The price of 'thinking like a lawyer'

Has being a lawyer changed your outlook on the world?

I've not been practicing long (bit more than a year now but in the field for longer), but I've already experienced that I've grown more cynical, pragmatic, amoral, less empathetic and more distrustful. I've noticed I've become way more proactive and assertive and more capable.

I'm not sure I like the way my worldview is going. I can definitely get more shit done and have an easier time figuring stuff out but I'm starting to lose out on a lot of principles I used to have. I don't want to start to turn into a douche.

Seems like I, like most people, started law school with the intention to bring more justice to the world. I've found that the opposite is true. I'm in corporate law by the way (both transactions and litigation).

The things you do on a regular basis will inform your outlook on life and practice. There is a certain level of detachment that seems to go across the board, because we are all hired to deal with other people’s problems and have to do so without absorbing them….but this may be connected to your practice area and/or client base. If you don’t like it, you may want to do some introspection about how you want to be using your degree and start building toward doing that.

For me, specifically, not really. I didn't go into the law to bring justice into the world, whatever that means. To quote Stephen Colbert, I'm the son of a turd miner and grandson of a goat ball licker. Being a lawyer was a shot at upward mobility for a poor kid who was bad at math and science. I didn't have a whole lot of time to wax poetic with a family to feed and a lot of billables to hit. In a way, I guess I'm a little more surprised at how little being a lawyer changed my outlook on the world in 13ish years.

Super normal feeling. Law sharpens your BS detector and survival instincts, but it doesn’t have to kill your values. The trick is being intentional about where you let the cynicism live (at work) and where you don’t (your actual life). A lot of good lawyers stay effective without becoming jerks—it just takes some conscious boundary-setting and regular reality checks outside the bubble.

I'm no longer surprised at how easy it is to get people to lie, even if they really don't benefit from it. Employees, for example will readily lie on their company's behalf, even though there's no gain to them. Even if they have to do it under oath in a room full of people who know they are lying. And if you pay them, as is the case for expert witnesses, there is almost no lie that is too big.