pavlak post

A friend of mine recently returned from Australia. He was amazed to find nearly every living creature that walks, swims or crawls Down Under can turn out to be deadly poisonous.

It was incredible, he said – they had venomous toads and frogs and spiders and fish and snakes and centipedes and jellyfish and even a poisonous octopus. Just about anything you met could end up killing you.

What was it about living isolated together on a desert island that turned everyone poisonous?

Amazingly - the author of that text: the people's therapist might be surprised to find that because of Australia's size there's no being isolated together instead there's plenty of space for everyone to roam around with plenty of opportunities for establishing vast personal space on this enormous Island.

But he goes on:

If you are stranded on a miserable island with the same people for a long time, eyeing one another as candidates for lunch, you begin to turn poisonous. Everything turns poisonous.

You watch the damn penguin die, and you’re glad it’s not you.

This Island is paradise on earth, my friend, it is far from being 'a miserable island'.

Because is not enough to trash Australia, he turns to insulting lawyers:

It starts to feel like a law firm, he says.

I gather he means Australia is a terrible dismal place that turns people against each other and makes them super aggressive.

OK, maybe life in a law firm is like that, but if that's nothing like Australia.

This was the reaction from the crowd on the Althouse blog:

Interestingly, I worked in the same law firm he did: I left because I wanted to be a law professor. I was interested in ideas and not so much deals, fights, money, and clients. I'm more the serene, contemplative type and I like self-expression, not expression on behalf of a client's interests. These are just tastes of mine. I've got nothing against the people who like to be out there in the real world making things happen, trying to get things done. You have to know yourself and get into the line of work that suits you.

One time, back when I was a student on Law Review, people were having a big conversation about how everyone there was Type A, when I walked into the room. Somebody pointed out that I wasn't and it was roundly agreed that I was the only non-Type A person there. I was a sojourner amongst the lawyers, and I always knew it. Since 1984, I've been an observer, from my remote outpost. I'm the same way about politics. I think about politics and I write about it, but I'm the furthest thing from a politician.

I practiced law for 16 years. Never for a large firm though, mostly in a small firm (4-10 lawyers) and a few years as as a solo practitioner. One thing they never prepare you for in law school is the ever present contentiousness. Every time the phone rings and just about every piece of mail you get, it's always contentious to one degree or another. The worst of all to deal with were other lawyers, and that's what lawyers mostly do: interact with one another. It wears on you, and after awhile it does things to you. I too left law to teach. It's a much more appealing environment and more personally rewarding too.

Viciousness in a lawyer can be fine when it's directed towards an opponent in a adversarial case and it serves the best purpose of the attorney's client.

Do lawyers hater their jobs? I don't know.

that was from the people's therapist:

Neuroses? Superstitions? Substance abuse? Blackouts? And suicide? are these problems typical for psychologists? How are Freud's successors doing? Or, to put the question another way: Are shrinks really crazy?

above the law