Psychology, Public Policy, and Law Copyright 1999 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 1999, Vol. 5, No. 4, 944-950 1076-8971/99/S5.00 DOI: 10.1037//1076-8971.5.4.944 AND TELL TCHAIKOVSKY THE NEWS The Wedding of Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Preventive Lawyering Robert Eli Rosen University of Miami School of Law Advocates for therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and preventive law (PL) presume that legal practice is normally unemotional and that expressing concern for the client is normally therapeutic. This response challenges both presumptions. The author argues that, as part of the service economy, legal practice involves a great deal of emotional labor. He emphasizes how psychological difficulties in being a lawyer may spring from the dilemmas of being a salesperson. He further questions linking certain emotional orientations to moral judgment by privileging compromising, expressing caring, or not being aggressive. He suggests that sometimes being affectively neutral toward clients is therapeutically indicated, and he considers how techniques and values are mixed in merging TJ and PL. In this brief article I wish to question two commonplaces: first, that the practice of law is not an emotional performance, and second, that disengagement from clients is uncaring. Recognizing the limited conditions under which these commonplaces are validated can assist the union of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and preventive law (PL). Writing about lawyering, I argue, needs to develop a much more complex understanding of the emotional labor of lawyering. 1 In order to do so, a focus must be set on not only law as a profession, but also law as a business. 2 As a business, lawyering is part of the service economy. Like other jobs in the service economy, lawyering requires significant emotional labor. 3 For business reasons alone, being a lawyer requires emotional performance. The emotional communications of TJ/PL lawyers are not additions to a largely emotionally arid practice. TJ/PL lawyers need to redirect emotions already in play. Grappling with, for example, the concern toward clients of a salesperson is required to explain what is distinctive about the concern toward clients of TJ/PL lawyers. As important, the business of law needs to be central to a TJ/PL account Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert Eli Rosen, University of Miami School of Law, Coral Gables, Florida 33124. Electronic mail may be sent to rrosen@law.miami.edu. '"[Ejmotional labor includes knowing about, and assessing as well as managing emotions, other people's as well as one's own." Arlie Hochschild, Preface, in EMOTIONS IN ORGANIZATIONS X (Stephen Fineman ed., 1993). See also ARLE HOCHSCHILD, THE MANAGED HEART: COMMERCIALIZA- TION OF HUMAN FEELINGS (1983); JENNIFER PIERCE, GENDER TRIALS: EMOTIONAL LIVES IN CONTEMPO- RARY LAW FIRMS (1995). I have argued for the importance of studying emotional labor in, among other places, Robert Eli Rosen, Lawyer's Emotional Labors and Legal Ethics (Onati Institute Conference: A CHALLENGE TO LAW AND LAWYERS: WOMEN IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION (1999)). 2 Contra Jeffrey W. Stempel, Theralaw and the Law-Business Paradigm Debate, 5 PSYCHOL. PUB. POL'Y & L. 849-908 (1999). 3 See sources cited supra note 1. 944 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.