Guest Post - brilliantlegalmind.com

Mindfulness Techniques That Help Lawyers Break Out of Stress Cycles

Stress can build quickly in the legal profession, often trapping lawyers in exhausting cycles of overthinking, pressure, and emotional fatigue. In fact, a Reuters study found that 66% of lawyers said their time in the profession had harmed their mental health. Another 46% reported they were considering leaving entirely due to stress or burnout.

Mindfulness offers a practical, accessible way to interrupt those patterns. Grounding the mind, easing tension, and finding brief moments of clarity help lawyers break free from reactive stress loops. These practices help them reconnect with their work from a place of balance and control.

In this article, we’ll explore simple mindfulness techniques that support this shift.

Recognizing Stress Triggers Before They Spiral

Recognizing stress triggers early is one of the most powerful ways lawyers can stop stress cycles before they take over. Mindfulness helps by bringing attention to the first signs of tension. It also highlights the subtle moments when the body or mind signals that something is off.

The Mayo Clinic suggests starting by identifying what reliably causes your stress. What makes you feel tense, irritated, or suddenly overwhelmed? Do you notice headaches or stomach discomfort without a clear medical cause? Is your focus slipping or your sleep disrupted?

By observing these cues with curiosity instead of judgment, lawyers can catch stress at its earliest stages. They can then take mindful action before it spirals into a full cycle of pressure and reactivity.

Grounding Techniques That Instantly Calm the Nervous System

Grounding techniques help the nervous system settle quickly by directing attention away from spiraling thoughts and back into the present moment.

One simple option is slow, intentional breathing where you inhale deeply, pause briefly, and then exhale longer than you inhaled. This signals the body to relax and reduces the intensity of stress. Another method is physical grounding, like placing your feet on the floor or pressing your palms together.

The Cleveland Clinic also recommends the 3-3-3 technique, which means noticing three things you can see, hear, and touch. It may be a tree outside the window, a book on your shelf, or a photo on your desk. Pay attention to colors, textures, and small details. Then repeat the process for sounds and physical sensations.

These practices create an immediate feeling of steadiness and help lawyers regain control during high-pressure moments.

Mindful Reflection Practices for Long-Term Stress Reduction

Mindful reflection helps lawyers break long-term stress patterns by creating space to understand what truly affects their well-being. Simple practices such as journaling, a mindful review of the day, or intentional decompression routines create space to slow down. They also help you notice what triggered stress and how you responded.

Approaching these reflections with curiosity rather than judgment builds resilience and prevents the same stressful cycles from repeating.

Reflection can also inspire long-term professional growth, especially when lawyers explore new ways to shape their careers through flexible learning paths. This can include options like pursuing an online Juris Doctorate program. Such opportunities help lawyers grow their skills, broaden their practice options, and align their careers with their goals.

Cleveland State University notes that an online JD program requires 90 credits and includes experiential learning. The best thing is that it can be completed part-time in just over three years.

Using Mindful Pauses to Interrupt Negative Thought Loops

Using mindful pauses is one of the most effective ways for lawyers to interrupt negative thought loops before they intensify. A mindful pause can be as simple as stopping for a moment and taking a slow breath. It also involves observing what is happening in your mind without getting pulled into it. This brief reset creates enough space to choose a calmer response instead of reacting automatically.

Verywell Mind also suggests shifting your focus through healthy distractions when thoughts feel especially persistent. Stepping outside, moving your body, getting absorbed in a project, or reading for a few minutes can all help. Even activities like tai chi or karate can clear the mind. These small pauses redirect mental energy and break the momentum of stress-driven thinking.

Body Awareness Practices That Release Tension and Promote Focus

Body awareness practices help lawyers release built-up tension and return to a state of steady focus during demanding workdays. These techniques involve checking in with physical sensations rather than ignoring them, which is something many attorneys unintentionally do while rushing between tasks.

Noticing tightness in areas like the jaw, shoulders, or lower back is an important first step. It gives you the chance to gently relax those spots with slow breathing or simple stretches. Even simple actions like rolling the shoulders, loosening the neck, or unclenching the hands can reduce stress immediately.

Bringing attention back to the body also quiets mental noise. The result is clearer thinking and more thoughtful, deliberate responses. This renewed physical awareness supports better concentration and more grounded decision-making.

Emotional Labeling to Reduce Overwhelm and Reclaim Control

Emotional labeling is a simple but powerful mindfulness practice that helps lawyers reduce overwhelm and regain a sense of control. Instead of getting swept up in stress, you pause and name what you feel.

Labeling the emotion creates space and helps you understand what is happening inside. This shift calms the nervous system and interrupts the urge to react quickly or defensively.

By identifying emotions with honesty and without judgment, lawyers can navigate challenging situations with more clarity, stability, and confidence.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can mindfulness help lawyers who struggle with chronic stress or anxiety?

Yes, mindfulness can help lawyers. It trains the mind to stay present, reduces overthinking, and calms the nervous system. With regular practice, lawyers often feel more grounded, clearer in their decisions, and better able to manage ongoing pressure.

What mindfulness techniques work best during high-stakes legal work?

Breathing exercises, grounding techniques, and brief mindful pauses work best during high-stakes legal work. These practices steady the mind, reduce tension, and help lawyers stay focused and composed. Even a few slow breaths or a quick sensory check can restore clarity in demanding moments.

How do I know if my mindfulness routine is actually working?

You’ll know your mindfulness routine is working when you notice small but consistent shifts. These may include calmer reactions, better focus, improved sleep, or less tension during stressful moments. You may also find it easier to pause before responding and recover more quickly from stressful situations.

Breaking the Cycle With Mindful Awareness

Mindfulness gives lawyers practical tools to step out of stress cycles and return to a steadier, more grounded way of working. Even small practices can create meaningful shifts in focus, clarity, and emotional balance.

By integrating these techniques into daily routines, lawyers can strengthen their resilience and navigate their profession with greater ease and confidence.

Author bio: Writer by day, dream catcher by night. Marchelle Abrahams cut her teeth during the infancy of the internet when the dial sound of the modem was more than a soundbite at a rave. Not a Millennial and not a Boomer, Marchelle is an in-betweener, making her a special breed of human. As a qualified journalist, Marchelle believes her superpower is stringing a few words together and people reading them. That, and the ability to take her kids on with her unique brand of gnarly comebacks.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out my new book, How to Be a Badass Lawyer, for a simple guide to creating a meditation practice of your own in 30 days. And to share mindfulness with your little one, check out my new children’s book, Mommy Needs a Minute.

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Collective Care and Lawyer Wellness

Beyond the Individual Focus

Self-care habits like rest, exercise, and mindfulness are meaningful parts of a healthy legal career. They help lawyers steady themselves against the pace and pressure of daily practice, yet resilience doesn’t come only from looking inward.

An even broader source of balance can be found when lawyers give time and attention to causes beyond the office. Serving and caring for the community is sometimes referred to as “collective care” and shifting focus outward in this way can widen your perspective, relieve stress, and create a sense of connection that the profession itself doesn’t always provide.

What Collective Care Means

Collective care takes shape through service outside of billable work. It can look like volunteering with a nonprofit, mentoring a younger lawyer, serving on a board, or joining a civic project. The value comes less from the scale of the effort and more from the consistency. A steady commitment, even in small doses, creates connection and purpose that extend beyond daily casework.

Stress Relief in High-Conflict Work

So much of legal work is built on conflict because you’re fighting deadlines, pushing through discovery, arguing points that never seem to end. The grind can take a toll, but contributing to community projects can flip the script and help manage the stress. Instead of bracing for a fight, you’re working with people who share a goal, which can take pressure off and help you come back to the office with a clearer head.

Identity Beyond Case Outcomes

The Narrow Scorecard

Lawyers constantly deal with numbers, things like billable hours, win rates, settlement or verdict amounts, which makes it easy to reduce a career to a set of scores. A bad result in court or a client who walks away unhappy can feel like a judgment on you as a person, not just your work.

A Broader Foundation

Service outside of the office can help change the way you see things. When you mentor a younger lawyer or sit on a nonprofit board, no one is keeping track of wins and losses and the value shows up in relationships built and in the progress of the people you help. Being involved in collective care settings can remind you that your worth doesn’t live only in case outcomes.

Image of guest poster with quote from the blog post that says "Lawyers who give time outside of their practice discover energy and perspective that steady them for the long run. Service ties you to people and goals beyond the case at hand, and that connection can make a demanding career feel sustainable."

Mentorship and Role Modeling

When experienced lawyers give time to mentoring or to projects in the community, they can set an example that highly influences younger attorneys. Balance doesn’t come only from managing hours or squeezing in rest; it also grows from steady contribution to something larger than your own practice. A mentor who makes space for work like this shows that holistic wellness includes more than self-care.

Over time, those choices set a standard. New lawyers see that longevity in practice depends not only on private routines but also on the connections built through service. It gives a new perspective on what a legal career can look like by showing that resilience grows from community as well as personal habits. Over time, that perspective influences how newer lawyers balance the demands of practice with the need for purpose outside of it.

Perspective from Practice

Community work has been a steady part of my career. Our firm has donated to Austin nonprofits, helped build playgrounds, supported food banks, and backed programs that strengthen families. Giving in this way doesn’t take me out of my role as a lawyer; it gives me the perspective to do it better.

Focusing on causes outside of daily legal work provides balance and contributing to the community helps reduce stress and allows lawyers to return to their clients with stronger energy and focus.

What’s important isn’t the size of the contribution but the habit of returning to service again and again. Each project is a reminder that the profession doesn’t have to drain you if you anchor yourself in something larger.

Simple Ways to Start

Lawyers will sometimes hesitate to take on community projects because the workweek already feels overloaded. Fitting in one more thing can feel impossible, but collective care doesn’t need to mean adding hours you don’t have. It can begin with a single commitment that fits naturally into your schedule, like mentoring one law student each semester or serving on the board of a neighborhood nonprofit.

The key is to begin, even on a small scale and then once community involvement becomes part of your calendar, it starts to feel less like an obligation and more like a steady source of perspective.

Wellness Through Community Connection

Collective care, though community work doesn’t replace personal wellness habits, but it complements them in a way nothing else can. Lawyers who give time outside of their practice discover energy and perspective that steady them for the long run. Service ties you to people and goals beyond the case at hand, and that connection can make a demanding career feel sustainable.

Author Bio: Adam Loewy is a leading personal injury attorney in Austin with over two decades of experience. Since founding Loewy Law Firm in 2005, he’s handled serious injury and wrongful death cases, consistently securing multi-million dollar recoveries for his clients. Known for keeping a more focused docket, he ensures each case receives full attention, while his firm extends its impact through charitable giving, community sponsorships, and support of local nonprofits.

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Finding Balance: Lessons from Philosophy, Structure, and Resistance

If balance isn’t what you escape to, but what you build from, then the next question is obvious:
How do you build it?

Not just in theory.

In a world that runs on overstimulation, scarcity mindset, and status games:

How do you actually live differently?

The answer isn’t in hacks or habits. It’s in philosophy.

The kind that orients you when ambition is loud and clarity is quiet. The kind that helps you walk away from things that reward you for abandoning yourself.

Balance isn’t just about rest. It’s about rhythm, resistance, and re-centering, again and again.

1. Rhythm: You Are What You Repeatedly Do

Aristotle said it best: “Excellence is not an act, but a habit.”

What he really meant is: the shape of your life is formed by what you do consistently, not what you feel inspired to do once in a while.

That includes your inputs: what you read, consume, scroll, and rehearse in your mind.

It includes your defaults: what you say yes to without thinking, what you say no to because you “should.”

It includes your silence: what fills your attention when no one is asking for it.

If you want balance, you need rhythm.

And rhythm means making space on purpose, before the world fills it for you.

Ask yourself:

What are you building repetition around? Clarity, or chaos?
What time of day belongs to you, without negotiation?
What anchors you when you’re off-center, and do you actually return to those anchors regularly?

2. Resistance: You’re Allowed to Not Want the Same Things

Stoicism is often misunderstood as suppression.

But Epictetus wasn’t telling people to be numb.

He was teaching them to guard their energy, to distinguish between what’s in their control and what’s not. Because the more noise you react to, the less signal you can hear.

In today’s context, that’s a revolutionary act.

Because the system doesn’t just reward overwork; it shames you for wanting less.

It pathologizes rest. It glamorizes imbalance.

It makes ambition feel like obligation, and burnout feel like progress.

Balance, then, becomes a form of resistance.

It’s how you reclaim your time, your nervous system, and your identity from a culture that treats your worth as performance.

Ask yourself:

Where have you internalized urgency that isn’t even yours?
What values are actually yours, and which ones were just inherited from the environment?
Are you okay with being seen as “less ambitious” if it means being more intact?

3. Re-centering: You Need a Philosophy, Not Just a Schedule

Viktor Frankl wrote, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.’”

He was writing about survival under the worst conditions imaginable, but the lesson holds in everyday life: if you don’t choose what your life is for, something else will choose for you.

The point of balance isn’t to feel relaxed.

The point is to remain aligned, so that your output reflects your values—not just your fear or momentum.

That means checking in regularly. It means zooming out from metrics.

It means seeing your calendar as a moral document, not just a logistical one.

Re-centering isn’t an emergency button. It’s a regular practice.

Ask yourself:

What does success feel like in my body, not just in my inbox?
What would my week look like if it reflected my actual priorities?
What am I tracking, and is it helping or distracting me?

Design the Balance Before the System Designs You

You need a structure that protects your time before law school starts—not after. You need to know what hours are yours. What thoughts are yours. What parts of your identity aren’t up for negotiation.

You need:

Mornings that belong to you, not your inbox.
A body that isn’t treated like a taxi for your brain.
Relationships that don’t just tolerate your goals—but remind you who you were before them.

If you don’t set that rhythm early, the default will become your design. And once you’ve built your ego on that design, it’s much harder to undo.

Bonus: You Don’t Have to Be Chill to Be Balanced

There’s a trap that shows up, especially for high-performers.
We think if we’re anxious, tense, or reactive, we must be “off-balance.”

But balance doesn’t mean calm.
It means not losing the thread.

Tricia Hersey, in Rest is Resistance, reminds us: the system was not built for your healing.

So of course rest feels unnatural.
Of course silence feels boring.
Of course boundaries feel selfish.

That’s not a personal failure. That’s conditioning.

Balance isn’t a vibe. It’s a discipline.

One that protects your clarity, even when you don’t feel clear.
One that steadies you, even when you’re overwhelmed.

Balance isn’t just the absence of stress.

It’s the presence of structure, space, and sovereignty.

You build it by remembering, daily, that your life is not an accident.

It’s a design.

And it’s still yours to shape.

Author bio: Moshe Indig is the founder of Sharper Statements, a premier law school admissions consulting firm known for its depth, strategy, and results. A former litigator, Moshe helps aspiring lawyers craft powerful
narratives that reflect both who they are and where they’re headed—without sacrificing voice, clarity, or balance. Drawing from years of experience inside and outside the legal system, he teaches applicants to
center precision and authenticity in every part of the process. Read more at sharperstatements.com.

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Balance Isn’t What You Add—It’s What You Live By

Everyone thinks they’ll find balance after. After the LSAT. After admissions. After 1L. After biglaw. After they’ve proven something.

But that’s not how this works.

Balance isn’t the thing you reward yourself with once the chaos is over. Balance is the thing that prevents the chaos from defining you in the first place.

And if you don’t build around it from day one, you don’t “lose” balance. You forget what it ever felt like. You start confusing urgency for importance, burnout for ambition, and ego management for purpose.

Law Will Eat Whatever You Feed It.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you: law has no off switch.

It doesn’t say “thanks, that’s enough.” It takes whatever you give it—your time, your identity, your weekends, your inner monologue—and then
it asks for more.

And in the beginning, that won’t bother you. Because you’ll feel focused. Serious. In control. Like you’re becoming the kind of person who “gets things done.”

But fast-forward six months, or six years, and you’ll find yourself living in a schedule that you didn’t design, speaking in a tone you didn’t choose, and wondering when exactly you started measuring your worth by output.

By then, it won’t feel like a choice. Because the system will have made itself feel inevitable.

Work-Life Balance Is a Lie. Try Life-Work Clarity.

“Work-life balance” suggests that work comes first—and you try to squeeze life around the edges. That’s the default framing in this profession. It’s the water everyone’s swimming in.

But if you keep that frame, you lose the plot. You end up designing your life around a job that was never meant to be your identity.

Let me be blunt:
Law school is not your life.
Being a lawyer is not your life.

Your rank, your GPA, your offer letter—they’re not your center. They’re orbiting objects. And if you confuse them for your anchor, you will drift.

What I teach my students—whether they’re writing a personal statement or rethinking their entire path—is this: your life is the primary text. Everything else is just annotation.

Image with quote from post that says "Balance isn't what you escape to. It's what prevents the chaos from defining you."

Your Nervous System Will Outlast Your Resume

You can get into a T14 by white-knuckling your way through the LSAT.
You can get biglaw by sacrificing your body to the job. You can impress professors, mentors, hiring committees—by bending yourself into whatever shape they expect.

But eventually, the bill comes due. In your joints. Your breath. Your friendships. The way you sleep. The way you speak to yourself when no
one’s around.

And no job title is worth that. Balance isn’t luxury. It’s protection.

It’s not about spa days or Sundays off. It’s about building a rhythm that doesn’t collapse when the pressure spikes. It’s about becoming someone who doesn’t need to “escape” their own life to feel okay.

Design the Balance Before the System Designs You

You need:

Mornings that belong to you, not your inbox.
A body that isn’t treated like a taxi for your brain.
Relationships that don’t just tolerate your goals—but remind you who you were before them.

If you don’t set that rhythm early, the default will become your design. And once you’ve built your ego on that design, it’s much harder to undo.

Final Truth: Law Doesn’t Deserve Your Life. You Do.

You don’t get extra credit for martyrdom. You don’t get a medal for disappearing into the system. You get a life—or you don’t.
Law can be a meaningful part of that life.

But only if you’re still in the driver’s seat. Only if balance isn’t an afterthought, but the foundation.

You are not here to survive law school. You’re here to live a life you’re proud of—one that law fits into, not one it consumes. The time to start thinking about that is now.

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5 Ways to Decompress and Look After Your Mental Health When Applying to Law School

Image of student sorting through application with title for blog post "5 Ways to Decompress and Look After Your Mental Health When Applying to Law School"

It’s no secret that law students are seriously struggling—over 75% report increased anxiety, and over 50% experience depression. Other stats say a staggering 96% face significant stress—far more than medical students or other graduate students.

But the stress doesn’t start in law school—it begins long before. With admissions growing more and more competitive, students must craft applications that are both deeply personal and meticulously calculated.

They’re expected to be both authentically themselves and exactly what hard-to-impress admissions committees want to see. Balancing vulnerability with strategy, storytelling with structure, and passion with polish is exhausting.

And that’s only one hurdle. Students also juggle time-consuming extracurriculars designed to impress, competitive internships, near-perfect GPAs, months of LSAT prep, and applying to a dozen or more schools—all under the looming fear of rejection.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. While the pressure is real, there are ways to manage stress, protect your mental health, and set yourself up for success—strategies that can help you not just survive the process but maybe even beat the stats.

Prioritize Movement While Applying to Law School

It’s well-documented that regular exercise improves mental health, boosts emotional well-being, and lowers rates of anxiety and depression. It may sound too simple, but something as basic as walking around your neighborhood can help you decompress.

The science behind this link is complex. Some studies suggest exercise affects brain chemicals like serotonin, stress hormones, and endorphins, while others point to the connection between inactivity and mental health struggles. Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that movement helps!

But this isn’t about forcing a strict workout routine into your already packed schedule. Exercise shouldn’t feel like another obligation—it should be something you enjoy. Whether it’s walking, yoga, pilates, or light stretching, find what lets you take a breath and quiet your mind. You can pair it with binaural beats or calming music for added effect!

Express Your Emotions During the Law School Application Process

The emotions you experience during this process—stress, anxiety, frustration, self-doubt—are valid. Bottling them up will only make them feel heavier. Finding an outlet to release these emotions can help prevent them from spiraling into overwhelming anxiety or burnout.

Talking to someone—a friend, family member, or mentor—can be incredibly helpful. If speaking to someone isn’t for you, consider journaling. Writing your thoughts down, even if no one ever reads them, can be a cathartic way to process your emotions. The simple act of transferring your worries from your mind onto paper can create a sense of relief and perspective!

Image of Jesse Wang, guest contributor, with quote from the blog post "While the pressure is real when applying to law school, there are ways to manage stress, protect your mental health, and set yourself up for success—strategies that can help you not just survive the process but maybe even beat the stats."

Take a nap—Without Guilt to Support Your Mental Health

You don’t need me to tell you how important sleep is, but when you’re buried under deadlines and LSAT prep, it’s easy to sacrifice rest in the name of productivity.

While getting a full eight hours every night might not always be realistic, ignoring your body’s need for rest only makes the process harder in the long run. Instead of running on fumes (or another cup of coffee), give yourself permission to take a nap if you need one.

Even a short 20-minute reset can improve focus, memory, and mood. And if you need a full hour or two? Take it. The time you “lose” to sleep won’t make or break you, but being well-rested will make everything else feel a little more manageable.

If you are the kind of person who struggles to nap during the day, a quick meditation or a restful practice like restorative yoga might be great alternatives. Remember, rest isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.

Get Outside for a Mental Health Break

We’ve all heard the joke of telling people who are chronically online to “touch grass” as a reminder that there’s a real world beyond their screen. But it’s more than just a joke—literally walking barefoot on grass is a common grounding technique that can help reduce stress, lower anxiety, and bring you back to the present.

Studies have shown that spending even a few minutes in nature can lower cortisol levels and improve overall well-being. Even if going outside barefoot isn’t your forte, just getting outside—feeling the sun on your face, taking a deep breath of fresh air, or going for a quick walk—can do wonders for your mental health.

When stress keeps you stuck at your desk, a few minutes outside can be the reset you need to clear your mind, refocus, and feel a little more human again.

Zoom Out to Remember that Law School Application Is Just the First Step

It’s easy to get tunnel vision when applying to law school. Your success starts to feel like it hinges entirely on getting the right grades, getting into the perfect program, and getting that coveted job. However, defining success solely through academic and professional achievements can set you up for more stress and disappointment.

Creating a vision board that extends beyond law school can be a great way to maintain perspective. Think about what else makes you feel fulfilled—hobbies, travel, personal goals, new skills you want to learn.

By diversifying your definition of success, you remind yourself that your worth isn’t solely tied to your legal career. Plus, updating your vision board with small wins along the way can help you feel a sense of accomplishment throughout the journey, not just at the finish line!

Image sharing the 5 ways to manage stress and support mental health while applying to law school that were shared in the post

Final Thoughts

Stress is an unfortunate but inevitable part of the law school journey. You’re entering one of the most demanding careers, and the path to getting there isn’t any easier. But you don’t have to do it alone.

Juris Education can help shoulder the burden—guiding you through applications, essays, and interviews—so you can focus on putting your best foot forward without burning out.

At the same time, small habits can make a big difference. Moving your body, expressing your emotions, resting when needed, getting outside, and maintaining perspective can help you manage stress in a healthier way.

Law school will come with its own challenges, but building these habits now will set you up for success—both in your application process and in your future career!

Author Bio: Jesse Wang is a published author and attorney based in New York City. He completed a JD/MBA from the USC Gould School of Law, where he was Secretary of the Student Bar Association, Co-President of the Diversity Committee, and Founder and President of Gould’s Legal Technology Association. Prior to law school, Jesse graduated magna cum laude from Emory with a Bachelor’s in business administration with dual concentrations in information systems and operations management and marketing and Chinese language and literature. In 2020, he published a novel titled “Underdog” about his law school experience, as well as the experiences of classmates, professors, law school deans, and startup founders within the USC Gould legal community. Jesse has a strong track record of supporting students in their writing processes, having tutored both undergraduate and graduate students across various subjects. Jesse excels at providing comprehensive strategies for the admissions process. He helps students craft persuasive narratives, optimally structure their arguments, and leverage their unique qualities to make an impression on top-tier law schools. He is committed to helping students reach their goals and become part of the nation’s elite legal community. Having faced and overcome the challenges of applying to law school himself, he understands the stress and pressure students experience and works diligently to give them the best chance of success.

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How a Holiday Gift Pulled Me Out of Burnout

Founder’s Note: Writers on the internet have a way of finding each other. Jim is a labor and employment lawyer in Illinois with Big Law and corporate experience, blogger, and many other things. He found me when I interviewed his best friend, Joel Stern, about his experience with cancer and his new book. We chatted via email for a while and then Jim sent me a guest post. It wasn’t until I read it that I learned we had another thing in common: Peloton. Checkout his story of how a holiday gift helped him end burnout and start a new life.

In 2017, I became the Global Lead of Employment and Immigration for a large Indian IT company (a competitor of Accenture). I had a team of 20 lawyers based in London and Bangalore, India. I would travel to London and spend about one week there and then a week in India. I did this several times. At first, it was exciting and fun. After a couple of years though, it was no longer fun- – it was just grueling. And the job was really 24/7, I would be doing conference calls in the middle of the night because that’s daytime in India or checking emails in the middle of the night.

I am not saying my employer expected this; it is how I am wired. Lawyers handle the toughest issues businesses and society face. And while there is a lot of satisfaction to be gained by the practice of law, the legal profession is a stressful one. Lawyers are expected to work long hours, practice at a 24/7, “always on” pace, and provide immediate answers to the most complex issues, all while maintaining a high degree of client service and professionalism.

In December 2018, I traveled to London and India for almost 3 weeks. I returned home just before Christmas. I was physically and mentally exhausted. As I left India, I thought to myself “I really never want to come back here.” When I got home, we had friends over to sing Christmas carols and I literally fell asleep while singing them.

One of my favorite things about Christmas was singing in the midnight Christmas Eve service with the choir I sang with for over 20 years. Singing “Silent Night” with only candles to illuminate the church is one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve ever had. But I couldn’t even stay awake until 8 p.m., so I missed the service that year.

2019 rolled around and a polar vortex hit Chicago and the temperatures were way below 0. That matched my mood – – cold and dark. I was supposed to return to India in February. I just couldn’t do it. My General Counsel was very understanding. But I just couldn’t get of my funk. I struggled to get through the workday, and it was a slog.

By 2020, I realized that I wasn’t doing myself, my family, my friends, or my work team any favors and it was time for me to go. I took an “early” retirement in March 2020. What else happened in March 2020? The pandemic hit. A double whammy. I plunged into further darkness. I would sleep until noon and basically get up and just read a book or something. I had no interest in playing golf even though we had moved to a beautiful new community with a golf course and our house overlooks the 16^th hole.

In December 2020, my wife and I bought a Peloton bike. I made a pledge to myself that I was going to get on this damn bike and ride almost every day. And I did! I started to feel better and eventually experienced weight loss that further contributed to my well-being. At the same time, I rediscovered meditation. I had meditated off and on over the years, but I found a meditation program called Ten Percent Happier. I am not getting paid to endorse this, I just really like the program.

Dan Harris is a fidgety, skeptical journalist who had a panic attack on live national television, which led him to try something he otherwise never would have considered: meditation. He went on to write the bestselling book, 10% Happier. Dan talks with eminent meditation teachers, top scientists, and even the odd celebrity. Dan sometimes ventures into the deep end of the pool, covering subjects such as enlightenment and psychedelics. Or it can be science-based techniques for issues such as anxiety, productivity, and relationships.

Dan’s approach is seemingly modest, but secretly radical: happiness is a skill you can train, just like working your bicep in the gym. Your progress may be incremental at first, but like any good investment, it compounds over time. I liked that. Meditation became part of my daily practice. Between biking and meditation, I rediscovered myself. Don’t get me wrong-many days I still struggle with meditation because I have a very active monkey-mind. But I stick to it.

I love my life now. I love my family. I love my friends. I love my work and I love to sing (I found a local junior college choir to sing with where it’s me and about twenty 18–19-year-olds who put up with an old fart like me), play sports like golf, pickleball, platform tennis, kayaking, swimming, etc.

I love to travel and I cannot wait to travel more with my amazing wife of 37 years who put up with me during my darkest days. I write my own blog called “A Year of Grateful Music” where I highlight an artist and a song that I like. They say writing things we are grateful for everyday drastically improves your life. If you’re interested, email and I’ll send you the link and password.

Will this approach work for you? I don’t know, but I’d sure encourage you to try it and become a badass lawyer too!

Author Bio: Jim Beyer is a management labor and employment Lawyer with 25+ years of experience with major corporations (Accenture, General Electric, IBM and Infosys) and with Seyfarth Shaw, an AmLaw 100 firm. Jim is currently employed by Axiom. Axiom is the global leader in high-caliber, on-demand legal talent. Axiom employs over 13,000 lawyers globally. Over 60% of Fortune 100 companies are Axiom clients. Over 4000 Axiom lawyers have been with Fortune 500 companies and over 1700 Axiom lawyers have been with AmLaw 100 firms . Jim was elected as a Fellow in The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers in 2006 and he is an Adjunct Law Professor teaching employment law.

Outside of work, Jim is an avid singer looking to perform on Broadway (but happy to be a soloist on a local junior college choir, along with about 20 18–20-year-old young adults). He is a wannabe legal fiction novelist, he has been for married 37 years to a woman who should be sainted for putting up with him, father of 3 great adult sons (they call him Fred McMurray), Dad to a precocious 11-year-old English Springer Spaniel, lousy but avid golfer, Peloton bike nut and Jim also enjoys pickleball, platform tennis and kayaking. He writes a blog called “Musings of an Employment Lawyer.”

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Book Review: Stolen Focus: by Johann Hari

Editor’s Note: Eden Davis Stephens is a fellow Kentucky lawyer and a Facebook friend. As she mentions in the post below, she mentioned Stolen Focus in a Facebook post and I asked if she’d write something longer for the blog. I’m so pleased that she accepted. Welcome, Eden, to Brilliant Legal Mind.

I hit a wall last year. People-pleasing and general anxiety were no longer enough to propel me forward. I couldn’t concentrate on anything.

Information of any kind – from school fundraisers to requests from parties in cases – was burdensome. Each email or phone call was just one more thing to consider, remember, and address. I felt trapped.

As a life-long resident of the Ohio River Valley, I attempted to self-diagnosis by asking, “Is it depression, allergies, or exhaustion?”, whenever this familiar dark sensation appears. It all feels so tragically similar that this fun trio seemed to be the obvious suspect.

Upon further analysis, this usual explanation didn’t seem quite right. It felt larger than “merely” being overwhelmed by life. There was stress, but not an unusual amount. So, at first, I attempted to tackle my symptoms one by one. I had some aging-related issues to address. I finally started seeing an allergist who greatly improved the quality of my life. I leant into naps and self-care.

And yet it remained – the feeling that someone was constantly changing channels inside my head. The simplest of tasks required more and more of me to accomplish. It was unsustainable.

At last, I discovered the culprit hiding in plain sight. The last and ultimately guilty suspect was the glowing rectangle in my hand. Fortunately for me, this item was no smooth criminal because it’s very use help me discover its culpability in my predicament.

A Youtube show called “Offline”, introduced me to the author, Johann Hari, who took this topic on after a disappointing and eye-opening trip with his godson to Graceland. After watching people choose to swipe on an iPad to “see” the Jungle Room they were physically standing in he recognized a sickness creeping over all of us.

Out of this came Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. Hari begins with himself, describing a self-imposed internet detox. He was financially able to put himself up for three months in Rhode Island with an old laptop, no internet service, and no access to a smart phone. Much like any addiction, he started with some bumpy experiences, followed by a “pink cloud” of euphoria as his ability to digest long and complex books returned. When the end of his retreat grew near a wave of panic washed over him as he wondered how he could keep what he worked to regain.

Hari understands that, in our modern society, it is hard to completely detach yourself from social media platforms and internet access. He explores in the remainder of the book how one can balance this need while retaining the ability to stay focused. Hari interviews several researchers and fellow authors who have explored the algorithms of media giants, looked at macro trends across the world, and managed addictions.

Hari approached his sources with an open mind, which I appreciate in this current ultra-binary climate. He gives a thorough explanation of each person’s position and their reasoning (citing to their work in the Appendix), whether he ultimately agrees or disagrees with them. I found this rudimentary, but foundational, journalist step strangely and depressingly refreshing.

Many non-fiction books I’ve recently come across are a soft to rock hard sell of the author’s point of view. As a reader, I felt more at ease reaching an “ala carte” set of conclusions about modern technology and where it is going. Hari leans pessimistic, believing modern smart phones hasten and exacerbate the impulsive thinking and action of world leaders at a time fraught with multiple emergencies. (I, on the other hand, agree with the school of thought Hari describes – smart phones are a new technology that we can and will healthily adapt to… eventually.)

While the background to dopamine-fueling algorithms was enlightening, I was much more interested in the practical suggestions Hari provides throughout the book and summarizes toward the end. One such suggestion is an app that I now have downloaded on my phone called, Freedom.

Freedom is a VPN that blocks anything from one website to the entire internet. Much like learning to keep cookies and soda out of one’s house (ok, my house) to avoid eating or drinking these sugar-laden snacks, this app is designed to keep you from temptation. Do you have a trigger-finger for one-click Amazon purchases? A little too curious too often about what your exes are up to these days? This app helps you help yourself.

When I finished reading Hari’s book, I felt so relieved that I wasn’t alone in this struggle. Perhaps ironically, I posted to Facebook to share a summary of what I learned with friends. Within seconds people responded with similar concerns/relief that it wasn’t necessarily aging or undiagnosed ADHD.

Much like Hari, as I continue to tinker with the right amount of phone use, I have improved my own attention span. If I can, you can. I recommend Stolen Focus as a great first step in striking a better balance and improving your relationship with your smart phone.

Eden Davis Stephens is the Deputy Executive Director of the Office of Administrative Hearings where she hears cases as an administrative law judge for agencies and boards within Kentucky’s Public Protection Cabinet. When she is not fielding requests at work or requests at home, she likes decompressing with historical fiction shows that are heavy with meaningful glances & fancy costumes and light on historical accuracy.

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Turning Someday Into Now: My Guest Post about Writing a Book on Above the Law

As I’ve written here before, writing is one of my favorite pastimes. At this point, I consider it a mental health practice. Quite literally, it helps me clean out my mind, process life, and connect more deeply with my world and community.

Even so, I had a lot of doubts when I started writing about things that weren’t related to my law practice. I had ideas that I should devote most of my mental energy to building my law practices and serving clients and than anything leftover should go to my kids.

I’m no math genius, but anyone can immediately puzzle out the problem with this theory: it didn’t leave much for me. Now, you may not consider writing a very restful but for me it was. It let my brain and heart gradually stretch like you stretch your legs after a long trip. Though I read and write a lot for my law practice, I don’t do it the same way I write in a blog or social media post.

It didn’t take long until this little hobby of mine turned into something more. After a few years, I let the idea emerge that I wanted to write a book. Early on, I was confronted with many doubts, such as:

I didn’t have time.
I wouldn’t stick with it.
Nobody will care.
I had more important things to do.
It is too much work.

What did experience teach me? That these doubts were all wrong. If you want to learn what I discovered, check out this new guest post I wrote for the partnership between MothersEsquire and Above the Law.

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1,000 DAYS, A MILLION REASONS & A MILLION WAYS: Saying Goodbye to Alcohol

I used to love drinking. Until I didn’t anymore.

People curious about my decision to quit drinking alcohol usually ask me (privately) some version of the same two questions: Why? and How?

THE “WHY”

The “Why” is different for everybody.

My “Why” was like an everything bagel – a really stale one.

Some people quit out of necessity. They get in legal trouble, their spouse threatens divorce, the doctor (or priest) says “it’s time,” they develop an allergy (that’s a real thing), they “accidentally” say something that incinerates a most-cherished relationship, their boss threatens them with termination, etc.

Others quit for personal health reasons. They want to lose weight, exercise more, lower their stress levels , reduce anxiety, sleep better, communicate more deeply with their loved ones, learn a new skill, find a new purpose or meaning in life, etc.

Others quit because they see the effects of alcohol around them and they just want to do things differently. They’re tired of the drama, the missed deadlines, the prurient behavior, the disappointments, the dishonesty, the worrying, etc. Alcohol weighs them down – indirectly, but in a powerful way. And it’s just plain exhausting.

Some quit for financial reasons. Regular boozing is expensive. I did the math for myself, and I figure (conservatively) that if I had never started drinking in the first place, I would have saved enough money to pay cash for law school.

Look: 21 years of drinking (I’m 42 and it actually started way earlier than that) x $25 (average) per day = $191,625. My law school charged me a whopping $120,000 (plus a boatload of compounding interest).

If that math sounds wonky to you, try this one: I quit 981 days ago. My sobriety tracker app estimates I’ve saved myself $24,425 since quitting. Think about what that means moving forward. I’m hoping to get another 50 years out of this ride!

Even moderate drinking drains the bank. A 6-pack of beer costs $6 – $10. If I bought one every other day (no more than three beers a day): that’s $18 – $40 a week; $936 – $2,080 a year; $46,800 – $104,000 in 50 years.

The numbers above don’t even account for lost productivity or the healthcare costs associated with regular or prolonged drinking. When I started my journey, I estimated I spent one hour a day drinking (it was way more). I’ve earned back almost 1,000 hours of my life – but it feels like a million. My productivity now is threefold what it was when I quit. I have three active boys, a busy law practice with my spouse, and a side-gig as an artist and marketer. I need all the energy I can get. And I love all of the energy that I have!

Truth is: there are a million different reasons to quit. No matter what yours are, have been or will be, keep a few things in mind:

1. Your “why” is the most important “why” for you, even if someone else tells you it is silly, stupid, meaningless, an overreaction etc. Nobody knows you like you. DO YOU. All the rest of it is just noise.

2. No one else’s “why” is better or worse than yours. Playing the comparison game will not – I repeat – will not help you. Compare yourself only to yourself and keep moving! It’s a game of progress not perfection.

3. Your “why” is not a point of shame – no matter how bad you think it is. YOUR WHY IS YOUR SUPERPOWER. Own it. Love it. Remember it. Honor it. Your “Why” got you where you are. And that, my friends, is a blessing – even if it hurts in the beginning. It won’t hurt forever, I promise!

4. You are allowed to share your “why” with others, but you don’t have to, especially if you’re not ready. Take your time. You may not even really understand your “why” fully until you’ve had some time to clear your mind and think about the impact of your choices and actions. Be patient with yourself and with others. Growth takes time. A lot of it. You’re allowed a little privacy in this process.

There are plenty of medical professionals with ample advice on how to quit drinking and scientific treatments that will help you do it. I am neither an expert nor a professional. But I learned a thing or two in my own furnace and I’ve talked to enough folks to know there are a million ways to quit. No matter which path you choose, I can personally attest to the effectiveness of the following strategies:

THE “HOW”

First, talk kindly to yourself. When you quit drinking, you are going to have feelings. Lots of them. Some may be painful or uncomfortable. And some may be wonderful beyond your wildest expectations. Positive self-talk is absolutely essential to riding this roller coaster. If you’re lucky, your parents taught you how to do this and you’re already good at it. But lots of folks are clueless when it comes to self-soothing. So, try this simple exercise: Imagine yourself 20 years into the future. Close your eyes and picture what you look like, how you feel and all of the wisdom you’ve earned over the years. Picture yourself happy, content, fulfilled and proud. Now, ask that future version of you to talk to the current you. Do it out loud. And keep it simple: “You can do this.” “I’m proud of you.” “This will pass.” “Just breathe.” Do this every. single. day. Keep in mind, there is no such thing as a right way or a wrong way. Just do your best and thank yourself for the effort!

Second, if you’re going to quit drinking, you’ve got to replace old habits with new ones. Use your hands. Try knitting, whittling, braiding leather, stringing beads, weaving. Get yourself a cheap sketchbook, a pocket-sized watercolor set, a notebook, a camera (your smart phone works!). Paint, write, draw, photograph, write poetry, imagine. Whatever you use, it needs to be portable, it needs to be mind-numbing and it needs to be with you all the time. Something you can carry through airport security (okay, maybe not a whittling knife). Every time you feel the old habit creep up, grab your “thing” and get those hands busy. Don’t stop until the urge passes. It will pass.

Third, there will be plenty of days when you want to drink. Have a plan. When I first decided to quit drinking, I took all the alcohol out of the house. We were in Covid lockdown so there was really no place for me to go to drink, so that made it easy (easier). But, if you know that going to Happy Hour on Thursdays with your coworkers will be a temptation for you, don’t go. Go see a movie instead or check out your local park or nature trail. If you do socialize with drinking friends, ask the bartender in advance to make you a fancy, refillable “mocktail.” I kept a pretty glass, soda water and fresh lemon and lime on hand at all times for the first year. Hot tea is a great sippy cup substitute also.

Fourth, sweat out that stress. You absolutely have to exercise. Make time. If you had time to drink yesterday, you have time to sweat today. At my drinking peak, I used alcohol daily to blunt a fairly heavy level of work/parenting stress. So when I quit, that energy had to go somewhere. I literally felt like I was going to explode. The first 60 days were the worst. Then my mom and sisters insisted we do remote cardio classes together. I cursed them for days. But it worked. With their help, I started a new habit, and prevented what I thought was sure to be a case of premature death by spontaneous combustion. Remember, exercise doesn’t have to be expensive. Cleaning house counts. Yard work counts. Just move. And make sure you’re sweating when you do it.

Fifth, ask for help if you need it. Everybody’s circumstances are different. You may have an unsupportive roommate or partner. Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start (or how to stop). Maybe you feel trapped or ashamed or like you’re just not strong enough to weather the next storm. There are people who are ready to help you. Ask a doctor, a priest, a family member, a close friend, a local non-profit or a support group. Reach out to someone you trust. Loving arms will catch you.

Finally, think about how you see alcohol in your life. Look around. We are bombarded with advertising encouraging alcohol consumption in every one of life’s most glorious occasions: weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, the Super Bowl. We use it for celebration and in moments of sorrow. Did you get dumped? Blow that big presentation? Fail your final exam? There’s a concoction for that!

Alcohol. Is. Literally. Everywhere. I never really noticed this until I decided to quit. And then I asked myself, why do they want me to drink so much? It’s an odd thing, really.

I often wonder how things would be if, instead of asking “How” and “Why” a person quits drinking, we were to ask “How” and “Why” we all start drinking in the first place. The answer, of course, does not matter. All that matters is what you do today. And I have a question for you: What have you got to lose?

Author Bio: Christina T. Mazaheri is Managing Partner at Mazaheri & Mazaheri where she practices primarily in the areas of Employment & Civil Rights Law. She is a native South Carolinian and met her husband and law partner, Bernie, while working at the nation’s largest plaintiffs’ firm in Florida. Christina and her family (Bernie, their three boys and their Great Danes) moved to their “forever home” in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky in 2018. Christina handles cases in several states, and she has published articles and spoken on topics dealing with Wage & Hour, Age Discrimination, Arbitration and Family Medical Leave issues in the workplace. When she’s not practicing law, Christina takes an active role in educating her children, who are full-time practitioners of the Art of Fencing. Christina also enjoys creative urban agriculture, historic renovation, painting, music & textile arts, raising and showing Great Danes, and remaining active with her church.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out the new book from our founder, Claire E. Parsons, called How to Be a Badass Lawyer which is now available.

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How Do I Avoid Burnout? I Have Learned to Practice Renewal.

This week, we offer a guest post from a friend and supporter of the blog who is doing great work out in the world. Joseline Jean-Louis Hardrick found me and the blog on LinkedIn and she’s been an active supporter of it. We love her work to promote diversity, inclusion, and wellness in the legal profession and want to support her back here. Welcome Joseline to Brilliant Legal Mind!

Many lawyers and other professionals are experiencing burnout. Are you going through a hard time in your life and career and are constantly struggling with chronic stress that leaves you feeling exhausted to the core and helpless to the extent where you think nothing can ever go right?

No job in this world is easy. Every task, every goal, and every journey has its fair share of struggles and obstacles. That said, being a lawyer has its troubles on another level. It is certainly not easy to tackle difficult cases, prepare strategies for your client, and stand strong in the grueling atmosphere of the courtroom. This job and your daily routine certainly take a toll on your well-being and can easily produce a state of complete burnout.

What Burnout Does to You

Burnout is a traumatizing state of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion that makes you feel swamped and shattered. It is normal to have occasional or even routine bouts of stress, particularly in this line of work. However, things take an unexpected, undesirable turn when you do not manage your stress on time and soothe it daily.

When you don’t address the routine stress, it grows bigger and more monstrous. There then comes the point when you become so emotionally drained and overwhelmed that your body and mind keep you from going any further. You lose the motivation to take on any case; you feel withdrawn from even the activities you once found incredibly enjoyable, and you simply let go of the will to push yourself any harder.

You become cynical, hopeless, pessimistic, lethargic, exhausted, and even highly resentful. You do not wish to progress in life because you feel you don’t have that spark anymore. Burnout manifests itself in many different symptoms, including feeling drained, emotionally and physically, all the time; having muscular pain frequently, drastic changes in appetite, insomnia, lowered immunity, and a very low sense of self-esteem, among other things. If you experience any of these daily, it is clear you are not in a healthy physical, emotional, and mental state.

Whether you work as a litigator or as a transactional attorney, or you’re in academia or government, if you find yourself overwhelmed and cynical often, that’s because of burnout. Fortunately, a creative way out of this rut is a unique approach to soothe burnout and reclaim your energy, motivation, and life for good.

A Creative Solution to Handle Burnout

Having struggled with burnout excessively and frequently myself, I realized that I would have to find a unique fix for the problem to turn things around. When we are stuck in a bad rut, often, our go-to approach to get ourselves out of the problem is to push past the walls. We keep pushing ourselves forward to end the problem, but we only exhaust ourselves more in the process.

The right way to turn the tables around in your favor is to look for a new angle, just like you do in a deposition. Instead of beating around the bush, you bring up a completely new and creative perspective on the table and turn the odds in your favor. Similarly, to soothe your burnout, you need to adopt an innovative approach.

This approach is about finding joy in the journey by engaging yourself in useful activities that help you channel your stressful energy into something positive, meaningful, and productive. I call this approach “RENEWAL.”

What is Renewal?

The RENEWAL process involves the following:

R: Review your strengths, priorities, and talents and review your schedule to understand everything better.
E: Energize yourself by eating healthily, sleeping well, and taking care of your body.
N: Noticing things peacefully and becoming more mindful of yourself and your surroundings.
E: Expressing gratitude for everything you have to attain contentment from within.
W: Withdrawing yourself from the digital world to give yourself a break from the online media and different technological tools.
A: Assess your routine and responsibilities and prioritize things that matter to you.
L: Love is an essential requirement to live happily, so you need to infuse meaningful relationships and connections in your life.

This approach helps you change your thinking and behavior to modify your current state of life. Understand that nothing always happens as you plan it, but you need to let go of your former ideas and create a new you to improve on things.

While doing that, understand that you must have a clear goal moving forward, especially in the study and practice of law.

In case you’re wondering if any of these ideas are backed by research – they are! The anecdotal evidence and your personal lived experience tell you that being a law student and lawyer is stressful. But so do all the studies. The studies also show that the techniques can lead to lawyer satisfaction in their personal and professional lives.

One such study is What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success by Lawrence S. Krieger and Kenno Sheldon. They conducted a theory-guided empirical research project to identify the activities and behaviors that correlate and contribute to lawyers’ well-being and life satisfaction.

One thing they noticed is that most law students and lawyers focus almost exclusively on external factors. These factors include money and status-such as earnings, partnership in a law firm, law school debt, class rank, law review membership, and U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings. But the study shows almost no correlation between those external factors and lawyer well-being.

But they found that internal and psychological factors correlate to “happiness” and “satisfaction.” But unfortunately, focusing on the internal factors, such as autonomy, interest, freedom, a sense of worth, choices regarding family and personal life, erode in law school.

Interestingly, money and status factors and demographic differences were least important in lawyer happiness. Different practice types and settings further exemplified the issues that arise with a misplaced focus between internal and external factors. For example, lawyers in large firms and other prestigious positions were not “as happy” as public service attorneys. This held true even though the latter had much better grades and pay than the former group. And junior partners in law firms show no significant improvement in happiness than senior associates. Even with the higher pay, benefits, and prestige of a partner, there was no actual increase in the sense of satisfaction.

The bottom line is, lawyers are like everybody else. Despite specialized cognitive training and the common perception that lawyers are fundamentally different, we are people first and lawyers second.

So do yourself a favor, practice RENEWAL regularly to prevent and overcome burnout because the world needs and deserves, well-balanced attorneys.

Author Bio: Joseline Jean-Louis Hardrick is an associate professor at WMU -Thomas M. Cooley Law School. She teaches Criminal Law and Constitutional Law and assists graduates with bar preparation. She is the founder and director of Diversity Access Pipeline. Inc., a nonprofit organization that runs the Journey to Esquire® Scholarship & Leadership Program, Blog, and Podcast to promote diversity and create access for law students. She is the author of Finding Joy in the Journey to Esquire A Guide to RENEWAL for Lawyers and Law students. She magically finds spare time, which she uses to paint, dance, and watch sci-fi movies.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and compassion? Check out the new book from our founder, Claire E. Parsons, called How to Be a Badass Lawyer which is now available.

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