TRP 351: Practicing Law at the Speed of Light with Dr. Larry Richard

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Nine out of ten lawyers score in the bottom half of resilience. That’s not an opinion — it’s 32 years of personality data from over 10,000 lawyers. Dr. Larry Richard is the researcher who found it, and he wrote the book on what to do about it.

Dr. Larry Richard holds a J.D. from Penn Law and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Temple University. He’s spent three decades studying lawyer personality and is the author of the new book Thin-Skinned: Why Lawyers Are So Low in Resilience, and the New Science That Can Help. In this episode, he joins Scott Love to break down the seven atypical personality traits that define lawyers — and the evidence-based framework that can help them manage stress, raise resilience, and thrive in a profession that’s changing at unprecedented speed.

What you’ll learn:

The 7 atypical personality traits that make lawyers exceptional at their work — and vulnerable in their lives

Why 90% of lawyers consistently score in the bottom half of resilience — and why that number hasn’t moved in 32 years

Why empathy in lawyers (and people under 40 generally) is declining — and what it’s connected to

What sociability really means — and why lawyers average at the 12.5th percentile

The catastrophizing spiral: how one associate’s mistake became a tent in a park in her mind — and what that reveals about low resilience

Why personality traits are more genetic than social — and the crucial exception: resilience, skepticism, and empathy can actually be changed

The three-legged stool of the brain: how thoughts, feelings, and actions are chemically linked — and how changing one changes all three