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Myths About Divorce Mediation in Maryland

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Divorce mediation is used when a married couple wishes to dissolve the marriage and do so under various agreements. This type of divorce is often less emotional for the parties, and, for the most part, can be conducted outside the courtroom. While divorce mediation is a good option for many couples, it is not for every couple, and there have been some misunderstandings about how the process works.

Here are some facts about Maryland divorce mediation and how it works.

The Issue: Mediation lets one spouse dominate the other.

The Fact: Divorce mediation is not about dominance. It is about negotiating and keeping things in balance. An experienced mediator will pay attention to any power struggle or conflict and bring that up for discussion between the parties. The only reason divorce mediation in Maryland works is because the couple agrees on the important issues. Without this mutual agreement, there can be no mediation.

The Issue: Females can be taken advantage of.

The Fact: Wives are not at a disadvantage during divorce mediation as long as the mediator is experienced and watchful, which most are. There are many times, in fact, when women will get a better deal out of mediation than they would in traditional court. The reason for this is because divorce mediation in Maryland allows each spouse to discuss and negotiate an agreement rather than having the court simply adjudicate a result. It should also be noted that in most cases the woman is allowed to stop the mediation process whenever she wishes. She is also allowed to refuse signing an agreement that she feels is not fair.

The Issue: Finding a divorce mediation attorney is hard to do.

The Fact: This may have been true at one time, but divorce mediation has become so popular over the last few years that it is now possible to find a well-qualified mediator fairly quickly and easily. The divorce mediator should be someone that both spouses approve of and feel comfortable with.

The Issue: Mediation takes longer than court divorces.

The Fact: This is simply not true. In fact, by going through divorce mediation, most couples will save time compared to what it would take a court to do. In court divorces, litigation takes place between attorneys and the judge, not the two spouses. In mediation each spouse is allowed to voice and offer any idea to help move the process forward. This almost always cuts down on the amount of time needed to reach a mutual agreement.

The Issue: In divorce mediation, the mediator decides who gets what.

The Fact: Not true. The divorce mediator has absolutely no power or authority to decide who gets what and what is fair, as long as the mediation takes place within the legal guidelines set up by the state Maryland. It is up to the couple to discuss and decide what the final terms will be, not the mediator.

The Issue: Mediation works for all divorces.

The Fact: Divorce mediation in Maryland can work for many, if not most, divorcing couples if they are willing to conduct themselves appropriately during the sessions. Again, this process is about finding common ground, not fighting tooth and nail over some aspect of the couple’s life. There will be some divorces where mediation is not appropriate, especially if there was a history of abuse, spousal or child, or if there are issues with substance abuse. In these cases, one spouse may feel safer having his or her own attorney speaking for them rather than having to meet face-to-face with the offending spouse.

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Categories: Legal Articles - Tags: divorce, divorce mediation, divorce mediation in maryland, divorce mediatior, maryland, mediator

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

Why Coaching and Mentoring Are Vital To Every Lawyer’s Career Planning

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“I wish I had a mentor.” I have heard that statement uttered by more lawyers over the past 18 years than any other except perhaps, “I hate billable hours!” That lawyers want more mentoring doesn’t surprise me. Mentoring and coaching are critical to every lawyer’s career development. In fact, after education, such support is widely held to be the second most significant factor in becoming a successful lawyer.

Law School Does Not Teach You How To Be A Lawyer

Mentoring is not just for young lawyers, either. The need for mentoring and coaching cuts across all stages of career, all practice areas, all environments, all sizes of law firms, in-house departments, genders, ages, races and geographic areas. From the minute we ventured forth from the halls of law school we heard, “Law school does not teach you how to be a lawyer.” Have you ever had one of those dreams where you show up for a final exam and realize you never attended that class and haven’t a clue about the exam? Starting out stone cold in the practice of law felt like that to me. Okay I’m here, now what do I do?

If mentoring is such a key building block in our professional career development, why do most lawyers report that they never received the mentoring and coaching they felt they needed?

When The Bottom Line Rules, Associates Lose

Simply stated, things are not the way they used to be in the legal profession. The modern practice of law with its current myopic focus on the bottom line leaves little time or incentive for developing truly impactful mentoring relationships among lawyers. This leads to a major gap in the acculturation of the vast majority of associates. The lawyers, the firm and clients suffer.

It was not like that in the “good old days.” When my father graduated from law school in the early 1950′s, he started with a firm and right away had a very experienced, successful mentor who was eager to show him the ropes, share his knowledge, give advice, introduce him to the “right” people, work with him and groom him to be a successful trial lawyer. That was common practice in those days.

This organic mentoring relationship has pretty much gone by the wayside. It exists only rarely, and hardly ever for women and minorities. When my brothers and I got out of law school in the 1980s, we each expected to be mentored as my father was. We were surprised and disappointed when that never happened. A large number of my law school classmates had the same negative experience.

Associates Must Take Matters Into Their Own Hands

What has been done to fix the problem? Law firms started various kinds of formal mentoring programs in the 1980s but these have had only marginal success. According to managers in major law firms I have interviewed, these programs that continue today are not meeting the need (even though the firm proudly touts them!) and associates are still not experiencing the relationship part of mentoring that is so critical to their development. The mentor they are assigned is either not fully invested in the concept of mentoring, or does not have the training to be good at it. In fact mentoring skills run contrary to a lawyer’s strengths. On the other side of the equation, young associates do not know how to look for mentoring experiences and instead wait passively for something that rarely happens.

Is there anything that I could have done differently coming out of law school? Is there anything that lawyers today can be doing for themselves while waiting for firms to implement better mentoring programs? Absolutely! Instead of waiting
for the ideal mentor to show up at your office door, you can take full responsibility for your career and seek out opportunities to be mentored. It’s the approach I share with the lawyers I coach in other aspects of career development – whether finding new jobs, alternative careers, or building bigger client bases.

Take Full Responsibility. Build A Network. Create A Plan

There are excellent mentors to be found, but you have to orient yourself three ways. First, you have to take full responsibility for your career and understand that your career development has always been and always will be up to you. Second, you need to shift from thinking of mentoring as something you get from one person. You need to have more than one mentor and think in terms of building a network of people you can turn to for a variety of things – a mentoring “board of advisors.” Third, you need to create and follow a strategic plan, much as you would when conducting a job search or targeting a new client. This is where the rubber meets the road and it takes time, focus and purpose.

You need to get clear about your personal goals for career and business development and create a career development plan. Temporarily at least, you need to stop thinking like a lawyer. Instead of driving yourself crazy obsessing about all the risks and potential downsides in every situation just try to relax and picture where you want to go with your career. Ask yourself: Who do I want to be in five years? Ten years? What kind of clients do I want to be serving? What kind of practice do I want to have? And what are the qualities and attributes of a successful person with that kind of career and practice?

Once you have a vision for your career, you can break it down into manageable, tactical pieces and set goals to get there. You can identify the steps you need to take at each stage, including the skills you need to have, the people you need to meet, the clients you need to have, and so on.

Find A Mentor Who Fits The Stage Of Your Career

There are some mentoring needs that most lawyers have in common. New lawyers need to focus on developing skills, competencies, professional identity, work/life balance and how to progress on the partnership track if that is what they want, or where to look for alternatives if they don’t want to be a partner. Lawyers who have practiced three to five years also need to learn about leadership, marketing, human resource management, and the financial realities of the law business.

Nor does lawyer development stop when you reach partnership. For experienced lawyers, it is important to find mentoring at transition points – redirecting one’s area of practice, changing employment, or even changing professions. For senior lawyers it can be about many of the same things as well as keeping up with technological changes.

Once you have your career plan in place, you can create a mentoring plan. I don’t mean look for one person to fill all your needs. As I said earlier, the odds of that happening are slim to none. Once you have identified the various areas in which
you need mentoring, you can identify the people who can help you. For example, if you have decided that one of your long-term goals is to be a well-known speaker, then you need to find a mentor who has contacts, influence, and may be able to teach you presentation skills. You would likely choose a different person to mentor you in managing competing work demands; one who is well organized and could show you practical techniques and strategies.

Good Mentoring And The Role Of Coaching

Aside from technical skills, what should you look for in a mentor? What I have found in my personal experiences on both the mentor/coach and protégé sides is that good mentors need to be able to play different roles at different times, depending on the situation. Sometimes they need to instruct and give guidance, sometimes they need to give constructive criticism, and sometimes they need to be more of a coach. Always they need to have patience, to care about the other person’s success, to be supportive, perceptive, a good listener and able to help protégés help themselves.

What I see missing from most formal mentoring relationships in firms is the coaching role, which most lawyers do not know how to play effectively. It requires dramatically different skills from the analytical, directive ones expected from a lawyer. It is more like the Socratic method that is used by first year law professors. The mentor asks the protégé questions that help her discover answers that are inside her already. The coach’s role is that of a sounding board, facilitator, counselor and awareness raiser. Often the coach says little to nothing. Instead, he asks questions to get a clear understanding of what the protégé thinks, wants, and needs. He listens closely to the answers and often asks more questions to help the protégé discover her own answers.

Instead of the mentor telling the protégé how to correct a difficult problem, handle an assignment, or rescuing her from a mistake, he leads her to think through a situation, tap into her own experience and knowledge, and find her own way. By investing a little time on the front end of this ‘coaching conversation’ the partner saves much more time going forward because the associate becomes increasingly more self-reliant, confident and less dependent on the partner. It’s much like the adage, ‘Pay me now or pay me later.’

There are two key reasons why the coaching role is so important to good mentoring. First, it leads to a deeper level of learning both for the person being mentored and for the mentor. Second, it also makes for a higher quality relationship characterized by mutual trust, respect and more open communication. Not a bad payoff for a few extra minutes of attention by the partner!

Since very few lawyers have intuitive coaching skills it may be difficult to find a mentor who also can play the coach role. However coaching skills can be taught and learned, and hopefully one day this type of training will be a regular part of formal mentoring programs. Meanwhile coaching skills can be found in people who may not otherwise be positioned to serve as your mentor. So you can have both, just not in the same person.

Now that you know what you want in a mentor, how are you going to articulate to a potential mentor what you offer? Be ready to talk about your specific goals and explain why this person has the skills and abilities to help you. You don’t even have to use the term mentor – just be precise about what you want him to do and why.

Mentors Come In All Shapes, Sizes And Philosophies

How do you find mentors? You start by networking to identify prospects, both in your firm or company and outside of it. Look at partners, co-workers, ex-bosses, and colleagues in other practices. Business and professional organizations,community groups, and personal interest groups are other sources. For a senior lawyer, a junior partner who is technologically savvy can be a mentor. Don’t assume it has to be someone senior to you – you can find mentoring opportunities everywhere. Talk to friends in the profession and find out who their resources are. Remember, non-lawyers can be great mentors and can teach important practice skills. If your goal is to be a better negotiator, look to business people and mediators as possible mentors. If you need to be better at analyzing complex financial data, seek out an accountant or financial advisor. In return, you can offer your experience and insight as a mentor to them.

Once you identify someone, take the initiative to build a personal relationship. You can take the indirect approach and find opportunities to get to know her better before asking her to assist you. You can also take the direct approach – ask her for ten minutes to talk and lay your cards on the table. Describe your goals, be clear about what you want, and estimate how much of her time it will take. Approach this person with the attitude that you are trying to emulate her, not asking to be taken care of. She is more likely to be willing to share what works for her rather than to help you do your work.

Demonstrate from the outset that you are someone worth investing time in. What I hear most mentors say they want to see in a potential protégé includes: ambition, integrity, determination, a positive attitude, good listening and interpersonal skills, and willingness to take responsibility for her own career. Emphasize your own responsibility in the relationship and be confident about your abilities and how they can help you become a better lawyer.

Lessons That Last A Lifetime

I have to admit that I did not practice what I’m preaching to you here when I entered the profession. Partly because I did not know how, but mainly because I knew early on that the practice of law was not for me. I have, however, followed this approach in my subsequent careers. When I stepped out of the practice in 1991 to start a company placing experienced contract lawyers, I immediately came up with a business plan and determined who I wanted on my personal Board of Advisors. I knew I had a lot to learn about networking, marketing, and all the other aspects of running a business. I began to develop close relationships with a few like-minded, experienced lawyers who believed in what I was doing, who could help pave the way in my networking efforts. I hired a business coach to work with me weekly in all aspects of business skill development.

I have continued to do this in my new career as a professional life coach. When I decided to transition into a coaching career, I sought out coaches I already knew and joined several coaching associations. By doing this I have established
wonderful relationships with coaches more experienced than I, to whom I turn for coaching when I need it. I now have another personal Board of Advisors. As I identify new competencies and situations for which I need mentoring, I seek out new mentors and will continue to do so the rest of my professional life.

About the author of this article: Anne H. Whitaker, vice president of Counsel On Call’s Atlanta office, has more than 20 years of combined experience in coaching, consulting, marketing, law and education. In 1991, she co-founded In-House Counsel, Inc., a pioneering contract attorney placement company in Atlanta. Prior to entering the business world, Ms. Whitaker practiced real estate law in private practice for five years.  She received her J.D., cum laude, from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1986, where she served on the editorial board of the Georgia Law Review.  She is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, the Atlanta Bar Association, Lawyers Club of Atlanta, and Georgia Association of Women Lawyers (GAWL) and has created, chaired and spoken at numerous seminars for lawyers on career development and transition. She provides career development coaching for lawyers, is founding member and co- chair of the Atlanta Bar Career Management Committee, and is a licensed provider of the Highlands Ability Battery and other career-related assessments.  To contact Ms. Whitaker, visit www.counseloncall.com.

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Categories: Legal coaching - Tags: coaching lawyers, legal coach, legal coaching, legal coaching for attorneys, legal mentoring, mentoring

Create A Personal Vision And Change Your Life

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Here we are at the end of the series on creating a Personal Vision for your life and career.  The approach I’ve outlined is certainly not a quick solution to finding success, happiness, and your “dream career.”  But I can personally attest to the fact that it is worth the time and effort.  Having a Personal Vision has made an incredible difference in my life.  My current career is fulfilling on many levels, uses my natural abilities, allows me to do what I am most passionate about, is connected to my most deeply held values, continues to incorporate my interests, gives me work/life balance, and allows me to feel like I am making a difference.  I look forward to each day and am energized by what I do.

How did I get here?   In 1998, when I decided to transition into a new career, I did the exercises and asked the questions I have been sharing in these articles, and then created a Personal Vision that specifically defined what I wanted to do next.  Then I began doing the things I needed to do to make it happen.  That was not the first time I used this process.  I went through the same self-assessment and creative envisioning in 1991 when I left the practice of law to start a company.  Truth be told, I plan on tweaking my Personal Vision and using it as a tool for the rest of my life to keep my career and life aligned with my values, interests, and goals.  To continue to have my life and my career my way, I believe it’s a must.

I share my story with you not to boast, but to reinforce what I have been saying since writing the first article in this series nine issues ago.  Creating a Personal Vision has changed my life, and I’ve helped many lawyers to create Personal Visions that have changed their lives as well.  If you don’t already have a life and career that are “your way,” you can.  But you have to know very clearly what “your way” is.  I hope by now you have some ideas about what that looks like.

Assuming you have done the exercises I have described in the past articles, you have taken some time to unplug from your current life and looked at yourself through different lenses to gain new perspectives.  Following this inside-out approach, you have analyzed your preferences, your abilities, and motivations; you’ve also decided the kind of environment and type of work that best suits you.  You then combined what you learned and integrated those pieces of information into a Personal Vision Statement that gave you some new ideas about the kind of career you want.  You may have come up with a specific direction, or you may be considering some ideas.  Either way, the next step is to translate your ideas into reality.

Whether you have a clear focus or just pieces of a puzzle, how do you take your idea and make it real in your life?  Or, if all you have is the pieces of the puzzle but no real idea yet, how do you turn your vague notion into a more focused idea you can pursue?  The process is the same.

Translate Your Vision Into Reality In Three Steps

Step One:  Write your idea down, no matter how vague.  If you have more than one idea, write each one up but on separate pieces of paper.  If it’s a specific idea, think about when you want to start working on it and identify the steps it will take to get you there.  Also identify the things you still need to investigate.  Ask yourself why this plan is attractive to you.

Step Two:  Talk with other people about your idea.  Go beyond your circle of family and friends and reach out to a wider network—but do not include people with whom you work or family.  Explain why you think your new career might be a good fit.  Use their feedback to help you refine and revise your idea.

If you don’t have a clear idea at this point, you can solicit other people’s input and insights.  Start by sharing information about your background and the factors you have identified that are important for your ideal job.  After they hear about your preferences, skills, abilities, interests, they may be able to offer you ideas about careers, jobs,
businesses, and even people with whom you can talk with next to get more information.   You can also ask people you meet what they do for a living—neighbors, people you run into at the doctor’s office, and other acquaintances.  You can even look at classifieds to see what fields are hot and read books that give you ideas of career options.  Ask people
what they are doing for fun both in and outside of law.  After investigating these broad possibilities, come up with a list that might satisfy the requirements of your Personal Vision.  Pick six to eight that most appeal to you and research them.  Then narrow it down to one or two fields that seem the most attractive to you.

Step Three:  Research your idea.  You can start by tapping into the usual information sources such as the library, the Internet, trade publications, seminars, and trade associations.

The Informational Interview Is An Essential Tool

The most powerful research tool you can use is the informational interview.  These are conversations with people about their careers that will help you gain a better understanding of an occupation or industry, and build a network of contacts in that field.  Informational interviews clarify your Personal Vision and check it against the reality of the workplace.  As an added bonus, they are also the foundation of a successful job hunt.  Once you feel certain about what you want to do, they will also give you valuable information about the field you ultimately choose to pursue and prepare you for marketing yourself.

Researching and informational interviewing operate like a spiral:  The more you learn, the more new and important questions you will come up with.  The better your questions are, the clearer and more useful the answers will be.  Your idea will become more focused as you gather information from talking with people about what they do and know.

These interviews can sometimes take you in unexpected directions and open up possibilities you were not aware of.  For example, when you start to research a potential career path, you may realize it is not what you thought and uncover another direction that more closely matches your Personal Vision.  This will eliminate dead ends.  If you
use the informational interview well, your idea will become more precise and aligned with what you really want.  In addition, when you’re ready to propose your new job to an employer, you will be able to connect your career needs with the employer’s needs.

Whom Should You Interview?

Start by interviewing anyone whose occupation is even remotely close to the one you envision.  (Naturally, talk first to those who are doing exactly what you’d like to do.)  Ask people for introductions to others.  If you read about a position in an article or on a website, try to contact the person directly.  Your goal is to gather information from Start by interviewing anyone whose occupation is even remotely close to the one you envision.  (Naturally, talk first to those who are doing exactly what you’d like to do.)  Ask people for introductions to others.  If you read about a position in an article or on a website, try to contact the person directly.  Your goal is to gather information from

Prepare For The Interview

How you approach someone to ask for an informational interview sets the tone for the interview itself.  Call the person and state who you are and how you were referred to him or her.  You want to make it clear you are not looking for a job and are merely researching options.  Be respectful and appreciative of the person’s time.  Here is an example of what you may want to say:

“Good afternoon.  My name is Amy Patton.  John Smith gave me your name and said you were very experienced in graphic design.  I am investigating making a career change and want to find out as much about the field as I can before making my decision.  I would appreciate it if I could have 20 – 30 minutes of your time at your convenience to ask you some questions about your work.  May I buy you a cup of coffee or meet you some place convenient sometime this week or next?”

Before the meeting, research the field so you’ll know what to ask, and compile a list of questions to bring with you.  During the meeting, listen with interest and an open mind; don’t judge or try to sell yourself.  A good rule of thumb is to let the other person do 90 percent of the talking.  You are there to gather information and obtain a reality-check; you are also creating a future networking contact should you decide to go forward with this idea.  The following is a list of generic questions to get you started.

• How did you decide to get into your present career?
• How did you move into your present position?
• What do you like about it?  Dislike?
• Describe a recent day that you feel was productive and that you enjoyed.  What made it enjoyable?  Productive?
• Describe a recent bad day or unproductive day.  What made it bad or unproductive?
• How much of your day do you spend working with people (or computers, merchandise, etc?)
• What personality attributes, talents, and skills would someone need to enjoy or be satisfied with your job?
• What education, certification and other requirements are required for this type of work?
• What do you see for your own future?
• What do you see for the future of this field/industry/company?  What changes are occurring?
• How can my legal skills or training benefit this field?
• What books and trade publications do you recommend I read to learn more?
• What or who has helped and guided you most over the years?
• What advice would you have for someone just starting out?
• May I contact you if other questions arise?
• Who else should I talk to, and where else should I go for more information?  May I use your name as a referral?

Alternately, make your own list, but keep it reasonably short and focused.

After the meeting, be sure to write a thank you note.  Also, if you leave the interview with a referral or a suggested next step, follow up by letting the person know what happened as a result of their help.

Continue informational interviewing until you have a clear vision for the job you are researching.  You should be able to see what the job entails and how it fits with your Personal Vision factors—your abilities, personality, values, interests, and goals.  You also need to know how your idea meets a need in the workplace so that you can market it to others.

Make Your Case

After you’ve gathered all the information you can, you need to convince others that your idea—whether you want to take on new responsibilities in your current job or change careers altogether—is a good one.  You do this by creating a convincing presentation.

Start by talking about yourself.  Communicate who you are and what you have to offer.  Use what you have learned about yourself:  your abilities, interests, personality, skills, experience, goals, even your stage of adult development.  Then talk about what the person or organization you are addressing needs, and give examples of how you can fulfill those needs.  Thanks to all the informational interviewing you did, you will be able to speak knowledgeably about the field.  Share with others your vision for this job—what it entails, how you would work and with whom, what the potential problems might be, and what the factors are that will make it successful.

You can use this approach for moving into an entirely new career or for just making changes in your existing career.  It takes some time but yields great results for getting exactly what you want.

Change Happens? And Vision Statements Need To Be Retuned

I hope that this series has been helpful and that you have been able to develop a clear vision for your career and life that will bring you great joy and satisfaction.  Even if you have only been able to do part of the process, at least that is a start.  Perhaps you are not at a Turning Point or you need the assistance of a career coach to give you structure and accountability.  Whatever the reason, it is never too late to start this work.

Also, it is never really over.  Once you have crafted a Personal Vision Statement Template and taken the steps to make it real, you will need to renew the process at some point in your future.  One thing is for certain—change will occur.  Remember that our lives move in regular cycles from Turning Points to periods of stability back to Turning Points again.  We all long for change at some point, no matter how satisfied we have been with a career.  The work you do to create a Personal Vision now will continue to help you in the future.  When you reach future Turning Points, use the same process to decide what is right for you.  Keep these articles handy!  And don’t forget to “tune up” your vision as often as you need to.

There’s an inscription on an old English church I think of often, and hope you will, too – “A vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery; a vision and a task is the hope of the world.”

If you are new to the series, you may want to take a look at the previous articles:
-Personal Vision: How To Make Your Vocation Your Vacation
-Moving From The Stress Cycle To The Balance Cycle
-What Are Your Natural Talents and Abilities?
-The 8 Critical Turning Points Of Your Life
-Pay Attention To Your Skills And Interests
-How Core Values And Family Of Origin Impact Your Career
-Match Your Personality With Your Job
-Use Your Long-Term Goals To Motivate You
-Your Personal Vision Statement: A Template For Change

About the author of this article series: Anne H. Whitaker, vice president of Counsel On Call’s Atlanta office, has more than 20 years of combined experience in coaching, consulting, marketing, law and education. In 1991, she co-founded In-House Counsel, Inc., a pioneering contract attorney placement company in Atlanta. Prior to entering the business world, Ms. Whitaker practiced real estate law in private practice for five years.  She received her J.D., cum laude, from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1986, where she served on the editorial board of the Georgia Law Review.  She is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, the Atlanta Bar Association, Lawyers Club of Atlanta, and Georgia Association of Women Lawyers (GAWL) and has created, chaired and spoken at numerous seminars for lawyers on career development and transition.  She provides career development coaching for lawyers, is founding member and co- chair of the Atlanta Bar Career Management Committee, and is a licensed provider of the Highlands Ability Battery and other career-related assessments.   To contact Ms. Whitaker, visit www.counseloncall.com.

Notes
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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Resources
1. Arron, Deborah, What Can You Do With a Law Degree?: A Lawyer’s Guide to CareerAlternatives Inside, Outside & Around the Law.  Chapter 17 is on researching options and contains specific questions to ask in informational interviews.
2. Lore, Nicholas,  The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetimeof Satisfaction and Success.  Chapter 10 is about researching and informational interviews and gives a good list of questions to ask.
3. Stoodley, Martha, Information Interviewing: How to Tap Your Hidden Job Market, 2ndedition, Ferguson Publishing, 1996.
4. Crowther, Karmen, Researching Your Way to a Good Job, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.(April 1993).
5. Levine, Michael, The Address Book: How to Reach anyone who is anyone (Address Book, 10th ed), Perigee, 2004.  Websites, e-mail addresses, and street addresses to assisting making a personal contact.
6. Kaufman, George W., The Lawyer’s Guide to Balancing Life and Work: Taking the Stress Out of Success, 1999, ABA Law Practice Management Section.  A good resource for having a balanced and fulfilling career as a lawyer.

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How to choose the right location for your law practice

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One of my very first law students was a New York policewoman I’ll call Amy who left the police force on a disability pension. Amy was from a small, blue collar town in upstate New York whose population was declining ever since the area’s largest employer had relocated. It hardly seemed like the ideal place to open a law practice. But because she was committed to caring for an elderly aunt and because she owned property there, she returned to her hometown.

Yet the situational analysis we did revealed otherwise. First Amy converted an old barn on her property into an office. Then she established a relationship with the only other attorney in town who was elderly, close to retirement, and unable to take on every case that arose. Soon, he began referring cases to her; she hopes to buy out his business when he retires.

Meanwhile, the quality of her daily life is precisely what she hoped it would be. She lives near her friends and relatives those who know her best. For her, this real estate is “prime” because it satisfies both her personal and professional needs and will for decades to come.

The Best Real Estate Is Near Those You Know

In the legal business, location has little to do with securing the priciest real estate to impress people you have yet to meet. It has more to do with being in close proximity to those who already know you best. Before you can even make a decision about location, however, you have to fully digest and totally internalize three very important concepts:

You are the product. Clients are buying you, your personality, integrity, enthusiasm, compassion and commitment to advocacy. Everything else is overhead, changeable, portable, expandable, but most importantly, expendable. Your product and business are an integral part of your persona and therefore travel with you; they aren’t tied to a physical location. 62% percent of your business will be referrals from friends, relatives and coworkers.

Whether you realize it or not, all your life you have been conducting a marketing campaign, marketing yourself 24/7. The people who know you best want you to succeed. They are proud to say they know a really great lawyer. The qualities which have attracted your friends, spouses, business partners to you and helped foster familial relationships are the very qualities which will encourage them to refer their friends, relatives and coworkers to you when a lawyer is needed.

Successfully locating your practice has everything to do with achieving balance in both your professional and personal lives. You need to select a location where you want to build a personal life or where you already have an established lifestyle for you and your family. If you are like most people, you will ultimately choose to live close to those you have grown up with, whether relatives or friends. Starting your practice close to your support system offers emotional comfort and the opportunity to attain true life/work balance.

Virtual And Home Offices Offer Inviting Possibilities

Today, a lawyer who wants to put down roots in her sleepy home town isn’t limited by her physical location. Thanks to technology, it’s possible to create a virtual law office (VLO). With access to a computer, lawyers can maintain and broaden their practice areas while maintaining their desired lifestyles.

Operating in cyberspace is very freeing for both lawyers and clients. Untethered to specific locations and restrictive schedules, solos can work non-traditional hours while saving on commuting costs. In this era of climbing gas prices, working from a virtual office can benefit your clients as well. Think how grateful they will be to not have to drive to consult with you. In this way, you’ll be addressing not only their legal needs but their unspoken needs as well.

At the same time, home offices are on the rise for a myriad of reasons. For instance, a lawyer who works from home can more easily achieve greater work/life balance, has low overhead, and can raise and enjoy his or her family.

Investigating these various options can further enhance your practice but you have to find what works for you. Not everyone has the freedom to work from home, or to open a hometown practice. Commitments, financial or familial, may force you to open your practice in a less than ideal location. But one of the rewards of being your own boss is the flexibility you enjoy to create a workable solution for yourself, just as Amy did. There’s never just one ideal location; with a little bit of creative thinking and the right computer technology you can make many different locations work for you.

This article was written by Susan Cartier Liebel, the founder & CEO of Solo Practice University which is the #1 online educational and professional networking community for solo lawyers and law students.

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What’s Your Grade In Law Firm Romance 101?

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In light of the run-away success of Sex in the City, this might be a good time to deconstruct romance in the workplace. Over the years I’ve seen many decent people blindsided, and many others who end up hurting or embarrassing either themselves or, worse yet, innocent bystanders. Though all professional schools (and risk managers) should provide office sex education, focusing on how well-meaning, good people can fall into potentially compromising situations, they don’t which leaves us pretty much on our own to deal with difficult feelings and circumstances. Yet there’s nothing new about falling in love at work; most situations are fairly predictable.

The Intensity Of The Workplace Fosters Romance

The workplace can become so intense that boundaries blur and we’re tempted to throw caution to the winds. When strong feelings develop, often unexpectedly, it’s easy to conclude that you’re in love. But instead of surrendering, or reacting with stupefied surprise, it’s best to make intentional decisions, which are easier to make if you’re prepared for them.

Why is it anyone else’s business if two people who work together fall in love or begin an affair? Putting aside practical concerns like lawsuits, malpractice claims and ethics charges, organizations are complex systems and unbalanced relationships impact the whole team. There really isn’t any way to insulate the work environment. Questions about fairness, confidentiality, and the team’s survival if the relationship dies inevitably arise; communication is often disrupted and trust compromised.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Here are a few situations to be on guard for.

Office Parties Often Create Havoc

Office parties have a notorious reputation and with good reason. During work hours, we all experience a variety of feelings we don’t act on, ranging from anger toward others to attraction. Throwing an annual office party is a way we all get to let off a little steam. It’s a socially acceptable outlet, like a roast, or Mardi Gras. Granted, we all have fantasies, but once we act on them, we can’t always fit them back into the neat little box of our imagination. Remember: most of what happens in the heat of an alcohol-based event doesn’t survive the hangover, except as an embarrassing (and occasionally career-ending) bad dream.

Trials Can Become Romantic Hotbeds

Preparing for a trial can be akin to producing, directing and starring in a play both are dramatic, intense situations in which the stakes are high, hours are long, and you are on the same team. It’s not unusual for a romance to blossom, even though it will most likely fade after the wrap. None of the players is immune lawyers, clients, witnesses, experts, investment bankers. Wise attorneys will postpone any undying declarations of love until after the cast party is long over.

Rescuing A Client In Distress Can Be Sexy

Like therapists, lawyers have to work hard to not confuse the admiration and gratitude they receive from their clients for love. This is easier said than done. When people entrust you with their most difficult, and sometimes most intimate matters, it can be a heady experience. Who doesn’t love to be flattered, admired, appreciated and deferred to especially if we don’t receive quite the same attention from our families. In these situations, your clients need to believe that you are the most brilliant, experienced, and dedicated lawyer in the world; this allows them to weather situations over which they have lost control. Just make sure you don’t mistake these intense feelings for something they’re not.

Avoid The Mentor/Protégé Mix-up

In most offices, an informal mentoring relationship often develops between people who like each other. People generally choose to mentor someone who shares their interests, outlook, or values. Protégés admire and appreciate those who single them out for attention and guidance but these are often the same feelings that can lead to attraction and romance. But a mentoring relationship is, by definition, not between equals, and mentors bear the responsibility for protecting their protégés from the inherent vulnerability of this relationship. Wise protégés need to recognize that their mentors may not have completed Romance 101 and, therefore, should keep their own eyes open.

Don’t Become A Fool For Love

Some wonderful, passionate, caring and intense people men and women simply fall in love time after time. Often, they are charismatic, attractive and charming. They thrive on the depth and intensity of true love and seem to have a difficult time adjusting to ordinary life when the bloom fades. The last thing they want is to hurt anyone, but unfortunately they do. Men may be especially susceptible to this since our culture doesn’t allow them much room for emotional expression, and falling in love is an acceptable outlet. To protect yourself, notice patterns your own or your suitor’s. Once you’ve been down this path a couple times, ask yourself what role romance plays in your life. Is it a substitute for coming to terms with yourself? How are your serial romances impacting the lives of the people you care about? Conversely, if you are the latest object of affection, you need to ask yourself what happened to the most recent flame because you’re probably going to wind up like her (or him).

If you find yourself in one of these situations, the best thing to do is pause. Don’t enter into romantic relationships in charged circumstances until you can test your feelings in the cold, mundane light of day. If you can’t extricate yourself, talk to your firm’s risk manager or Human Resources representative. The conversation may be hard, but the one you initiate will undoubtedly go better than the one you are summoned to.

For law office managers, an ounce of prevention will save you tons of cure. Talk to the people involved before a relationship becomes an “issue.” When people understand the risks inherent in charged situations, they are much more likely to handle themselves admirably without your intervention. Second, establish clearly articulated norms about office relationships; that way, people will know what to avoid. Third, establish that “don’t ask, don’t tell” won’t work in your firm. Talking to people about personal relationships violates a host of cultural taboos, so the default expectation is that no one is going to raise the subject until it’s unavoidable at which point it’s usually too late to salvage. Let it be known that you are determined to have difficult conversations early. In fact, read the book: Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss what Matters Most by Stone, Patton, Heen and Fisher (Penguin Paperback,2000).

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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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What Are Your Options? Exploring Alternative Careers Before Leaving The Law

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You spent three years getting your J.D., followed by years of practicing law, only to realize that you are dissatisfied.  You may have always thought you wanted to be a lawyer, only to find now that you have become one, you are disgruntled, stressed, and simply can’t continue to live the way you are.  Or perhaps you went to law school by default, not really knowing much about the practice of law, but you thought that a J.D. degree would open up possibilities for other careers.  You found yourself swept up in the current of interviews for a traditional law job and now here you are, practicing law and wondering why.

If either of these describes you, know that you have a lot of company.  Many studies show that between 33% to 50% of lawyers today are dissatisfied with their jobs.  The biggest reason given for this dissatisfaction is loss of control—over the kind of work they get to do, the interactions they have daily with other people, and their work/life balance.

There Are Many More Opportunities Now For Lawyers To Find Success On Their Own Terms

Regardless of the situation or reason for dissatisfaction, the questions asked are usually the same.  “What in the world do I do now?  Remain where I am and suffer, abandon my career as a lawyer, or is there an in-between?”  Of course, the answers to these questions are different for each person.  While many lawyers decide to keep plugging along, silently suffering, many are choosing to make a change.  In the past 15 years that I have been coaching lawyers in their career choices, I have seen many lawyers transition from a traditional law practice into successful and fulfilling careers in a multitude of other areas.  Some of these careers are related to the legal profession and some are outside of the law.  There are many more opportunities now for lawyers to find success on their own terms than there were when I left the practice of law in 1991 to start my company.

Many successful law-trained professionals have gone on to contribute great things beyond the traditional practice of law.  You would be amazed at the number of former practicing lawyers you may know of already.  Some famous
examples include Mahondas Gandhi (Indian political/spiritual leader), Tony LaRussa (St. Louis Cardinal’s manager), Herb Kelleher (chairman of Southwest Airlines), David E. Kelley (television and film producer, Richard Thalheimer (president of the Sharper Image), Rossana Brazzi (actor), and Fred Graham (CBS TV reporter).  Once you start looking for them, you will find many other examples—they write novels, operate businesses, run schools, counsel people, and develop real estate, to name a few.

Lawyers Have A Superb Background And Work Experience That Will Assist In Pursuing Many Other Careers

What are your options outside of the traditional practice of law?  What job can you get with a law degree?  I have some good news and some bad news.  The good news is that there is no list of other careers I can give you that are definite options for you—your options are unlimited and the sky really is the limit.  You can do pretty much whatever you want to do. Lawyers have been able to move into almost every field that exists.  The truth is that a legal education is one of the most challenging, broadening educational experiences there is.  We have a superb background through our legal education and work experience that will assist in pursuing many other careers.

For some, that is also the bad news—the options are limitless.  There is no list of other careers for which lawyers may get hired, and no one-size-fits-all formula.  It overwhelms many to hear that, as most professionals want a ready-made list of careers for former lawyers that guarantees they can find something else.  It is no wonder it’s overwhelming—it is very different from the law school experience.  Deciding where to go after graduation was much more structured and established.  There was a set list of places to go, roles to play, and a procedure to follow.

Once you realize that the traditional list of options has failed you, it’s natural to want someone to hand you another list. Even if there was such a list, I wouldn’t recommend that approach.  You would probably end up in another stressful, unfulfilling job.

You Need To Know Whether You Are In The Wrong Career Or Just The Wrong Job

So what is a lawyer to do?  First, you need to do some self-assessment about what is causing your dissatisfaction and what it is that you want in your career.  Take some time, either by yourself or with the assistance of a career coach, to figure out what matters most to you.  You need to know whether you are in the wrong career or just in the wrong job.  Are you dissatisfied with the practice of law entirely or is it really the place where you are working or your colleagues who are creating the problem?  Or perhaps it is the schedule that you are keeping, the long hours, and lack of balance.

Once you have assessed what is important to you and what you really want to be doing, then you can decide if you are going to be able to achieve those things as a lawyer. Do you need to switch practice areas?  Working as a lawyer doing labor and employment law could be as different from being a divorce lawyer as it is from many of the non-legal jobs.  Or maybe you still like practicing law but it takes so much out of you that there is no time left for anything else.  If you could find a way to have more work/life balance, you might actually like practicing law again.  Don’t give up on being a lawyer until you have done some self-assessment and examined the possibilities for change.

Career Options Within The Law

If you have decided that you want to continue to practice law in some manner, start thinking outside of the box and consider what changes would make you happier.  Would changing practice areas give you more of what you want?  Explore that option and maybe even do pro bono work to experience it first-hand before making a change.  Maybe you need to switch to a smaller firm, explore part-time work options, or approach your employer about telecommuting.  Do you want to start your own solo practice or small firm?  This is not for everyone but is very rewarding for many.  There are also opportunities with the government, with nonprofits, for-profit corporations, and universities.

Another avenue to consider is practicing law on a contract basis.  I have seen this alternative blossom since the late 1980s from a new option considered strictly for lawyers who couldn’t land a regular job, to a viable and fulfilling career choice for very talented lawyers.  I can tell you of many examples of lawyers through the years who have decided to practice law this way, from those with four years of experience to former partners and general counsels.  Some want to have more control over their lives and more work/life balance.  They enjoy the predictable hours contract work affords, while still being able to do substantive work and work with great people.  If you chose to do it through a company that specializes in this kind of placement, it is critical to make sure that you choose the firm carefully and work with one that has the same professional standards that you do.  Your reputation is one of your most valuable assets, and working with a well- respected company on contract assignments that are in line with your career goals is a key part of making this path a good option for you.

Working on a contract basis can also allow you to explore nontraditional and non-law career alternatives, which we will examine next.  Many of my clients have practiced on a contract basis as a stepping stone to a new career.  Some have used the additional free time that contract work affords them to write books, return to graduate school, do volunteer work to test a new area of interest, or to turn the heat up on their career search. Others have used it to fund starting a new business.

If you have decided that you no longer want to practice law in any shape, fashion, or form and you want to look at careers where you can wear a completely different hat, then it is time to research what your nontraditional options are.  You can look at what is available in law-related areas, and those that are completely outside of the law.  The following is an overview of these options to get you thinking about what you might want to explore next.

Law-Related Careers

There are a variety of career options that are connected to the practice of law.  Some of them require a J.D. and some do not.  There are positions in almost every type of organization and every employment sector that are related to the law, including the private, public, nonprofit and international areas.  There are few places where lawyers do not work these days.  Great inroads have been made over the past 15 years and the opportunities continue to expand.

This is where you can put your creativity to use.  Do some research through general career websites, networking, and informational interviewing to learn more about a particular option and how it meshes with your goals and your
personal vision for your life.  Remember that there are many skills you have developed as a lawyer that are transferable to other fields.  For example, lawyers have developed good analytical skills, oral and written communication skills, and negotiation skills.  Research, critical thinking, and attention to detail are all skills that are honed in law school and in practice. Your problem-solving skills will continue to help you in many other professions and roles.  If you have practiced in-house, you often have developed some of the same skills that are required in non-lawyer jobs:  business acumen, management skills and industry expertise.

Consider corporations, trade and professional associations, large and small businesses.  Take a look at federal, state and special district governments; international organizations; colleges and universities; and law firms. Politics,
international business, and compliance or regulatory bodies are additional areas to examine.  What kinds of roles can lawyers play in those settings?  Common ones include consulting, mediation, journalism, sales, contracting, and legal
administration.

The most obvious are bar associations and law firms that have a variety of needs, for which former lawyers are well suited.  So do companies who provide services and products to lawyers such as computer software companies, financial planners, staffing agencies, and legal publishing companies.  Start examining all of the various companies and positions that are related to the practice of law and generate a running list.  Then check it out to see if any of them interest you.

Non-Law Career Options

If you want to consider options completely unrelated to law, the choices are even broader.  Using a J.D. to go into a career outside of the law is becoming more common.  According to a survey by NALP, nearly 10% of new law graduates are going into non-legal careers.  There are no studies that show which jobs outside of the law are the most satisfying or successful for lawyers, but there are some areas that our legal training can point us towards.  Your legal experience can transfer very well into the communications fields, including creative and technical writing, contracting, reporting, training, editing, writing novels, publishing, and public relations.  There are also many positions in the business world for which lawyer’s skills can be of value including director, analyst, human resources, and the compliance area.  In real estate, lawyers can transfer their skills into real estate development or become an agent or a broker.  Many lawyers decide they want to be their own boss and so start their own businesses.  You can also consider using your teaching or training skills in another field, or if it’s counseling you enjoy take a look at doing that as a psychologist, corporate coach, or career counselor.

Just a reminder that you first need to spend some time deciding which interests, skills, and abilities you want to take with you into your next career.  You can then do some market research to identify what careers and roles would offer you those opportunities.  Take the planning and strategic thinking that comprises so much of what you do as a lawyer and focus it on analyzing “what is out there.”  You can read a good general resource book that surveys other fields in detail, and contact your undergraduate career services center as well.  Once you have identified a few options, do informational interviews to learn more about them and how they mesh with your goals and your personal vision for your life.

Most People Make A Gradual Transition Instead Of A Leap—It Helps To Have Support

A word of caution here.  You may encounter a case of “paralysis by analysis” when you are looking at too many options.  There is a natural resistance to change, no matter how much you may need it and want it.  It helps to have someone else’s support and guidance with the assessment process and creating an action plan.  Consider using a career coach or get the support of a friend who is going through a career change as well.  There are also a multitude of resources you can tap into, including books on alternative careers for lawyers1, websites that are lawyer-
specific and materials on generic career options.

Most people do not make a drastic change overnight.  The majority of my clients who have made successful career changes have done it a step at a time—a gradual transition instead of a leap.  Just asking the questions “What else do I want to do?” and “Where can I do that?” is a powerful beginning to making a change.  “The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible.”  – Richard M. DeVos

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Categories: Professional Development - Tags: career outside the law, law related careers, leaving the law, non-law career options, professional development

Moving From The Stress Cycle To The Balance Cycle

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It is possible to have a career that you are excited and passionate about. A career that truly fits you and brings you satisfaction and fulfillment – even if you feel overwhelmed, frustrated, burned out, out of time, or you don’t have a clue where to start.  In the first article of this series (See Vol. 2 No. 1)  I explained what a Personal Vision is and why it is crucial to you having a satisfying career.  As Steven Covey said, you can “work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”1  When you create a Personal Vision you decide what wall you want to lean your ladder against as well as what ladder you want to use.

The Eight Critical Success Factors

Your Personal Vision needs to take the whole picture of you into account. There are eight factors that need to be considered: natural abilities, skills, interests, personal style, values, family of origin, stage of adult development, vision and goals.   Some of them are objective, such as your natural abilities, and some of them are subjective such as your vision and goals.  In the next article we will focus on the first of those factors, your stage of adult development.  Before we do that, we need to look at something that is closely connected to it – the Stress Cycle.

You know what stress is but probably are not familiar with the Stress Cycle. Yet chances are good that you are caught in it at this very moment.  The Stress Cycle impacts your daily life and will stop you from creating your Personal Vision if you aren’t aware of it and don’t take action to address it.

What is the Stress Cycle?  If you are unhappy with your career and yet find yourself starting to think things like “I don’t have time to think about whether I’m happy or not right now,” or “I’ll get to it when things are not so hectic in my life,”
you are probably caught in its grasp.  Feeling like you don’t have time for yourself or you are too busy is a natural side effect of being in the Stress Cycle.  Most of my clients are caught in this mode when they first come to me.  Their lives feel out of control and they need help stopping the cycle.

The Elements Of The Stress Cycle

  • Relentless Rush – You never stop.  You feel like you are jumping through hoops, are on a treadmill or a runaway train.  You think you only have time to do the next task or project that comes up.  And there is always another.
  • Short Term Focus – You tell yourself things like “I’ll just make partner (or wait until this large case is over or wait until next year) and then I’ll be able to live my life.”  You focus on the task at hand instead of envisioning a bigger picture of your life.
  • Reactive Decision Making -  You respond to everyday events as though they are crises and have a constant sense of urgency even about little things.
  • Status-Driven Goals – You are focused on gaining things such as a new car, new house, second home, making partner, getting somewhere in life, joining the country club, or wanting more responsibility so you can be in charge and can have a life etc.
  • Outer-Directed Priorities – Your main goals are earning a lot of money and gaining a position of power -both worthy goals if they are connected to your Personal Vision but if they aren’t, then they are empty.

The elements of the Stress Cycle relate strongly to each other – one element leads to the next, and then the next.  Once you get into the Stress Cycle it perpetuates itself and is very difficult to escape.  Often, people feel like they are trapped and helpless to change the status quo.

You are not alone in this.  The truth is the majority of people, particularly lawyers, live in the Stress Cycle.  Why?  Because we grow up in systems that set it up that way.   Here is a snapshot of how life goes for most of us:  Start out in our family, move through the school system to college, graduate, go to law school,  get a job, achieve some success, earn more money, buy more things, move up in the organization, make partner or go in-house, win the big case or close the big deal, gain the boss’s attention and approval, become a boss, retire.   We get so caught up in the effort to keep up with what’s going on around us and what the systems (family, schools, firms, companies) want us to achieve that we get out of touch with who we truly are,  what we really want.

It’s especially hard for lawyers not to get caught up in the Stress Cycle. On top of the system’s demands, lawyers often have personal characteristics that contribute to creating the Cycle.  We are competitive, ambitious and typically impose unrealistic demands on ourselves.  Furthermore, the practice of law trains us to focus on facts and have an outward orientation.  Too often we  get used to tuning out the inward messages that give us insight into how we really feel about what’s going on in our lives and careers.

What The Balance Cycle Looks Like

It may sound hopeless and that there is no alternative to the Stress Cycle in today’s fast-paced, competitive and driven workplace.  Contrary to what you may believe,  however, you can move from the Stress Cycle to the Balance Cycle.

What does the Balance Cycle look like?  The elements of the Balance Cycle include:

  • Long Term Focus – you do things that connect to a fundamental value orgoal.
  • Meaning-Driven Goals – what you do every day should contribute to giving your life meaning.  If it doesn’t, why are you doing it?
  • Inner-Directed Priorities – You move toward goals you have chosen, not the system’s goals.
  • Vision-Based Decision Making – You use your Personal Vision as a template or measuring stick that you compare with every opportunity that comes along.  If the opportunity will move you toward your vision, you take it.  If not, you just say no.

As with the Stress Cycle, the elements relate to one another.  Once you get into the Balance Cycle it perpetuates itself.

Moving From The Stress Cycle To The Balance Cycle: Start By Stopping

How do you get out of the Stress Cycle and into the Balance Cycle? You must start by stopping.  The Stress Cycle keeps you in constant motion and keeps your mind constantly occupied.  You must stop the relentless rush and set aside a significant amount of time to devote to yourself and your goals and look within. And not just for 15 minutes.  The Stress Cycle makes stopping seem impossible because it makes it appear that everything is urgent and nothing can be set aside.  However, you don’t have time to NOT do this work – your life is a marathon, not a sprint.  Creating your Personal Vision is not something you can knock out in a day, or even a weekend.  You need to give both your creative mind and logical mind a chance to work together over a period of several weeks or months.  (I’ll explain
what I mean by that later on.)

You also must get outside of your systems.  Your family, friends, colleagues, boss, fellow church, synagogue or club members, no matter how well-intentioned, will not be of much assistance in helping you get new information about yourself.  You need answers that are different from what they can provide because you need to take a fresh look at your own answers and preconceptions.  You need a process that helps you look within and get a more objective and complete view of yourself.

The vehicle for moving from the Stress Cycle to the Balance Cycle is a Personal Vision.  The answers to making your life more balanced and meaningful are not out there somewhere:  they are inside you.  You need to unplug from the
messages that surround you and focus for a period of time on The Eight Critical Success Factors to see what you can learn about yourself that you may have never known or may have simply forgotten.

If you don’t do it for yourself, who will?

One Lawyer’s Story

Frank, age 41, is a partner at a large law firm.  He has worked for the same firm since he graduated from law school.  He is a successful litigator with a great book of business, including some of the firm’s largest clients. He is well-respected by his colleagues and others in the community.

Despite all of his apparent success, Frank is silently miserable.   He is busier than he has ever been before and feels as if everybody is putting more demands on him.  He is constantly putting out fires and dealing with urgent deadlines, and is tired of dealing with so much conflict.  The hours he is working are getting longer, not shorter.  He does not enjoy the work he is doing and is finding that the things he has achieved do not mean much to him anymore.

Although he is unhappy, he feels as if he does not have the time to even think about changing things.  It is all he can do to just keep up with what he has on his plate.  He can’t fathom adding one more thing to his day, even something as positive as creating a Personal Vision for his life.  He believes that he is too busy to stop and just hopes that at some point things will change.

Frank is deep into the Stress Cycle.  He is a prime example of how easy it is to get caught up in the system and become trapped in the cycle of rushing, urgency, and outward focus.  He doesn’t realize that nothing will change until he stops what he is doing and takes time to assess what he really wants out of life and how he can get it.  Otherwise he will continue to be busy meeting the goals that others set up for him.

How Frank handles his situation and whether or not he does something to move out of the Stress Cycle and into the Balance Cycle will be largely affected by where he is in his life:  his Stage Of Adult Development.  The Stage of Adult Development, the first of the eight factors that everyone needs to consider when creating a Personal Vision, will be our focus in the next article.

In the meantime consider giving yourself some time off every week to reflect only about you and what you want.  You may be surprised at the kinds of creative solutions that bubble up!

___________________
1.     The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal
Change, Stephen R. Covey, 1989, Simon and Schuster.
2.     Don’t Waste Your Talent:  The 8 Critical Steps to Discovering What You Do
Best, Bob McDonald, Ph.D. and Don E. Hutcheson, 2000, Longstreet Press.

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Categories: Law Career Development - Tags: law career, law career development, lawyers and stress, personal vision, stress, 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

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