Unhappy Lawyers and the Cooperative Hard Wire
Why are We Unhappy?
Maybe it's Because We're Hard Wired to Cooperate
By and large, we're liberal arts majors, right? Theater, film, literature, and art history people. Political scientists, philosophers and sociologists. We like mental puzzles. Not the teasers that undid most of us in math class. No, we like problems that require us to be good at analogies and story telling. To sharpen our Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew detective skills. We're good at figuring out who killed Colonel Mustard in the drawing room. We're born litigators.
And the fighting part? Most of us complain. But it's part of the job so we roll up our sleeves and throw our natural competitive spirit at it. Still, all that good feeling about solving the complicated antitrust problem usually comes to a grinding halt just about the time the opposing brief comes in. I'll admit it if no one else will. I wince when I read these responsive briefs. I mean, I sit at my desk shaking my head and looking at the damn thing sideways as if it would be easier to take if I snuck up on it slowly. Then I pray that they've cited the wrong case, failed to shepardize their most compelling authority, been guilty of the shamelessly misleading ellipsis.
When friends ask me what it is I do during the day if I’m not giving closing arguments to a jury every week like William Shatner does on Boston Legal, I explain it this way: Every morning when I get up, someone else is also preparing for their day. And those people will be dedicating a large part of that day to making me look bad. To finding my mistakes and undermining my opinions. To suggesting that I am -- or directly accusing me of being -- a liar.
"Gee," they respond, "that sounds terrible," before I go on to assure them that I actually enjoy winning and, hey! if you want to win, you've got to suck up a fair amount of losing. At which point they understandably walk away figuring I deserve my lot.
We're Hardwired to Cooperate
So I don't know if it's good news I have to share with you or not. For those pursuing a more cooperative or collaborative legal process, I hope the news is good. Here it is. Neuropsychiatrists who have been taking MRI images of their students' brains during collaboration have discovered that the act of cooperating with another person makes the brain light up with joy.
Sources: Emory Brain Imaging Studies Reveal Biological Basis for Human Cooperation; Gintis, Bowles, Boyd & Fahr, Explaning Altruistic Behavior in Humans (2003) 24 Evolution and Human Behavior 153; Stevens & Hauser, Why Be Nice? Psychological Constraints on the Evolution of Cooperation, Trends in Cognitive Sciences;
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