Stress among lawyers
Elwork and Benjamin (1995) tried to adapt the general model
of stress to the profession of lawyers. They identified the following three
groups of circumstances and characteristics of lawyers and their work
environment—stressors, consequences of stress and interventions. Stressors that
according to Elwork and Benjamin (1995) are characteristic for the profession
of lawyers are related to their workload, tasks and time constraints. In the
form of stressors lawyers also experience strains that result from aspects of
the legal system and of norms and values specific for the communication between
lawyers and other law professionals and between lawyers and their clients.
Strains can also result from unrealistically high or unspoken expectations on
the part of clients and from the responsibility to solve problems that in most
cases affect their clients’ personal lives. An interesting concept is that of
professional mystique based on the theory of Cherniss (1980) and listed by
Elwork and Benjamin (1995) as a possible stressor. The concept of professional
mystique is not specific to the occupation of law professionals but to all qualified
professions. It describes a phenomenon related to the existence of an
unrealistic representation of given profession and its representatives. Because
of this mental representation both sides might have unrealistically high
expectations—on the part of the client that might affect his/her expectation of
a positive result that is impossible to be fulfilled; on the part of the lawyer
that might lead to too high expectations of his/her professional abilities and
work duties. When none of the expectations could be satisfied, both sides would
likely feel disappointed. The third group of stressors in the model of Elwork
and Benjamin (1995) is called personal factors among which are type A behavior,
aggressiveness, analytical thinking. Although Elwork and Benjamin (1995) listed
personal factors under the category of stressors, they assumed that personal
factors might in fact moderate the relationship between stressors and stress
consequences. Näsström and Mesick (2006) found it reasonable to list them in a
separate category.