in the classroom is that law schools are not addressing the need to teach students to accept the responsibility and competently fend for themselves. The very idea of entrusting one’s professional career to a large law firm, government agency or any other employer is to create a victim for live. Unless we at least teach the basic skills of business to law school graduates, they will forever be cursed with having to find an employer in order to survive; and, employers tend to put their interest ahead of that of their employees. The fundamental skills of business are not difficult. Like the tort of negligence, there is a very limited number of constitutive components. Likewise, every business is also composed of a very limited number of constitutive components. And, just like the tort of negligence, size does not matter. The constitutive components remain the same. Merely arming students with the autonomy they get from just knowing this, tends to reduce the level of competitive stress to beat their competition for a job that likely has enough weekly work hours to make law study look like a part time hobby.

In my day as a law student, there was a saying the “A” students made good law school professors; “B” students became judges; and, “C” students became millionaires. Viewed with 36 years of hindsight, that proved to be amazingly true.

Responseive to some of the post above, you should know than in more than 25 yeas of administering my own firm, not once has a client ever asked about an associate’s class standing. Typically, we would hire one or two associates near the bottom of their class at some impressive sounding law school in order to dress up the firm resume. To get the work done, we preferred to hire students who evidenced a willingness and ability to work (inlcuding some night school students). Of my four children just graduating from college, I’m not advising any of them to go to law school for the reasons mentioned in Post 21 above.
Posted by Ingrid - 5 months, 2 weeks, 14 hours, 7 minutes ago

Yeah, as a recent law grad, I’m going to have to agree with those who question whether, in 2008, a focus on money is a wrong priority to have as a law student. Before taking a look at the elephant in the room that this article describes as “the depression and anxiety suffered by many students[,]” shouldn’t the Law Student Division first be looking at the other and much larger elephant in the room, or rather the law-school-loan elephant from which the depression-and-anxiety-about-money elephant was most likely born?

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