"The Happy Lawyer": UMKC Law Professors Nancy Levit and Douglas O Linder's hypocritically stupid advice to law students and law grads.

Nancy Levit and Douglas O Linder, Professors of Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, have earned a place in my ongoing list of idiotic quotes from law professors, even though most of their quotes are more accurately described as hypocritical and sententious than as idiotic. The quotes come from their 2010 book, called "The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law." First the quotes and then a discussion below.

1. "Law degree offer tremendous flexibility. If you go to dental school—well, plan to spend years looking at teeth. A law degree, on the other hand, can open doors in politics, business, health care, journalism, law enforcement, and other fields where clear thinking and a knowledge of our nation’s laws is valued. Don’t limit your career vision to traditional law jobs. You can consult in an area of your expertise (such as business valuations); be a headhunter; go into arbitration or mediation; look at human resources jobs (such as affirmative action officer); develop real estate; write thrillers (think Scott Turow or John Grisham); become counsel for a school district; use the law degree to teach at the college, junior college, or paralegal level; become an agent in the entertainment or sports industries; manage a baseball team (Tony La Russa); coach football (Vince Lombardi); write poetry (Edgar Lee Masters); create crossword puzzles (Will Shortz); become a sportscaster (Howard Cosell) or broadcast journalist (Geraldo Rivera); become an actor (John Cleese); become a Presidential speechwriter and a game show host (Ben Stein); or even become a community organizer and then President of the United States (Barack Obama). In short, don’t start law school thinking that the sole career outcome is to practice law with a law firm."

Levit, Nancy; Linder, Douglas O. (2010-07-22). The Happy Lawyer:Making a Good Life in the Law (p. 114-115). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

2. "The best elixir is not money, but people. Search for a law school where professors understand and teach the importance of social bonds. Is your prospective law school one where students and faculty play together? Does it hold poker tournaments, faculty-student softball games, or annual skit shows? Do members of the law school community participate in Habitat for Humanity or other charitable projects? Ask current students if they have ever had a beer or a cup of coffee with a faculty member." Id. at p. 119.

3. "Consider how many of your current decisions are motivated by economics—what you can afford to do, and whether you can repay your student loans. Fortunately, this debt may be more manageable than the looming large numbers first make it seem. Lawyers are not minimum wage earners and make a good salary over time." Id. at p. 136.

4. "Unlike some other sources of lawyer unhappiness, feelings about not serving a larger social purpose come from a choice you made. No one forced you to take the job with the fancy downtown firm with its list of well-heeled clients. You could have taken a job with the county prosecutor or the public defender (which one would have given you a sense of contributing to society’s betterment depends upon your own views on law, order, and justice)."  Id. at p. 105-106

5. "Instead of taking that higher paying job at the prestigious firm of Thurston, Howell & Gilligan, how about accepting that slightly less lucrative offer from the seven-person firm in your hometown?" Id. at p. 90.

6.  "Developing social connections with faculty outside the classroom not only enhances learning, it "makes the educational process more meaningful" because professors can often help students reflect on their own values better in one-on-one meetings." Id. at p. 134.

7. "Fortunately, you will probably discover that lawyers in the community are more than willing to be mentors."  Id. at p. 134.

8.  "You may look back and realize that law school did equip you to handle many of the slings and arrows of practice: that you learned teamwork in sharing notes, that the Socratic dialogue prepared you to sharpen your thinking and articulate positions for your clients and to understand that there is no single right answer to "most of the hard questions that real world practice poses," and that as a litigator—and unlike Yogi Berra—you need to be ready to "take both forks in the road."  Id. at p. 131-132.

9. "The range of possible pro bono possibilities is vast. . ."  Id. at p. 197. [1]

Was the whole book as stupid as these quotes indicate? Not quite, which isn’t saying much. I thought that Levit and Linder’s discussion of some aspects of lawyer unhappiness was okay, if very shallow and overlong. They note that humans are "happiness-seeking animals." Id. at p. 226. They look to neuroscience and evolutionary psychology for insights into what makes humans happy. They note that relationships are key to life satisfaction. They recommend working a job consistent with one’s values, and discuss the importance of flexible schedules, autonomy, and maintaining a reasonable work-life balance. Ect.

Now, most of this stuff applies to white collar jobs generally, not just to lawyers. Indeed, in evaluating the unhappiness of practicing lawyers, Levit and Linder are not speaking from long or recent experience. The "employment" section of Levit's CV indicates that her only her experience as a lawyer consists of a federal district court clerkship and a single year of private practice. She has been a law professor since 1988. The biographical squib of Prof. Linder on his law school's website does not include a CV or even a list of positions or dates, but merely states that "Professor Linder is a former member of the Minnesota bar, and has practiced in the areas of environmental law and communications law." Linder has been a law professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, since the mid-1980s--where it is unlikely that his Minnesota bar membership, now lapsed, ever did much good. 

What infuriates me about this book is the near-complete failure to critique law school as a source of lawyer career unhappiness, even in the longest chapter of the book, Chapter 5, entitled: "Preparing for a Satisfying Career: The Law School Years." Why must law schools graduate 44,000 freshly minted lawyers to compete for 20,000-26,000 full-time legal jobs?  Why must they force their students to shoulder debt loads from hell? What about the declining levels of job security that Levit and Linder correctly identify as a source of lawyer unhappiness-- isn’t that ultimately a product of the market-flooding behavior of law schools? These questions are not addressed in their book.

Levit and Linder insistently advise young lawyers to go for that small firm or government job rather than opting for Big Law. Do they really believe that more than a sliver of new graduates have the choice? Or that government jobs are plentiful in this age of austerity? Or that small firms are eager to hire new law grads, even as ever-increasing competition, tort reform, and the growing availability of online legal resources eats into their bottom line? Young lawyers simply do not have the options they had a couple of decades ago. They will be lucky to get a job of any sort in the profession, and their JD is not respected by nonlaw employers. Of course, that is due to larger economic forces. But a new lawyer’s career prospects and opportunities for "happiness" would not be nearly as dismal had it not been for the greedy behavior of law school deans and professors. 

Levit and Linder add stunning hypocrisy to their cluelessness in advising their debt-ridden students that that money can’t make you happy, indeed that "even having higher income aspirations leads to reduced life satisfaction."  Id. at p. 137. If that is really the case, then maybe law professors can set an example by sacrificing their "higher income aspirations" for the greater good of their students and their profession. Yes, maybe Levit and Linder can ask that half their salaries be used to offset student tuition– in the interest of social bonds and trust and values and all those good things they talk about in their book. [2] The professors would merely be discarding those happiness-destroying higher income aspirations. Plus, if they ever did need some extra income, they could avail themselves of the "tremendous flexibility" offered by a law degree and coach a football team, write a thriller, or help launch an innovative comedy troupe, following the example of John Cleese.

notes and additional links.

[1]   Possible possibilities. I guess these happiness experts do not care about the happiness of their readers.

[2] In their book, Levit and Linder assert that: "So, if you earn more than, say, $70,000 (the midpoint of the $50,000 to $89,999 bracket), your absolute salary level should not matter much to your general life satisfaction—you will be earning enough to live comfortably." Happy Lawyer, at p. 10-11. And, yet, according to the University of Missouri employee salary database, Levit was paid $156,750 and Linder was paid $141,250 for the academic year 2011-2012.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/university-of-missouri-employee-payroll/html_6a155f54-6766-11df-bc3d-0017a4a78c22.html?appSession=108244848274722
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/university-of-missouri-employee-payroll/html_6a155f54-6766-11df-bc3d-0017a4a78c22.html?appSession=34744848018658