the Zealous

Personality may play a part. Lawyers are overwhelmingly introverts. Introverts often require more solitude for “recharging.” Add that to a heavy workload that values independence and perfection and there may be little time to build meaningful relationships. Also, lawyers rarely know how to practice self-care. Those serving at-risk and traumatized populations often don’t know how to deal with the emotions they hear of and often take on themselves. This vicarious trauma can lead some,  motivated by a concern about burdening others, to keep their struggles to themselves, thereby creating even more distance between them and their sources of support.

Employers have the specter of their lawyers not only in precarious health but also dispensing legal advice while in a debilitated state. Liability on a number of fronts raises its ugly head, as well as the costs and difficulty of replacing burnt-out workers.

On this day 102 years ago, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a lawyer with serious mojo, was arrested and charged with sedition for leading a campaign of mass civil disobedience against the British in India. After years of frequent arrests and imprisonments in his campaign for independence from British rule, Gandhi, nicknamed "Mahatma," meaning, the "great-souled one," appeared without counsel in the Ahmedabad court before a British judge. He pled guilty to all charges and requested that he be given the maximum penalty. He was sentenced to six years in prison.

What if everyone could know every detail about any person? What if, Matrix-style, you could upload into your brain, on demand, every intimate life experience and detail about any person that you meet? Every weakness and insecurity, every sin and virtue, every insane thought and unrequited longing, every proclivity, kink and quirk, every scar and tattoo, naked and exposed? No fact about a person, in this thought experiment, could be kept private. Privacy simply does not exist.