I recently attended a practice management presentation and was surprisingly surprised by something I heard from one of the speakers when discusisng mentoring: studies show that people who endured challenges in the past were less likely to show compassion for someone facing the same struggle, compared with people with no experience in that particular situation. The speaker referenced the Harvard Business Review article It’s Harder to Empathize with People If You’ve Been in Their Shoes in which several real-life situations and experiments are discussed.

Why was I surprisingly surprised? Well, its an all-too-common experience in my career, particularly in the early days, and while so obvious, I haven’t particularly focused on it as it seems like the norm in the profession. But the speakers comments about striving to make it better for those who come behind us and being a better mentor resonated with me. If it was terrible for us when we were starting out, why perpetuate the misery for the next generation of lawyers?

One of the studies referenced in the article examined compassion toward a bullied teenager:

Participants were either told that the teen was successfully coping with the bullying, or failed to cope by lashing out violently. Compared to participants who had no experience with bullying, participants who reported having been bullied in the past themselves were more compassionate toward the teen who was appropriately coping with the experience. But, similar to our earlier studies, participants who were bullied in the past were the least compassionate toward the teen who failed to successfully cope with the bullying.

Now think about your experience as an articling student. The long hours and insecurity. Did you receive much compassion from others in the profession or did you hear stories about how bad they also had it back in the day? When you hear about the struggles of young lawyers now, do you instinctively think they should buck up and stop complaining? Heck, we got through it and so should they.

So, why do we behave this way? The article claims this behaviour is rooted in two psychological truths:

1. Empathy Gap: People have difficulty accurately recalling just how difficult a past experience was and underestimate just how painful that experience felt in the moment. Those who’ve experienced childbirth will understand this one.
2. Belief It Can Be Conquered: Those who’ve been through it and came out the other side are overly confident that it can readily conquered.

Together, these psychological truths reduce empathy.

Going forward, try to recognize the tendency to show a lack of compassion to those coming up in the profession. The article suggested that when in mentoring situations, place less emphasis, not more, on your own past challenges. Focus instead on the struggle of the mentee to increase empathy and hopefully make it better for the next generation of lawyers.