Institutional Denial About the Dark Side of Law School, and Fresh Empirical Guidance for Constructively Breaking the Silence

In the day-to-day business of legal education there is remarkably little evidence that we are aware of the unhealthy-unhappy-law-student(lawyer) problem.\u27 The core of this article is a description of recent psychological research on the components of happiness and life satisfaction. This research provides an objective framework for understanding the pervasive problems in legal settings and thus can lead to constructive discussion and intervention. I first review empirical and anecdotal evidence of the dark side of law school, the process of denial among faculty, and failing paradigms at the heart of legal education. I then discuss the helpful recent research, and I conclude by suggesting individual and collective faculty approaches based on this research

Institutional Denial About the Dark Side of Law School, and Fresh Empirical Guidance for Constructively Breaking the Silence

In the day-to-day business of legal education there is remarkably little evidence that we are aware of the unhealthy-unhappy-law-student(lawyer) problem.\u27 The core of this article is a description of recent psychological research on the components of happiness and life satisfaction. This research provides an objective framework for understanding the pervasive problems in legal settings and thus can lead to constructive discussion and intervention. I first review empirical and anecdotal evidence of the dark side of law school, the process of denial among faculty, and failing paradigms at the heart of legal education. I then discuss the helpful recent research, and I conclude by suggesting individual and collective faculty approaches based on this research

What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success

This is the first theory-guided empirical research seeking to identify the correlates and contributors to the well-being and life satisfaction of lawyers. Data from several thousand lawyers in four states provide insights about diverse factors from law school and one’s legal career and personal life. Striking patterns appear repeatedly in the data and raise serious questions about the common priorities on law school campuses and among lawyers. External factors, which are often given the most attention and concern among law students and lawyers (factors oriented towards money and status—such as earnings, partnership in a law firm, law school debt, class rank, law review membership, and U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings), showed nil to small associations with lawyer well-being. Conversely, the kinds of internal and psychological factors shown in previous research to erode in law school appear in these data to be the most important contributors to lawyers’ happiness and satisfaction. These factors constitute the first two of five tiers of well-being factors identified in the data, followed by choices regarding family and personal life. The external money and status factors constitute the fourth tier, and demographic differences were least important. Data on lawyers in different practice types and settings demonstrate the applied importance of the contrasting internal and external factors. Attorneys in large firms and other prestigious positions were not as happy as public service attorneys, despite the far better grades and pay of the former group; and junior partners in law firms were no happier than senior associates, despite the greatly enhanced pay and status of the partners. Overall, the data also demonstrate that lawyers are very much like other people, notwithstanding their specialized cognitive training and the common perception that lawyers are different from others in fundamental ways. Additional measures raised concerns. Subjects did not broadly agree that the behavior of judges and lawyers is professional, or that the legal process reaches fair outcomes; and subjects reported quite unrealistic earnings expectations for their careers when they entered law school. Implications for improving lawyer performance and professionalism, and recommendations for law teachers and legal employers, are drawn from the data

Urban public health, a multidisciplinary approach

Urban environment is a highly complex interactive socio-physical system, with competing expectations and priorities. Public health interventions have always had a fundamental role in the control of diseases in cities. WHO considers urbanization as one of the key challenges for public health in the twenty-first century, since cities offer significant opportunities to improve public health if health-enhancing policies and actions are promoted. A multidisciplinary approach is required, but the basic differences existing between technical and health disciplines make the interaction difficult. The multidisciplinary collaboration is still at a very early stage of development, and needs to be further understood and planned. The author concludes stressing the need for a transversal training, but also for sharing knowledge, instruments and methods, involving all the actors in the planning process, to develop a real multidisciplinary approach

Defining and measuring gender: A social determinant of health whose time has come

This paper contributes to a nascent scholarly discussion of sex and gender as determinants of health. Health is a composite of biological makeup and socioeconomic circumstances. Differences in health and illness patterns of men and women are attributable both to sex, or biology, and to gender, that is, social factors such as powerlessness, access to resources, and constrained roles. Using examples such as the greater life expectancy of women in most of the world, despite their relative social disadvantage, and the disproportionate risk of myocardial infarction amongst men, but death from MI amongst women, the independent and combined associations of sex and gender on health are explored. A model for incorporating gender into epidemiologic analyses is proposed