Aguerri 1

Adriana Aguerri

Joel Bergholtz

ENC1102

March 12th, 2023

With Law Comes Stress

Introduction

The objective of my research is that lawyers deal with stress, but what are these stressors;

does something happen because of them? It is important because I hope to be a lawyer like my

grandfather. He is now a retired lawyer, but from the stories and cases he told me, his life's work

has left a sore mentally. I believe others should care about this because lawyers get exposed to

many traumatic cases that leave them troubled, but the stigma on lawyers leaves this unresolved.

My primary research is four academic articles from the UCF library which are peer-reviewed.

Two articles used to advance my research are “the Unseen Cost of Justice: Post-Traumatic Stress

Symptoms in Canadian Lawyers” and “Enduring Occupational Stress: Experiences of First Level

Women Court Judges in Central Philippines.” These articles and the others used for my primary

research for my proposal exemplify tested variables through sampled questionaries with different

variables to see if lawyers are at risk of stress or PTSD and what even is the cause of it. Overall,

my primary research has opened more to me about why lawyers have stress and how it affects

them. However, the reason I feel many lawyers dealing with stress aren’t spoken about openly is

that lawyers must always have this persona to seem unbothered. I believe continuing research in

open spaces like Reddit allows for room for conversation on mental health and the causes for it

when in a profession working with the law. In all, my hopes to be a lawyer are still there, but

how badly will my health be affected by being one?

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Methods

When looking for ways to analyze my question if lawyers retain stress and whether it

causes health complications. A lot of information came up, some were less helpful than others,

but I decided I wanted to keep looking. In starting my research, I went on Reddit, one of the most

open spaces to communicate with a group regarding a topic or even just a conversation between

others that isn’t a study like my primary research showed. Before diving into my research,

methods, and even results from the research. I want to explain that as someone who is not an

avid Reddit user, it took me a while to find what I felt would be enough research to analyze and

see if it answers my questions or brings more questions up. It ultimately took me about three

times to go on Reddit till I decided what I would use for research methods. I feel that as I am

trying to answer my question with my study, it is important to know about this variable because

even though it is not the biggest concern, it still holds a lot of information on how I got the

information I ended up with to enhance the question I’ve asked.

Furthermore, since we are going into depth with methods used for this study on open

spaces, I will discuss my first go-around with Reddit. When I first looked at Reddit, I came

across different objectives as I searched for “lawyers dealing with stress” and “stress being a

lawyer.” What I found from these searches is more just a variety of communities talking about

issues regarding being a lawyer. With my first trial in the Reddit search bar, I found a thread

posted within r/Lawyertalk by u/MMMsomethingintheway 14 days ago titled “Introvert

Lawyers, how do you deal with stress at court?” When I first saw this conversation, I was super

intrigued. However, when I continued reading the commentary, the overall message and

reception from the thread were not what I was looking for. In part of it, I realized it would not

add to the study, and continuing to go into depth was not necessary. Another thread I found was
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someone who’s in partnership with someone who is a lawyer, and even though their focus is

explanatory I wasn’t looking for that perception when it came to stress affecting lawyers. Thus, I

decided to recircle and try to search for new ideas or phrases on Reddit to find a good open space

where I could use my study to analyze how lawyers suffer from stress and what are the effects.

Continuing, my second shot at Reddit was better but I still fell short of finding what I felt

was needed for me to use as data and analyze. This time I decided to focus on typing “stressed

lawyers”, and I got a lot of memes. Even though I found some of the memes to be very funny I

decided that would not be enough to answer my research question. So, I still felt maybe I could

find something, and I thought I did. I found about two posts on lawyers feeling stressed and

holding law firms accountable but there was no discourse in the comments so clearly, I wouldn’t

get anywhere with finding an answer to my research question. Thus, I started to feel a bit

defeated, and my question may not be relevant as I thought. I honestly took daybreak from trying

to look because, after two shots in a row finding nothing, I felt that maybe I would have to

change my whole project and that upset me because my primary research and analysis of texts

from the UCF library showed that my topic research could be done. However, the difference was

that I was reading studies already, and this time when looking for something it had to be more in

line with discourse amongst other lawyers and getting a face-to-face level of something that’s not

just scientific. So far with this research I was perpetually stumped and was trying to find a new

angle for this research project.

Finally, I had a breakthrough in my opinion on what I deemed would be fit to use in this

study to analyze and give a good response to the question I have proposed. The following day I

decided to search up on Reddit, “most stressful part of being a lawyer?” Thankfully that search

was flood gates of discourse that allowed me to start conducting research on my research
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question on what stressors are and what inevitably happens or could happen because of them.

Reddit gave me two different communities to look at which were r/uklaw and r/lawfirm. Once I

clicked into the communities, I decided to check the most relevant posts/comments of all time

and I finally found relevant information to my question. For r/uklaw there was a post asking,

“what is the most stressful part of being a lawyer” and for r/lawfirm the post was titled “Being a

lawyer is brutal”. Therefore, these two communities’ posts are what allowed to me start looking

into their comments. I decided to run my study by analyzing the comments for these two

subreddits. The top three comments for each whether it’s from the arrow that allows to shoot up

a certain discussion, a like on a comment, or if that comment brings a high tract of discourse in

the conversation that many are having an opinion on. Then comparing all 6 comments to see if

they answer my research question after all.

Primarily, I started with r/uklaw and the post “what is the most stressful part of being a

lawyer?” As stated, before I pick 3 comments from the post that answers my questions that either

brought in more discourse or the more relevance’s based off how Reddit presents them.

Whatever # with an uppercase “A” is how I keep track that the comment is from r/uklaw post.

Listed Below are the three comments from r/uklaw post on “what is the most stressful part of

being a lawyer?”

Comment #1A: From Legallawyerlady, saying “Going above and beyond for your

clients yet still receiving a barrage of abuse and/or threats from them. Also being called to the

police station at 3am then still having to go to the office at 9am. Probably everything about the

criminal justice system.”

Comment #2A: From AR-Legal, “After my slightly superficial and sarcastic response, I’d

say that the most stressful part of my job is defending the innocent. Representing someone who
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is blatantly guilty is a piece of cake… what’s the worst that can happen? Your brilliance baffles a

dozen strangers, and the punter will either learn from it or give the CPS another crack down the

line. But when you genuinely believe your client is truly innocent, and they are at risk of their

entire life collapsing around them… yeah, that’s when the sleepless nights kick in. And if the

jury doesn’t see what you see, it takes a long time to move on.”

Comment #3A: From brickboxeee, “Clients”

Secondly, I went to r/lawfirm and went on the post “being a lawyer is brutal” to start

analyzing comments. As I explained for r/uklaw I completed the exact same steps. Except unlike

the comments being filtered with # uppercase “A” also r/lawfirm comments from the post “being

a lawyer is brutal is # uppercase “B”.

Comment #1B: From VitruvianVan, “As you become more experienced, it feels less

brutal because you’re able to avoid some of the aspects that might otherwise subject you to

brutality or you become more adept at dishing out brutality as necessary and reasonable. Still, it

is far more demanding in every dimension than most other careers and leaves in its wake the

wreckage of various others who have tried and failed at it and moreover, the

children/friends/SOs of attorneys who could not balance work and life. Why? Because there

simply is no such balance to be achieved except under certain circumstances, most of which are

not conducive to making money.”

Comment #2B: From FunImprovement166, “Aside from marrying the wrong person or

starting a hardcore drug habit, going to law school is one of the worst choices you can make.”

Comment #3B: From driftwood7386, I don’t drink. But after solo practice for almost a

year I can see why there is such a substance abuse issue with the profession.
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Results

From what I have gathered from both entities on Reddit, I do feel that it has answered my

overall question. I asked what are these stressors; does something happen because of them? From

what I have gained knowledge from in law school and even finally becoming a lawyer is very

tedious. It is a job that needs to be controlled but all the outside variables are always at a dismay

regardless of where you stand from. The r/uklaw showed me in comment #1A that you don’t

necessarily get stressed out from your colleagues but the people who are quite literally paying for

your guidance, even more that the discussion around comment #1A showed many lawyers feel

overwhelmed from their clientele and that even the law system overall causes them to bend their

back even more which just creates stress. She even states how most nights she doesn’t get any

sleep and down the line it is an easy observation that those who are overworked burn out through

stress faster. Comment #2A shares that for them the most stressful thing is representing someone

who they believe is innocent, but the jury isn’t siding with. That it keeps them up at night and

partially because it feels as a job not done right. Comment #3A is the shortest but funniest in my

opinion because there is no context needed for it. Commenter puts “clients” as what makes the

job so stressful for them and ironically it pairs with comment #1A and half of the other Redditors

in the post’s comments. So just from r/uklaw I find that lawyers are stressed from their clients,

the work culture, and not getting enough time to sleep as they must be working on the clock

regardless of when they end or start.

Moreover, the results I have seen from r/lawfirm is quite exactly to what r/uklaw

commenters spoke about. The difference between them is what questions were asked so the

answers can be different, but they all entail the same thing more or so. For instance, in r/lawfirm

comment #1B discusses how with time it gets better and less brutal but regardless it is going to
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very hard trying to figure out a balance in your life and that it is nearly impossible. The

commenter entails that it just ends up being about money and with that the dimensions of being a

lawyer are very hard coming. Comment #2B is more of a sarcastic discourse but it still puts out

that going to law school is one of the worst things one can do. The comments surrounding this

comment even go into that law school is the start of the life of misery waiting ahead by being a

lawyer. Lastly, comment #3B comes from someone who personally doesn’t drink but knows

many who fall to drinking to relive stress. Many other commenters felt the same way and some

even starting how they have turned to alcohol. Alcohol abuse is damaging to the liver and one’s

livelihood. For me these comments answer my long-term question because they show how being

a lawyer is hard to balance life as whole with family or partners, it affects addiction to alcohol as

a passing from the stress, and that even law school itself is an inquiry to a long-term struggle

with life. Both Reddit posts allowed for me to see other sides for lawyers and how clients, trying

to balance life, alcohol, jury trials, and so on holds so much to a lawyer’s life and the stress of it.
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CONCLUSION/REFLECTION

ANALYSIS
“Lens” developed from secondary sources. The secondary sources, hopefully, will give
you some ways to analyze and talk about the comments you are looking at.
Can bring in secondary research back in here
DISCUSSION
Conclusion
Takeaways
Reminds of us finding
Looks at potential future studies (things you maybe could or would’ve done if you had
more time and resources)
Some limitations of study (I only looked at _____, but if we looked at _____, we might
see larger trends)
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Works Cited

Leclerc, Marie-Eve, et al. “The Unseen Cost of Justice: Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms in

Canadian Lawyers.” Taylor & Francis, 10 May 2019,

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1068316X.2019.1611830

TSA, Feng-Jen, et al. “Occupational Stress and Burnout of Lawyers.” Wiley Online Library,

Journal of Occupational Health, 2009,

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1539/joh.L8179

Bergin, Adele J, and Nerina L Jimmieson. “Interactive Relationships Among Multiple

Dimensions of Professional Commitment: Implications for Stress Outcomes in

Lawyers.” Jcd.sagepub.com, Sage Pub, 2015,

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0894845315577448

Gabayoyo, Lunel J., and Dennis V. Madrigal. “Enduring Occupational Stress: Experiences of

First Level Women Court Judges in Central Philippines.” Philippine Social Science

Journal, University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos Graduate School, 2022,

https://philssj.org/index.php/main/article/view/629

Miki, Sharon. “Why Being a Lawyer Is Stressful & 7 Tips to Manage Lawyer Stress.” Clio, 10

June 2022, https://www.clio.com/blog/lawyer-stress/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lawyertalk/comments/112dfsf/introvert_lawyers_how_do_you_deal_

with_stress_at/