Feeding into the fear and loathing of the unduly emotional with repeated viewings of Stuart Smalley and the tummy rubs of the lean-in group, chanting in unison that it’s not your fault you screwed up, it could happen to anybody who didn’t bother to work hard because there were more fun things to do than prepare, know your law, give a damn about your client, is one answer.  It’s a bad answer. A disgraceful answer, no matter how many teary-eyed whiny voices disagree.

Lawyers are supposed to be peeerrrfeeect. It’s tooo haaarrrrrddd. It makes me unhappy.  Because it’s all about the lawyer being happy, not that poor schmuck who thought you would put his interests first because you were, you know, a lawyer.

The number of new lawyers feeling this fear and loathing has skyrocketed lately, likely due to too many seats in too many law schools being filled by too many asses who have no business there, as well as a shift in culture toward the overwhelming importance of the feelz, so much so that it doesn’t dawn on these anxious lawyers that their unhappiness is nothing compared to the misery their clients endure.

But the phenomenon isn’t new. There have always been lawyers, even good lawyers, who came to the realization that being a lawyer wasn’t for them. Robert Markewitz is one.

I was the envy of my 30-something friends in Palo Alto, Calif. I had my own law office right on California Avenue. People charged with crimes handed me cash, in advance, over a big oak desk. Occasionally, I’d make a couple of grand in an afternoon.

But soon, my body started giving out one part at a time. First a shoulder, then my lower back, knee cartilage, neck vertebrae. Two groin hernia surgeries later, at 33 years old, I could not lift a bag of groceries, or sit without an orthopedic pillow. After 10 years as a law student and lawyer, working in a profession I didn’t like was taking its toll.

It’s not entirely clear what being a lawyer had to do with his knee cartilage or groin hernias, but it doesn’t change the fact that he didn’t like being a lawyer. It wasn’t because he was starving. He just hated it. And he’s allowed to hate it.  As is anyone.

Fighting depression, I volunteered at a Sunday school. It couldn’t hurt to see a few kids on the weekend. On a bright morning, I organized an outdoor game of Duck Duck Goose. “I’m wearing new white stockings to visit Grandma this afternoon,” a 6-year-old girl told me. She had blond curls and big brown eyes. Chasing a boy around the circle, she slipped on some dirt, and fell hard, tearing the stockings. Before I knew it, she leapt up into my arms. My heart exploded with the joy of being needed. Next morning, I called my mother, and told her I was coming home.

And that’s wonderful that his heart exploded with the joy of being needed.  He was probably needed, perhaps even more so, as a criminal defense lawyer, but that doesn’t mean he had to feel the same about it.  The fact is that not all of our clients are nice, innocent, maligned human beings (mine are, every one of them, but I’m trying to show off here), but sometimes are the sort of person you wouldn’t invite over for dinner.

Sure, they still need and deserve effective assistance of counsel, but that doesn’t mean you have to be the one to give it to them. Not if you hate it.

But if you hate it, and you don’t want to be the one to provide effective assistance of counsel because it makes you miserable, your option isn’t to take their money (or the government’s money, as the case may be), go through the motions and then rationalize your suckiosity in terms of the depth of your personal unhappiness. Oh no, that you cannot do.

This, however, you can:

Studying want ads one evening, the one that got my blood moving promised to train me as a party clown, and send me out at $25 per show. Years earlier, I’d dreamed of becoming so weightless that I bounced off the ceiling. I could see myself in a billowy clown suit. After a free training session, I purchased the starter kit for $59 and waited for them to call.

Within a week, the company dispatched me to a party for a 7-year-old at a Ground Round restaurant in Yonkers. I applied colorful makeup, donned oversize shoes, orange wig, bag of tricks. It took a minute to decide on “Bobo” as my name. I silly-walked up to a table of children in the party room. By the end of the performance, the birthday boy said to me, “Bobo, I love you.” In the car later, I rested my head on the steering wheel. An unexpected feeling surfaced: happiness.

That’s great.  He found the place where he belonged, where he was meant to be, and it wasn’t the law but being a clown. (No scary clown jokes or pictures allowed.)  That’s a very cool thing to be, even if Bobo is a pretty lame clown name. Bozo? Blatant rip off, anyone?

The point is that there are always alternatives to being a lawyer if law doesn’t make you happy. No one, but no one, puts a gun to your head and says, “remain a lawyer or I’ll shoot.”  If you hate it, it makes you miserable, it’s not the right life for you, you are free to pursue your passion elsewhere.  With my blessing, if that counts for anything.

You just can’t continue to be a lawyer and focus only on your own happiness at the same time and still be a clown at the same time.  Now, go with Bobo, and enjoy.