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Are you a disillusioned lawyer?
- Steph Turner
- Dec 7, 2024
- 9 min read
Updated: Dec 11, 2024
Are you disillusioned with lawyers? Do you long for a different career?
Become a need-responder. You give up the adversarial role of attorney to mutually apply the law to everyone's benefit.
Get in on the ground floor and help co-create this amazing alternative to legal services. Help us all resolve more needs to help us improve our overall wellness.
Which do you prefer?
Remain working in a profession you find dissatisfying, hoping somehow things will get better.
OR
Join efforts to co-create a fresh alternative for accountably responding to your needs.
When prompting ChatGPT for the “top reasons lawyers can be disenchanted with practicing law,” it offered these 15 pain points. See how the new professional service of need-response answers each one.
Click on the listed item to go there instantly. Return to this list by clicking on any header below in green text.
After each of these items below, see how need-response can be far, far better. Click the right arrow to expand the text.
After each point below, see how need-response can be far, far better. This is where you can join the effort. You are welcomed to respond to this vision, add to it, critique it, and help shape this alternative. Join us in resolving more needs to improve our overall wellness, which the law itself can never do.
According to ChatGPT, “Lawyers can become disenchanted with practicing law for a variety of reasons. Here are some common ones.”
“Law is a high-pressure profession with tight deadlines, heavy caseloads, and significant client expectations. This constant stress can lead to burnout over time.”
Need-response shares the heavy lifting with the client’s support team.
If choosing to become a professional need-responder, you learn to replace the law’s adversarial approach with a more need-responsive alternative. The adversarialism of the legal process unnecessarily creates stress for all sides.
Need-response replaces stressful adversarialism with amicable mutuality. Instead of the pressure of pursuing win-lose outcomes to offer relief to the winning side, need-response pursues amicable win-win outcomes beneficial to all sides.
You only take on the cases you know you are sufficiently qualified to oversee. Each client’s support team alleviates the caseload. Clients must first demonstrate they are fit for this alternative, so you can redirect any unfounded expectation to their agreed terms of service.
“Long hours, frequent overtime, and the expectation to always be available can make it challenging to maintain a healthy work-life balance.”
Need-response grants you more space to live your life fully.
As a professional need-responder, you spread the workload to your client’s support team. They step up to perform the more monotonous tasks, like factchecking. You no longer must sacrifice your precious time to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T’.
Your role evolves into a coordinator, as you nurture team members to become need-responders in their own right. You delegate tasks to them to help them grow their responsiveness to needs, as you savor more time for your personal development and private life.
“Some lawyers find that their work doesn’t align with their personal values or passions, particularly in roles that feel more transactional than meaningful.”
Need-response features a noble cause that provides meaning to your efforts.
As a professional need-responder qualifying in specialized areas, you connect with clients requiring your specialized assistance. You agree to support clients with a wellness cause you personally support.
Instead of impersonal interactions serving flexible law, you engage in personal enrichment directly serving client’s inflexible needs. Instead of offering pain relief for the winning side in a court battle, you offer meaningful resolution of needs on all sides of a conflict or situation.
The whole process prioritizes universal values enshrined in our most sacred texts. Incentivizing responsiveness to needs among those in authority is about the only thing that remains transactional, giving them a taste of their own medicine.
“The financial burden of law school loans can weigh heavily, especially if the lawyer's salary doesn’t meet their financial needs or expectations.”
Need-responders creates opportunity to earn a lucrative income.
As a professional need-responder, you have opportunity to exponentially increase your income. You help your client attract enough crowdfunding supporters to cover your basic rate.
You then lead your team to incentivize powerholders to convert from the free Sufficiently Responsive program to a Competitively Responsive program. Even more lucrative income opens up to you if converting an inspiring leader into the Transformatively Responsive program.
Income streams could easily outpace your student loan and other regular financial commitments. Especially early one when demand for your services could compel you to raise your rates.
“Managing clients who are unreasonable, demanding, or emotionally draining can contribute to job dissatisfaction.”
Need-response screens a client’s fit for the need-response approach.
As a professional need-responder serving qualified clients, you rarely if ever have to serve an emotionally demanding client. The process requires such clients to be represented by someone they personally know and trust.
You then interact instead with the person granted power of attorney. You keep your hands free to help this ally grow the support team.
Along the way, you address the needs that fuel the emotional intensity of such clients. To the point they no longer have cause to be so emotionally demanding.
“For many, practicing law involves a lot of repetitive tasks like document review, drafting, and administrative duties, which can feel unchallenging or tedious over time.”
Need-response shifts such work to support team members and AI.
As a professional need-responder, you spread the workload to your client’s support team. They step up to perform the more monotonous tasks, such as factchecking.
Perhaps some monotonous legal tasks can be delegated to qualified artificial intelligence and checked. More demanding legal tasks can be assigned to a hired lawyer with our business associate agreement.
Your role remains more of a coordinator, to oversee the process of greater responsiveness of all involved. You let others handles the minutia that makes your professional role go more smoothly.
“Constantly dealing with conflict—whether in litigation, negotiations, or disputes—can take a psychological toll on some lawyers.”
Need-responders turns conflicts into opportunities for beneficial mutual support.
As a professional need-responder in a field emphasizing mutuality, you rarely if ever deal with litigated conflicts or disputes. Need-response incentives you and others to negotiate in good faith, toward the mutual benefit of all involved.
Your wellness potentially improves as you guide your clients to improve their wellness levels. You see the value of shifting from adversarialism—of constant conflicts—to mutual support that results in more needs resolving. And better wellness outcomes among all those involved.
You drop the adversarial role of attorney. You never advocate for one party against another. You apply the law equally to everyone’s inflexible needs. Where necessary, you step above the minimal standards of law and stretch outside the bounds of adversarialism.
“In some legal fields or firms, the path to advancement can be slow, uncertain, or overly competitive, leaving lawyers feeling stuck.”
Need-response offers new paths for professional success and prestige.
As a professional need-responder in a pioneering new field, your path to career advancement could be unprecedented. Where competition emerges, you simply narrow your offerings to an underserved niche.
As one of the first professional need-responders, you could trailblaze and truly make a name for yourself. You may find yourself in high demand.
Powerholders could gladly invest hundreds of dollars in your sweet alternative to the less valuable adversarial status quo. Instead of seeking partnership in some law firm, you could lead an agency creating far more valuable outcomes than any law firm ever could.
09 Firm Culture
“The culture of certain law firms can be toxic or overly focused on billable hours, making the workplace feel impersonal or unsupportive.”
Need-response stays accountable to improved wellness outcomes.
As a professional need-responder, your bottom-line hinges on how well you help your client resolve their inflexible affected needs. Billable hours play a minimal role.
You shape the culture of your agency by the improved wellness outcomes of your clients. Instead of a cutthroat atmosphere, your agency works together to brand itself as more responsive to needs than available alternatives.
You work with your need-responder colleagues on what you can delegate to responsible support team members. Your work incentivizes you toward more personal connections and mutual support.
“Clients increasingly demand quicker results, lower fees, and more accessible communication, which can increase stress and decrease job satisfaction.”
Need-response creates prompt improvements at lower costs with transparency.
As a professional need-responder, you screen clients for readiness for this pioneering alternative. You recommend or may even require clients to take on an ally, if they present a lack of discipline to stick with the mutually agreed terms of service.
You forward the same standards to onboarded support team members. And later to the powerholders you interact with on your client’s behalf.
Unlike legal services, you train your clients and onboarded team supporters to stretch their resilience. You encourage them to turn any difficult challenges into opportunities to outshine lackluster powerholders. They get all this at a cost far less than individually hiring a lawyer.
“The legal profession has high rates of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse, often exacerbated by the stress and demands of the job.”
Need-response prioritizes everyone’s affected needs to improve overall wellbeing.
As a professional need-responder, you focus on your own wellbeing along with the wellbeing of those you serve. You never let the demands of your role undercut your reputation to proactively respond to needs.
Need-response helps you identify any source of your own anxiety and depression. You learn to be more responsive to your neglected needs, so as not to fall trap to coping behaviors.
The more you turn your own personal challenges into opportunities of growth, the more you brand yourself to future clients. You model to them what need-response can also do for them.
“Lawyers can face moral conflicts when representing clients or causes that conflict with their personal beliefs.”
Need-response identifies the needs behind moral conflicts.
As a professional need-responder trained to identify and address needs, you will to be better equipped to handle ethical situations. You will quickly spot the inflexible needs and those needs exposed to dangerous influences of the powerful.
All professional need-responders and agencies answer to the oversight of the Anankelogy Foundation, or its delegated oversight committee. Which you could possibly serve as a trusted member of the need-responder community.
You guard the integrity of this new profession by promptly identifying ethical situations. And offering need-responsive solutions. Everyone gets held accountable to the measurable wellness outcomes of clients, and helped to deliver that priority.
“In some areas, there are more lawyers than opportunities, which can result in underemployment or the need to take on less desirable cases.”
Need-response opens an untapped market for creating new kinds of value.
As a professional need-responder serving a brand-new market, you likely will find more opportunities than you can fill. Demand for your specialized service should motivate you to train support team members as the next generation of professional need-responders.
As others start to compete for your market share, you learn to specialize even further as you find an untapped niche. Since you are among the first in this marketplace, you will be among the first to “kick it up” and serve those in positions of power to improve their earned legitimacy. Which can evolve into a lucrative source of income for you.
“Solo practitioners or those in small firms often experience income instability, especially during economic downturns.”
Need-response financially backs cases not generating sufficient revenue.
As a professional need-responder answering to a nonprofit, you are guaranteed a steady income as long as you are demonstrably creating value for clients and their support teams. When you first meet with a new client who is using the free trial period, your time and effort gets compensated by the Foundation.
Once you take off and attract revenue—first with an expanding crowdfunding campaign and alter with earned legitimacy support—your income then grows to new bounds. You will be asked to remit the amount fronted to you, to get you started, but you are not required to compensate this grant. You simply have opportunity to demonstrate your responsiveness if you can “pay it forward”.
“The focus on billable hours, profitability, and meeting financial targets can overshadow the human aspects of the profession.”
Need-response economically incentivizes the priority of improved wellness.
As a professional need-responder under the umbrella of a nonprofit, your incentives prioritize wellness. You learn to focus more on improving wellness outcomes than the economic bottom line of others.
The focus on need keeps us accountable to see money as merely a tool. Need-response incentivizes you to put your interpersonal connections ahead of impersonal financial clout.
As the Cree Indian proverb puts it, “you can’t eat money.” You connect deeper with clients than you ever could as merely a lawyer.
ChatGPT adds, “Addressing these challenges often requires a reassessment of career goals, seeking support, or exploring alternative roles within or outside the legal profession.” Need-response can be that viable alternative.
Instead of advocating for your client to win in a legal battle, you incentivize all sides to mutually support resolving each other’s affected needs. Instead of offering relief for the winning side, you support all sides to resolve their inflexible needs.
Does this speak to you? Can you see yourself embracing the opportunity to become a need-responder?
Thank you for your interest. Follow developments by listening to the Need-Response podcast each Wednesday, starting 30 April 2025.
Let’s build this amazing service that can more effectively serve your overlooked needs.
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