By Zachary Rothwell
Sarah sits at her desk at 11:47 p.m., reviewing a motion for summary judgment for the fourth time. It’s well-researched, well-written, and ready to file. But she can’t stop herself from reading it again, convinced it’s not quite right. Her partner needs it in the morning, yet Sarah has spent two hours adjusting transitions and reorganizing footnotes. Her shoulders ache. Her eyes burn. And beneath it all, there’s a quiet, gnawing fear: What if it’s not good enough? What if I miss something? What if this is the one that makes them realize I don’t belong here?
If you identify with Sarah, you’re not alone. The legal profession attracts perfectionists for good reason: precision matters. A missed filing deadline, an overlooked precedent, a poorly drafted clause can cost clients their case. The drive for excellence that got you through law school is often what makes you effective. But that same drive can cross a line and become destructive. That’s the paradox: What makes you good at your job can be what destroys your well-being.
Having high standards is admirable, but perfectionism isn’t simply about standards or work quality. At its most destructive, perfectionism becomes a complex psychological pattern characterized by setting excessively high performance measures, engaging in overly critical self-evaluation, and worrying about making mistakes that go far beyond their natural consequences. For lawyers, this can feel like a constant internal trial where you’re simultaneously the prosecutor, the defendant, and the judge who never rules in your favor.
The pressure is real. Your client’s trust, your reputation, and sometimes even people’s lives rest on the decisions you make. But when perfection becomes rigid and fear-driven, it can deepen the very vulnerability it claims to shield. The distinction matters: Not all perfectionism looks the same. The question isn’t whether you pursue excellence. It’s how you pursue it, and at what cost.
Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Perfectionism
There’s nothing wrong with aiming high. What matters is whether your touchstones serve your growth or become self-destructive.
Adaptive perfectionism is the healthy pursuit of excellence. You set lofty yet achievable standards, take genuine satisfaction in work well done, stay flexible when circumstances change, and treat mistakes as feedback while recognizing when something is “good enough.”
Maladaptive perfectionism is relentless. You set unrealistically high, sometimes impossible standards, think in all-or-nothing terms, are harshly self-critical, and are driven more by fear than aspiration. When efforts fall short, you struggle to recalibrate and may either double down on the same approach or walk away altogether.
Consider three scenarios to understand the difference.
Trial Prep
Adaptive: You prepare thoroughly, develop your themes and questions, and create outlines that guide you while leaving room for flexibility. You feel nervous before beginning, which sharpens your focus, but you trust your preparation.
Maladaptive: You spend untold hours scripting out every possible question and response, trying to eliminate all uncertainty. You lie awake the night before trial running through scenarios, convinced that any deviation from your plan will expose you as incompetent. You feel like an imposter despite winning your last six trials.
Contract Review
Adaptive: You review the acquisition agreement carefully, flag genuinely problematic provisions, and move on when the language is standard boilerplate.
Maladaptive: You redline the same sections for six hours, convinced there’s something you’re missing. You rewrite perfectly adequate clauses because they’re not “quite right,” even though opposing counsel will just change them back.
Delegating to Associates
Adaptive: You assign the research memo, provide clear direction, review the work, offer feedback, and file it.
Maladaptive: You rewrite the entire memo at midnight because it’s not how you would have done it, even though it was perfectly competent. You’re training your associates to believe that their work is never good enough because yours never feels good enough either.
When Perfectionism Becomes Costly
When the pursuit of perfection becomes rigid and fear-driven, and when absolute perfection becomes the standard for every task, starting feels overwhelming and finishing feels unsafe.
Professionally, this shows up as delay and over-investment in minor details. Decision-making grinds to a crawl as the fear of being wrong leads to paralysis or excessive consultation. The longer this pattern persists, the more energy it drains. Constant internal pressure and the inability to feel done fuel burnout and, ironically, lower work quality. Team dynamics suffer, too.
Overcritical supervision, difficulty delegating, and mistrust of colleagues erode collaboration.
You see this play out in the associate who has revised the same client email 12 times because they’re terrified of sounding stupid. The public defender carrying so much guilt about the clients they couldn’t save that they can barely function. The in-house counsel who volunteers for every project to prove their value, then drowns in commitments they can’t meet. The corporate partner billing 2,400 hours while convinced everyone will discover they’re an imposter.
When perfectionism becomes unhealthy, chronic stress can activate the body’s alarm systems, contributing to physiological problems such as insomnia, headaches, gastrointestinal issues, and cardiovascular strain.
The numbers are stark: In the 2016 ABA–Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation study of 12,825 lawyers, about 28 percent screened positive for depression, 19 percent for anxiety, and 20 percent for problematic drinking.
When there is little left for life beyond the office, relationships pay the price. When you’re exhausted, irritable, or mentally preoccupied with work that “must be perfect,” loved ones feel secondary. The work expands; the benefit does not.
Hidden Connection to Shame
As a therapist who specializes in helping lawyers under stress, I’ve seen many of my clients uncover a connection between perfectionism and shame. In Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Brené Brown describes shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” For perfection-driven lawyers, these impossible standards often mask a deep-seated belief, formed in childhood and reinforced through legal training, that if people see your mistakes, limitations, or vulnerabilities, they will see the “real” you, the one that isn’t “good enough.” Perfectionism becomes a defense mechanism against shame: If I can just be perfect, no one will discover that I’m actually inadequate.
In a profession where confidence and competence are expected to be on constant display, shame has nowhere to go. You can’t let your client see that you’re uncertain. You can’t let opposing counsel sense weakness. You can’t let your partners know you’re struggling. So, the shame gets buried, pushed down, and ignored. But it doesn’t go away. It remains hidden and growing in the shadows.
Breaking this cycle doesn’t require lowering your standards or accepting mediocre work. It requires changing your relationship with the standards themselves. Managing perfectionism means developing a relationship with your drive for excellence that serves rather than sabotages you. It’s about shifting from maladaptive patterns toward adaptive ones. Here are three practical strategies:
1. The colleague test. One way to distinguish professional standards from personal anxiety is to ask yourself: If a colleague submitted this work, would I consider it ready? If yes, but you still can’t stop revising your own, that’s anxiety.
2. Wave to it. Instead of either ignoring difficult thoughts and feelings or being consumed by them, simply acknowledge them. Wave to them like you would to a friend you see across the street: I see you. I can’t chat right now, but I’ll reach out when I have a minute.
Think about walking into a store where staff ignore you versus one where someone says, “I’ll be with you in a moment.” Being acknowledged matters. When we avoid difficult feelings, they find ways to get louder. Simply noticing thoughts (I see you, anxiety) reduces their need to escalate. This doesn’t mean you are excusing them. Once you acknowledge that something exists, then you can start to change it.
3. Box breathing. Breathing. It seems simple. It is. And it works. Box breathing goes like this:
Inhale through your nose for four counts.
- Hold your breath for four counts.
- Exhale through your nose or mouth for four counts.
- Hold for four counts.
- Repeat for four to eight cycles.
You can use it in a high-stakes meeting, during a difficult call with a client, when you’re spiraling about a mistake, or at midnight when your mind won’t stop running through tomorrow’s arguments.
When you’re stressed, your sympathetic nervous system sounds the alarm: heart racing, shallow breathing, tense muscles. This response is great for running or fighting, but not helpful for thinking clearly during a deposition. Box breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system, calming the stress response and interrupting rumination.
Benefits of Therapy
These strategies are valuable in the moment, but they don’t address the underlying patterns that drive maladaptive perfectionism. If your perfectionism is causing constant anxiety and affecting your work, health, or relationships, therapy can help you understand and change those patterns.
Seeking therapy isn’t an admission of weakness or failure. It’s a strategic decision to optimize your performance and well-being, the same way hiring an expert witness or consulting with a specialist in an unfamiliar area of law is a strategic decision.
Lawyers often ask: If I stop being so hard on myself, will I become mediocre? No. Therapy doesn’t lower your standards. It helps you distinguish between standards that serve you and anxiety that sabotages you. You’ll still prepare thoroughly for trial, just without lying awake at 3 a.m. rewriting your opening argument for the 15th time.
Managing anxiety means clearer thinking during depositions and negotiations. Strategic judgment improves when fear doesn’t drive every decision. Better sleep restores energy. Your relationships with colleagues, supervisors, and mentees strengthen when you’re not projecting impossible standards onto them. You cannot sustain professional excellence when your personal life is in crisis.
Beyond professional gains, therapy addresses what perfectionism costs you personally. You can be present at your kid’s soccer game without mentally drafting a brief. You can have dinner with your partner without half your mind staying at the office. You can rest without guilt. Eventually, you stop needing constant activity to feel productive. You gain the capacity to sit still without anxiety driving you to the next task.
If you’re using alcohol, work, or other behaviors addictively to manage stress, therapy helps you break those patterns before they break you, your career, or the ones you love. Ultimately, you develop confidence based on competence rather than fear as well as relationships built on authenticity rather than performance.
If you’re considering therapy, look for someone who works with lawyers or other high-achieving professionals. Ask how they approach perfectionism. Many people find that managing perfectionism only at the surface level, without exploring what drives it, feels like trying to keep a beach ball underwater. The pressure provides temporary relief, but the underlying issues eventually resurface. A sustainable approach involves both practical strategies for the present and deeper exploration of where perfectionism comes from and what it’s protecting you from.
Consider practical factors: evening or early morning appointments, online scheduling, cancellation policies, virtual sessions, and whether the therapist accepts insurance. Many qualified therapists don’t accept insurance, so you may need to factor cost into your budget.
The D.C. Bar Lawyer Assistance Program offers free, confidential support at dcbar.org/for-lawyers/lawyer-assistance-program.
The Bottom Line: Healthy and Successful
Managing perfectionism isn’t about compromising on quality. It’s about reclaiming the energy you’re wasting on anxiety and redirecting it toward the work that actually matters. You can still be an excellent lawyer. You can still win cases, advise clients brilliantly, and build a distinguished career. You just don’t have to sacrifice your health and relationships to do it.
Sarah, still at her desk at 11:47 p.m., takes a breath. Four counts in, hold, four counts out. She asks herself: If a colleague submitted this motion, would I approve it? Yes. The anxiety rises. What if you’re wrong? She waves to it: I see you. Not now. She closes the document and sends it to her partner. Tomorrow she’ll consider whether she wants to understand this pattern more deeply. Tonight, this is enough.
Zachary Rothwell, founder of The Unhappy Professional, is a therapist specializing in lawyer well-being.
