Some of the traits comprising the lawyer personality appear long before law school, suggesting that those who are suited to practice law self-select into the profession. For the most part, the practice of law as it is currently configured is entirely appropriate for individuals with the lawyer personality. In turn, the lawyer personality is adaptive to the practice of law. It allows lawyers to do their work with a minimum of emotional conflict or angst and allows them to provide clear-headed, emotionally detached representation to a variety of clients and causes. The problem is that society as a whole is not satisfied with its lawyers or with law as it is practiced today.
Clients complain that lawyers are too cold, inhuman, greedy, and expensive.
Litigation as a method of dispute resolution is lengthy, inefficient, expensive, painful, and polarizing. While these problems might respond to various interventions aimed at redefining professionalism and reeducating the public, the well-documented problems of lawyer dissatisfaction and psychological distress may remain. Evidence exists that the dissatisfaction and distress are related to certain atypical, humanistically-oriented personality traits among lawyers. Because of the high levels of this distress in the profession, something must change. Happily, change has already begun.