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Help Older Adults Combat Loneliness And Isolation

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Loneliness and isolation often dramatically affect older adults. Debilitating illnesses, giving up the car keys and surviving the death of a spouse after a long-standing marriage all contribute to these feelings.

The less mobile older adults become whether because of chronic or sudden illness the more isolated they feel. Access to all the routines that helped them feel engaged becomes more limited: they find it harder to socialize, to go to the library or the grocery store, or to attend religious services. Without the stimulation of human company, older adults can shut down and become depressed.

Giving up driving, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, is especially isolating and difficult. It strips people of the independence they have enjoyed since the first day they got behind the wheel of a car. Most of us get frustrated when our car is in the shop for the day and we have to depend on someone to pick us up: we immediately think of at least ten places we need to go. Can you imagine what it feels like to suddenly realize that you can’t get in the car and run errands anymore? Without car keys, older adults can feel imprisoned unless we begin to think of ways to help them.

Suggest A Move

You may want to suggest that your elderly relative move either closer to other family members or to an independent living facility where she can enjoy activities and social events, or perhaps to an assisted living facility. Most likely, the older adult needs the equity from his or her home to finance long-term care. The current housing crunch we are experiencing may well impact your decision as to whether such a move is advisable.

Pets Can Help

Pets can become wonderful companions for older people. Animals have amazing healing powers; they are soothing and comforting. Caring for a pet makes us feel wanted. Many seniors love to experience the closeness of a pet that responds so positively to human touch.

This solution isn’t for everyone, and many factors need to be taken into account, including the type of pet best suited for the individual, and having back-up care for the pet if its owner becomes ill or goes out of town. Some organizations cater to older pet owners, helping them pay for the cost of keeping the animal current with vaccinations and vet visits.

Consider A Companion

It may be financially and emotionally beneficial to have someone move in with your older relative. Some non-profit organizations dedicated to community service sponsor programs that match older adults looking for companionship with those who need a home. College undergraduates and graduate students may also be looking for quiet places to live. Normally, the person moving into the home does not have any responsibility to take care of the older adult, but relationships often develop based upon trust and comfort levels. The monthly rent can help financially, and having another person in the house can help older adults feel less isolated. Of course the renter needs to be thoroughly vetted, but the rewards can be manifold.

Encourage Older Adults To Volunteer And Join Programs

Many volunteer programs welcome older adults. Seniors appreciate feeling responsible to others; they experience themselves as engaged and productive. RSVP, a national volunteer network for adults aged 55 and over, offers a full range of opportunities. Any local United Way office also offers a multitude of volunteer opportunities through the agencies they support.

Willing seniors can attend an array of social programs. Many local and non-profit organizations often sponsor a wide range of classes from tai chi to crafts to swimming all of which stimulate older adults. Contact your local Area Agency on Aging to find the social and recreational programs nearest to your aging relative. Also consider senior centers: call your County Office on Aging to find nearby locations.

If the older adult in your life needs a more supportive environment during the day, consider an adult day program which offers a supervised, safe day-time environment. If you need supplemental help at night, contact a home healthcare agency to find an aide.

Ensure Mobility

Even if a senior can no longer drive, she can still feel as if she has the power to leave home when she wants to if you provide appropriate options. Research various transportation services, or enlist the aid of a neighbor or a member of her religious community who would like to earn some extra money as a driver. Some families establish relationships with a specific cab driver who becomes a “personal driver” for the older person.

By thinking creatively, you can help ease the isolation and loneliness that afflict so many older Americans. Although they may experience themselves as more dependent, they don’t have to necessarily feel more depressed. If we help them to keep their spirits up, we’ll feel better as well.

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Categories: Health - Tags: beneficiary, healthcare for elder people, non profit organizations, older adults, older person, seniors, volunteer program

Use Your Long-Term Goals To Motivate You

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“In the long run you only hit what you aim at.  Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.”
–Henry David Thoreau

What do you want to be, do, and have in your life? These questions are the adult version of “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Many lawyers I coach have been so caught up in the stress cycle that they don’t know the answers.  They have been busily getting things done on their to-do lists and meeting the goals that have been set for them by their law firms, their families, and others.

They are so busy, in fact, that they may not even realize that they are out of touch with what makes them really happy—the important, not- so-urgent goals that connect them with their true selves and give their lives real meaning and fulfillment.  Knowing who you want to be and the things you want to accomplish and experience in your lifetime are fundamental to defining success your way.

Align Your Goals With Your Values

I am sure you already know how important goals are.  In fact, odds are that you’re already a high achiever, which means you’re probably very good at setting and meeting goals on a regular basis.  That’s how you made it through law school, passed the Bar Exam, and practice law.  However, if you are like many of my clients, your existing goals and plans have nothing to do with your most deeply- held values; instead, they’ve evolved from the stress cycle you are in.  The more closely you match your goals to who you really are and what you want out of life, the more they will help you create a life and career that bring you great fulfillment and meaning.

To see if you know your goals, ask yourself:

  • Toward what end are your efforts directed on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis?
  • Do you know where you are headed?
  • If you do know, is it where you really want to go?
  • Are the goals your own or someone else’s?
  • What do you really want to accomplish between now and the end of your life?
  • Who do you want to become and are you in the process of becoming that person?

These are some of the most important questions you can ask yourself.  Very often the reason people don’t get what they want is simply because they haven’t figured out what they really want.  If you create  clear goals that include the most important things about yourself and then keep those goals in mind when you consider opportunities, you can usually achieve what you are seeking.  But first you need to be clear about how you define your short-term and long-term goals.

Categorize Your Goals

Think of your goals as falling into three categories or levels:

  • Big-picture, higher level, abstract goals.  These include good health, security, love, and prosperity.  They are similar to values. “Achieving financial security” is a big-picture goal.
  • Intermediate goals.  These specific goals support or connect to the bigger goals.   “Saving money,” is an intermediate goal.
  • Action goals.  These are items on your “to-do” list that will help you achieve specific goals.  “Creating a budget” is an action goal.

Use Your Long-Term Goals To Motivate You

You can see how these goals are connected and interrelated. Creating a budget clearly will allow you to save money, which will contribute to your sense of financial security.

But you may not realize how you can use your highest level goals as motivational tools.  If, for example, your higher goal is to be physically and mentally fit into your 90s, you’ll be more likely to keep your action goal of getting up to run at 5:00 a.m. because you’ll think of it as an essential step in achieving longevity.  Simply adding “running 30 minutes 4 days a week” to your daily to-do list without linking it to the higher goal doesn’t give you any motivation to follow through.  Similarly, if you plan on making $200,000 a year, drill down beneath the numbers to identify your true end-goal.  What do you want to do with the money?  Enjoy an active retirement?  Provide for your children?  Answering these questions will help you devise interim and short-term goals that you can keep.

The trick is to make sure that your action and intermediate goals lead you towards the more big-picture goals that really matter to you.

Identify Your Long-Term Goals By Thinking Backwards

To start the process, identify your highest-level goals first, and then decide which interim and action goals will support them.

If you’re not already in touch with your most valued, big-picture goals, here’s an exercise to help you.

Pretend you are near the end of your life.  Your loved ones are with you and you have the chance to look back over your life.  Your grandchild asks you what you are most proud of, what you believe that your life has meant, and what you have accomplished.   How would you answer?  Ask yourself the following questions as
if you are that older person:

  • What has been most important to me?
  • What gave me the most joy?
  • Who have I been, what have I done, and what has meant the most to me?
  • What kind of difference have I made in the lives of others?
  • What has changed as a result of my having lived?
  • What kind of compromises would cause me to be disappointed with myself?

Here’s another exercise: make a list of any and all goals, big and small, you can think of—short-term, long-term, personal, career, family, health and fitness, financial.  Without categorizing or prioritizing them, write down  all the things that you love to do or would love to do, including all that you came up with in your “the end of your life” exercise.

Now, group your goals by category.  You’ll probably end up with a few large goals and many smaller goals, which you can group by sub-category.  For example, you may have several subsets under “Financial Security” or “Health and Fitness.”

Next, look at the goals that aren’t in a category and ask yourself:

  • Is this a goal that I really want, or one I think I should have?
  • How does it add to the quality of my life and my values?
  • Does it inspire me?  How does it challenge me to grow as a person?
  • Does this goal limit me to what I think is possible for me to become or achieve?

Based on your answers, eliminate those goals that don’t feel important or authentic.

Create Two Timelines

Your next task is to plot your true goals on a timeline.   Take a long piece of paper and draw two long, parallel horizontal lines leaving  space for writing in-between.  Label the top line “Career Goals” and the bottom one “Personal Goals.”  (You can tape several pieces of paper together to give you more room, use poster board, or even create it in a document that can expand as you add to it.  Be creative and use whatever method works best for you.)  Once you have drawn the lines, write your current age at the beginning of both parallel lines, and put 100 at the ends.  You can put hatch marks at ages 22, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 as those are considered turning points by many people.

It’s important to consider your life and career together.  We often make the mistake of separating our life into compartments rather than considering it as a whole with overlapping and interdependent segments.  The truth is, all of the parts of our lives are interwoven and affect one another; your career affects your family, your health, your finances, and your parenting—and vice versa.

Write your goals on the timelines, starting with your big-picture ones, and place them on the appropriate line at the age you want to achieve them.  Then add the smaller, intermediate goals.  Be creative—use  colored pens, for example, or draw pictures—to  make the activity more real and enjoyable.  Once you have added all your goals, you’ll probably notice substantial time gaps between your age now and the date you have targeted to achieve the goals.  Your next step will be to fill in those gaps with the necessary intermediate and action goals that will help you attain your long-term goals.

Make sure your intermediate and action goals are smart goals: make them specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based.   If they are vague, fuzzy, or open-ended, they will not be as effective.  For example, saying “I want to
be healthy” is a big-picture goal that sounds like a value.  How can you achieve this goal?  Will you exercise?  If so, where, how much, and how often?  When will you start and how will you know you have achieved your goal?  If you want to become healthier by changing your diet , ask yourself similarly specific questions.

Revisit Your Timelines To Modify Them As Your Life Changes

Once you have completed your timelines, review them and notice where you have placed your career and personal goals.  Are there any goals that you need to reconsider now that you can see how they mesh or conflict with each other?  For example, one client realized she had put the personal goal “to have a baby” at age 35, the same age she hoped “to start a business.”  Seeing this in black and white helped her realize how unrealistic it was; she ended up reevaluating her time frame for both goals.

As you continue to refine your Personal Vision, you will probably modify some of your goals, adding new ones, removing others.  This timeline is a work in progress—a living document that you can continue to use throughout your life.  Refer to it often, especially when making career and life choices.  And don’t be afraid to modify it as needed.

Setting True Goals Makes Your Life Easier And More Balanced

What happens if you don’t take the time to set your true goals?   You might be able to have a fulfilling career and life, but your path will probably prove more difficult and longer.  Or you might find you made unintended sacrifices that resulted in an imbalanced life.  Having meaningful goals that keep you focused on what you want to create for your career and life will help keep your feet moving in the right direction and keep your life in balance.

Take some time during the next two months to examine your short- and long- term goals for your career and your personal life.  Setting goals is like making promises to yourself, and that process alone can yield amazing results.

The next article will show you how to integrate all of the eight factors, including your goals, into your personal vision and how to uncover the possibilities for making it real in your life.
__________
RESOURCES

1.  McDonald, Bob, Ph.D., and Hutcheson, Don, E., Don’t Waste Your Talent: The
8 Critical Steps to Discovering What You Do Best, The Highlands Company,
2005.

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Categories: Professional Development - Tags: career and life, fulfilling career for lawyers, goals in life, law career development, long term goals, motivational tools, personal vision, professional development, setting goals, stress and lawyers, stress cycle

Ten Important Truths About Aging

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A s the legal profession debates various ethical issues pertaining to the “graying of the bar,” it’s important to consider the neuropsychological perspective.  According to up-to-the-minute research, aging by itself does not mean decline.  As we grow older, we improve in some areas, we get worse in others and, up to a point, we can control the course we take, as the following ten truths will explain.

Aging Means Lifelong Development, Not Automatic Decline
We prefer to talk more about change than about decline.  As Sharon Begley wrote in “The Upside of Aging” (The Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2007),

But it’s not all doom and gloom. An emerging body of research shows that a surprising array of mental functions hold up well into old age, while others actually get better. Vocabulary improves, as do other verbal abilities such as facility with synonyms and antonyms. Older brains are packed with more so- called expert knowledge—information relevant to your occupation or hobby. (Older bridge enthusiasts have at their mental beck-and-call many more bids and responses.) They also store more “cognitive templates,” or mental outlines of generic problems and solutions that can be tapped when confronting new problems.

In his most recent book, The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older, Dr. Goldberg explains that as we undergo experiences, we actually change our brains by creating new neurons and synapses.  This process never stops; our brains enjoy lifelong plasticity.  Until recently, a popular misconception was
that neurons die as we age and do not get replenished. Now, neurogenesis, or the ability of our brains to create new neurons until the very day we die, is a proven reality.

Some Skills Improve With Age

In our “Exercising Our Brains” classes, we typically explain how some brain functions improve as we age; that is, we get better at self-regulation and emotional functioning, and we accumulate wisdom. Today, scientists are beginning to talk about wisdom as a biological category. We can define wisdom, at least in part, as the pattern recognition
that enables us to solve problems efficiently, develop empathy and insight into others’ minds, refine moral reasoning, and most importantly, be able to prescribe (not merely describe) how to adapt to our environment. For example, as lawyers tackle more completed cases, they develop an “intuition” for solutions and strategies. As long as the environment does not change too rapidly, we can continue to accumulate wisdom.

Some Skills Need To Be Continuously Nurtured And Trained

Some areas of mental functioning typically decline.  We usually see this in areas that test our capacity to learn and adapt to new environments, such as effortful problem- solving in novel situations, processing speed, working memory, attention and mental imagery.  (These are some of the areas that the computer-based programs mentioned
below focus on.)

Not All Instances Of Forgetting Are Of Equal Concern

There is an essential difference between not remembering where you put your car keys today…which happens to all of us when we are too absorbed in something else…and not remembering why you need keys to open the car. Sometimes we tend to worry too much over memory lapses that aren’t significant. Memory may decline over the years, but many people can continue to function well before serious problems develop.  We should take action as soon as we can, but we don’t have to become unduly concerned.

We Are In Control, To A Large Extent

Studies have shown a tremendous variability in how well people age and how, to a large extent, our actions influence our rate of improvement and/or decline. Our awareness that it’s not all doom and gloom and that there’s much we can do is important.  As Atul Gawande wrote in “The Way We Age Now: Can medicine serve an aging population?” (The New Yorker, April 30th, 2007):

“For most of our hundred-thousand-year existence—all but the past couple of hundred years—the average life span of human beings has been thirty years or less. (Research suggests that subjects of the Roman Empire had an
average life expectancy of twenty-eight years.)” “Inheritance has surprisingly little influence on longevity. James Vaupel, of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, in Rostock, Germany, notes that only six per cent of how long you’ll live, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ longevity; by contrast, up to ninety per cent of how tall you are, compared with the average, is explained by your parents’ height. Even genetically identical twins vary widely in life span: the typical gap is more than fifteen years.”

In terms of healthy aging, nurture seems to be at least as important as nature, which means that how we age is at least partially under our control.

There Are Four “Pillars Of Brain Health”

According to the existing scientific literature, if we want to maximize our chances of healthy brain aging, we should focus on four pillars: physical exercise, a balanced diet, brain exercise and stress management. And the earlier we begin the better, if we want to build a Cognitive Reserve (more on this later).

1.  Physical Exercise

Physical exercise has been shown to enhance brain physiology in animals and, more recently, in humans. Exercise improves learning through increased blood supply and growth hormones. If you can only do one thing, focus on cardiovascular training—exercise that gets your heart beating faster, like walking, running, skiing, swimming,
biking, hiking, tennis, basketball, playing tag, and ultimate Frisbee.

2.  Balanced Nutrition

As a general guideline, what is good for your body is also good for your brain. Eat a variety of foods of different colors while avoiding foods with added ingredients or processed foods. Add some cold-water fish to your diet (tuna, salmon, mackerel, halibut, sardines, and herring) which contain omega-3 fatty acids. If you can only focus on one change, eat more vegetables, particularly leafy green ones. Few supplements have shown long-term benefits on memory and other cognitive functions.

3.  Stress Management

Since chronic stress reduces and can even inhibit the creation of new neurons, stress management is important.
Practice meditation, yoga, or other calming activities as a way to take a relaxing time-out.  If you want a more high-tech option, use biofeedback devices that measure heart rate variability and allow you to see your levels of stress in real-time. If you can only do one thing, set aside 5-10 minutes to just breathe deeply and recharge.

4.  Brain Exercise

Mental exercise can accelerate the rate that new neurons are created and enhance the chances of their survival, and strengthen the synapses or connections among neurons, thus improving overall cognitive functioning.
The 3 key principles for good brain exercise are:

  1. Novelty: you need to try new things, including things you aren’t good at.
  2. Variety: given that the brain is composed of a variety of functionally distinct areas, you need to ensure a complete mental “workout circuit” to maintain sharpness in all areas.  Excessive specialization is not the best strategy for our long-term Brain Health.
  3. Challenge: you need to be exposed to increasing levels of challenge, so the task is never too easy.

If you can only do one thing, learn something new every day.

Cross-Training Our Brains Builds Up Cognitive Reserve

It’s important to explain brain exercise in more detail.  When we cross-train our brains, by doing activities that provide us with novelty, variety and challenge, we are building up our “Cognitive Reserve” or buffer against decline.

The concept of Cognitive Reserve has been around since 1998 when a post- mortem analysis of 137 people with Alzheimer’s disease showed that the patients exhibited fewer clinical symptoms than their actual pathology suggested.  Their brains also weighed more and had a greater number of neurons when compared to age-matched control groups. The investigators hypothesized that the patients had a larger “reserve” of neurons and abilities that offset the losses caused by Alzheimer’s. Since then, the concept of cognitive reserve has been defined as the ability of an individual to tolerate progressive brain pathology (including Alzheimer’s plaques and tangles) without demonstrating clinical cognitive symptoms.

In one study of 1772 non-demented individuals over seven years that controlled for factors like ethnic group, education, and occupation, participants with high leisure activity had 38% less risk of developing dementia, and that risk was reduced by approximately 12% for each additional leisure activity adopted. Subsequent research,
including imaging studies of cerebral blood flow, continues to build up data showing that frequent participation in cognitively stimulating activities reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and slows the rate of cognitive decline. Interestingly, physical, social, and intellectual activities all help, although intellectual activities are associated with the lowest risk of developing dementia.

Participation in stimulating activities spurs neuronal growth and results in a larger number of neurons and neuronal connections to compensate for brain pathology. The net result is this: the more mentally stimulating lives we lead, the less exposed we are to problems as we age.

Computer-Based Brain Exercise Programs Can Help

You can expect more “brain training” computer-based programs to appear in the market over the next five to ten years since they are great tools that help us complement and enhance other activities in our daily lives. Computer-based brain training programs can deliver the right mix of novelty and variety at constantly evolving difficulty levels that ensure constant challenge. SharpBrains.com constantly reviews programs developed by scientists worldwide.  Visit our website if you want to learn more about a variety of programs and how to select the ones that can be useful to you. These programs, until recently mostly used by neuropsychologists in clinical settings, have been adapted and improved to provide healthy individuals with the intense mental challenges that help build the Cognitive Reserve and improve specific brain functions. We have seen both research and testimonials indicating that intensive and well-targeted Brain Fitness Programs can produce good results in as little as 3 months.

Embrace “Good” Stress; Eliminate “Bad” Stress

Stress can be positive.  For example, it probably helped you deliver the court room performance of your life. Short term stress can help you focus and perform—if it’s in the right amount and short-lived. In other words, you feel the jitters or adrenaline for a period of time, and then you use it up accomplishing your goal.  Afterwards, you need to rest and recover while basking in the glow of your accomplishment.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) describes long-term, chronic stress that just does not go away. GAS may paralyze you into inaction, during which you just stare at the problem and worry without being able to do anything about it. This type of stress is harmful to the brain; disrupts your immune and cardiovascular systems; and makes
you anxious, irritable, and unable to sleep.  If you’re afflicted with GAS, try meditation, yoga, tai chi, or biofeedback programs.

Retirement Is Overrated

Many baby boomers want to remain active and mentally stimulated beyond arbitrary retirement ages. Given demographic trends, this will create a large group of people working into their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Society at large will have to adapt its education, health and employment policies to benefit from this trend.

In summary, the latest neuroscientific research has shown that, contrary to popular belief, the brain is constantly undergoing neurogenesis.  Learning new things and targeted mental exercise promote the development of new neurons and connections between neurons, just as muscle growth is promoted through physical exercise—and this can take place at all ages.  Indeed, work itself, and embarking on second and third careers, can provide great cognitive exercise.

RESOURCES
1. Goldberg, Elkhonon, Ph.D., The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized
Mind, Oxford University Press, 2001; paperback 2002.
2. Goldberg, Elkhonon, Ph.D., The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger
As Your Brain Grows Older, Gotham Books, Penguin, 2005; paperback 2006.
3.  SharpBrains’ Brain Fitness Topics and Blog.

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Categories: Health - Tags: aging, aging process, alzheimer's disease, balanced nutrition, brain excercise, brain fitness, brain health, dementia, meditation, neoropsychology, neuron, stress management, yoga

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

Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been A Bad Boss?

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We’ve all had bad bosses – creepy, crawly, hair-raising, crazy – making ones. They come in all shapes and sizes: yellers, fumers, passive, aggressive, obsessive, oblivious, and egotistical. But have you ever considered that you might be a bad boss? Chances are, the answer is no.

While working for a litigation support company, I once had a boss whose determination to improve the bottom-line was so single-minded and narrowly focused that he failed to realize the company was suffering as a result. As president of a division of the parent corporation, I participated in regular but painful executive meetings. My anguish was compounded by the fact I had to fly 2,000 miles across the country to attend these anxiety-ridden “let’s-beat-up-the-managers” conferences, sometimes trekking through heavy snow storms and icy runways to be there. At one meeting, a shaking vice-president took a big gulp and bravely pointed out to this so-called billionaire, this self-centered Chairman of the Board with the iron fist, that employees were consistently working 90 hour weeks, not paid overtime and stressed to the max. His response? “Drive the horses harder.”

“They’ll drop at the finish line,” I retorted. It was out of my mouth before I stopped to think. (Yep, true story.)

We all like to think that when we’re the boss we’ll run our firms the way we always imagined a well-oiled team is supposed to work: we’ll give lots of positive feedback, maintain an open-door policy, and eschew harsh criticisms. We imagine ourselves well liked with an adoring staff, and tell ourselves we will make few bad decisions. Promotion to the top of the career ladder—here we come!

Hel-loooo!!! Are we all on the same page here?

Are You A Bad Boss?

In A Survival Guide for Working with Bad Bosses, author Gini Graham Scott writes that employee perceptions can be difficult for a boss to judge because employees are naturally—and understandably—reluctant to criticize their employer’s behavior, even when asked to do so. “Getting reliable feedback from your employees will be very hard,” Scott says. “Even if they like you, even if they trust you, they are still dependent on you for a paycheck and most won’t risk that to tell you the truth.”

In large firms, the effect of a single bad boss is mitigated by the firm’s sheer size. There’s always someone else to go to, a committee to complain to or a different department into which to transfer. The smaller the team of employees, the greater the impact employee disaffection with the boss can have on day-to-day functioning. Tension between the team leader and staff can dramatically hurt the entire firm through reduction of employee productivity. And those in law firms know what that means: fewer billable hours—the real career buster of most revenue-generators.

In their book, First Break All the Rules, authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman analyzed the results of a Gallup survey of 80,000 managers and one million employees. Their straightforward conclusion: Bad bosses hurt their companies. The worst effect of bad bosses was to drive good people away. “So much money has been thrown at the challenge of keeping good people—in the form of better pay, better perks and better training—when, in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue,” the authors write.

To avoid becoming a bad boss, watch your staff’s behavior. Rapid employee turnover is the number one sign of management problems. If you notice that your firm has a revolving door of paralegals, secretaries and other staff with whom you directly interact, that may be a sign that you are difficult to work for.

Bad Bosses Come In Four Varieties

There are four types of bad bosses, explained below, along with some advice for avoiding the traps they set.

#1: The Micro-Manager

This boss won’t let her employees do their jobs. She generally requires employees to obtain permission for every little action. Some problems stem from the fact that many paralegals are promoted from within. They have built up their territory, established procedures and spent a good deal of time running the office themselves. So when the firm expands and more paralegals or staff comes on board, they resist letting others make the decisions they’ve been making themselves for so long. While it’s understandable that no one wants a newcomer to rock the boat, you limit the possibility of expansion if you don’t let anyone else do the work.

The best way to avoid falling into the Micro-Manager trap is to hire the best paralegals, legal assistants and other staff you possibly can and let them do their jobs. When you have confidence in your team, you’ll be able to focus on your own job and not hover over others. However, if you aren’t confident that your staff will make good decisions, you probably haven’t hired the right people.

#2: The Mini-Manager

Can’t make decisions? Put off making decisions that are not directly related to assignment areas? Not interested in anything but productivity and quality? If you answered yes, you’re a mini-manager, which is the opposite of the micro-manager. Employees depend upon their boss for quick decisions that directly impact their work and ultimately impact their personal lives. If as a manager you drag your feet, especially on critical issues such as raises, reviews, seminars and scheduling vacations, employees tend to get just plain angry because they conclude that you don’t care. Once your staff realizes that nothing is urgent for you, their work will reflect the same lack of urgency. Timely decision-making and paying attention to decisions affecting home life all factor into your reputation as a boss. Don’t hang your staff out to dry simply because you can’t or won’t make a decision outside the scope of the assignment. Find the time, resources or support to make your staff’s issues matter.

#3: Up Close and Personal Manager

The boss who becomes so close to the people who work for her that they can’t distinguish whether she is their boss or their best friend can be worse than the manager who is indifferent. No matter how friendly you are with your staff, the relationship is always hierarchical and unequal. Period.

Being the best friend to a member of your staff puts you in a delicate situation because it’s difficult to maintain a professional distance with someone who feels that you are his or her equal. It’s also tough to discipline your staff or give unfavorable reviews—and tougher still to choose someone outside of the circle who is more qualified for a promotion or juicy assignment. Even worse, try firing that person. You may end up suffering more than your employee.

Being friendly but maintaining healthy boundaries is how good managers manage staff. Laughing, sharing good times and good stories are all appropriate. But draw the necessary lines so that you don’t become so involved with your employees’ personal lives that professional boundaries are blurred. Be approachable, friendly and interested but aware of the real limitations that exist.

#4. The User and Abuser

These bosses come in various forms. Brutal and/or emotionally invasive, they don’t need an excuse to come out of their chairs at you. Abuse can range from humiliation to screaming, inappropriate language, bullying or instilling fear for no reason. The worst abusers are those who demean employees.

Harvey A. Hornstein, Ph.D., author of Brutal Bosses and Their Prey, studied 1,000 U.S. workers and found that 90% had experienced some form of abuse from an employer during their careers. Dr. Hornstein attributes the behavior to a “me vs. them” mentality. Bully bosses are generally aware of their behavior but mistakenly believe that it increases productivity. In fact, Hornstein says, the opposite is true. “Employees who leave firms do so because they feel alienated by their managers. But not every employee can leave their job just because they have a bully for a boss. Those employees tend to strike back by deliberately lowering the quality of work.” He goes on to say that once the employees realize that the abuse will occur whether or not the work is good, they tend to let the quality slide.

Hornstein’s findings are supported by researchers Kelly L. Zellars and Bennett J. Tepper (University of North Carolina, 2002) who found that abusive behavior by supervisors such as public humiliation, screaming, yelling or derogatory remarks significantly reduced the willingness of employees to act in a way that promoted organizational effectiveness. In short, the partner in the corner office who gets his way through abuse generally has employees who produce less.

Further, some firms have a way of enabling the green-eyed monster on the C-level floor by excusing this person’s behavior because he or she is a top-biller or sacred cow. “Oh,” these enablers say, “That’s just Mr. SoandSo. He doesn’t mean any harm.” Yet the person who looks the other way is as abusive as the abuser himself.

Avoiding abusive behavior, according to Hornstein, comes down to policing interaction with employees. He advises managers to take special care to treat all employees equally. Obviously, he says, employers should never use pejorative names or abusive language with employees: not only does that do little to enhance employee performance but increasingly, it can lead to harassment litigation.
No wonder employment litigation is at an all-time high these past few years, as more and more employees stand up and say “no” to emotional and verbal abuse.

Rate Yourself On The Bad Boss Checklist

1. Check your turnover rate. Revolving doors do not always mean that you’ve made “bad hires.” Discontent often arises when the boss is bad.
2. Are you a delegator or horder? If you believe you are hiring qualified people but you are the only one doing sophisticated work, you may be hording the good assignments for yourself and not delegating properly. If you need to make every last decision, no matter how small, you’re probably micro-managing.
3. Do you have anything good to say to your employees? If you find yourself constantly criticizing performance, then you are presenting a one-sided personality and are most likely alienating your staff. No one can do a bad job all of the time. Really.
4. Do you avoid giving your staff bad news? Most likely, your staff knows what’s going on. Alternately, if they are reluctant to bring problems to your attention, it’s probably because they fear your reaction, which means it’s time to adopt a new attitude.
5. Are you too close? If you find yourself sharing personal information with your staff, you are most likely crossing professional boundaries.

RESOURCES

Graham, Gini, A Survival Guide for Working With Bad Bosses: Dealing With Bullies, Idiots, Back-stabbers, And Other Managers from Hell Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been A Bad Boss?
, AMACOM, 2005.

Buckingham, Marcus and Coffman, Curt, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been A Bad Boss?, Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Hornstein,Harvey A. Ph.D., Brutal Bosses and Their Prey, Riverhead Trade, 1997.

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Categories: Law Firm Support Staff - Tags: bad boss, boss, delegator, good boss, how to be a better boss, how to be a better lawyer, micro-managing

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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Elder Law Attorneys Can Help Humanize The Future Of Health Care

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As an elder law attorney I guide clients through the maze of the senior chronic care system to help marshal all possible resources to provide the best care possible and at the same time preserve some of their life savings. In addition, many elder law attorneys provide planning advice for persons of all ages with disabilities.

What will the elder law practice look like in 2020? I believe it will be very different because our health care system will be very different. Clearly, the system will get worse rather than better.

Three Crises Loom On The Horizon

The confluence of three crises illustrates the scope of challenges facing seniors and the disabled. First is the continued growth of Alzheimer’s disease in an aging population. The Alzheimer’s Association predicts that Alzheimer’s disease alone will break the public benefits system unless a cure or effective treatment is found within the next ten years.

Second is the terrifying rise and cost of autism and related disorders. Autism prevalence has gone from 4 in 10,000 a few years ago to 1 in 166 (according to some accounts, the rate is 1 in 150). The number of those diagnosed continues to rise. Lifetime direct and indirect costs to treat and care for an autistic child exceed 3.2 million dollars. If the rate of growth in autism continues to rise or even remains constant, it is enough to break our public benefits system.

Third is the aging of the baby boomers. If this age wave needs, wants and expects the level of care currently provided by Medicare and Medicaid, we will have costs rising at a rate most citizens and politicians are likely to find unacceptable. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has cautioned that “…the coming demographic transition will have a major impact on the federal budget…continuing for many decades” (Oct. 4, 2006). Bernanke predicts that Social Security and Medicare will change from the current 7% of domestic product to 13% by 2030. Bernanke also says the country will have to choose among higher taxes, reduction in payments for entitlement programs, a sharply higher budget deficit, or some combination of these; and goes on to suggest that taxes would have to be increased by at least one-third over the next 25 years.

We May Be Moving Toward The Rationing Of Healthcare

As the 2008 presidential election moves into full swing, candidates are proposing new health care systems for the United States that may be more affordable, comprehensive, and include the more than 47,000,000 Americans with no health care coverage at all. Will universal health care solve the senior and special needs population health crisis? Will we move to a health care rationing system that will effectively make care less available rather than more? How will the new health care system treat chronic illness and disability?

Medicaid has already surpassed education in Florida’s budget at a time when casualty insurance and real estate taxes are perceived to be beyond the taxpayer’s ability and willingness to pay. Where will the cuts be made as the state’s crisis deepens? Long-accepted planning techniques for disabled persons will eventually come under the government microscope. Special Needs Trusts that provide for supplemental needs and allow the individual to collect government benefits are likely to be in bipartisan trouble.

William Mitchell School of Law Professor Kim Dayton believes that rationing will inevitably accompany universal health care. In her paper “The Future of Elder Law: End of Life Issues,” prepared for the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys Institute November, 2006, Professor Dayton suggests that the new system consider the following rationing choices:

• You get a certain number of years, but that’s all (how many?)
• You get a certain quality of life, but that’s all (what is quality, anyway?)
• You get what you can pay for yourself, but that’s all (it’s the American way)
• You get basic treatment, that’s all
• You get what you need, but not if your diseases or disabilities are self-induced (no liver transplants for alcoholics or triple bypass surgery for smokers)
• You get what you need if you are someone of past, current, or future importance
• The closer you are to dying (due to age or disease), the less health care you get

Three Ways Elder Law Attorneys Can Help

How can elder law attorneys deal with these extremely negative possibilities for the future?

1. Take Personal Financial Responsibility. Each of us must advise our clients to take personal financial responsibility for the care of our special needs loved ones. Elder law attorneys and estate planners must budget long-term care into client estate and financial plans. Once a person makes age 60, she or he has a 60% likelihood of needing long-term care. Instead of planning for death, as we traditionally have, we need to plan for life, taking into account the strong probability that each client will have chronic illness. It is foolish to believe that government benefits will adequately provide for seniors and the disabled by the year 2020.

2. Become Politically Involved and Politically Active. As elder law and estate planning attorneys, we see and hear many wrenching stories from a generation Tom Brokaw named “The greatest.” We are positioned to advocate for their fair treatment. Their stories touch us; their plight trumps the economic concerns expressed by elected officials at the municipal, state, and national levels. We can make public officials who are in a position to help aware of the challenges facing seniors. We must find cures for these terrible chronic illnesses and disabling afflictions.

3. Be Visible. The public needs to experience the ways in which seniors have a positive impact on all of us. Aging is not just about illness. Elder lawyers can help laypeople understand that aging is not synonymous with inevitable decline but can be as a stage in which we share the wisdom we’ve accumulated.

Elder Law attorneys deal with the legal, health and social issues connected with aging. Medicare does a good job for seniors with cancer, heart disease, and other acute illness. The Medicare patient who needs open heart surgery is likely to run up medical and hospital bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars with out-of-pocket share of cost being a few thousand dollars at most. However, seniors afflicted with chronic illness such as stroke, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS, and Lou Gehrig’s are very limited in Medicare coverage. Medicare may provide up to 100 days of skilled or rehabilitative care if preceded by at least a three-day hospital stay. The patient must be making progress with rehab and most do not receive anywhere close to 100 days of coverage. When Medicare benefits terminate, the payment sources for the $6-7,000 per month cost of nursing home care are limited to long term care insurance (hard to get and expensive). I am a founding member of the Special Needs Alliance, a national invitation-only organization of lawyers specializing in assisting people with special needs. Special Needs Trusts allow disabled people the opportunity to live more comfortable lives with the combined benefit of public benefits and protected private resources. Other trusts protect seniors whose income exceeds Medicaid limits but is well below the monthly cost of care.

Elder law and estate planning attorneys must take on these challenges now, not only for the current generation but for future generations. We must choose whether we want to drive our own vehicles and end up where we want to be or be mere passengers dropped off wherever others decide. There is little likelihood that our health care system will become any easier to navigate in the future. As we advise senior and disabled clients of all ages to be proactive and creative, we can do no less.

[This article was published in 2007]

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How Can Lawyers Thrive In An Uncertain Economy?

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During uncertain times in the legal market, a law firm that wants to survive and thrive must stabilize its core and align all of its efforts with specific, identified long-term strategic goals. Professional Development (PD) is the perfect structural tool to achieve that stability and alignment. PD can equip associates with the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to meet the challenges of the current economic climate. When firms cut professional development programs, they communicate a short-term, “every man for himself” mentality to their attorneys and jettison the one thing that can best provide their attorneys with the tools they need to adapt and respond. As a result, attorneys become more anxious and less secure. Firm cohesion falls apart. Law firms must use the PD function to re-focus, re-tool, and move forward—to shift from reaction to action.

PD Is the Core Platform To Circle the Wagons

In challenging markets, the overall success of a firm depends on several critical factors: what attorneys know and can do, their ability to adjust and change in the face of adversity, their commitment to and belief in the firm’s goals, and their desire to work together as part of the team. Law firms can use existing professional development components—training programs, mentoring programs, virtual learning systems, peer-to-peer collaboration—to reinforce firm integration, individual attorney security, and client confidence. Partners, associates and clients all need to see that the firm is on solid ground. Use PD to tell your lawyers and clients that everyone is valued, everyone pulls together, and everyone benefits in the end. Use PD to calm the waters, communicate consistent messages, disseminate the firm’s strategic and tactical goals, and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

PD can also be used to reassure your associates that their participation is essential to the firm’s continued success. In this market, associates need to help the firm hold on to existing clients, reduce client costs, re-build practice groups and develop new practice areas. Shift the learning content of professional development programs to match the evolving needs of clients and the firm. Through mentoring and feedback, partners can demonstrate their commitment to their associates. That commitment inspires associate loyalty to the firm even when there are fewer billable hours, workforce reductions, or decreases in above-salary compensation (such as hours-based bonuses). To weather the storm, your firm is going to need that loyalty.

By continuing to offer professional development programs, the firm reassures its clients that it is still focused on developing excellent attorneys and providing high-quality service. Look for new opportunities to add value and cement client relationships. Bring clients in as partners and participants in your PD program. Send attorneys out as partners and participants in client training programs. Use virtual learning and peer-to-peer collaboration to generate new solutions to client problems.

Your PD Function Must Support Today’s Strategic Plan

To be effective, PD must be an integrated, dynamic part of the firm’s strategic planning. The PowerPoints you used years ago don’t cut it anymore. Yesterday’s clinical scenarios won’t help your associates face today’s challenges. All components of your PD program must be tied to your firm’s current tactical and strategic objectives.

Persons charged with PD responsibilities must consider what legal services clients are going to need during the next six months, the next year, and the next two years. Then they must ask: Do our attorneys have the expertise, knowledge, and skills to provide those services? If there is a gap between the two—and there will be—you need to close it so that your attorneys are ready when your clients need them, and are equipped with the necessary skills to do the work you have and the work you want.

Firms that align their professional development with their firm’s strategic goals will gain a competitive advantage over firms that let their professional development programs stagnate, or worse, cut them—or worst of all, do not have any. These advantages will manifest in:

  • identification of new client needs
  • new expertise and skills
  • greater subject matter and practice specialization
  • higher efficiency with improved realization rates
  • better internal communication
  • better resource allocation

Maximize PD In Six Steps

Professional development doesn’t have to be a burden, expensive, or hard. It just has to happen. Most firms already have the subject matter expertise and internal capability to create the professional development programs they need; they just need to strategically deploy their resources.

Here are six ideas for maximizing the use of PD:

  1. Focus on industry and practice specific skills. Avoid “just in case” programs and focus on “just in time” programming.
  2. Use PD as a substitute for additional associate compensation/bonus to support morale. Even in the best of times, associates are often willing to trade money for greater personal engagement and work satisfaction. Increased opportunities for engagement and satisfaction can offset decreased opportunities for economic rewards.
  3. Trim the fat in your professional development schedule. Your firm should not be spending time or money on generic, worn-out programs that are only useful for the MCLE credits they provide (MCLE credits should be a bonus of but not the objective of PD). Make sure that each program is focused on strategic objectives and will allow your attorneys to achieve those objectives.
  4. Eliminate expensive extras. Meals, cocktails, travel, and gifts are often used to entice or reward attorneys for attending professional development programs. A good program that engages them and provides them with the tools they need to succeed can be a reward in and of itself.
  5. Take advantage of virtual learning tools. Explore and exploit the wonderful world of intranets, webinars, wikis, knols, podcasts, and peer-to-peer networks. You can use outside sources, develop internal sources (or combine the two), and blend traditional and virtual training methods to maximize the PD experience and reduce costs.
  6. Use slow times to develop and improve internal programs. If your firm’s partners and associates are wandering the halls looking for something do, grab them and put them to work. Most of them have probably been promising to pitch in for years, and now is the time to hold them to it.

PD is a vital part of every firm’s ongoing health and well being, not an “extra” or an afterthought. Use it to lift morale, to rebuild, and to expand—to not just survive these uncertain times, but to thrive in them.

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The Creative Lawyer Thinks Laterally

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How does creativity relate to professional achievement and personal fulfillment? How can creativity help us move toward the elusive goal of becoming “the complete lawyer?” These are the questions this article and others in this series will answer. Creativity is not only a skill that can be developed, but also a natural gift that can be cultivated and coaxed into fruition.

The disciplined use of creativity in our practice will make us more effective lawyers. But the importance of creativity goes beyond improved performance. By learning creative techniques, like lateral thinking, we can become healthier, happier, and wiser.

Vertical Thinking Limits Your Options

Lateral thinking is the brainchild of Dr. Edward de Bono, an authority on creative thinking. According to Dr. de Bono, “’Lateral thinking’ is the creativity concerned with changing ideas, perceptions, and concepts. Instead of working harder with the same ideas, perceptions and concepts, we seek to change them.”

He coined the term to distinguish it from the “vertical thinking,” which is concerned with arriving at the correct conclusion through a sequential, logical process of rejecting incorrect choices. To conceptualize vertical thinking, imagine soldiers crossing a minefield: they advance only by rejecting some steps as incorrect and taking a step only after they have concluded that it is “not-incorrect,” that is, that they won’t be blown up. To conceptualize lateral thinking, picture kids running onto a playground: full of curiosity they just want to play.

Dr. de Bono describes vertical thinking as a “self-maximizing system with memory” and argues that at any given step in the sequential process the “arrangement of information must always be less than the best possible arrangement.”

This is because at every step some information is not yet available. However, if our thinking is to progress, we must accept some choice as “not incorrect” based on the information at hand. As a result, we tend to make key choices prematurely and then lock into them. Like soldiers crossing the minefield, we get halfway through the problem only to find our progress blocked on all sides.
The key to getting unstuck is to see things differently. Lateral thinking is a generative process of using choices not to advance thinking, but to change habitual perspectives; it re-opens our awareness and allows us to escape the straightjacket of haphazard mental habits; it triggers a “repatterning of information.”

Legal thinking is steeped in vertical thinking. For example, if we discuss a tort case, the elements of that cause of action immediately become part of our conversation. You might ask, “Where’s the duty?” as you try to think of precedent that would allow that element to be satisfied. You most likely will proceed sequentially and negatively, rejecting material that does not support the allegation that the defendant had a duty to the plaintiff. This is a good thing, of course, because nobody enjoys being non-suited. But when traditional legal thinking arrives at a dead end, it is important to ensure that our expertise does not lead us to blindly work the same concepts harder. Dr de Bono compares this to digging a dry well deeper when the smart thing to do is drill elsewhere.

One limiting mental habit we have is the tendency to conflate “real facts” with opinions, conclusions and judgments. For example, suppose you conclude that opposing counsel is engaging in dilatory tactics. The behavior may satisfy fully your criteria for that conclusion, but a conclusion is an opinion and not a real fact. Unless you distinguish between the fact and opinion, your opinion will blind you to the important, real facts.

  1. De Bono, Edward, Creativity Workout, Berkeley, CA, Ulysses Press, 2008, 4-5
  2. De Bono, Edward, Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step, New York, NY, Harper Perennial, 1990, 51

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