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A reader in Texas – I was married to a lawyer for 26 years. I wish I could have read this book years ago. Reading it now, though, confirms many things I felt but couldn’t identify. We had a difficult marriage, and I often suspected that there was something about those who practiced law that made them different than other people. Turns out, I was right, and your book makes many things more clear. It is too late for my marriage, but I hope this book can help others like me.

ABA’s Student Lawyer Magazine – Should You Marry a Lawyer? I did. Fifteen years later and our marriage is still going strong, despite dismal statistics about marital failure rates, particularly among lawyers.

When I was engaged, I didn't have access to Should You Marry a Lawyer?, but I wish I had read her words of advice before tying the knot. In her new book, Travis, a veteran psychologist who is married to a lawyer, discusses how to create and nurture a successful relationship when one or both parties are lawyers. Lawyers, Dr. Travis asserts, differ from the rest of the population in terms of personality type, conflict resolution skills, negotiating tactics, and communication styles.

Ever feel like having a dispute with your lawyer-partner is like arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court? Travis explains why this is the case. She also details why successful lawyering techniques often clash with the skills needed to nurture a successful relationship and how to navigate a middle road. "What lawyers are taught about winning in the courtroom will later turn out to be at odds with the kind of careful, patient listening one needs with a spouse or a friend," she writes.

Dr. Travis's book is replete with studies of the legal profession, profiles of attorneys as well as non-lawyer spouses, and concrete suggestions for making relationships (whether straight or gay) thrive. Many lawyers and spouses contributed to offer words of advice. For example, a Chicago lawyer comments on her marriage with brutal honesty: "If you want to marry a litigator, my advice is, 'Make sure you have your own life, and you don't have to depend on your partner for company and companionship.' Just figure they're going to be gone. . . a lot. And even when they're around, they're going to be really tired and stressed out."

Travis provides ample examples of successful relationships, as well as failed ones. By reading real-life vignettes of the challenges that lawyer families face, the reader can learn from others' experiences. There are sections on child rearing, single parenting, managing finances, and marital danger signs. One of Travis's best chapters ("Helping the Lawyer in Your Life") deals with stress management and burnout. Law is a demanding profession that requires dedication, focus and sacrifice, not to mention more than 2,000 billable hours each year on average, for years on end. Many law students I meet are under the mistaken impression that life becomes suddenly better when one becomes a partner; Travis dispels this myth and explains ways to alleviate stress, recognize signs of depression, and find help.

The book ends with a short section on balancing work, love and ambition. While the author offers no pat answers, she does provide insights into lawyers' lives and marriages, together with useful tips, and acknowledges that lawyers see the world and form relationships differently than most other people.”

The Cleveland Bar Assn’s Law & Fact Magazine – No matter how breathtaking the engagement ring, if it's coming from a lawyer, give it back ... and run At least that is the impression any bride-to-be (or groom for that matter) would get from the initial chapters of Should You Marry a Lawyer? A Couple’s Guide to Balancing Work, Love & Ambition. Author Fiona H. Travis is quick to point out that many of the traits lawyers need to be successful in the courtroom (aggressive, analytical, direct) are lousy influences on relationships where couples need to compromise, concede and cooperate. The workload, the stress and the competitiveness of the profession do not exactly make lawyers the warm and fuzzy people you want to snuggle up with at night. Travis notes that lawyers have the highest divorce rate of any profession.

But Travis didn't write this books to bust wedding bells.

She is offering non-lawyers about to start a relationship with a lawyer a wake-up call in order to prepare themselves for a life that is not always the fairy tale associated with the marriage to a well-paid attorney. For lawyers, the book also demonstrates that those characteristics that make them winners at work should be left at the office or the courthouse if they want to succeed with love and marriage. Once past the grim statistics, the secrets to balancing work, family and relationships are there for the taking.

What makes a woman with a doctorate in psychology qualified to dissect lawyers and their behavior? A lifetime of experience. Travis has been married for more than 40 years to her husband, a common pleas court judge in Columbus, Ohio. She's been with him through law school, his time as a prosecutor and now on the bench. The couple has raised two children.

Travis also devotes more than half of her therapy practice to working with lawyers and their families. She offers insight into the traits of attorneys typically revealed only in the halls of courthouses or the conference room at private practices. The book is peppered with anecdotes of lawyers and their families that will ring true with many in the practice who are struggling to keep peace at home. While the title is Should You Marry a Lawyer? the book is more aptly called So, You Married a Lawyer: How Are You Not Going to Drive Each Other Crazy? Travis knows what the majority of arguments at home are about: money, time, parenting, sex, and the division of labor at home. The book attacks these issues from nearly all imaginable angles. There are examples from the marriages of lawyers to non-lawyers, lawyers to lawyers, male lawyers to female non-lawyers, female lawyers to male non-lawyers, gay and lesbian lawyers in relationships, and single parent lawyers trying to maintain relationships with their children while dealing with ex-spouses.

She covers the personality traits of first-born lawyers, middle-child lawyers and last-born child lawyers, and how these family characteristics (which Travis calls "scripts") play into their actions as adults in practice and at home. With all the variety there is bound to be at least one story that relates to the life of any reader who is involved with a lawyer. It's hard to believe Travis left anyone out. Playing to her legal-minded audience, Travis fills the book with much of the latest pop psychology-- not the Dr. Phil one-sound bite solution to miraculously transform your life; but rather, the latest effective techniques from the world of counseling and therapy that have helped people make significant changes through sustained commitment to improvement.

Much of the advice rings familiar with those who are versed in other self-help books or have seen snippets of wisdom in any of the many health-related magazines hawking advice. The book includes checklists and quizzes, such as how well one knows the spending habits and financial tendencies of a spouse or fiancé. And, there are "assignments" to the reader such as trying a "planned spontaneity" day with a child.

Lawyers are offered the exercises to remind them that when dealing with spouses and children, they are not trying to win a case, but win over a heart. That takes a whole different set of skills that need to be learned and practiced.

"Balance" is a theme that runs deep through the book and one of the most striking illustrations comes from a Los Angeles lawyer raising kids with her lawyer husband. "I prefer the '10-Year Rule of Parenting.' I ask myself whether, in 10 years, it will matter to a client if I miss a meeting. The answer is ‘probably not.’ But will it matter to my son in 10 years if I was at his baseball banquet? Yeah, it will."

All of 162 pages, this is a quick read that does not call for significant changes by lawyers in their lifestyles to make their marriages work, but emphasizes the point that cooperation is going to be far more important to preserving a family life than any skills used to be successful at work. When dealing with family, lawyers have to resist applying the adversarial tactics to grasp for the upper hand that wins cases.”