If you’ve ever sat through a juried trial, you know one thing: lawyers are not there to get at truth. Lawyers are there to win their case. Extreme bias for combats extreme bias against, hired specialists paint diametrically opposed scenarios, and if you happen to be a juror your head and stomach get tied in knots in the drawn-out dead-boring struggle for the glittering prize—the verdict.

I walked out of my first jury duty knowing I’d added my own bias to the fierce legal biases; once I’d touched the thick metal pins that held the defendant’s knee together after his motorcycle collided with a truck, my impartiality vanished. Suffering warranted remuneration, and this man had suffered.

Was justice served?

I bring trials up because a couple of weeks ago, my dearheart said—after listening to an operatic description of my woes—that my lawyer was talking, not me. (My father was a lawyer so this struck me as hilarious and likely utterly true.) I laughed so hard tears spilled onto my shirt. I had lawyered-up with my grievances against my man and turned a very open world into one pained with operatic Sturm und Drang.

To make my case at the cost of accuracy, openness, fairness, peace. Well, wasn’t that silly? And of course damaging, because lawyering-up meant I had separated myself from anything and everything but loyalty to my own story. Lawyering-up is a big hard elbow pointed at the world.

If you find yourself trapped in a line of thought that is rigorous, full of thrust and churning out glittering hard-edged conclusions, that is very likely your lawyer speaking. Not you. Good news, eh? You can stop paying your lawyer to spin thoughts into self-serving conclusions. You stop paying the lawyer because it’s a false world, a biased world, an unpleasant world in which to live. And it nearly always harms others, too.

Neuropyschologist Rick Hanson has a fine take on this lawyer-prototype who lives within us. Hanson says, “Watch how a case starts forming in your mind, trying to get its hooks into you. Then see if you can interrupt the process. Literally set down the case, like plopping down a heavy suitcase when you finally get home after a long trip. What a relief!”

Case dismissed. All those cases...

Set 'em down, take in a big long draught of freedom. You are right back home.

Subscribe to Rick Hanson’s weekly e-newsletter, Just One Thing. The week of 4/14/11 (#59) is called “Who are you prosecuting?”

And a charming site on what to do with old suitcases!

Sturm und Drang: storm and stress