The ‘trapped’ feeling is what can set many negative or destructive actions in motion. I’m not a therapist, but I would encourage you to seek out one and even seek out a life coach. I’d also recommend you look to change practice areas. Experiencing a drop in gross receipts is not unique to divorce law and others are making shifts to other practice areas which seem more promising monetarily, more mobile, less litigious. If divorce is 80% of your practice, what is the other 20%? How can you tap into your client base for additional work, bankruptcy, foreclosures, trusts and estates? You may also have to review your overhead expenses and investigate new processes to streamline your practice and cut costs. There is always a way. The hard and necessary part is for you to regroup, however, and start looking at the raw material you have to work with, reshape and remold it.

For instance, in a Counterpunch article, Levine writes: “Schools are routinely places where kids — through fear — learn to comply to authorities for whom they often have no respect, and to regurgitate material they often find meaningless. These are great ways of breaking someone. Today, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly become places where young people are merely acquiring degree credentials — badges of compliance for corporate employers — in exchange for learning to accept bureaucratic domination and enslaving debt. ” ( http://www.counterpunch.org/levine12042009.html )

I agree with Chuck that the legal profession allows for a certain amount of freedom in fashioning a legal career that fits an individual’s character. However, I would also argue that many of those people drawn to the legal profession dive in without understanding the true constraints imposed by the government monopoly on “law”. Some of the best and brightest minds enter the legal profession with dreams of changing the world and revolutionizing the way people interact. But the legal profession’s expectations are crushing for many of these people, who after being saddled with debilitating debt are forced to fit their round personal peg into the square hole of the legal profession just to pay the bills.

I think there is also an argument to be made that the depression epidemic has sprouted from social conditions in general and that, given the uber-awareness and analytical capabilities of those who enter the legal profession, the profession is obviously going to be predisposed to having higher rates of depression. In my opinion, society breaks people and coerces them to tow the line in order to get ahead or maintain status. There is simply not enough freedom for people to find who they are supposed to be and, beyond that, society is organized in such a way as to destroy the adventurous motivations of people from a very young age.

In short, I see this problem as a combination of the shortcomings of the broader society we’ve built and the legal profession itself. Our profession certainly exacerbates the issue by forcing so many arbitrary expectations upon the practicing lawyer. But those narrow limitations arise from a society that allows ultimate authority to define too much of each citizen’s life. In days past, visionaries and dreamers had the western frontier to explore when they found society too oppressing. Now, there is effectively no escape which is a painful realization for any idealist who believes things could be done differently somehow. In today’s united States, we expect everyone to be utilitarian: suck it up, get the job done, and don’t complain.

In the legal profession, trying to do things differently is a huge risk even if one believes she has morality or justice on her side. That is a crushing reminder of the limitations on being a lawyer in today’s hyper-controlled world.