LCL ANNUAL MEETING
ANNUAL MEETING NOTICE The Annual Meeting of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, Inc. will take place on Thursday, September 17, 2015 at 3:30pm at LCL’s offices at 31 Milk Street, Suite 810. The meeting will be an open meeting of the…
A Story of Hope and Redemption
Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers means many things to many people. Ideally those that seek its services do so before their personal challenges result in professional problems.
I’m a regular member of LCL’s Professional Conduct Group, a group made up of attorneys who have been subject to some form of Board of Bar Overseers discipline. Members represent every stage of the disciplinary process: Most have already been subject to a sanction, be it suspension, or disbarment. Some are in the very earliest stages of the disciplinary process and may even still be practicing pending a temporary suspension or some other, lesser disposition of their matter. Others have already done their time as it were and have already been successfully reinstated to the practice of law. It’s a testament to the importance and power of this group that those lawyers, the reinstated ones, who are under no obligation or mandate to come to this group, continue to do so, in many cases years after they’ve returned to the practice of law.
Shedding Some Light on Blackouts
In her new book, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, Sarah Hepola looks back on and illuminates her drinking life, a time when she recurrently found herself awakening in the bed of a stranger and told herself that it meant that she was free and empowered rather than imprisoned in a horror show. Sarah experienced drinking as a doorway to feeling better about herself – her intellect, her body – and, as it is for many alcoholics, sexual behavior and alcohol consumption became intertwined. To hear Terry Gross’ interview with this author, who is very open about her story, click here.
Re-entering the job market through the OnRamp Fellowship
Today’s legal job market is competitive. With the number of law school graduates exceeding the number of law firm job openings, many struggle to find a way into a job working in a law firm. On top of this, many experience law firms as looking for a very specific resume and feeling as though they need to fit into a cookie cutter mold and surrender over their lives in order to get hired. Historically, there have been significant gender differences in the practice of law which can be grossly summarized as large firm culture has favored men. Women lawyers often report that their experience as associates in large firms is significantly less satisfying (as in their compensation) than their male counterparts (you can read more here and here).
Tips on winning the fight against anxiety – Tip #1: Cheat
Growing up we all learned that games have rules and you have to play by those rules, otherwise you are cheating. And cheating is bad. If you cheated you were considered a poor sport, someone who couldn’t play nice with others, or someone who just always wanted their way at all costs. Again, all bad. So it’s no wonder that we resist the idea of breaking the agreed-upon rules. So how does this translate into a tip to fight against anxiety? Stay with me.
Change is BAD! Or at least, that’s how it can feel at first.
There is comfort in predictability. This is one of the reasons we develop routines and habits. In fact, the more comforting our routine, the more painful it is to change it. To put it simply, deep down inside we often times would prefer the comfort of a bad habit to the uncertainty of a potentially positive change (that’s why it is so difficult to change habits – even bad habits). Despite the negative aspects of our routines, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. This principle of resisting change contributes to the fact that the only reason we give in to change is when our status quo becomes too uncomfortable. Sometimes the motivating discomfort comes from within you (feeling bad about the status quo) and sometimes it comes from the environment (new jobs require learning new skills).
A 3-Part Interview with Attorney Lee Holland: Part 3 – The Work You Love
We continue our conversation with Lee Holland, Esq. about his journey through personal and professional crisis. (You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here).
LCL: In setting up your firm you focused on work you love, how did you go about identifying the work that you loved and wanted to focus on?
LH: I found my specialty as a FINRA advocate for consumers and reputable industry clientele largely by happenstance, but have always had a strong sense of enforcing fairness. Past legal representations had exposed me to many different areas of practice, and with those, many different types of clients with many different backgrounds. From my experience, I felt the strongest connection when working with individuals as clients, and the best of those interactions were largely 1-on-1 relationships. I became a FINRA arbitrator in 2005, and I quickly grew to respect the organization and its mission, while simultaneously becoming more active and interested in promoting effective financial regulation.
Avoiding Burnout
Burnout is one of the more common catastrophes that occur in high stress legal jobs, whether that be in a large firm or a solo practice. The key to avoiding burnout is to recognize the warning signs and be prepared…
A 3-Part Interview with Attorney Lee Holland: Part 2 – The Transition
We continue our conversation with Lee Holland, Esq. about his journey through personal and professional crisis. (You can read Part 1 here).
LCL: In your transition from a high pressure large firm job to working for yourself and being a stay-at-home father, were there any difficult aspects of that transition? If so, how did you handle them?
LH: The transition was difficult in ways that were unexpected, and also challenging in more readily apparent ways. For instance, I knew it would be a challenge to balance being a solo and simultaneously be a fully engaged father available to my children during the school/work week, but I had decided that the latter needed to be part of my life, and the former would just have to adapt. I am grateful for clients who are understanding. With advance planning, most if not all of the sorts of scheduling challenges I had envisioned can be easily managed. Good communication and honesty with self and clientele has earned me the ability to raise conflicts with clients in a way that we are able to work around. The discussions that led me to have this chemistry with my clients pay repeated dividends throughout the representation. I believe that my clients respect me all the more for my decisions to achieve a personal/work balance that permits so much family time. They know my time is valuable beyond the financial, as is theirs. They can sense that I know and respect the value of their time as well.
A 3-Part Interview with Attorney Lee Holland: Part 1 – The Crises
According to Merriam-Webster, one of the definitions of crisis is “an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially: one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.” We all face crises of one kind sometime in our lives. For Lee Holland, Esq., he faced multiple crises at one time. LCL Clinician, Dr. Shawn Healy, sat down with Lee to ask him about his crises and how he grew from them.