Can lawyers really be happy? Research the world over is showing us that lawyers are unhappy in very large numbers. Here in Australia, current research suggests that one in three lawyers will experience depression at some stage during their careers. For anyone practising in law or considering it in their future, this statistic is both overwhelming and so very sad. Happy Lawyer, Happy Life is the book for people on the law path who want to live the happiest life they can, at the same time enjoying all that brought them to their law career in the first place. Written by Australian lawyer Clarissa Rayward, Happy Lawyer, Happy Life will give you the tools you need to make the best of your career in the law and, perhaps more importantly, find happiness in your life. Clarissa's own experience of managing unhappiness in her career is combined with the knowledge and wisdom of many other happy lawyers to create this practical guide - a must-read for anyone considering or navigating a career in the law.

You get good grades in college, pay a small fortune to put yourself through law school, study hard to pass the bar exam, and finally land a high-paying job in a prestigious firm. You're happy, right? Not really. Oh, it beats laying asphalt, but after all your hard work, you expected more from your job. What gives? The Happy Lawyer examines the causes of dissatisfaction among lawyers, and then charts possible paths to happier and more fulfilling careers in law. Eschewing a one-size-fits-all approach, it shows how maximizing our chances for achieving happiness depends on understanding our own personality types, values, strengths, and interests. Covering everything from brain chemistry and the science of happiness to the workings of the modern law firm, Nancy Levit and Doug Linder provide invaluable insights for both aspiring and working lawyers. For law students, they offer surprising suggestions for selecting a law school that maximizes your long-term happiness prospects. For those about to embark on a legal career, they tell you what happiness research says about which potential jobs hold the most promise. For working lawyers, they offer a handy toolbox--a set of easily understandable steps--that can boost career happiness. Finally, for firm managers, they offer a range of approaches for remaking a firm into a more satisfying workplace. Read this book and you will know whether you are more likely to be a happy lawyer at age 30 or age 60, why you can tell a lot about a firm from looking at its walls and windows, whether a 10 percent raise or a new office with a view does more for your happiness, and whether the happiness prospects are better in large or small firms. No book can guarantee a happier career, but for lawyers of all ages and stripes, The Happy Lawyer may give you your best shot.

Are you in the throes of a divorce or separation and don't know where to turn? We often joke about the 'D' word (divorce) but if you are or have experienced the breakdown of a family relationship it is anything but a humorous experience. Although divorce is often unpleasant there can be a light at the end of the tunnel.Splitsville- How to separate, Stay out of Court and Stay friends will guide you and your family through the legal issues associated with your relationship breakdown and onto a path to a successful future.Written by Specialist Family Lawyer, Clarissa Rayward, Splitsville provides you and your spouse with the information you need to ensure that after your separation or divorce you can both move forward into a new stage of life without causing each other or your children unnecessary angst. The complex legal process is broken down into clear language to ensure you can gain the knowledge needed to negotiate sensible and sustainable agreements for your finances and your children.If you are considering or experiencing divorce or separation and want to minimise the financial and emotional costs to you and your family then this book is for you.

How you can make use of your law degree—without making yourself miserable. When they enter the field, lawyers seem to have it made—with a high-salary, high-status profession that should set them up for life. Yet, even when they seem to have it all, they often start to feel like something’s off. Their careers have become horribly soul-sucking. They’re managing their lives, sort of—but they feel duped. Trapped. Their “good job” is affecting their health and relationships—and they’re just trying to keep all the plates spinning. Here’s the good news: Beverly Davidek has been there, and in this book she and husband Dirk show how you can find a job that allows for happiness, satisfaction, and peace of mind. If you’re still struggling to find a way to provide for your family without losing yourself, this book is for you. Part Ask and It Is Given and part What Color Is Your Parachute? (but written specifically for lawyers), Happy Lawyer gives you the tools you need to get unstuck in your career and start living your dream.

Each year, over 40,000 new students enter America's law schools. Each new crop experiences startlingly high rates of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and dissatisfaction. Kathryne M. Young was one of those disgruntled law students. After finishing law school (and a PhD), she set out to learn more about the law school experience and how to improve it for future students. Young conducted one of the most ambitious studies of law students ever undertaken, charting the experiences of over 1000 law students from over 100 different law schools, along with hundreds of alumni, dropouts, law professors, and more. How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School is smart, compelling, and highly readable. Combining her own observations and experiences with the results of her study and the latest sociological research on law schools, Young offers a very different take from previous books about law school survival. Instead of assuming her readers should all aspire to law-review-and-big-firm notions of success, Young teaches students how to approach law school on their own terms: how to tune out the drumbeat of oppressive expectations and conventional wisdom to create a new breed of law school experience altogether. Young provides readers with practical tools for finding focus, happiness, and a sense of purpose while facing the seemingly endless onslaught of problems law school presents daily. This book is an indispensable companion for today's law students, prospective law students, and anyone who cares about making law students' lives better. Bursting with warmth, realism, and a touch of firebrand wit, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School equips law students with much-needed wisdom for thriving during those three crucial years.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

A high level of pay doesn't necessarily mean a high level of satisfaction. Written in a fun and inspirational way, this book will help lawyers find a way to happiness in their career and life. Starting with self examination, readers will be able to analyze their personal values and then create their own personal fulfillment plan. Create a step-by-step plan for life and career that will get you back on track with your personal definition of happiness with this important book.

Each year, thousands of men and women make a decision that will ultimately change not only the course but the quality of the rest of their lives: they decide to become lawyers. From the moment that thick congratulatory envelope arrives, accepting and welcoming them to law school, they begin their journey down a road they hope will lead them to a life of worth and personal satisfaction. Unfortunately, for most of them, this road leads only to misery and despair which oftentimes plummets to depths that eventually cause them to leave the practice of law or, more often, remain, resigned to spend their entire professional lives working for people they do not like and on issues for which they have no interest. The Happy Lawyer Handbook is out to change all that, examining the roots of this phenomenon and providing practical advice for law students and young attorneys in how they can avoid this in their legal careers. The Happy Lawyer Handbook provides insight into those practicalities of law practice that are never discussed in the career services office but which will very likely have an overwhelming effect on the entirety of a budding attorney's career. For example, the dangers of being pigeonholed and trapped into practicing in an unsatisfying area of law are discussed as a way of stressing the importance of choosing one's preferred area of practice right out of law school. Once in the workplace, competition among fellow law firm associates and issues relevant to promotion is analyzed in order to provide a better understanding of who gets promoted and why. Intrinsic in this discussion is the importance of job satisfaction right off the bat as a required tool for career advancement. The topic of student loan debt and how to deal with it is likewise a focus of The Happy Lawyer Handbook. Far too many students and young attorneys permit their fears over their student loans to dominate their career decisions, causing them to accept employment positions they otherwise would never even consider, thereby dooming themselves to a lifetime of professional misery. The Happy Lawyer Handbook shows them how to make sense of their student loan obligations, how to put their debt in the proper perspective, and how to avoid falling into a disastrous career spiral. Should young attorneys strive to retire their student loan debt as quickly as possible? Surprisingly, and contrary to popular opinion, The Happy Lawyer Handbook demonstrates how and why this is perhaps the worst thing he or she should do. On a larger economic scale, the book discusses how the combination of new technology and the recent recession has changed the legal employment marketplace forever. It shows readers how to make sense of it all and points out the hidden upsides to seeking legal employment in a down economy. As The Happy Lawyer Handbook shows, it is possible for savvy legal job seekers to use the current fragile economic climate to their advantage to secure the job of their dreams. The key is in understanding the new rules of the job search game. Readers of The Happy Lawyer Handbook will not only learn these rules but, more importantly, learn how to make them work to their advantage.

In Strong Advocate, Thomas Strong, one of the most successful trial lawyers in Missouri’s history, chronicles his adventures as a contemporary personal injury attorney. Though the profession is held in low esteem by the general public, Strong entered the field with the right motives: to help victims who have been injured by defective products or through the negligence of others. As a twelve-year-old in rural southwest Missouri during the Great Depression, Strong bought a cow, then purchased others as he could afford them, and eventually financed his education with the milk he sold. After graduating law school and serving in the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, he rejected offers to practice in New York and San Francisco and returned to his hometown of Springfield. Strong exhibited his lifelong passion to represent the underdog early in his practice, the “trial by ambush” days when neither side was required to disclose witnesses or exhibits. He quickly became known for his audacious approach to trying cases. Tactics included asking a friend to ride on top of a moving car and hiring a local character called “Crazy Max” to recreate an automobile accident. One fraud case ended with Strong owning a bank and his opponent going to prison. When he sued a labor union for the wrongful death of his client’s spouse, he found his own life threatened. With changes in the law that allowed discovery of information from an opponent’s files as well as the exhibits and witnesses to be used at trial, Strong and fellow personal injury attorneys forced a wide array of manufacturers to produce safer products. When witnesses of a terrible collision claimed both roadways had green lights simultaneously, Strong purchased the traffic light controller. After three months of continuous testing at a university, the controller failed, showing four green lights, and Strong learned that fail-safe devices were available but had not been implemented. These fail-safe devices are now standard on traffic lights throughout the country. In his last venture, Strong represented the state of Missouri in its case against the tobacco industry, culminating in a settlement totaling billions of dollars. He reflects on the changes—not always for the better—in his oft-maligned profession since he entered the field in the 1950s. Thomas Strong’s story of tenacity, quick wits, and humor demonstrates what made him such a creative and effective attorney. Lawyers and law students can learn much from this giant of the bar, and all readers will be entertained and heartened by his victories for the everyman.

"It's no secret that individual lawyers are under siege in a profession with a high incidence of stress, divorce, substance abuse, and suicide. In this groundbreaking multi-dimensional collection, you can find tools and information that enable you to have both a successful career and a happy, satisfied life. These tools will teach you how to harness the transformative power of being more relational and less transactional. The earmark of happy lawyers is the development of emotional intelligence, resilience, and mindfulness practice. The book provides the keys to the kingdom, what is essential to thrive in the competitive environment of lawyering. The material comes from recognized experts who provide step-by-step behavioral guidance of what you need to do. The material is easily accessible. Each chapter has a summary and conclusion. Follow the wisdom and it's guaranteed to change your life and career."--