Addressing The Inner Lawyer

By Qualia Reed

What’s an Inner Lawyer?

Throughout much of my life, I’ve felt a pull toward what I like to name my inner lawyer. Think of the inner lawyer as a sort of hyper-vigilant defence mechanism. My inner lawyer operates largely on my childhood programming that I am inherently an unsafe, inadequate, or downright wrong person, and therefore, to achieve a state of safety, adequacy, or rightness, I must create a case for myself and plead it to the people around me, the jury of my peers, so to speak.

As I’ve reflected on this, I differentiate the inner lawyer from the inner critic in a big way.  My inner lawyer, unlike the critic, is actually trying to do something beneficial (or so it thinks). The inner lawyer, much like a real defence attorney, is trying to defend me. That sounds great, except it’s doing a terrible job. The reason for this is that it’s turning all life into a high-stress, anxiety-fuelled courtroom drama, where I begin to accept that daily existence is supposed to feel like that courtroom.

Why Do I Do This?

There are many reasons people may develop the inner lawyer: Childhood trauma, bullying, neurodivergence, or childhood programming for conditional acceptance are only some of the ones that come to me as I reflect on the inner lawyer. As someone with a neurodiverse mind, I grew up in a world that I felt I was not designed for. I was an alien, not quite human. I didn’t have the terminology for things back then, but I had an inkling that because I didn’t fit in or didn’t fully understand how other people worked, I’d have to make a case for why people should accept me.

I learned firsthand that chronic bullying can lead to thinking ‘I’m guilty until I can prove I’m innocent’. People will assume I’m the problem unless I can prove otherwise. That can cause my mind to slip into thinking that my survival is directly connected to the evidence I can come up with. This can overlap with conditional acceptance, where love, acceptance, or safety becomes an equation rather than a fact someone can ground themselves in.

How It Can Look

If someone asks me to spend time with them or invites me to a social function like a party and I don’t want to go, I can’t just say no because the lawyer reminds me that only bad people say no to invites. What happens next is the lawyer builds a case.

“Oh, thank you, but I can’t make it unfortunately because I have to travel to a faraway galaxy and save a failing kingdom from ruin.”

“Darn, I really wanna say yes, but I already promised my mother I’d drive her to the doctor that day.”

“Sorry, I’m feeling sick at the moment; I probably shouldn’t leave the house.”

“I’d love to, but I don’t have any childcare for my kid that day.”

This can happen in all facets of life and not just in social situations. The inner lawyer can agonize over the perfectly worded email to an employer, trying to justify being given a day off for surgery, for helping a loved one, or even for a day of self-care. I’ve found this is becoming more evident in how people use AI chatbots to draft emails instead of writing them themselves. The need for that inner lawyer can normalize outsourcing to professionals, whether it’s to AI or to our own inner processes, because it all stems from feeling like what we have to offer is not enough.

In relationships, this can look like keeping track of all past arguments to quote the emotional/legal precedent to justify what’s happening in the present. This becomes counterintuitive because, instead of letting go of the past, it can lead to a reliance on bringing up the past to create comparisons and further conflict, justified or not. Being able to quote precedent in a real-life courtroom makes sense with my limited understanding of the Canadian legal system. Still, it makes very little sense in terms of a human-to-human relationship. If I’m holding on tightly to the past to weaponize it for future arguments my inner lawyer may make, am I able to let go or forgive anyone?

Whatever reason or excuse the lawyer comes up with, having the lawyer working for us directs attention in the situation to someone or something, real or imagined. Sometimes that can be a quick and easy excuse; at other times, the lawyer has a 20-page binder full of blueprints, schematics, and long-form arguments to make the case. I can think of earlier in my life when I’ve been presented with a situation I didn’t want or found difficult, and my lawyer jumps to their feet and goes into overdrive to quickly build a believable case for whatever the situation is. How great to have such a friend on retainer in my head 24/7, right?

What Does The Inner Lawyer cost me?

As the courtroom drama of my mind continues over time, the true costs, the legal fees become apparent. Exhaustion begins to take over my daily life. I like to think of this as my lawyer continuing to pile evidence into his briefcase, and the weight of it in my mind has grown heavier and heavier until the daily load becomes more than I can sustainably carry. The worst part of this load is that it can spiderweb outward, becoming exponentially heavier over time as I am forced to keep track of lies, excuses, and imaginary lines in the sand that I didn’t want to draw.

The other cost of the inner-lawyer is the loneliness and isolation. All of this energy expended in the courtroom builds division and walls in my real life, preventing me from forming authentic connections because the lawyer keeps people from getting to know the real me. The courtroom drama can then snowball, slowly turning into a tragedy born of a desire for safety and survival. This can be a big moment for self-reflection when we begin to see the effects that having a constant inner lawyer brings.

“Do I want people to interact only with my defence attorney, or with me?”

Letting Go Of The Inner Lawyer

Having navigated my relationship with the lawyer for so long, I found it necessary to practice letting go of that safety mechanism. This could be starting with letting the lawyer have a day off, or two days. If the lawyer was there to help me make the case for myself, moving away from that had to start with practicing daily the concept that I was enough on my own and that no one had to make a case for me to exist. With practice, I realized that I was enough on my own. I mattered in the same way that we all matter. We matter because we are matter; each of us a unique collection of atoms currently experiencing the universe around us, of which we are a part.