Have you noticed that lawyers are unhappy and anxious? Obviously, this is a generalization. But for those that know many attorneys, it’s quite obvious that they are different.

The average person makes decisions on a risk/benefit basis. Lawyers on the other hand are often not willing to accept any risks, regardless of the potential benefits.

This is why attorneys often make lousy entrepreneurs. I’ve offered an example below.

I recently posted on a Facebook page for attorneys. The post said that I was willing to let the attorneys post promotional articles for their law practice on my website, for free. This is called guest posting.

They could write about the area of law that they practice, and add their phone number to it. I explained that I earn no money from this. I simply wanted to help them and build a relationship.

Lawyers Are Afraid

Our website gets around 60,000 people on it per month as of the writing of this article. The point of the lawyer writing an article wasn’t to get found by the 60K visitors to our website.

We were able to get so many visitors to our website because we have high domain authority. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this.

The average attorney can’t afford that. Without spending money on SEO, it’s hard to be found by internet search.

The point of the post was that if the attorney wrote about something like “drug offences in Dallas Texas,” it could rank at the top of the first page of Google for that important keyword.

Then when someone who had been charged with a crime in Dallas, Texas saw the article, they would see the author’s phone number. Hopefully, they would call the author.

That was the point. So what happened?

One attorney started questioning me on if I actually make money on the blog or not. She seemed to believe that guest posting was some sort of scam.

Another said that Facebook posts count as backlinks for SEO, and that was the point of the post. This is total nonsense. All social media websites use no-follow links.

And another lawyer thought I was suggesting that a significant number of the 60K visitors to our website would be looking for drug offences in Dallas Texas. He didn’t seem to understand how Google Search works.

The lawyers then started to feed off each other and suggested that I get banned from the group.

It’s always the same when I post in a lawyer group. If the first few comments are positive, the rest of the comments are positive.

If a lawyer posts something negative as an early comment, others quickly think something might be wrong, and they follow.

Lawyers are unhappy and anxious because they follow other lawyers, even when the other lawyer is wrong.

Even when a good opportunity is provided to them for free, they can find ways to manipulate it into something negative. It’s sad to see. This leads to a high alcoholic rate among attorneys.

One example isn’t enough to drive home my point. So I will provide another.

My company recently put up profiles of lawyers in a directory and allowed the public to leave ratings for the attorneys.

Attorneys Follow The Herd

Some lawyers love the profiles, and others hate them (although they can never explain why they don’t like them.) My guess is that they don’t understand what it is, so it makes them unhappy and anxious.

They don’t have time to figure it out, so they just get upset. The lawyers then either contact us to let us know they love the profile, or they hate it.

This always sets off a wave effect at the law firm where they work at.

Let’s make up some names. If Steve Smith works at Dentons Vancouver and contacts us saying he likes the profile, we will hear from other lawyers at Dentons Vancouver in a positive way.

If Jane Stevenson works at Stevenson Law and hates the profile, we will hear from other lawyers at the firm demanding that we take their profile down.

This happens around 10 times per day, both on the positive and negative sides.

Lawyers need to not feel pressured to conform. Think back to your high school days. When there was pressure to be a certain way.

It was super stressful! You are who you are, but you wanted to be more like someone else to fit in.

Even the popular kids were always fighting to be more popular. This is what the legal industry is like.

Lawyers Are Unhappy

Another reason that many lawyers and attorneys are unhappy is that they get paid to deal with conflict.

They deal with disputes every single day. After a while, they assume that the world is full of divorce and lawsuits because that is all that they see.

I encourage all attorneys who read this article to challenge their thoughts. Don’t assume that everything is a scam, fraud, or dishonest.

Don’t discount everything you read as a misrepresentation. Enjoy life. Try new things, and push to grow.

If you liked this article, share it with someone who needs to read it.

I have been trying to lighten up the legal industry.

I’ve been writing fun articles like the below:

Some lawyers seem to enjoy the fun articles, although it mainly seems to be law students that read them. I wonder if law students haven’t yet lost the ability to have fun.

Author: Alistair Vigier is the CEO of ClearWay Law

Why Are Lawyers Unhappy and Anxious?

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