"Law is a very addictive profession"
About this Quote
Law doesn’t just employ you, Carman implies; it rewires you. Calling it “very addictive” drags the profession out of its self-mythology of dispassionate reason and into the realm of compulsion: craving, tolerance, escalation. The word is deliberately unflattering, almost medical. It suggests a cycle where each case delivers a hit - adrenaline, status, the warm certainty of being the sharpest mind in the room - and then leaves you restless for the next fix.
Carman knew that pull from the inside. As a celebrity barrister in Britain’s high-gloss courtroom culture, he operated in a world where legal work is performance as much as principle: late nights, huge stakes, press attention, the theatrical cross-examination. “Addictive” hints at why people don’t leave even when the cost is obvious. The job colonizes your time, your relationships, your sense of self. You start narrating life like a brief: who’s credible, who’s inconsistent, what’s the angle. That can look like competence; it can also look like a narrowing of empathy.
There’s subtext, too, about the profession’s reward structure. Law offers constant external validation - winning, billing, being sought-after - while promising an inner purity (“justice”) that can justify the grind. Addiction thrives when pleasure and meaning are fused.
The line works because it punctures legal respectability with a single, street-level metaphor. It’s half confession, half warning: if you’re drawn to law, ask whether you want the work - or the need for it.
Carman knew that pull from the inside. As a celebrity barrister in Britain’s high-gloss courtroom culture, he operated in a world where legal work is performance as much as principle: late nights, huge stakes, press attention, the theatrical cross-examination. “Addictive” hints at why people don’t leave even when the cost is obvious. The job colonizes your time, your relationships, your sense of self. You start narrating life like a brief: who’s credible, who’s inconsistent, what’s the angle. That can look like competence; it can also look like a narrowing of empathy.
There’s subtext, too, about the profession’s reward structure. Law offers constant external validation - winning, billing, being sought-after - while promising an inner purity (“justice”) that can justify the grind. Addiction thrives when pleasure and meaning are fused.
The line works because it punctures legal respectability with a single, street-level metaphor. It’s half confession, half warning: if you’re drawn to law, ask whether you want the work - or the need for it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Career |
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