From Ballistic to Holistic

Angry and depressed by win-at-any-cost legal work, a growing number of lawyers are seeking peace of mind

Pollak's work literally made her sick. Every time she was due for court, she would vomit and have diarrhea. "I chose this profession because I wanted to be of service to people and to our greater society," she recalls, "but I didn't feel the system I found myself in encouraged that. The whole environment was very toxic."

I thought I wanted to be a lawyer once. One time while I was in college about 10 years ago, I got a job as a runner for a group of lawyers. What I saw in a few months time changed my mind. There were plenty of times when I got home from a day at the courthouse that I really felt like I needed to take a shower. One day when I was driving home I had to pull off the road and throw-up. This happened because one of the lawyers I worked for had really pestered me to let him know the second that I had this one appeal filed for one of his cases. Turned out the appeal that I filed was going to get a convicted murderer cut loose because of a procedural error that got some evidence thrown out. I asked the lawyer (after I found out what the whole story was) if he thought this was a really good idea. He told me that he didn't care because a murderers money spent just as good the money of an innocent man. I quit and changed my major the next week.

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