Law firms - brilliantlegalmind.com

How Lawyers Can Use Self-Compassion for Growth

December can be hit or miss for lawyers depending on how your year was. It can be a big celebration if you had a lot of growth. But it can be a struggle if the year did not quite go as you had hoped. In both cases, self-compassion is in order.

Now, you may think it’s odd that I say self-compassion is important if you achieved your goals. If so, jump down to point 2 below. Most of us understand innately why self-compassion might help when we fail to achieve our goals.

The struggle, of course, is in remembering to use employ it. That is why I am reminding you about it here (and trying to remind myself in the process). If self-compassion is a struggle for you, know that you aren’t alone. But keep reading because this post has some tips and a good resource to help you learn more.

Lawyers Should Be Cautious about Raising the Bar

One of the reasons that I am thinking about this now is that I did not achieve all my goals this year. It was a great year for me. I achieved many of the goals I had set for myself. Sadly, I did not achieve them all and one significant personal project fell by the wayside.

When you are a high achiever, like many lawyers are, it can be really easy to expect that you will achieve all your goals. This can cause you to forget that many of our goals are challenging and subject to conditions outside of our control. What this means is that accomplishing the goals we set for ourselves is not always something we can realistically expect.

How can we reflect on the year in a way that keeps our standards high, but doesn’t continuously raise the bar to unhealthy levels?

Assess Your Growth with Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is the tool that can help us find balance here. As I have written before, self-compassion has three simple steps: (a) mindfulness; (b) common humanity; and (c) self-kindness.

Contrary to popular belief, these steps are not about being “easy” on yourself. Instead, they are about being fair to yourself. Self-compassion is about not judging yourself more harshly than you would judge someone else.

Even if you struggle with self-compassion, using the three steps in your year-end reflection can help you take a balanced and accurate view.

Step 1: Mindfully Review the Data

The first step – mindfulness – does not require meditation though that can help. Instead, mindfulness here refers to awareness. To review your year with self-compassion, you would review the data of what transpired.

To do this, you might ask questions like these:

What did you accomplish this year?
How did you use your time?
How do you feel about the year?
What happened during the year that was unexpected or out of your control?

When you ask these questions, be as objective and neutral as you can be. It may help to review your calendar and any relevant data points to ensure your reflections are based on accurate data.

Step 2: Celebrate the Victories

In a normal year, the odds are that the questions above will elicit both positive and negative recollections. Though it may be easy to do, I encourage you to not gloss over the positive parts.

One part of self-compassion that lawyers easily forget is enjoying positive things. If you achieved goals or hit milestones, by all means, celebrate them.

If you struggle to even recognize the positive things you did, as some lawyers might, you can try to reflect on these questions:

What did you do well?
What personal or professional growth did you experience?
What goals did you achieve or what habits did you make last?
What makes you proud about the last year?

This is not an exercise of selfishness or arrogance. In fact, one benefit of reflecting on achievements is that it inevitably leads to reflection of the people and supports who helped you along the way. If these arise, share your celebration by expressing gratitude or praising the people who deserve it.

Step 3: Identify the Areas of Growth

Of course, the biggest struggle for many of us is with the goals we did not achieve. These dreaded “areas of growth” can easily make us feel defeated or hopeless. As people who come to expect high performance, lawyers often don’t know how to process failure when it comes.

This is where self-compassion is really essential. Mindfulness can help us get clear about the things that did not go as we had hoped. The second step, common humanity, is what can help us stay clear and avoid judging ourselves too harshly.

To identify the areas of growth from the year, we can ask ourselves these questions:

What projects did you not get to?
On what goals did you fall short?
What problems or struggles did you encounter?
What things or experiences are missing in your life and work?

After we identify these items, the key is to remember that we are human and that most humans are imperfect. Most humans do not always achieve 100% of their goals 100% of the time. Then, instead of beating ourselves up, we might reflect on the things that were struggles for us and consider what we need to recover or move forward.

Use Self-Compassion to Set New Year Goals

As I have written before, self-compassion is not just for reflecting at the end of the year. It can also help you apply more self-kindness when you set goals for the new year.

This may help you find motivation to start strong with a new habit. It could help you learn to stop procrastinating on one of those nagging projects that you’ve avoided for too long. It can even make sometimes heart-wrenching resolutions, like checking unhealthy habits or weight loss, feel less painful.

If you are looking to set high goals or form healthier habits in the new year, don’t forget about self-kindness and honoring your human needs.

Where Lawyers Can Learn More

Image for webinar event shared in the blog post that is called "recharge your legal mind: year end reflection for growth in the new year"

If you want to learn more about this topic, you are in luck. I will be presenting a webinar for CLE credit on this subject for the Knowledge Group on December 12, 2025 at 12 PM EST. The session will be available on-demand after that date as well.

I will be speaking about Self-Compassion for End of Year Self-Reflection and Goal-Setting. Fellow lawyers and mindfulness teachers, Ron Wilcox and Alexandra Echser-Rasmussen will offer session on mindfulness practices and self-care.

If you would like to join the session, you can connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message for a 50% off code.

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.

Like this post? Subscribe to the blog here or follow us on social media:

Five Reasons Kindness Is Essential for Lawyers

In honor of World Kindness Day, I am giving a talk this week on the power of kindness for lawyers and legal professionals. Many lawyers are skeptical of kindness, at least in relation to our work. We worry that kindness will be viewed as weakness by others and lead to passivity in ourselves.

Clearly, I don’t have illusions that I can convince an entire profession on this point, but I don’t think I have to do any convincing. If you pay attention to what kindness really is, you will see that it is powerful and essential for lawyers today. Here are five things to consider as you explore this for yourself.

1. Kindness Is Rare for Lawyers and Therefore Precious.

As a general matter, I have had mostly positive experiences with other lawyers. In general, I have experienced that lawyers are polite and professional in most settings. Real kindness, on the other hand, is more rare.

As discussed below, law practice is often challenging and filled with stress. This both makes kindness more essential and also more challenging. As most of us know, the difference between a difficult and unbearable situation is kindness. I cannot tell you how much of a difference it makes to work with an opposing counsel who is kind. We communicate more effectively and work through problems more efficiently as a result.

Though I know that many clients think they want a bulldog lawyer, I have found those types of litigators to often be ineffective. Therefore, if you want to really show power, calm, control, and courage in law practice, being kind is the way to go.

2. Kindness Is Essential in Difficult Times.

I have written before that kindness is an essential trait for difficult times. Lawyers, of course, are usually dealing with difficult times. We are literally paid to manage other people’s problems. This means our stock and trade is dealing with people going through really hard situations.

If lawyers are to weather these storms, we must learn skills for caring for ourselves and others. Sometimes this may include tending to our own fears, worries, and hurts. Sometimes it may mean patience with a stressed or unskillful opponent. And sometimes it may mean showing calm courage for our scared clients.

Either way, kindness is essential for lawyers because it helps us and our clients navigate challenging situations.

3. Kindness Is An Antidote to Fear and Aggression.

Because stress and conflict is a big part of law practice, fear and aggression unfortunately are too. This can be hard for our clients, but it is definitely hard for lawyers. One of the reasons that kindness is so powerful is that it helps people feel safe or at least safer.

In this way, kindness is an antidote to fear and aggression. It is a way that we can calm our own nerves and built trust and safety with those around us. Kindness may not make fear and aggression disappear entirely but it can help us create a sense of steadiness and comfort during emotional upheaval.

This can help lawyers focus more squarely on the relevant issues and avoid creating additional fights.

Image sharing the five ways that kindness is essential for lawyers as shared in the blog post

4. Kindness Builds the Connections that Lawyers Need.

Related to the feeling of safety is trust. Most lawyers know that relationships are at the core of law practice. Relationships permeate what we do as lawyers, including those with our firm, opposing counsel, and clients.

Kindness is a way to build trust because it is how we demonstrate care and concern for others. One of the reasons that litigation is so difficult is that trust is often lacking between parties and legal counsel as well. This is one reason that kind and professional speech is so important in litigation contexts.

When trust is lacking, it is easy to misunderstand each other and overreactions are bound to occur. Kindness is a way to cut through this animosity and rebuild the trust that is so essential to our working relationships.

5. Kindness Looks Soft but Feels Like Power.

The best and final argument I can make for kindness is not an argument at all. That’s because the best argument for kindness is in the experience of it. Lawyer struggle with kindness because it is easy to misunderstand.

In many situations, kindness has a softness to it. When we feel kindly towards someone, we may feel a softening of our hearts and a sense of generosity towards them. When someone is kind to us, we may notice a quiet, soothing voice and a non-threatening posture.

Next time you offer or experience kindness, though, I urge you to pay closer attention. Though kindness undoubtedly has a softness to it, it often also includes stability, calm, courage, and support. In this way, even though kindness may look soft to an observer, it often feels powerful to those who give and receive it.

In truth, kindness is power because it offers us the possibility of transforming a situation or building a connection with a little bit of courage, presence, and an open heart.

Don’t Take My Word for It. Try This for Yourself.

Here’s the truth: you probably already know how essential kindness is. Most of us wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have without kindness in our lives. Even so, most of us would love to have more kindness in our lives. If you are nervous about showing more kindness in your life or work, you aren’t alone. Kindness takes courage, discipline, and patience.

But when you pay attention, you may notice that it feels really good and usually leads to even better results. That’s what this post was really about anyway. I hope it helps you know where to look and to look for when it comes to kindness in your life and work. The more you study and notice kindness, the more you will want to experience and share it with others.

Like this post? Subscribe to the blog here or follow us on social media:

How Mindfulness Helps Break Mental Patterns

Seeing your mental patterns clearly is one of the biggest benefits of a mindfulness practice. I experienced this recently and the results of a few minutes of meditation were so pronounced that I had to write about it. I had a big attack of anxiety about a party with my law firm. Despite this beginning, the night was actually really fun. I had an amazing time and ended up singing “Pink Pony Club” in front of my colleagues without the slightest feeling of fear.

So what changed? How did I go from social anxiety to social butterfly in the course of a night? The long story is that I have practiced mindfulness for more than a decade. The short answer relevant to this particular situation is that I spotted my mental pattern.

This post will share some steps for recognizing and navigating challenging mental patterns with mindfulness and self-compassion.

What Are Mental Patterns?

People new to meditation are likely to notice that the mind generates a lot of thoughts. If you keep meditating long enough, you eventually will see that thoughts are often not original. Many of the same thoughts repeat themselves or fall into categories.

These can fall into a wide array of categories, but many people have a select few that dominate their minds. Some examples include obsession with planning, a recurrent theme of self-doubt, or even a preoccupation with past harms or slights.

One of my most obnoxious mental patterns is the anxiety that arises around social settings. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to shake the fear of being rejected in a social situations. This can make it hard to enjoy myself during the networking events and parties that lawyers often have to attend.

Clearly, taken to the extreme or left unchecked, patterns like this can cause us to feel shame, and miss out on connection, opportunities, and fun. This is why learning to recognize and navigate mental patterns is one of the most important power moves that mindfulness practice can offer.

The Problem: Mental Patterns Can Be Tricky

Here’s the problem with well-worn mental patterns: we often don’t recognize them for what they are. Many lawyers are too busy to pay close attention to our thoughts and feelings. We also are often intent on projecting an image of strong self-assuredness.

So, when nasty mental patterns arise, they can be hard to spot. These patterns don’t announce themselves. Instead, they slink in through the back door of your mind and whisper awful things about you and your life. They have the bleakest and most savage view of every situation.

In my case, the pattern revealed itself by creating little worries about nearly everything associated with the event. My mind criticized the outfit I had selected. It worried about whether my shoes would be too uncomfortable. It offered concerns about whether I would be too tired to have fun. It presented me with mental imagery of me standing alone in a crowded room with nobody to talk to.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Image with quote from blog post that says "mental patterns don't announce themselves. Instead, they slink in through the back door of your mind and whisper awful things about you and your life."

Mindfulness Can Help You Recognize Mental Patterns

After a while of these nagging thoughts, I started to zoom out and get some perspective. Instead of seeing the thoughts as individual rational reflections, I saw them for what they were. These thoughts were the manifestation of my social anxiety.

This hardly sounds like good news, right? I know it is counterintuitive to feel relief that a litany of negative self-talk is *just* one’s anxiety. Even so, there is a very practical benefit to be had from recognizing that the worrisome thoughts are part of a pattern.

An implicit idea underlying all of my nasty thoughts was the idea that I was not good enough and would never be good enough. This is a constant lie that anxiety tells me. But when I saw the mental pattern as just my social anxiety talking, I realized that it was not the voice of reason. I stopped believing it for a moment and that gave me enough space to break free.

The Practice: Holding the Toxic Mental Pattern in Mindful Awareness

When I created enough space, I saw that I was struggling. So I did the thing that I have trained myself over years to do: I took a pause.

It is not a fun to sit and let nasty thoughts just bounce around in your mind. I am sure that this is why so many people say that they can’t meditate. Trust me, I get it. It truly sucks.

Over the years, however, I have learned something cool. If you can sit and let the thoughts bounce around in your mind, they don’t hurt so much. Sometimes the thoughts change. Sometimes other insights arise to counter them. Or sometimes the thoughts just bounce around until they lose energy and they just stop or disappear.

With this experience, I knew that I should just meditate for a few minutes and let the thoughts do whatever they wanted. I let them wash over me and thrash around. All the while I kept returning my focus to my breath or softening and relaxing my body.

Finally, the big insight came that I was nervous about the party. My thoughts weren’t truths. They were signs of my fear. They were signals that I wanted to connect with people, but was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do so.

The Red Flag: Don’t Judge Yourself

In years past, noticing a childlike vulnerability like this in myself might have made me feel worse. But in my case, this was actually the path forward. Years of mindfulness practice, has taught me a lot about self-compassion. That has helped me cultivate a healthy dose of caution when it comes to self-judgment.

Instead of feeling like a loser about my anxiety, I recognized that I just needed some self-assurances. I needed to take care of my fear. First, I offered myself some perspective by reminding myself that this was supposed to be fun instead of a test. Then I remembered that I did not have to stay at the party for any specific period and could leave if it wasn’t fun.

Finally, I drew on common humanity to remember that I was probably not the only person who had these fears. I recalled that social situations are hard for a lot of people and that we had several other new people in the firm. In reality, most of us were too busy, but we made the effort to attend the party because connection matters.

Image sharing the four steps to break mental patterns with mindfulness as shared in the blog post: recognize, hold it in awareness, use self-compassion, and disobey the pattern.

The Result: Being Brave Enough to Break the Pattern

The final step of the process is to break the pattern. Once you see the pattern, investigate it, and take care of yourself, the only way to get out of a pattern is to disobey it.

I won’t lie. This is really hard. If you are new to mindfulness practice, it may not always be possible to get out of mental patterns so easily or you may have to take baby steps. As someone who has practiced mindfulness for more than a decade, I have learned that part of changing my patterns is acceptance.

Life experience helps me run a quick cost benefit analysis whenever my anxiety flares up. I know that fear, worry, and nerves are often going to be part of many social activities I undertake. So I sit with them, take care of my fear, and then make the brave choice to proceed anyway.

Before the party, all my anxious thoughts were attempted roadblocks. They were concocted objections and warnings trying to convince me to skip the party. Life experience has taught me that the best way to silence those thoughts was to take their power. I did that by ignoring them. I just decided to go to the party and be afraid. A few minutes in at the party, I wasn’t afraid anymore.

Conclusion: Mindfulness Practice Is One Way to Check Mental Patterns

Don’t get me wrong here. There are a lot different types of mental patterns. All of us cannot necessarily expect to face those mental patterns on our own. We all deserve the support of trusted friends, medication, and other mental health treatment to face down our most challenging mental patterns, including those relating to anxiety. Even so, one of the great blessings of mindfulness practice is that it can help you support yourself and build the skills to check, disrupt, and break free from some of the mental patterns that hold you back.

This post is just one example of how this can be done, but once you learn a process that works for you it can help you many times over the course of your life. I hope that, like I was able to do in the example shared here, you can recognize difficult mental patterns before they keep you from doing the things you want to do in life.

Like this post? Subscribe to the blog here or follow us on social media:

How Law Firms Can Support Attorney Well-Being

Though I often teach strategies that individual lawyers can take to manage stress, I always balance this with the reminder that law firms have a big impact on attorney well-being. When I joined my law firm, Bricker Graydon, a few years ago I saw this first hand. While I had generally positive experiences at prior firms, the firm’s commitment to well-being was deeper and more explicit.

Many staff members at the firm help make this happen, but one I want to mention today is Mina Jones Jefferson. She’s the Chief Culture and Engagement Officer at my firm. I’ve worked and presented with Mina on topics relating to stress management and attorney well-being. She’s so knowledgeable on these subjects that I asked her to join me on the FDCC FedSpeaks podcast to discuss steps law firms can take to support attorney well-being.

Keep reading to learn more about the insights from the interview, where to listen, and how to learn more about this subject.

Attorney Well-Being Should Be a Law Firm Priority

One of the things that Mina shared first in the interview is why law firms should make the well-being of lawyers and all staff a priority. In the interview, Mina explained that supporting attorney and staff well-being was not just the right or feel-good thing to do.

Instead, she explained how mental health directly contributes to law firm business goals. Mina shared studies showing that how employees feel about their work contribute to the quality of their work. It can also correlate to absenteeism, which translates to lost work time and billable hours. Or, in the alternative, presenteeism where employees don’t miss work but their performance suffers.

In general, Mina explained, happy lawyers and staff members are more productive and do better work for clients.

How Law Firms Can Monitor Attorney Well-Being

The idea of mental health can sometimes seem hard to define, but Mina didn’t skip a beat when I asked her about this. First, Mina explained that there are many signs that firms can monitor to gauge the well-being of their employees. As noted above, these include sick days uses, absences, and productive work hours.

To get more information, though, Mina suggested that firms should consider asking their employees regularly how they feel about work. She shared about the value of employee engagement surveys to gather information from attorneys and staff members directly. This can help law firms identify practical steps that may need to be taken to make the work life of their employees better or more satisfying.

Image of podcast guest, Mina Jones Jefferson, with quote from the interview shared in the blog post which says "Attorneys with the lowest risk of attrition are in law firms where they feel valued for their skill, talent, professionalism, or inherent worth as a human being. This shows that the value system of an employer can affect employee mental health."

Simple Steps Law Firms Can Take

Armed with this qualify information, Mina explained that law firms can make good decisions to support employees better. This can include reviewing internal policies, benefits plans, wellness offerings, and employee assistance programs.

It can also include leadership strategies that keep mental health a top priority in the law firm’s culture. These can include things like “leaving out loud”, where firm leaders don’t hide the fact that they prioritize things outside of work. It can also include simple strategies, such as honoring business hours for email and text communications.

As Mina also shared, however, it should also include a review of broader firms policies and procedures and leadership. In some ways, Mina explained that attorney and staff well-being is a function of a well-run organization.

Where and How to Learn More

This blog post was just a summary of the insights that Mina offered in the interview, but I strongly encourage you to listen to the full episode to hear it straight from her. If you want to listen to the full interview, you can find it on Apple Podcasts here. You can learn more about Mina Jones Jefferson and her work at Bricker Graydon on LinkedIn.

For more great interviews relating to lawyer well-being, check out the following episodes of FDCC Speaks:

Like this post? Subscribe to the blog here or follow us on social media:

Join This Free Evening Meditation for Well-Being Week in Law

Image showing details for evening meditation for well-being week in law

Making things work is a skill that most lawyers have to learn. As a mindfulness teacher and practitioner, it’s a great skill for meditation too. Anyone who works in or around the law must find ways to fit our well-being practices into our busy lives. For this Well-Being Week in Law, I am leaning into making things work.

I’m really pleased that my friends at the Mindfulness in Law Society are supporting me in doing so. They asked me a while back to offer a guided meditation in honor of Well-Being Week in Law. I told them I would love to, but I had a hearing set the whole week.

Then I took a breath and got creative. I knew that my hearing would end by late afternoon. I also knew that it would be great for my well-being to have a reason to commit to meditation during that time. I pitched the idea of an evening meditation and MILS agreed.

Why Evening Meditation Is Great for Professionals in Law

The first reason why an evening meditation is great for lawyers is obvious. Evening practice allows lawyers to avoid cutting into their work day. Most mindfulness teachers recommend morning practice, but I have never been able to make that work.

The evening is when I can consistently find time to meditate. The good news is that there are several good things about evening practice. It can help you let go of the stresses of the day. Evening meditation can also help you relax your body and mind and prepare for sleep.

Evening meditation also offers a chance to reflect on the day. This means it can help you heal, recover, and course correct before tomorrow. While morning meditation can be great, evening meditation can be great for professionals in law.

Details for the Evening Meditation

When Is It: 7 PM EST / 4 PM PST

Who Can Join: Anyone in law or the legal profession. This includes law students and professors. Lawyers, regardless of practice status, and all staff who work for a law firm. Judges and their staff are also welcome to attend. Prior meditation experience is not required.

How to Join: Register on Zoom to get the meeting link.

Style of Practice: Light instruction will be offered before the guided meditation. We will set an intention for practice. The practice style will be a simple mindfulness of breath or other focal point. It will conclude with some metta (loving-kindness). The meditation should take about 20 minutes.

Join the Evening Meditation to Support Well-Being in Law

As I have written here before, community is essential for maintaining a mindfulness practice long-term. The theme for Well-Being Week in Law this year is social connection. Most of us working in law meditate on our own most of the time. The evening meditation on Thursday May 8th offers you a chance to practice mindfulness in community. I hope you will join us to support your own own well-being and that of other professionals in law.

Like this post? Subscribe to the blog here or follow us on social media:

What Law Firm Leaders Can Learn from Better Call Saul

I was watching Better Call Saul with my husband as Howard Hamlin, the law firm partner with perfectly quaffed blonde hair and a toothpaste commercial grin, appeared on screen. After meeting with the title character, Saul Goodman, Howard gets into an expensive vehicle and drives away to reveal a vanity plate that reads “NAMAST3”. We already knew that Howard had been struggling with his past and had turned to yoga and new-found spirituality to tame his inner demons. Unfortunately, as the audience eventually learns, Howard’s inner peace is much like the spelling on his vanity plate: not quite right.

My husband smirked, turned to me and said, “Does that irritate you?” He was mocking me, but I was nerding out far too hard to acknowledge it. Instead of rolling my eyes at him, I replied “No, this is a great example about how easy it is to gaslight ourselves with spirituality.” Indeed it was, but it turned out to be a tragic one too. In Better Call Saul, Howard had turned to yoga and mindfulness to soothe his tortured soul after the downfall and death of his mentor and Saul’s brother, Charles McGill.

Despite this new-found ethos, however, there is little evidence of reflection on Howard’s part about his preoccupation with appearing perfect or the practices of his own law firm. Tragically, Howard’s obsession with his reputation left him vulnerable to Saul’s tricks, and it ultimately lead to his own death and the implosion of his firm.

I talk about the power of mindfulness all the time, so it may seem strange that I would draw attention to Howard Hamlin. If anything, he shows us that mindfulness has limits, right? And, to be sure, the characters on Better Call Saul are generally examples of what not to do as attorneys. So why talk about them?

I talk about them because, of course, there are limits to mindfulness practices. As Howard demonstrates, one of the dangers of mindfulness practice is that it can help you feel better temporarily or on a surface level without achieving the clarity needed for real peace. If you don’t have other supports to ground you, you may end up deluding yourself instead of growing and understanding yourself better.

The show doesn’t tell us what practices and teachers Howard relied on to develop his mindfulness practice, though his license plate suggests he went for yogic practices. The show offers clues, however, that Howard is otherwise intent on appearing serene when his life in many ways seems to be falling apart. Though he experienced the death of his law partner, strife in his firm, and an impending divorce, Howard seems intent on showing everyone how happy and at ease he is. There’s also no mention of Howard trying additional strategies, like therapy for example, to support himself.

I don’t say these things to suggest that Howard was a bad guy. He really wanted to be a good guy. He wanted to be a mentor to young lawyers. He wanted to be a good leader and build a law firm that lasted. The problem is that Howard was not an aware guy because he was afraid to see himself as he really was. In this way, Howard Hamlin was entirely human, but his obsession with looking at peace tragically got in the way of him ever finding it.

Research is clear that mindfulness practices, including yoga, can help you reduce stress and feel more at peace. They do that, though, by helping you face yourself as you are and life as it is. Part of that means accepting your own imperfections and learning how to share them with others. As Howard Hamlin shows us, your so-called inner peace can get torn apart very easily when you can’t allow yourself to do this.

The legal profession certainly needs more law firm leaders who are willing to be examples about leading a good life, including the practices that help them do it. So, if you are a serious yogi, go ahead and talk about it and keep that yoga mat in your office. But, don’t just talk about it and throw a vanity plate on your car. You also need to act on the values that have served you well. You need to be real in a way that Howard Hamlin never let himself be about the struggles you’ve had rather than merely trying to convey an illusion of spiritual purity. Not only do you deserve all the support you can get when you deal with hardships in life, your law firm may need you to get it.

Indeed, research suggests that emotional intelligence and relationship-building are essential leadership traits. Even the best lawyers would struggle to do either of these things without being honest with themselves and others about who they really are. Law firm leaders who embrace mindfulness to help stabilize themselves can certainly use the practices to become better leaders for their firms.

But they shouldn’t do so with the objective of always looking calm and serene, especially not when real crises in life or law practice are happening. Instead, the practices are there to help you accept and face what is there–in yourself or in life–and greet it with compassion. When you can do this, there will be no need to tell people how at peace you are because you’ll show it with your life, law practice, and leadership every day.

Like this post? Subscribe to the blog here or follow us on social media:

Which Encanto Character Are You? Law Firm Edition

If you have small children or have just not been living under a rock for the last month, you probably know the lyrics to “We Don’t Talk about Bruno” by heart. Both of my girls are under 10, so although we don’t talk about Bruno we definitely have been singing about him, constantly, on a loop, for weeks now. And we have had vigorous philosophical debates about which character we like best and which is the worst. As someone who came of age in the era of internet identity tests, I couldn’t help but wonder which Encanto character I am. As a law firm partner, the next imaginings on the topic turned to my colleagues and lawyer friends.

When you think about it, the struggle of the family Madrigal in the midst of crisis and change isn’t too far off from the situations of many law firms trying to navigate technology, wellness, diversity, succession planning, and pandemic issues and move into the future. If you aren’t so sure, read on and find out which Encanto character you and your law firm colleagues might be.

Mirabel

Do you work in a firm and just stare blankly at people when they tell you that “you just have to find your niche”? You might be Mirabel. Although you haven’t quite figured out your superpower just yet, you are curious, collegial, and brave. If you have the support of compassionate firm mentors and enough freedom to explore, you might become a great leader because of your ability to see things that others ignore.

Abuela

Let’s be clear, the senior partners run the show. But, just like Abuela, they can become so fixated on stability that they block innovation and new leadership. At their worst, they may lead from fear and create toxic situations for others even when their intentions are good. Like Abuela, senior partners deserve respect for their ability to build stability in the midst of change over time but if that respect overawes all other voices the firm can’t evolve and it may alienate and stifle talented attorneys.

Luisa

In the firm setting, Luisa can come in many forms. They can be the big rainmaker who brings in the lion’s share of the firm business but feels burdened by the job. They might be the person who is effective at managing firm housekeeping and either volunteers or is voluntold for all the committees. It can even be that support staff member who goes out of their way to take care of others but gets taken advantage of when all the filing deadlines fall on the same day. These people struggle to ask for help and make a point of making things look easy. They are wonderful and critical elements of the team, but good firm leaders know to be proactive to check in on their status regularly to ensure that they don’t feel like a tightrope walker in a three-ring circus.

Isabela

The Isabela of the law firm is the person who shows exceptional talent and value in one area but struggles to expand their role. They may be an excellent writer or have a specific knowledge of technical issues that nobody else understands. Because these attorneys have found and excelled in their niche, they may usually appear like things are as sweet as rows and rows of roses. Growth, however, doesn’t just mean continued productivity and solid billable hours. It can also mean learning, trying new things, and surprising oneself with new skills. Safe firm cultures and open communication are essential to help these skilled attorneys avoid becoming pigeonholed so they have someone besides a recruiter to ask “what else can I do?”

Camilo

Camilo is the foil of Isabela. This is the attorney who literally believes he or she can do any matter that comes up. These lawyers are often plucky, scrappy, and unsinkable and law firms can often use that energy to their advantage. On the other hand, figuring out the true selling points and marketing an attorney with a practice like this can be as confusing as trying to find the real Camilo in any scene in Encanto.

Julieta

The COVID-19 pandemic may have put a temporary freeze on the person who brings cookies (or arepas) into the office to feed everyone, but the odds are that your firm nevertheless has a Julieta. For attorneys, this is the person whose office everyone runs to for advice or just to be heard. This could be a support staff member or administrator who goes the extra mile to not just do the work but also bring calm and kindness to everything they do. These people are mild, steady, and gracious. They may not always advocate for themselves but, because they are essential to the sanity of the entire organization, firm leaders should acknowledge and reward their efforts.

Pepa

All law firms like to say that they are collegial. I’ve heard most firms say how kind and decent everyone is. But I have never heard a firm claim that there are no drama queens around. It happens in every organization. The Pepa of your firm can bring the sunshine at a firm happy hour or party and may be quick to share a joke or story. They may also be the first to get lost in a storm of emotion when the network goes down at 4 PM and a brief is due. If this is you, surround yourself with steady, stable people and keep reading this blog so you can learn some strategies for managing stress.

Antonio

Unless you firm allows pets in the workplace, you may think there’s no place for Antonio in this quiz, but my obsession will not be deterred by anything so paltry as literal truth. In the firm setting, it doesn’t take too much imagination to see that Antonio’s skill of talking with animals can be analogized to the uncanny skill that some lawyers have in dealing with clients. Surely, clients are people just like us lawyers, but in most cases their brains were not warped by 3 years of law school so this can sometimes make communication with clients a struggle. The Antonio of your firm is the person who can speak the language of clients across industries and build deep and lasting relationships with them.

Dolores

The Dolores of the firm is the person who just seems to know what is going on even when the partners all believe incorrectly it’s a secret. They may or may not tell everyone about what they know. If you are friends with Dolores, try to listen more than you talk and you may learn some interesting things.

Bruno

Yes, at last, we are going to talk about Bruno. I truly hope that you don’t have any lawyers driven mad by their visions of the future living with rats in the walls of your firm. So, what is the Bruno of your law firm? Well, Bruno is whatever issue your firm doesn’t want to talk about. Maybe it’s compensation. Maybe it’s succession planning. Or diversity. Or low morale. All firms have a Bruno but it’s the ones that eventually learn to talk about it that will be able to stabilize their casita to continue serving the community in the future.

So, which Encanto character are you? It’s a fun question to ask, and many of us may exhibit elements of more than one character. But, for law firm leaders, the lessons in Encanto about crisis and organizational change may be more than just family fun. Just like casita, law firms are also full of stars who want to shine, but their leaders must recognize and account for the fact that constellations shift to keep the magic going.

Like this post? Subscribe to the blog here or follow us on social media: