Learning What Good Lawyers Do

One of the assumptions we often make about professional life is that people become the way they are because somebody teaches them to be that way. We imagine that organisations shape behaviour through policies, competency frameworks, supervision or performance management. All of those things matter, of course, but the more time I spend talking to lawyers, the less I think they explain the deeper changes that take place over the course of a career.

When people describe the lawyers who influenced them most, they rarely mention formal training sessions. Instead, they talk about particular individuals. A partner who always seemed calm under pressure. A senior associate whose preparation was meticulous. A barrister who somehow managed to hold a courtroom without raising their voice. Equally, they remember the people who answered emails at midnight, who were first into the office and last to leave, who always appeared available regardless of the demands being placed upon them. None of these individuals necessarily intended to become role models, but that is exactly what they became.

It made me realise that professions probably teach far more through observation than instruction. Long before we understand the formal culture of an organisation, we begin to absorb its informal culture. We notice who is respected, who is trusted and who progresses. We begin to understand, often without anybody saying very much at all, what success looks like in this particular environment.

That process isn't unique to law. It's how human beings learn. Children watch their parents long before they understand family rules. Young athletes watch experienced players before they fully understand the tactics of the game. Junior doctors observe consultants, not simply to learn clinical knowledge but to understand how a doctor behaves. The same process appears to happen in professional service firms. We arrive with technical knowledge and legal training, but we gradually learn something much broader. We learn what sort of person seems to thrive here.

Reading Laura Empson's work helped me appreciate just how powerful that process can become. Throughout Leading Professionals, she argues that professional service firms operate differently from many other organisations because they rely upon highly autonomous individuals whose expertise gives them considerable independence (Empson, 2017). A managing partner cannot simply direct experienced professionals in the way a production manager might direct a factory workforce. Influence depends far more upon credibility, shared purpose and mutual respect than formal authority.

That raises an interesting question. If professionals cannot easily be controlled from above, why do professional cultures often appear so remarkably consistent?

Empson's answer isn't that professionals are less independent than they imagine. Rather, she suggests that culture itself becomes one of the primary mechanisms through which behaviour is shaped. People come to understand the values of the organisation not because they are repeatedly told what those values are, but because they see them reflected in everyday behaviour. Over time those behaviours become so familiar that they no longer feel like cultural expectations. They simply feel like common sense.

I found myself thinking about that distinction for quite some time because it echoes something we've been hearing repeatedly during the LegalPsych interviews. Lawyers rarely describe external pressure in the way popular discussions of the profession often imply. They don't generally say, "My firm forces me to do this." More commonly they say, "That's just how it is," or "It's what you have to do if you want to do the job properly." The language is revealing because it suggests that organisational expectations have gradually become personal expectations. The standards no longer belong to the firm. They belong to the individual.

That is where I think psychology begins to add another layer to Empson's work.

From a psychological perspective, one of the most powerful drivers of behaviour is not external reward or punishment but identity. Once a behaviour becomes part of the way we understand ourselves, maintaining that behaviour requires remarkably little conscious effort. We don't repeatedly decide to brush our teeth because somebody reminds us. We do it because it has become part of who we are. The same principle appears to apply to professional life. If I begin to think of myself as the sort of lawyer who is always available, always prepared or always willing to take on more, those behaviours stop feeling like choices. They become expressions of identity.

This is one of the reasons I have become increasingly cautious about describing lawyers as perfectionists. The word is used so frequently that it risks explaining very little. What I've heard instead is something rather more nuanced. Most lawyers are not trying to achieve perfection for its own sake. They are trying to avoid letting clients down, missing something important or failing to meet standards they genuinely believe matter. Those are entirely understandable motivations. The challenge is that, over many years, they can become woven into a person's sense of professional worth.

Empson captures part of this through her description of the 'insecure overachiever.' It is one of the most discussed ideas in her work, although I suspect it is also one of the most misunderstood. I don't read it as a criticism of successful professionals. Nor do I see it as a psychological label. Instead, I think she is describing an enduring tension that exists within many elite performers. Outward competence and inward uncertainty can coexist remarkably comfortably. Indeed, they often reinforce one another. The desire to prepare thoroughly, to anticipate every possible difficulty and to leave nothing to chance frequently grows from an awareness of just how much is at stake.

That observation resonated with me because I have seen similar patterns in elite sport. The performers who appeared most confident from the outside were often those who questioned themselves most rigorously in private. Their uncertainty didn't undermine their preparation; it fuelled it. They kept asking whether there was another detail they had overlooked or another way they could improve. In the right measure, that questioning became one of the reasons they reached the highest level.

The question that has occupied my thinking over recent months is not whether those characteristics are useful. Clearly they are. The question is what happens when they become increasingly tied to identity rather than performance. There is a subtle but important difference between wanting to prepare thoroughly because the case deserves it and feeling unable to stop preparing because stopping creates discomfort. The behaviour may look identical from the outside, yet psychologically the two experiences are very different.

Perhaps this is where Empson's idea of 'comforting social control' becomes particularly valuable. It is an unusual phrase because it combines two words that we rarely place together. Control normally implies restriction, while comfort suggests safety or reassurance. Yet, the more I reflected on her argument, the more I wondered whether this is exactly how many professional cultures exert their influence.

The culture doesn't simply tell us what successful lawyers do. It reassures us that we are becoming the kind of lawyer we hoped to become. Working hard feels satisfying not only because the work is meaningful but because it confirms that we belong. Meeting high standards reinforces our identity as competent professionals. The organisation doesn't have to compel commitment because, over time, commitment becomes one of the ways we reassure ourselves that we are living up to our own expectations.

That strikes me as a very different way of thinking about overwork. Rather than viewing it purely as a response to external demands, Empson invites us to consider how professional cultures gradually shape the internal standards by which people judge themselves. It is a subtle shift in perspective, but I think it helps explain why changing behaviour is often so much harder than simply encouraging people to work fewer hours.

The challenge is no longer just about workload.

It is about identity.

And once identity becomes involved, understanding how people change over time becomes a much more complex psychological question.

Reference

Empson, L. (2017). Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas. Oxford University Press.