Popular culture would have us believe that in order to live a good life, we must indulge ourselves frequently and think only good thoughts. Worried about the future? Manifestation is king: all it requires is a vision board with pictures of mansions and attractive people on vacation. We’re encouraged to obsess over youth and endlessly consume, as if our mortality isn’t definite and our resources aren’t finite.

The Stoics embraced starkly different virtues. 

They believed that in order to appreciate life, we must think about all that can go wrong and what can be taken from us. They pondered about death constantly, and practiced poverty regularly. The Stoics were famously skeptical of wishful thinking, embracing instead action, discipline, and the “dichotomy of control”—recognizing what is in our control and what is not. 

These lessons are especially pertinent to law, where risk assessment, humility, and resilience are crucial. Embracing Stoic virtues can make us better lawyers, students, and people. Here are a few core Stoic principles and how they apply to lawyering: 

Dichotomy of control 

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. 

--Epictetus

The Stoics were big on personal responsibility, agency, and action. They embraced inner strength and our power to better ourselves and our circumstances. But acknowledging our transformative capabilities also means knowing all that lies outside of our control. We can’t choose the families we are born into, or what we look like, or how others see us. We can only control our thoughts and our actions.

Similarly, there are many aspects of law that we have zero control over. We can’t choose the facts in our cases, nor can we control what our clients do or say. We can’t change existing legal frameworks, like the judiciary and precedents. Knowing this, we can make our lives simpler by focusing on what we can do. We can acknowledge the realities of a jurisdiction, focusing instead on sharpening our legal strategy. We can limit our approach to what’s been framed by precedent so we produce better results for our clients. Instead of worrying about prejudicial evidence, we simply try and exclude it from being presented at trial.

Differentiating between what is in our control and what isn’t is also important for our personal growth. As women, we will be judged unfairly by coworkers, judges, clients, and jurors at various points of our careers. Race plays a factor in this, as does disability and LGBTQ+ identity. 

This is where Stoicism steps in as a tool for empowerment. Why waste time lamenting on how others perceive you, when you can focus on your capabilities instead? How would you move through life knowing that people are, and will be, “ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial?” You might find this idea comforting.

Make no mistake—embracing the dichotomy of control isn’t about accepting injustice. To the contrary: it's about building resilience so we can act with dignity and power. We must accept life for what it is, while doing everything in our power to improve our circumstances.

Premeditatio malorum (“the premeditation of evils”)

What is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster.

--Seneca

The Stoics embraced a unique visualization exercise to prepare for the future and the challenges that awaited them. Premeditato malorum, or the premeditation of evils, is a practice of visualizing negative outcomes. Think of relationship troubles, financial ruin, making difficult decisions, or losing a loved one: how would you react? What steps would you take to prepare yourself?

This exercise might sound familiar. After all, many of us engage in the premeditation of our future hardships in our daily lives. While our society frowns upon negative thinking, the Stoics instead embraced negative visualization as a method of planning for the future and building resilience. For me, discovering this about Stoicism was quite comforting: not only was I not overly anxious or worry-obsessed for anticipating hardships, I was actually better off at handling them by doing so. 

Assessing risks and planning for the worst are immensely useful strategies for lawyers, who often take on challenging, complex, and unpredictable cases. Oftentimes, the odds are stacked against your client. Don’t you owe it to them to prepare for the worst? To know what their options are if they fail? For lawyers who regularly work on “losing cases,” such as international human rights lawyers, risk assessment can be a matter of life and death. It can also be the basis for impact lawyering and strategy. In a hostile regime, if a human rights case loses out on domestic courts—which it will—what international mechanisms are available? What alternative approaches will have the broadest impact? What steps can you take to keep your client safe? 

Much of corporate and in-house lawyering centers around compliance, due diligence and risk assessment. It’s making sure that the worst doesn’t happen, but also that if it does, you have viable strategies to navigate it.

Premeditatio malorum is a practical and intuitive exercise for rehearsing realistic outcomes, in life and in law. Failure is just as likely as triumph: the Stoics knew this, and prepared for it. Thinking of all that can go wrong—and what we can do once that happens—better prepares us for life’s inevitable challenges. 

Memento mori

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.  

--Marcus Aurelius

The Stoics were, to put it plainly, obsessed with death. In fact, one of Seneca’s biographies was titled “Dying Every Day.” For the Stoics, this preoccupation wasn’t about arranging for death, or worrying about how it’s going to happen. It was simply a practice of acknowledging its inevitability. 

The Stoics believed that meditating on your mortality made you more grateful, humble, and deliberate in your interactions with the world. That acknowledging the inevitability of our deaths made us more aware of time—or our lack of it—and in turn, got us to embrace action. Scientists have backed this up with evidence, finding that thinking of our deaths made us less likely to procrastinate.

For lawyers, this can have multiple implications. It means prioritizing action and initiative. Meditating on our mortality also means treating our coworkers, clients, and opposing counsel with kindness and grace. Would you want an angry email or stress-fueled rant to be the last interaction you had with somebody? 

Thinking of our inevitable deaths also makes us appreciate the moments we spend with our loved ones. This is a lesson that many lawyers learn too late. Aren’t we lucky just to be alive in this moment, sharing our lives with people we love and cherish? Drawing clear boundaries around our work and our personal lives becomes more pertinent with this approach. 

Conclusion

In a world that glorifies indulgence, toxic positivity, and workaholism, Stoic principles can provide a grounding philosophy for navigating the challenges of the legal profession. They remind us that competence doesn’t come from ignoring hardship, but from engaging with it deliberately. By embracing Stoic principles, we can approach our work—and our lives—with greater perspective, purpose, and peace.

Su Aray is a first-generation Turkish-American and law student at Cardozo School of Law, where she serves as a Student Fellow at the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights. She received her undergraduate degree in Social Sciences at University College London where she participated in competitive debating, representing UCL at the 2020 World Universities Debating Championship. Born and raised in Turkey, then Germany, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Su identifies as a “third-culture kid,” relating to many different cultures and perspectives.