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Learn Happiness Strategies And Become a Happier Lawyer

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“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you’re still a rat.”
- Lily Tomlin

Learning to become happy may sound strange. Many of us think of happiness as a state in which we happen to find ourselves. But as researchers in the emerging field of positive psychology are discovering, we can all adopt strategies to become happy.

Becoming change- and stress-resilient are essential components of happiness, especially for lawyers. Resilience is the ability to persevere and adapt when overcoming obstacles. The secret to the emotional intelligence competency of resilience is accurate thinking. We need to challenge limiting beliefs and negative thoughts. Managing stress and dealing with change allows you to excel in the workplace while maintaining a well-balanced, healthy lifestyle.

Unmanaged Stress Affects Physical Health

The legal profession is full of lawyers who are dissatisfied and abandoning the practice of law for less stressful careers. Increasing billable hour requirements, time pressures, and work/life balance issues are frequently cited as the reason for the high rates of lawyer dissatisfaction. Attorneys complain of little time for themselves or their families. (In contrast, happy people are less self-focused, less hostile, more loving, forgiving, trusting, energetic, decisive, enthusiastic, creative, sociable and helpful.) Contributing factors include anxiety, depression, relationship issues, and questions relating to personal values and the meaning of life.

Unmanaged stress increases anxiety, depression (we all know that there are many depressed lawyers), anger, substance abuse, and feelings of unhappiness, all of which decrease quality of life and workplace productivity. A Johns Hopkins study found that out of 104 occupational groups, lawyers were the most likely to suffer from depression—more than three times more likely than average. Nearly 75% of attorneys report experiencing high levels of stress; 66% of these attorneys report that their physical and emotional health suffers as a result.

The greatest source of stress is the tremendous internal pressure and anxiety that we create for ourselves through:

  • worrying about situations we can’t control
  • the unrealistic expectation that life can be problem-free
  • comparing our achievements, or lack of them, to those of others
  • perfectionism—expecting too much of ourselves or others
  • competition—turning every encounter into a win-lose situation
  • self-criticism—focusing on faults, rather than strengths
  • insecurity—looking to others to provide emotional security rather than ourselves
  • powerlessness—failing to see the choices that are available
  • hurrying—constantly pushing ourselves to perform better and faster
  • pessimism—expecting the worst from life

Take Action To Become Happier

To reduce the stress in your life and experience more happiness, begin by taking one of the steps below. Over the next 21 days, commit yourself to recording, measuring and implementing how this step helped you to successfully change.

Focus on the Positive – Write down your proudest accomplishments. When do you exhibit peak performance?

Get Organized – Put important things first. Learning the skill of self- management involves organizing and managing time and events based on personal priorities.

Do It Now – Procrastination breeds stress. Do your most difficult task at the beginning of the day when you’re fresh; avoid the stress of dreading it all day.

Stop Perfectionism – Perfectionism is often a poor use of time. High priority items require more perfection than low priority items. By demanding perfection of yourself and others, you may be wasting time in unnecessary effort.

Change Attitudes – Think of stressful situations as a challenge to your creative thinking rather than as insurmountable problems. Generate solutions.

Learn to Say “No” – Say “no” when your schedule is full: to responsibilities that aren’t yours; to emotional demands that leave you feeling exhausted; to other people’s problems that you don’t have the power to solve.

Take Care of Your Body - You will have more energy and become stress-hardy when you eat a balanced diet, get sufficient sleep and exercise regularly.

Optimistic Self-Talk – Use positive self-reinforcement: Say to yourself, ”I can handle this one step at a time,” instead of frightening or depressing yourself by coming up with reasons why you can’t cope.

Support – Actively seek support from friends, colleagues, and family. Don’t be a Lone Ranger.

Express Gratitude – Take time to appreciate what you have. Express appreciation to others.

Take Charge – Take responsibility for making your life what you want it to be. It is more empowering to feel a sense of control and to make decisions. Commit to what will bring meaning into your life and take action.

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Categories: Legal coaching - Tags: anxiety, attorneys stress, depressed lawyers, depression, lawyer depression, lawyer stress, practice of law, stressful career, substance abusing lawyers, unmanaged stress

Our Responsibilities May Be Hazardous To Our Health

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An old joke that has floated around recovery circles for years tells the story of a relatively young man who passes away. Among his acquaintances, it was a well-known but not acknowledged fact that he couldn’t stop drinking. At the wake, one of the deceased’s old friends who had not seen his widow in quite some time approached her solemnly and after offering condolences, asked, “How did this happen?”

“Oh John,” she said, “the sad truth is Frank simply drank himself to death.”

“Did he ever try AA or another recovery group?” John asked.

“Oh, for heaven sakes, John, no—he wasn’t that bad.”

This is perhaps a not so funny way of highlighting the fact that most alcoholics don’t recover. For many it is simply because they, and perhaps those around them, never are willing to admit that they have a problem.

As many of us now know, lawyers have a much higher rate of incidence of alcoholism than those in the overall population. One group determined that the rate of alcoholism among lawyers is twice that among adults generally.

I believe this is true for two reasons. First, the nature of our business leaves us vulnerable to high rates of depression, stress, long hours and sleepless nights. Relief from alcohol is at times the easy answer.

Second, many who do drink alcoholically have developed, through years of training, strong streaks of independence and at times perhaps arrogance; as a result, they simply can’t and won’t believe that they can’t handle the problem on their own. Because of this, the percentage of alcoholic lawyers is skewed because many simply never try to seek help.

Legal Training Fosters Unhealthy Behaviors

I didn’t become an alcoholic because of practice-induced stress. Looking back, I realize that I was an alcoholic long before I even decided to attend law school. But I did develop a certain sense of invincibility with my legal expertise. The piece of paper that told me I was a “professional” helped me believe that I wasn’t one of “them,” and that if I ever did develop problems, I’d deal with them.

Many believe that substance abuse among lawyers actually begins when they’re in college. What factors then lead to substance abuse?

According to Professor Dubin, at least 10% of lawyers have some sort of problem with a form of addictive behavior. Though this is a high number, it closely echoes society as a whole. But during lawyers’ careers, this percentage increases to an estimated 20%. In fact, short-term or chronic symptoms of depression, stress or other self-destructive behavior can, at one time or another, affect 33% of legal professionals.

Others correlate this increase from pre-law school to career involvement with the competitive nature of our business—we’re driven to achieve material success and prestige, and need to feel as if we can pull our weight with billable hours.

Several years ago, at an ABA-sponsored program on stress management and burnout, Standish McCleary, a psychologist and former lawyer, identified some reasons why lawyers are above the norm for depression and often become addicted:

• Time constraints and deadlines
• The high-stakes nature of the work which can cause clients to lose their property, freedom, and even life
• High expectations for level of expertise and
• Consistent scrutiny and critical judgment of work from opposing counsel or courts
• The conflict-driven legal process (“opposing counsel must always be determined to prove us wrong”)
• An ever-present threat of malpractice
• An understandable and at times admirable tendency to assume the clients’ burdens
• The demise of professional cordiality and loss of close fellowships
• Professional training requiring us to notice and anticipate the negative and downside in all situations

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

1. Notre Dame Magazine, autumn, 1999; “I know I’m Not Alone,” by Rick Hoel, The Complete Lawyer, March, 2008

2. “Addiction and Lawyers: Substance Abuse in the Legal Profession”, quoting Professor Larry Dubin at The University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.

3. “The Devastation of Depression: Lawyers Are at Greater Risk — It’s an Impairment to Take Seriously” by Michael J. Sweeney.

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Categories: Law Practice Marketing - Tags: aba, american bar association, law practice marketing, law school, legal training, responsible lawyers

Moderation: The Key To A Healthy Life

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A TCL Interview: Richard Eynon

TCL:  Do you think lawyers as a whole are a healthy population? Why? Why not?

No. Too much stress. Too much hostility among lawyers. As someone recently said, “In the old days lawyers made life difficult for everyone else. Now lawyers make life difficult for each other.” We are one of the leading professions with anxiety and depression. It is the adversary nature of our profession that leads to lawyers’ stress. In our profession, as with others, alcohol and even drugs are fall-backs to constant stress.

TCL:  How would you describe your health overall? What has contributed to your level of healthiness?

Good health. Recognized early that nutrition and exercise are important to good health, especially in a stressful profession. Eat healthy, but not in an obsessive manner. Eat fast food in moderation. In fact, moderation is a great rule of life.

Most of my exercise is achieved through playing basketball a couple of times a week over the lunch hour. It not only contributes to my physical health, but to my mental health, in sharing time with different groups of people who are in different professions and of all ages. We all share a common bond of the love of basketball, but also share “un-stress” time as well.

TCL:  What specifically do you do to take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually? What would you recommend to others?

Hardest area to address is mental well-being. Must learn to turn off work in my mind; must learn to share the good and bad with another—friend, spouse, significant other. Don’t be afraid to talk from the heart. Not sharing or communicating is not healthy. You must have an outlet to let some things out.

It is spiritually important to worship and share your soul with others as well. The church community is another group of people you don’t usually see at work or in our profession. Worship tends to be reflective in a different way; it slows you down. It makes me look at the bigger picture of life, if only for a few hours per week. We all need love and forgiveness. Our spiritual life allows that to happen without strings attached.

TCL:  What are the indicators you use to let you know when your life is in or out of balance? How do you find and maintain it in your life – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual?

My barometer is my lack of sleep. When I get tired, I get emotional very easily. The first time something sets me off inside that would not ordinarily occur, I know I am pushing myself too hard and have become tired. It sets off my internal warning system that says, “Slow down now,” or my body will make me slow down with some illness or worse. Once again, I try to see what has changed to cause this reaction. I can usually figure it out and try to moderate whatever extreme has set off the warning. This seems overly simplistic, but it has worked well for me.

TCL:  How do you define “good health”?

Moderation of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual lifestyles. Keep these all in balance and your chances increase for good health. Finding that balance will take time. It may take getting to know yourself better. Often we don’t stop or stand still long enough to step inside our body and soul to take a real look at who we are and what we really need. Identifying and controlling stress is an imperfect art. Not all stress is bad. How to draw the line is the quandary.

TCL:  Is there any relationship between mental and physical health? If so, how do they affect each other?

I believe they balance each other. If you are not physically healthy, your mental health will suffer. Likewise, your physical health will suffer if you don’t take care of your stress and depression.

We lawyers often ignore the need for relief from the adverse effects of our profession. We need assistance in what I call “quality of life” issues. If the qualities of our lives are improved, then we will be better attorneys and can better counsel our clients. Lawyers can no longer ignore the stress and depression of our profession. It needs to be addressed in seminars, in our annual meetings, and in our publications. There are plenty of written materials and professionals to assist us in getting a better handle on our professional and personal lives.

TCL:  Think of a person you consider to be in excellent health? How does this person maintain his or her health?

Healthy people have determined that moderation is the rule of life. They do all of the things that we have discussed involving health, emotion, and spiritual uplift. They usually have figured out how to control their work energy. They are not workaholics, but have found a balance of work, family, God and body. They also have acknowledged that this profession is stressful and depressing, and have taken strides to control that fact.

TCL:  What is the single most important factor in excellent health? In harming health?

Moderation. Anything in excess harms your health—too much work, worry, food, drink or even leisure.

TCL:  What is the state of health of your law firm as a whole?

Pretty good. Probably too much stress, but we have identified that as a problem and are working on solutions.

TCL:  Do you have any additional comments about the state of health in the profession of law?

We can do much better in dealing with our stress and depression and the abuses that often occur as a result. I wrote for the Indiana State Bar Association publication Res Gestae (June 2007), addressing the issue of quality of life. Most states now have CLE programs addressing these issues, and others are slowly getting out of the Stone Age to acknowledge that we are working in an extremely fast-paced profession that, by its very confrontational nature, increases our levels of stress and depression. There is an abundance of literature and personnel ready to assist us. We need to address these issues within our own associations. Large corporations and judges associations have recognized stress as a problem, and have taken steps in their professional meetings and conferences to address it. There are several books on the market that deal with attorney stress. One in particular is Stress Management for Lawyers: How to Increase Personal & Professional Satisfaction in the Law,” by Amiram Elwork, Ph.D., 3rd Edition (Vorkell Group, 2007). I highly recommend it.


RICHARD EYNON

Richard S. Eynon is a graduate of Valparaiso University (J.D. 1969). Rich practices at Eynon Law Group, P.C. in Columbus, Indiana, focusing on civil litigation areas of personal injury, wrongful death and product liability; he is also a registered civil and domestic mediator. Rich has been actively involved in numerous law-affiliated organizations during his 38 years of practice, including the Indiana State Bar Association where he served as President in 2006-2007. His participation in many civic activities includes judging in the “We the People” organization, as well being involved with Friends of Hidalgo, Inc., serving a remote village in Mexico. Rich has three adult children and five grandchildren. In his spare time he enjoys living on a lake, fishing, playing golf, and shooting hoops regularly with other former college players in Columbus.

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Categories: Indiana State Bar Association - Tags: columbus, eynon law group, indiana, indiana state bar association, lawyer, lawyers' stress, personal injury lawyer, product liability, res gestae, richard eynon, wrongful death

Reduce Stress By Selecting Clients Wisely

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It is safe to say the number of attorneys who feel tremendous stress is reaching near epidemic proportions. According to a study done by Johns Hopkins, fifty-one percent of attorneys experience stress at rates significantly higher than the ‘normal’ population.1

Is this endemic to the profession? Or are those who are drawn to the legal profession predisposed to stress?

Both may be true, but the latter question holds the key. An earlier Johns Hopkins study that examined all types of graduate school programs revealed that graduate students who are optimists outperform pessimists by a wide margin—with one exception: students in law school.2

Pessimism is rewarded in law school and further reinforced when an attorney goes into practice. Here’s why: pessimists anticipate the worst. As a result, they tend to plan for it and are better prepared than those who expect a rosy outcome.

Unfortunately, the traits that make for a good attorney don’t always make for a good businessperson. To thrive in the marketplace, the solo or small firm practitioner must excel on both fronts. But solos or small firm practitioners who are not buoyed by the natural sense of optimism which supports and sustains most other professionals live in constant fear that their practice may not survive. Driven by this sense of impending doom and without any real business training to guide them, attorneys tend to make unfortunate business decisions.

Eschew Threshold Law

Among the worst decisions is their failure to effectively screen new clients. Unfortunately, practicing “threshold law” (working with anyone who crosses your threshold) often feels like the right thing to do at the time, but invariably leads to further distress because of the many problematic (non-paying and uncooperative) clients who begin to populate the practice. When a practice is filled with problematic clients, the affect on the attorney’s stress level is pronounced.

What does this mean to you? If you are like many of your colleagues and don’t properly screen your clients, you’ve probably set yourself up for great difficulties.

Were you to apply Pareto’s Principle (also known as the 80/20 Rule) to your client base, you would probably discover that 80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients, who in turn take up only about 20% to 40% of your time. This is worth repeating: Your best clients, the top 20% whom we’ll call your A and B level clients, take up the least amount of your time while generating the highest percentage of your revenues.

The remaining 80% of your clients take up a great deal of time and generate only 20% of your income. They are the problematic clients who agree to pay you only after wasting much of your time—or never pay you at all. Their poor payment habits are significant because not being paid not only adds to the stress you feel, it further reinforces your pessimism and subsequent disillusionment with the practice of law. As Jay Foonberg says, “It is better NOT to do the work and NOT get paid, than to DO the work and NOT be paid.” Just as potential clients interview you to determine whether or not you can help them, you’d be wise to assess their trustworthiness as well.

Are Your Clients Stressing You Out?

Not paying for services rendered is the worst trait of C or D level clients, but it isn’t necessarily their only bad habit. Take a look at the following checklist of symptoms signaling a practice which has an overload of problematic clients.

  • High outstanding receivables—you do quite a bit of work that you or your team will not be paid for
  • Clients who leave prematurely or often threaten to seek the services of another attorney
  • Clients who often fail to show for scheduled appointments
  • Clients who often fail to bring requested documents or to follow direction
  • Staff who feel abused by clients who misdirect their anger and scream at them or act unreasonably
  • Staff and attorneys who dread going to work and dealing with certain clients
  • Staff and attorneys who never hear “thank you” or any acknowledgment for their efforts—even after winning major victories
  • Experiencing a constant sense of crisis and tension that is attributable to specific clients and/or specific opposing counsel

If you check off even one of these symptoms, it’s time to reengineer your new client screening process because the effects of practicing threshold law have already disrupted your practice and will likely get worse. Unwittingly, you have created a stressful situation for yourself by not screening for clients who will pay you, cooperate with you and appreciate your efforts. It’s time to take control.

Remember that both in law school and in practice, success favors the pessimist, but the pessimist unchecked does not a good businessperson make. Intuitively, it seems like a good idea to work with everyone who crosses the threshold, but experience in working with hundreds of attorneys over the years has shown that you owe it to yourself, your team and your firm’s bottom line to raise your standards. Start now by being more selective in choosing who you will work with and take steps to systematically clean up your caseload.

Portions of this article are excerpted from Time Management for Attorneys: A Lawyer’s Guide to Decreasing Stress, Eliminating Interruptions & Getting Home on Time, by Mark Powers & Shawn McNalis, 2008.

  1. Raymond P. Ward, Depression, The Lawyers’ Epidemic: How You Can Recognize the Signs, The Legal Underground, 2003
  2. Richard G. Uday, That Frayed Rope, Utah State Bar Journal, August/September 2003

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Categories: Law Practice Management - Tags: attorneys, choosing clients, decreasing stress, how to select a client as a lawyers, lawyers and stress, pareto principle, selecting clients, students in law school, time management, time management for attorneys

Create Top-Of-Mind Awareness During Tough Economic Times

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Did you know that prior to the Great Depression the Kellogg Cereal Company was the industry leader? But as the dark days of the Depression receded, C.W. Post emerged as the frontrunner, outselling the field. How did this happen? Reportedly, Post, conscious of the fact that people still had a little money to spend and mouths to feed, launched an aggressive marketing campaign while their competitors downsized their efforts in order to save money. Consequently, Post generated more “top-of-mind awareness” than their competitors which translated into significant sales.

What does this have to do with you and your practice?

In a weak economy, it’s more important than ever to generate and maintain positive top-of-mind awareness with your clients, referral sources and community. Successful rainmakers know that next to your substantive legal skills, the single most important skill that will ensure the success of your practice is your ability to attract clients. Without this, your practice will not survive in the best of times, let alone the worst.

In our combined years of experience in working with, writing about and studying what the most successful rainmakers do, we’ve noticed that the best of the best have a keen eye when it comes to identifying three important factors in the client development process: the characteristics of their most profitable clients; the types of people who influence these clients; and the actions that allow them to get to know these influencers.

Identify The Characteristics Of Your Most Profitable Clients

You can do the same. If, like most attorneys, you focus on several practice areas, identifying your best clients is slightly more complex. It’s important to think of each practice area as a separate profit center or business unit, each offering different services and serving a different type of client.

To discover the characteristics of your clients for each practice area, review your files for the last year and look at the types of people each practice area has served. Once you’ve done this, narrow your search further and identify who your best, or “A” clients are in each group.

Almost without exception your “A” clients generate 80 percent of your revenues and only take up 20 to 40 percent of your time. They pay their bills on time, cooperate with you and send referrals. Typically, these are the clients you most enjoy working with and you are best equipped to handle. To emulate the best rainmakers, study the demographics of these individuals and target their peers as the types of people you want to attract in the future. Then ask yourself, “Who Influences These “A” Clients?”

Identify The Influences On These Clients

If you were an estate planning attorney, for example, your typical “A” clients may be high net worth individuals, both self-made and highly-educated men and women, predominantly in their upper forties to early sixties who have worked hard. Perhaps they are professionals or have started their own businesses and have accumulated assets exceeding a certain threshold.

Who do these individuals typically listen to? Research shows that these individuals confide in and trust their CPAs above any other professional. In this case, CPAs are the type of referral source with the most access and influence over the kinds of clients you want to serve. Next to CPAs, business and professional associations may wield a great deal of influence in terms of which lawyers these high net worth individuals consult for their estate planning needs.

To apply this to your own practice, ask yourself who has the most influence over your clients. If you’ve captured the names of those who’ve sent you your best clients in the past, you should be able to look through your files or in your database to identify the types of people who are in a position to send you good clients in the future. Apply this exercise to your practice to come up with the types of referral sources you should be targeting.

Network

Now that you know who they are, take steps to network with these individuals. The best rainmakers aren’t shy or reticent about cultivating relationships. We recommend you begin by making two lists. On the first, write down all of your referral sources everyone who has sent you at least one matter in the past two years. These are the people with whom you currently have some rapport. Make it your business to build and maintain rapport with this very important group of people.

Some of our more dedicated rainmakers actually create a spreadsheet to help manage this task. It contains 13 columns: one for each month, and a column on the far left listing all their best referral sources. They then keep track of the number of times each month they make contact with a particular referral source. Why go to all this trouble? Because the most successful rainmakers know that people like to do business with people they like. And for referral sources to like them, they must spend time with them. This chart or visual guide shows them at a glance who they are spending time with and who they’re not. Here’s the secret: With increased rapport comes increased referrals.

On the second list, write down the categories of people who influence your best clients. These are the people you want to target. They are in similar professions and positions as the referral sources who have proven to be good sources of business. While it may sound funny, you are, in effect, looking at which referral sources are the best and attempting to clone them.

While you are busy cultivating the first list of people your existing referral sources ask for introductions to the second group. While this doesn’t work when referral sources are competitive, you may be surprised to see how willingly your current referral sources help you network with people they know. Give this a try. It’s the fastest route to expanding your network.

If no introductions are possible, join organizations that are likely to be made up of your targeted referral sources. Make it your business to know where they go after work. Read what they read. Write articles for their trade journals. Attend their conferences and speak at their meetings. Hold seminars on subjects that would interest and attract them.

To keep your practice healthy and successful, you will need to maintain a minimum of three purposeful marketing contacts per week and a have a network of approximately 20 good referral sources. None of the strategies we’ve talked about is expensive, but all take an investment of your time. By diligently building “top-of-mind awareness” among your target influencers, you will start receiving more of the referrals you seek.

In these difficult economic times, don’t take the hunker-down and wait-it-out mentality favored by the Kellogg Cereal Company during the Great Depression. Clients still have issues to resolve and money to spend. See the downturn as an opportunity to raise your profile and be the C.W. Post of your legal community.

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Find Gratitude, Be A Better Lawyer

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Imagine thinking to yourself, ‘I appreciate our associate Shawn. He’s reliable, creative and gets along well with others in the office. I think I’ll let him know.’ Consider telling your spouse or partner, ‘I just want you to know I notice what you do around here the way you keep our family stable and help provide a home for me. I see how hard you work and we couldn’t have the life we do without your efforts.’

Gratitude has enormous power. Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association and the single most influential person who has guided positive psychology to its current pre-eminence in the mental health field, has found that gratitude is one of the five personal qualities which is tied to overall happiness. So what is gratitude?

In their classic tome, Character Strengths and Virtues, A Handbook and Classification, Seligman and Christopher Peterson note,

Gratitude is a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift be a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty. The word gratitude is derived from the Latin gratia, meaning ‘grace,’ ‘graciousness,’ or ‘gratefulness.’

Gratitude in its highest expression is found in the delight in the ordinary, as 19th century writer and philosopher G.K. Chesterton asserts. If that is true, what a gift it provides the opportunity to experience appreciation and delight because of people and circumstances which naturally exist in our lives.

Can Gratitude Flourish In The Legal Arena?

But consider this quintessential irony provided by the modern legal environment: In order to succeed, many people claim, one must be hardheaded, hard-working, have a scintillating intellect, and value analysis over sentiment. A strong sense of irony and a clever, sometimes withering, skepticism compose both the shield and sword for the well-respected, successful attorney. The very imagery of ‘shield’ and ‘sword’ reinforces the adversarial nature of the law. Yet what if the key to success resides in a sense of wonder or awe found in the most basic elements of existence?

Professor Robert Emmons of U.C. Davis is, perhaps, the nation’s leading researcher on gratitude and its benefits. His research reveals that gratitude is correlated with higher levels of well-being, greater social connectedness, and a higher correlation to spirituality. Grateful people also place less importance on material acquisitions. In one study, Emmons had students keep a daily gratitude journal in which they listed at least 5 things they were grateful for at the end of each day. They found participants experienced higher levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attention and energy than those in the control group (who kept a journal which listed daily hassles).

Exercise Your ‘Gratitude’ Muscle

Seligman, Emmons and others focus on trying to come up with exercises that actually cultivate gratitude. As Seligman relates in Authentic Happiness, he was struggling to find an exercise for gratitude when a student suggested the class have a gratitude night. Each person would recall a person in his or her life who had provided deep and lasting gifts, and who had not been really acknowledged. The student would then write a letter to that person, describing the gifts given by that person (in as much detail as possible) and what those gifts had meant. Then, on gratitude night, each student would invite the person and read his or her letter. Mothers, brothers, and teachers all came, and everyone was deeply moved no one could keep the tears from their eyes. At the end of the semester many student evaluations recounted that evening as the high point of the course. This gave rise to Seligman’s ‘gratitude visit’ in which he suggests that people write a letter of appreciation to someone in their life, and read it to the person they are ‘honoring’ with their recognition and gratitude.

The gratitude journal is another exercise that strengthens our ability to witness those things that we would otherwise take for granted. Researchers have found that keeping a gratitude journal over a period of six weeks markedly enhances a person’s sense of well being. I recommend this exercise also for the things you will learn from your reactions to the task. If you demur because it appears ‘soft’ or ‘silly,’ you might want to look at what inside you disdains recognizing and expressing the good things in your life. After a week or two, you may recognize those people and circumstances that you previously took for granted. After all, what’s the good of having wonderful things in your life if you don’t recognize them? (Remember, this journal is for the writer only. You don’t have to list ‘my wife’ so you can show it to her and seem like a good guy; nobody else is going to read it. It should be private and personal to derive any value from the effort.)

How frequently do those of us who are blessed with health stop and give thanks for our freedom from pain and physical limitation? Lawyers are very smart folks living and working among intelligent people but how often have you stopped to consider and appreciate the wonderful gift of a good mind, or how much fun it is to think and interact with others who are equally witty?

Count Your Blessings

We are a wealthy and, in many ways, overindulged culture. We are bombarded with advertisements that tell us we can’t be satisfied without certain things only our consumer economy can provide. People who travel a good deal often remark upon returning that our culture is marked by this sense of enforced dissatisfaction promoted by a consumer economy. We can resist that force, however, by spending just five minutes before we go to bed recounting our blessings.

For me, tonight, I might say that I love the way my golden retriever calms down when I rubbed his ears after he came in frightened by a thunderstorm. I am grateful that I am 58 and still have energy to run my practice and teach at the same time; for the soup my wife got me this afternoon because I came home not feeling so well; for hanging out with my 15-year-old daughter (we’re in different parts of the house) while her mom is out tonight, for realizing that her simple presence brings me a sense of well being and joy. I’m happy I found a book that interests me (Henry Clay’s biography) from the library; I am grateful that I was able to come up with an argument that will support a revision of a court commissioner’s ruling (which is like an appeal to a judge in a family law matter); I’m happy that Springsteen still puts on great shows after 33 years and that my wife and I could go to one this weekend so she could finally see what I had been carrying on about for so long; I’m grateful that Don Hutcheson has been kind enough not only to allow me to contribute to The Complete Lawyer, but to get this piece in a bit late.

Unless you’re struggling with depression, so that you’re biochemically unable to experience the joy of the simple or the sublime, I challenge you to not be able to come up with five things to be grateful for every night for six weeks prior to bed time. If Seligman, Emmons and others are correct, your productivity will rise, your sense of well-being will skyrocket and your creativity and mental skills will be sharp and satisfying. What lawyer wouldn’t want those assets?

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Categories: Legal coaching - Tags: be a better attorney, be a better lawyer, delight, legal, successful legal career

How to make more money as a lawyer

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It’s hard enough to generate new business when the economy is thriving; the current global economic climate raises the bar in ways that can cause anxiety, fear, and despair.

Is your practice recession-proof? Is your firm?

It’s time to think differently about networking, marketing and sales.

Great fortunes were made even during the Great Depression, and today savvy lawyers can rely on strategies to weather the storm and lay the foundational building blocks for powerful rainmaking success.

You needn’t fall prey to the swirling forces of depression (either monetary or emotional) that are now running rampant. Coaching works in the domain of mindsets mental constructs and beliefs that get in the way of the results you want. Results are generated by actions, which are directly created by thoughts and beliefs.

Mindset Resets Can Bust The Recession Blues

When the mindsets around you are fear-based, coaching can help you maintain your positive focus on doing your best work and best rainmaking. The impact of coaching is in resetting your thought-systems such that they better align to serve you and the results you intend to produce. Below are five general mindsets to consider followed by specific strategic rainmaking mindsets to successfully sell legal services:

This too shall pass. As bad as things are, and as bad as they have yet to become, nothing is permanent. That’s the good news! Find something (anything) that allows you to experience joy, love or happiness each day. Simple things work best: a grandchild’s smile; a sweet, crunchy apple; the twinkle of a star in the night sky; a flower; a raindrop; the smell of your favorite person. Daily practice: find and focus on one joyful thing each day. What you focus on expands.

Gratitude. It is impossible to feel fear when we feel grateful to be loved, to be alive, to breathe. Focusing on gratitude will restore your inner calm, and provide you with strategic and intentional thoughts about thankfulness. Daily practice: create a gratitude list before you get out of bed each morning. I’m grateful for every kink in my stiff body because it means I’m alive!

Generosity. Often when things are tough, the first thing we (and companies) do is tighten our belts. But this is not the time to hold onto everything; it’s the time to purge! Pay attention to all the ways you can be generous to others: give of your time to someone worse off than you, help a friend, donate food to the hungry, and give to your favorite charity. Contributing to others feels good. You’ll find that many generous acts don’t cost you a thing and that the return on your investment is one hundred fold. Daily practice: Ask yourself, “What can I do for someone else today?” and then act on the answer.

Money is energy; keep it moving. If we think of money as a scarce commodity, current economic conditions will cause hoarding: in effect, we’ll put up the equivalent of a giant dam blocking the flow of life-sustaining water to our worldwide village. If money is energy, life energy, we must do whatever we can to keep it moving. Buy what you need, give money away, and keep money flowing so that it can flow back to you. If you create an energy block, you will cut off your own supply in the future. Daily practice: Spend money or give it away to those less fortunate than you!

Trust (or faith, if you are religious). An abundance mentality relies on trust that everything will work out, and that everything happens for a reason, according to a power larger than ourselves. The universe works on dynamic laws that create and sustain prosperity for those who tap into them, and trusting the universe to provide is a key to loosening the knots in your stomach. Worry and fear are indicators that you are not trusting. Daily practice: Ask yourself, “What/or whom do I need to trust in to be able to breathe easier?”

SELL Your Services

Now that you have mindsets for busting the blues, how do you sell your services without selling your soul?

The answer is SELL, four specific strategies lawyers can leverage to increase rainmaking in a recession:

[S] Service, [E] Excellence, [L] Listening, [L] Leadership

Service is about taking care of others. Your focus is outward, identifying and serving the needs and interests of others. Notice that you’re not being asked to list the benefits and features of the services you offer that’s almost irrelevant. You want to provide solid service as a baseline, which will fuel your sales going forward. Think about your existing clients and how you can help them overcome the challenges of the current market. During a recession, focusing on client relationships is not a luxury; it is a requirement.

Excellence, a benchmark for success and the mindset from which top-tier results are generated, is about integrity and focus in your work and life. When economic times are tough, your competitors may cut their budgets and reduce their people development spending. Now is the time to invest in these areas. Demonstrable proof of excellence becomes a core marketing tool. Showcase any awards or prestigious wins as a consistent part of your marketing messaging.

Listening is how you successfully influence others. Whether you are seeking their business or their support for your ideas, you can accomplish your goals by improving and leveraging your listening skills. Take the time to understand the pressures your clients are facing, so that you can embrace creative alternative fee arrangements when it serves both your firm and the client to do so. Listen to what matters to your clients so you become the lawyer they go to because you find a creative way to get the job done rather than tell them what can’t be done.

Leadership is a key business development skill. Look around your firm or practice group. What processes no longer serve the flow of business and can be changed? What solutions can you recommend to improve legal services to clients? How can you repackage services or standardized work products to make them more affordable to prospective clients without sacrificing profit margins? What preventative legal insights can you give to your clients to help them navigate and predict the impact of the economy on their businesses? How can you get out in front of their business plans to help them reduce risk up front? Can you become a proactive business advisor to your clients rather than the fixer who comes in when there’s a problem?

Experts tell us that things will get worse before they get better. Futurists tell us that the global economy as we know it is already a thing of the past, and that our future includes new practices like bartering and community-based currency. Real estate gurus tell us that there will be a second upheaval in the housing market. Still, we needn’t throw up our hands and say “So what?” Indeed, we must plan for it, and not hide our heads in the sand. We need strength and faith in our own resilience during these challenging times. If we build our internal reserves and create new mindsets, we’ll thrive beyond surviving.

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Categories: Law Practice Marketing - Tags: how to make more money as a lawyer, law firm recession, law practice, recession, savvy lawyers

One Lawyer’s Short Story About Depression

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I’ve been depressed for a while.

I think it really set in last year after I had a couple of really awful outcomes in high conflict family law cases. I get so much pleasure and enjoy the sense of being in sync with my talents when I write, mediate or speak in front of a group. Adversarial advocacy in family law isn’t on that list and, as a family lawyer, I spend a fair amount of time doing this. So I found myself becoming depressed.

What does depression look like? Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be an episode of major depression to qualify. Major depression really knocks your feet out from underneath you (literally). It can be difficult just rolling out of bed. Days and nights are filled with obsessive rumination that acts like a mental whirlpool, driving the sufferer ever deeper into a vortex of hopelessness. Those struggling with major depression know for a fact that their lives will not and cannot get any better. For those made supine by this despair, antidepressant medication can be a literal life saver. Rather than elevating mood, these drugs put a floor underneath one’s mood so the whirlpool is shut off and the experience of an endless psychic descent ceases. Thankfully, what I’ve been experiencing is not nearly that debilitating or painful.

Dysthymia Allows Us To Function But In A Colorless World

My kind of depression is termed “dysthymia” in the DSM IV (mental health’s diagnostic “Bible”). With dysthymia, a person can still function after a fashion. However, life’s colors are faded. It’s more difficult to enjoy pursuits that had, not long ago, brought pleasure. We withdraw from our closest relationships. Paradoxically, I found myself coming home and drinking more. I love the taste of good vodka, and indulged that taste every evening. I say paradoxically because, as we know, alcohol is a quintessential depressant. However, I’ll also admit that I enjoyed the buzz before I drifted off to sleep. I wasn’t eating very well and found myself filling up this dark hole that was pulsating in my core with my favorite foods. (Try putting some salsa on Triscuit crackers, covering them with cheddar cheese and “nuking” the concoction in the microwave for three minutes. My mouth waters as I write this.) Anyway, I can attest that the short term comfort from “comfort foods” does bring a certain relief that is, indeed, short term.

At my office, it would take me all of about 15 minutes to shift into a cranky mood as I managed a case load of work that I increasingly had come to believe was basically pointless. I saw myself dealing with people who had grown apart in their most intimate relationships, overwhelmed by grief, betrayal and (most definitely) fear. They were then dropped into a process in which they were being assaulted by sworn statements made by their spouses and forced to respond in kind. Litigated family law, I have come to believe, is a preposterous exercise. By the time a marriage ruptures, two people who had formerly been intimate have arrived at the end of a long path marked by thousands of interpersonal and intrapersonal events which are both momentous and staggeringly trivial when measured against their impact. These people then ask another human being, often someone who has no training or interest in either psychology or family law, to make momentous decisions for them decisions based on scant information (20 pages of a sworn statement and another 5 minutes of a lawyer making a pitch). In trial, decisions can rest on the strength of a two-hour appearance on the witness stand. It’s a ridiculous process.

In this context, it is no small wonder that coming to the office to do what I have been educated and trained to do day after day would lead to dysthymia. As I said, I was not charming to live with. I was edgy. I was also lazy. That’s not my word, but it’s how my lack of interest in day-to-day household activities was labeled (not that I ever evinced much interest in this sphere of life). But depression drains the sense of purpose from your life so that you aren’t motivated to do the smaller things you used to do as a matter of course.

Actually, I think a lot of us struggle with dysthymia but because it really doesn’t affect our major life responsibilities, we just soldier on through the grey. Many studies have reported that lawyers have a high incidence of depression. Yet I think few of us really recognize it in ourselves precisely because we are basically able to continue on with what we’re doing after a fashion.

Last year, during the six months or so of my most pronounced dysthymia, although I took very poor care of my body, didn’t nurture my most important relationships with both family and friends, wrote very little (though writing is very rewarding for me), and found solace in crappy food and a bottle, I kept going to the office and avoiding things that were bringing me more and more angst and aggravation. Clients protesting my delayed response to their inquiries and issues pushed me even further into avoidance mode. My predominant emotion became worry about my practice. How’s that for fun? the capacity to experience joy is drained and the sharpest emotional experience is worry.

With Help, I Started To Resurface

A handful of events allowed me to start to resurface in this swampy water. I started to work with a very gifted therapist who incorporates neuro-feedback in her practice. This modality, which has been around for a number of years, enabled me to train my brain to augment or dampen brain waves by interacting with various computer programs or “games.” I remember being told that I had “punk beta waves” which is pretty emblematic of a depressed state of mind.

With a nutritionist’s help, I also started taking daily vitamins (with a boost of D since we don’t get a ton of sunlight here in the Northwest), omega 3 fatty acids, and Co-Q-10 which supports cellular health. After a Google search, I realized that, nutritionally speaking, I’d been living under a rock for a while. According to the Mayo Clinic, Co-Q-10 is manufactured naturally by the body, and low levels can, among other things, impact heart health. The vodka has been jettisoned. I still enjoy a glass of red wine with dinner and promise myself that if I have trouble keeping it to that amount, I will explore a 12-step meeting.

With all this support, I found that color started to fill the shapes of my life. Most importantly, perhaps, I began to seriously consider making a professional transition that I had been avoiding for a long time. Just last week, a man called who was deeply involved in a difficult family law conflict, with a real litigator on the other side. The case would definitely result in some healthy income in these economically troubled times. But I took a deep breath and referred him.

I knew that any transition in my feelings and attitude would not come immediately and that I needed to give myself some time. My lips and nose are above the surface of the swamp now and I’m pretty confident that in a month, or two or three, my whole head may emerge. I’m breathing now, though, and that’s an important start.

Joseph Shaub is a family law attorney and mediator in Seattle, Washington. An attorney since 1974 and marriage and family therapist since 1991, he has conducted several continuing education seminars and retreats for attorneys on interpersonal relationship skills over the past 15 years.

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The Ten Principles of a Healthy Diet for Lawyers

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In your busy life as a practicing lawyer, you probably feel overwhelmed, tired, unable to focus, and even depressed. You may think it is the nature of practicing law to feel this way, but a simple look at your diet might prove otherwise. You may not be eating enough protein.

Protein is made up of amino acids, which are the ‘building blocks’ of the human body. These building blocks repair the body and largely control how you feel mentally and physically. For example, protein increases focus and energy by causing the body to produce dopamine and norepinephrine, two substances that make you feel more alert and full of energy. It also causes the release of the hormone glucagon, which regulates glucose (blood sugar) levels for proper brain function. This, in turn, regulates hunger and energy levels. And because protein is more difficult to digest than carbohydrates and fats, it lasts longer in the body, suppressing hunger and satiating the appetite so you feel full after you eat and maintain that feeling longer.

Am I Eating Enough Protein?

The most common problems associated with a protein-poor diet are low energy, cravings for sweets and fats, constant hunger, and even emotional instability and depression.

Without enough protein, muscles weaken and the immune system functions less effectively. Our weakened bodies then have to work harder to perform basic bodily functions, causing us to feel tired, out of balance and unstable; we also get sick more easily, and can become depressed.

Cravings for sweets and fats are another telltale sign of inadequate protein in the diet. Similarly, feeling hungry less than two hours after a meal is also a symptom of eating too little protein. Without adequate protein, your body is unable to maintain blood sugar levels, causing you to feel hungry no matter how much you eat.

Eating too much protein isn’t healthy either; it causes constipation and sugar cravings (as opposed to sugar plus fat cravings). Meat, for example, is high in protein and fats but has no carbohydrates. Sugar is the exact opposite: it is only carbohydrates. When we crave sugar, we’re experiencing our body’s attempt to balance itself. But consuming lots of animal protein and sugar, neither of which contains water, can lead to constipation.

How Much Protein Should I Eat?

The health community is divided on how much protein we should consume.

The USDA recommends only 50 grams of protein per day. Dr. Barry Sears, author of A Week in the Zone and the popular Zone Diet, disagrees. He recommends a minimum of 75 grams per day for women and 100 grams per day for men, which should be part of a diet with a proportion of carbohydrates to fat to protein of 40%-30%-30%, respectively. Yet the accepted nutritional standard ratio of carbohydrates to fats to protein is 65%-15%-20%, respectively.

I don’t blame you for throwing up your hands in frustration and thinking, ‘Well, I might as well eat whatever I want since everyone disagrees as to what is a healthy diet.’ But if we look closely, we see that there is common ground: the correct daily amount of protein lies somewhere between 50-100 grams and 15-30% of our daily calories.

This actually makes sense. As Dr. Frank Lipman states in his book Total Renewal, everyone has a distinct genetic make-up, or ‘biochemical individuality.’ Because of these variations in our metabolism and biochemistry, no one diet or amount of protein is right for everyone.

In order to determine the proper amount of protein for you, experiment by varying the amount you consume for a week or two. Pay attention to the impact on your body, energy, mental state, hunger, and sustainability. Observe how your body responds to the food you eat and how you feel after you eat certain amounts of protein. (Use the Keep a Food Diary and Pay Attention to Breakfast pages below to guide you.)

Eat The Proper Portion Of Protein Per Meal

While the proper amount of protein on a daily basis may vary widely, the ‘per portion’ amount is approximately the same for everyone: 4 ounces of meat/6 ounces of fish for men, and 3 ounces of meat/4.5 ounces of fish for women, per meal. The body cannot utilize more protein than this at one time unless you are as active as a serious athlete.

Your hand is a perfect tool for determining the proper portion size. Dr. Barry Sears recommends eating a piece of lean animal protein no bigger and no thicker than the palm of your hand.

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Categories: Health - Tags: attorney health, diet for lawyers, health, lawyer health