By Joel G. Kosman, Esq., LCSW
When you’re under pressure at work, it can be useful to pause and ask a straightforward question: how do I typically respond in these situations?
That question is often more revealing than it first appears.
In most legal environments, the unspoken expectation is that you absorb pressure without much visible effect. So you do what seems to make sense: you push things down, tell yourself it doesn’t matter, move on as quickly as you can. Or the opposite happens — something builds, and then it comes out, more sharply than you intended.
In the moment, these responses feel like they provide some relief. Over time, they tend to create additional problems.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Think back to a recent stressful moment at work. You may have found yourself losing your temper with a legal assistant, arguing more sharply than necessary with opposing counsel, avoiding phone calls or emails you knew you needed to return, or bringing the frustration home and taking it out on a spouse or partner.
These reactions may feel justified in the moment. But the downstream effects are real and professional. Alienating a legal assistant makes it harder to get work done efficiently. Unnecessary conflict with opposing counsel may make negotiating a deal or finalizing a settlement that much more difficult. Not returning calls or emails damages client relationships and creates its own pressures. And you already know what it costs when stress follows you home.
These Are Patterns, Not Traits
One of the most discouraging conclusions lawyers draw is: this is just how I react. There’s not much I can do about it.
I understand that conclusion. After twenty years practicing law, I watched myself and others reach it regularly. It feels honest. It is also, in my experience, inaccurate.
What you are seeing are patterns — ways of responding that have developed over time, often without much awareness. They are not fixed traits. They are learned responses. And like other learned responses, they can be understood and, with practice and patience, changed.
There are no magic bullets here, and changing these patterns takes real effort. But the fact that something requires effort does not mean it cannot be done or that it is not worth doing.
A Note for Younger Lawyers
If you are earlier in your career, this dynamic is often more acute. Junior attorneys typically have less institutional standing, which means you face demands and pressures in an environment you largely cannot change to suit your needs. You cannot make a difficult partner less difficult. You typically cannot control what you work on or who you work with. But what you can work on — and what will ultimately matter more to your career and your wellbeing — is how you respond to those pressures.
That shift in focus — from what you cannot control to how you respond to it — is often where the most useful work begins.
A More Useful Starting Point
Regardless, though, of where you are in your career, the first step is simply noticing what you are actually doing, without immediately trying to change it. Most people have never looked closely at their stress responses because it feels uncomfortable to do so. But you cannot change a pattern you haven’t examined.
From there, it becomes possible to develop responses that are more effective: learning to recognize when tension is building before it spills over, finding healthier ways to discharge the buildup rather than directing it at colleagues or loved ones, and learning how to pause between stimulus and reaction in a way that gives you more choice about how to respond.
This is not about eliminating stress — that is not a realistic goal in a demanding profession. It is about developing a more workable relationship with it. In the next post in this series, we’ll look more closely at what is actually happening physiologically and psychologically when stress builds, and why understanding that mechanism matters for changing how you respond to it.
For more on how work stress affects professional life, visit the Work Stress and Anxiety pages.
If you’re considering whether working together might help, I offer a complimentary 20-minute phone consultation.
Call 914-295-2764 or email [email protected] to arrange a consultation.