"The definition of a narcissist is one who creates an identity and prizes it above all other things." Defining one's self in light of one's job is symptomatic of narcissists, and is common in lawyers. As if italicizing one's profession were not enough ("I'm a lawyer"), lawyers must create a stronger bulwark by calling everyone else non-lawyers. You don't hear mechanics speak of non-mechanics, or engineers as non-engineers, or physicists as non-physicists. What a person does is not who a person is - at least if you have a healthy sense of self.
The worst job a lawyer can have is that of a temporary lawyer. Unlike in other professions, a temporary lawyer is not someone who shows up to do work commensurate with his education. A temporary secretary, e.g., comes into an office to do secretarial work (perhaps while the regular secretary is out on sick leave). A contract lawyer, by contrast, does not do lawyerly work.
A contract lawyer is placed in a small room, huddled next to other lawyers. There are often cockroaches running around the floor; there is rarely ventilation; and there is never autonomy or independent judgment.
Instead, contract lawyers stare at a computer monitor, reviewing documents to see whether the documents fall under attorney-client privilege. A contract lawyer must go through 60-100 8.5x11" sheets each hour. There is no room to think, since there is nothing to think about. Whether or not a document is privileged is something a smart teenager could figure out simultaneously playing World of Warcraft and listening to an iPod.
After a year or so of contract lawyering, a lawyer is viewed as untouchable. Every heuristic and bias goes against contract lawyers. "If no one else would hire you to do real legal work, why would I?" Not every contract lawyer is hopeless.
For one contract lawyer, there was an out. Guest-blogging at the always-depressing Temporary Attorney Blog, someone with few job options wrote:
A college friend of mine works for Cognizant, a mobile communications technology company. Upon hearing of my plight, he asked me to give him my resume so he could forward it to his friend in the legal department. I hesitatingly did so, knowing in my heart and mind that I would be quickly rejected and laughed at because of all the Contract Attorney experience listed on my resume. My prediction came true: my friend called me a few days after forwarding my resume and told me his friend in the legal department determined that I "didn't have the skill set" they needed. My friend pressed him to define exactly what he meant by "skill set," and he said the following (my friend actually took notes):
1) New York Law School is a joke, a farce. They don't even consider NYLS graduates for attorney positions.
He might be able to get me an interview for a paralegal position though, but it's a long shot. (Mr. Matasar. I AM A LICENSED ATTORNEY, NOT A PARALEGAL!! I SPENT OVER $140,000 TO OBTAIN MY J.D. FROM NYLS AND I'M ADMITTED TO PRACTICE IN TWO JURISDICTIONS!!)
The contract lawyer is desperate for money. Later in the post, he states that he's so desperate that he's going to default on his student loans. His identity is so tied up into his J.D. and bar passages that he'd rather be broke than suffer the destruction of that identity.
The entitlement mentality of common of narcissism. He passed two bars (ALL CAPS! EXCLAMATION POINTS!). He's a lawyer. None of this matters to anyone but himself. No one owes him a job.
His entitlement attitude is self-destructive in another way. What if he took a job as a paralegal? Consider the possibilities for a minute.
A smart paralegal is usually asked, "Why aren't you a lawyer?" Often a paralegal is a lawyer - though perhaps not a member of the Bar. Some people do not want the stress of being a lawyer, and in California, anyway, a paralegal usually gets paid overtime.
A paralegal who can do lawyer-like legal work will soon find himself receiving more lawyer-like work. A paralegal who works and thinks like a lawyer - and who is also a licensed lawyer will - not long be working as a paralegal.
If this contract lawyer is as good as he thinks, then he will soon have a job doing real lawyering. Yet his fake image of himself as a lawyer will prevent him from ever becoming a real lawyer.
He is entitled to better. Because he is entitled to better, he will receive nothing.
Many people wind up like the hapless loser contract lawyer. "I won't dare to that!" Well, why not? Because it's beneath you? If it really beneath you, or beneath the false identity you've created?
Interestingly, it's often the person with the strongest sense of self who will do the lowliest level work when it needs to be done. Of course it's economically inefficient for the CEO to take out the trash. Yet many empty trash cans when it needs done. There is no, "What has my identity become?!" narcissistic injury. A person with a strong sense of self is not defined by taking out the trash.
Will you do what you must do? That is good questions to ask ourselves each day. Often we have no good reason for why we won't. If the best answer is, ultimately, "Narcissism," then we're at least on our way to recovery.
You don't hear mechanics speak of non-mechanics, or engineers as non-engineers, or physicists as non-physicists."
Oh really?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQRaR850iqU
;-)
Posted by: Christopher Tozzo | November 23, 2009 at 06:39 AM
Granted, the sample size is small, but the only paralegals I know who became practicing lawyers were paralegals before they went to law school. I also know a former contract lawyer who broke through the barrier into legal practice - of course, not with a firm where she did contract work.
I'm not seeing how a lawyer who works as a paralegal has any greater chance of breaking into law practice with the firm where he works than one of those contact lawyers in the windowless basement room. Using your example, do you seriously think the partner who will reject a candidate because he didn't go to a "real law school" will suddenly change his mind because he does good paralegal work?
I met some similar partners when I was in law school, and was ruled out for some firms based upon my undergraduate school. Hiring partners that obsess about their firm resume, and sneer at people they have never met because they "didn't go to a real law school", seem more apt to view a NYLS grad's success as a paralegal as evidence that NYLS is a good paralegal school even if not a real law school. Law firms pay know-nothing first year associates salaries well into the six figures principally to protect their resumes from being polluted by perfectly competent graduates of even middle-tier law schools.
Another factor comes into play: pay. Working as a contract lawyer doing document review may be mind-numbing, but it can pay $80-$100K. In most fields of legal practice, that's the most a career paralegal can hope to make. In many fields a paralegal will make substantially less. Absent a substantial reason to believe that a paralegal job is more likely to turn into a regular lawyer job than is contract work, for someone intent on becoming a lawyer, taking the paralegal job may amount to biting off your nose to spite your face.
There's nothing at all unusual about defining who you are by what you do. What do adults typically ask kids they don't know - "What do you want to be when you grow up?" When somebody uses the common ice breaker, "What do you do", they're not asking if you blog in your spare time. The mechanic will answer, "I'm a mechanic," the engineer will answer, "I'm an engineer," and the physicist will answer... "I'm a professor."* If you're arguing that this is unhealthy, and can lock people into a sense of self that revolves around a job, you're right. Yet such is the world we live in.
I largely agree with you, that people invest far too much in their sense of "myself as job". Thinking that way forecloses a lot of alternatives that will in many cases be far more personally satisfying than a career as a [whatever], and perhaps more lucrative. Or if you must be a lawyer, take a risk and hang out a shingle. I personally lost any desire to work with the "NYLS isn't a real law school"-type partner the first time I met one.
* Or perhaps "I create derivatives for Goldman Sachs". Career options for Ph.D. physicists have opened up a bit in recent years.
Posted by: Aaron | November 23, 2009 at 10:18 AM
In every office (all small offices, granted) I've worked in, people are going to get tasked with whatever they can handle. A paralegal who can do lawyerly work is going to get more lawyerly work. Eventually that paralegal (law license and all) is either going to get promoted; or will have a portfolio of real law work to use to get a job as a lawyer in another office.
A contract lawyer has no practical experience or any writing portfolio to shop around. So it's not just the stigma that's hurting him. It's the lack of, "Look at what I can actually do," that's killing him.
The guy I mentioned (read the whole post he wrote) is stuck. He can't even find a job doing contract work now. Yet he's unwilling to slum it as a paralegal. Classic behavioral trap. Repeating the same behaviors that have fucked up your life is going to lead to a better life...How? Yet we all get caught in these behavioral traps.
His current decisionmaking is getting him nowhere. His life is passing him by. If he followed my advice, he's be a "real" lawyer soon enough. Instead, he has no job and might default on his student loans.
Posted by: Mike | November 24, 2009 at 11:12 AM
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[Bradley Johnson, stop fucking spamming my site and others. It's unseemly. You left the same comment at Popehat. If you want to place an advertisement to your piece of shit site showcasing your reptilian smile, write me a check. Thanks, Mike.]
Posted by: seattle criminal attorney | November 30, 2009 at 11:44 AM