Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1260829 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Booklist
The professional habits of lawyers can isolate them, driving them to drink or even to suicide. An ex-lawyer turned psychologist, Sells knows the mentality that brings distressed barristers into his office and writes about it in an almost spiritual way without producing anything like the ethereal, God-loves-me idiocy that afflicts pop-psych titles. No case narratives, no self-inventories, not even much psychiatric analysis: Sells omits these in favor of pertinent generalizations about the law, and the adversarial and hierarchical character of its practice, that can sap a lawyer's soul. Diction is a classic example. Admonished to craft drum-tight language, Sells says that lawyers reduce words to a "pseudo-mathematics" that is the death of imagination. On he goes with the field's other traits (objectivity, proceduralitis) that spill into nonwork life, delivering experienced insight for the new lawyer. Fine for the career shelf and as a supplement for law courses. Gilbert Taylor

Ingram
Why do lawyers have the highest suicide rate and the highest alcoholism rate of all professionals? What's happened to truth, justice and the American way? Written by an attorney and psychotherapist who counsels lawyers, this book explains what's gone wrong, why, and what can be done about it.