THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 14, 1994 TAG: 9408160510
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
Lawyers need help.
That's the thesis of a new book by Benjamin Sells, a Chicago lawyer-turned-psychotherapist. Sells believes that many law firms squeeze the life out of their partners and associates by stealing their individuality and draining their souls.
Lawyers must fight back, Sells says, by listening to their clients and their spouses and by being more compassionate. Sells, 39, is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of ``The Soul of the Law.''
``I imagine this book as a case study,'' Sells says. ``If you're going to pick a group that carries the American fantasy, that carries the problems of the American soul, you can't do much better than lawyers.''
Recently, Sells spoke at a Virginia State Bar dinner in Virginia Beach. In an interview with staff writer Marc Davis, he discussed his philosophy of law, life and the soul.
Q: After reading your book, I can easily imagine why you got out of law. But why did you get into it in the first place?
A: I liked law. I felt like I had a talent for it. I have a fairly analytic mind. I liked argument. I liked to speak, persuasion, the art of rhetoric. So it seemed like the natural thing to do. So I moved to Chicago, went to law school.
Q: You got fed up with law after about six years, right?
A: It wasn't really a matter of dissatisfaction with it. . . I just reached a point where I knew that I couldn't continue practicing law. I felt like I had other talents and capabilities that weren't being used. More imaginative, intuitive, sympathetic talents that weren't really being served.
The analysis, the intellectual pursuits, the hard edge that you have to use as a lawyer - there's nothing wrong with any of that. The psychological problem comes when it becomes dominant and exclusive. It's not that lawyers shouldn't be analytic or intellectual. It's that that's not enough.
Q: Was there a point at which you realized, ``I can do more than this?''
A: Little things happened, like the cross-examination thing with my wife. She found me one day cross-examining her in my demeanor, in my style of questions. But I didn't know I was doing it. That was like a little light bulb. There was an unconscious process taking place here, and I was speaking with a voice that wasn't completely my own.
There was a comfort and a reassurance to that. Once you learn the legal mind and you learn the processes of it, you know what you're supposed to do and you know how you're supposed to act. People expect it of you. They expect you to have a certain demeanor, a certain way of talking. It's very comforting just to fall into that and stay there.
Q: Journalists are trained exactly the opposite. You never ask a yes-no question. You always ask the open-ended question.
A: You see? That's the point. When you become a lawyer, you're taught to ask closed-end questions. . . You're taught to try to contain things, to order things, to put them in a way that's controllable. The benefits of that in terms of the profession are enormous. But what happens when you start treating your friends, family and loved ones like that? When you go home and all you can do is talk to your spouse in a close-ended style of talk?
Q: But before you get to court, you ask a client a lot of open-ended questions to find out his situation, to draw him out, to find your strong points and your weak points.
A: Yeah, but you see, that's just it.
I'll give you an example: A guy comes in and has a contract. He says he wants to sue his former business partner. So the lawyer's initial impulse - and this is what you're taught in law school - is to try to identify where this problem fits in the law. Is it a breach of contract problem? Is it an intellectual property problem? Is this some kind of partnership problem? You've got to locate it.
So while the lawyer is asking these open-ended questions, the purpose of the open-ended questions is to find the categorical place to put it.
What I want lawyers to do is with one ear listen for the legal part. You've got to put together your prima facia case, you've got to have your elements. But with the other ear - and good lawyers do this - you have to kind of intuit and make some kind of sympathetic connection with the person to find out what is really driving this lawsuit. Q: What was the reaction of fellow lawyers when you told them you wanted to leave law to go into psychotherapy?
A: They were thrilled. You'd be surprised how many phone calls I get from lawyers around the country. They're fascinated. They've always wanted to be a therapist themselves. . . I think that has to do with the fact that lawyers inside want this other connection, they want to be counselors. They want to apply not only their legal training but their human experience.
Q: When I went to the law library looking for your book, a librarian said, ``Oh, that's the guy who writes those touchy-feely columns.'' Do you get that kind of reaction a lot? I mean, lawyers pride themselves as being a pretty tough, cynical bunch.
A: It boggles my mind that people actually think that talk about love and intimacy and honesty and openness and neediness - the things that make us human - we somehow denigrate them and say, ``Oh, that's not real. That's just touchy-feely idealist stuff.''
Well then, what the hell is real? Is our hard-nosed cynicism real?
It hurts me when I hear people denigrate those things. And it angers me, too. I absolutely refuse to give up that ground. I am not going to let people say the discussions of soul are irrelevant, or somehow touchy-feely. I challenge them to tell me the criteria by which they make that decision.
I guess I feel like my job is to be an advocate for this.
CROSS-EXAMINING YOUR WIFE COULD BE A WARNING SIGN
Excerpt from the book, ``The Soul of the Law,'' by Benjamin Sells, published 1994 by Element Books. 190 pages. $22.95.
Once, when I was still practicing law, my wife's car started acting up, so she took it to the garage. That evening, I asked her what the mechanic had said, and she told me, thinking that was the end of it. But then I started:
``Did you ask him about the rattle?''
``No, I didn't.''
``When he said it was the fuel injector, did you ask him whether it was a common problem or if maybe there was something more serious? Maybe a design flaw or something?''
``No,'' she said, looking at me a little strangely.
``Did you ask him. . . ''
``You're cross-examining me!'' she said finally, to which I responded as would any lawyer accused of such a thing:
``I am not!''
Now, I know my wife knows just as much about cars as I do, and is certainly more than able to handle a trip to a garage without my help. So this wasn't some kind of I'm-the-man-and-know-all-about-cars thing. No, something else had happened, something having to do with my being a lawyer. Because she was right - I was cross-examining her. It wasn't even the content of my questions so much as the persistent style of my inquiries, as if I were trying to cover every base, probe every possibility, close every door.
The more I thought about it, the more I came to realize two crucial things about that exchange. First, I hadn't intended to cross-examine my wife. Second, I hadn't been aware that I was doing so. What was going on?
I began to watch and listen to myself and my lawyer friends when we were in non-legal settings. I found that, like me, they too sounded like lawyers almost all the time. Their style of speaking, choice of words, even their physical posturing and bodily gestures had a kind of studied and measured quality that seemed to me to be continuations of their professional demeanor.
In those few instances where I knew folks well enough to risk starting a fight, I would ask their friends, lovers and family if they noticed these lawyerly mannerisms. Repeatedly, these people would instantly nod their heads and say they knew exactly what I was talking about, while the lawyers, just as I had done with my wife, would deny that they were ``acting like lawyers.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
``The Soul of the Law,'' by Benjamin Sells, published 1994 by
Element Books. 190 pages. $22.95.
Sells
by CNB