By Steven Poss
January 1, 2003

I stumbled into a meeting of the Publications Committee and was immediately offered a piece to write, due in two weeks, on lawyer burnout. Quickly scanning my mental list of upcoming memoranda due, research projects, discovery deadlines set, court dates and meetings on the calendar, and family and sporting commit-ments, along with an uncle’s certain funeral in the offing, I accepted. What the heck — a little change of pace to break the monotony of a repetitive bankruptcy practice, and maybe I’ll learn something in the process. One thing I discovered is that one way to assist in avoiding burnout is learning how to say “No.” Too late.
I started my research on the Web, that depository of all knowledge, which puts more options than you can ever read right on your screen. “Burnout” polled a mere 427,000 hits, while narrowing it to “attorney burnout” dropped it to a more manageable 6,550. Fortunately, I quickly learned that these articles reached a lot of the same conclusions. First, burnout is defined as “a cumulative process leading to emotional exhaustion and withdrawal,”1 and as “the exhausting of one’s mental and physical resource.”2 The symptoms, which “are as varied as the sufferers,”3 range from anger, placing blame on external factors, introversion, eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, chronic illness, obsessive workaholism, chronic tardiness, and psychological absence (pay attention!)4 ; as well as fatigue, sleep disorders, depression, indecisiveness, and loss of libido.5 This tells us that the podromals (warning lights — I could not resist sharing this technical term with you) will not be the same for all victims.6
In the legal profession, the causes can be many — overwork, underwork, juggling too many cases and types of cases, dealing with management issues, perceived and real injustices in our system, financial strains and failures, high expectations and unmet internal goals, and boredom, to list but a few. Expectations not matching reality as a stressor, or cause of burnout, as applied to family doctors converts well to most lawyers. “Many doctors go into family practice expecting respect from their patients and peers, only to find that instead of being treated like the venerable family doctor, they’re treated like an employee.”7 How many of us went into law school because we expected to be the object of scorn and jokes? How many of us expected to have our financial success or failure depend on where we spend our advertising dollars? More on that next month.
According to Stephen Berglas, who teaches psychology of management at UCLA, “one of the primary reasons (for burnout) is monotony. Take a corporate attorney. The better you are at corporate law, the more restricted the range of cases and clients you deal with. Sooner or later, you’re making widgets, psychologically. In a career, you feel psychologically rewarded only when you’re building a proficiency. Otherwise, you are replicating something, and that’s dull as dishwater.”8
Now that we know what causes burnout, how do we avoid it? For some, that will not be possible. Many lawyers chose the wrong profession. For others, the profession itself has changed too much. But for the rest of us, from the myriad suggestions and remedies available, I have culled the following:
Bottled Blessings, “formulated remedies for job-specific burnout!”9 The web site failed to include a “Lawyer’s Helper,” but prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers could probably get relief using “Detective’s Helper,” and plaintiff’s counsel can try “Performer’s Helper.”
MIT’s web site offers tips both from the “serious” point of view and from the “MIT” point of view, such as:
“3. CHANGE YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES. If your job, your relationship, a situation, or a person is dragging you under, try to alter your circumstance, or if necessary, leave.
MIT VIEW: If you feel something is dragging you down, suppress these thoughts. This is weakness. Drink more coffee.”10
Sound familiar? Most of us may have experienced and forced upon ourselves the MIT view more often than not. Other serious suggestions in brief include the following: stop denying, avoid isolation, diminish intensity, stop overnurturing, learn to say, “No,” back off, reassess your values, pace yourself, take care of your body, diminish worry, and as Mr. Fornias often helps us to do, keep your sense of humor.11
Other scholars and clinicians advocate keeping a good life balance, developing a strong support system of family and friends, and eating right.12 The latter will help you avoid activating Profactor H, also known as the dreaded “Caveman Gene.” This gene exists in 75 percent of the population and causes all foods to be stored as fat, when — oddly enough — you don’t eat enough fat.13 Really. And you thought you were only going to learn about how to get over that feeling that the appeal deadline looming on the horizon might send you over the edge and on to a career bartending in the Bahamas. The same guru advocates the use of “Interactive Self-Hypnosis” to get over “runaway brain syndrome,” which causes anxiety, sleep disorders, and poor concentration and memory, among other things.14
One of the easiest therapies to start right now is the “power nap,” which helps one to get enough sleep, according to the Stress Doc.15 The Doc also recommends delegating, prioritizing, and exercise to obtain the balance that prevents burnout.
In conclusion, I refer you to a wonderful article written by Christine Corcos, an Assistant Professor of Law, right here in our fair city at the LSU Law Center, in which she suggests “exploiting one’s own interests and talents, and when necessary, acquiring additional skills to enhance them, or inventing an entirely new discipline to take advantage of them”16 to avoid burnout. I guess I did the right thing taking on this writing assignment. Now, if I can only create a market for a well-compensated recreation advisor. Right after my nap.

1 “Are You Close to Burnout?”; Musick, Janine Latus; Family Practice Management, April, 1997.
2 “Managing Burnout . . . With Holistic Mindbody Tools”; Bohorquez, Elizabeth, R.N., SRN, CPH; Sarasota Hypnosis Institute Library.
3 Musick, id.
4 Musick, id.
5 Bohorquez, id.
6 Bohorquez, id.
7 Musick, id.
8 “Nothing Thwarts Burnout Like a Healthy Dose of Rage”; Clifford, Stephanie; Business 2.0; August, 2001.
9 Bottled Blessings Flower Formulas, Job Burnout
10 Burnout Prevention and Recovery; http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/w/c/wchuang/News/college/MIT-views.html.
11 Burnout Prevention and Recovery; id.
12 Musick, Id.
13 Bohorquez, Id.
14 Bohorquez, Id.
15 “Natural Speed I”; Gorkin, Mark, LICSW, for the Small Business Association; http://www.stressdoc.com/Stress_burn.htm
16 “Avoiding Lawyer Burnout: or, Don’t Just Play a Lawyer in Real Life, Try Playing One on TV; Corcos, Christine; http://faculty.law.lsu.edu/ccorcos/lawctr/lawyercareers.htm.