Schlichtmann is the most obsessively driven figure in the Woburn case. This may contribute to the dreams he suffers throughout. His dreams are nearly always of some disaster that is coming for him, or from which he cannot escape. Late in the book, when he starts to shout that he has always been self-destructive, it makes his dreams look even more significant. If dreaming is the mind’s attempt to deal with conscious experience in a subconscious way, then Schlichtmann’s dreams are an accurate reflector of what his days are like. There is almost nothing like peace in his life, even when he sleeps. Dreams are also hard to trust, but Jan’s dreams are so relevant to the events of his life that it is hard for him not to see them as omens.

The legal profession requires minds that are as precise as machines. The ability to invent and take apart complex arguments, to synthesize thousands of facts and tens of thousands of abstruse pages of legal briefs, is a skill set that is second only to rationality in its necessity for a lawyer. Nevertheless, the lawyers in A Civil Action have superstitions. Gordon constantly reads horoscopes to his partners, despite their protests.