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Career & Practice Concerns

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.

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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.

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What Motivates Us (and Our Procrastination)? Avoiding Pain and Pursuing Pleasure

To address procrastination, it helps to understand that it comes from the desire to avoid discomfort.

As I write this blog entry, I am thinking about what words to use next in order to express my intended message in the most succinct way possible. When I feel that my choice of words is successful, I feel good. I then want to write more with the hopes of repeating that experience. However, when I stumble over the words or it seems like I am hitting a barrier, I feel discomfort. My first tendency is to stop writing (to end the discomfort) and shift my attention to something else, something more pleasurable (email, coffee, the next thing on my to-do list, staring at the ceiling, etc.). This, by the way, is the recipe for procrastination.

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Rebranding your failures – It’s all progress toward your future success

It can sound almost sacrilegious to say, but the goal to succeed all the time is actually a terrible idea. The only way to achieve anything meaningful in life involves experiencing failure along the way. On one hand, no one enjoys failing. It can be an uncomfortable experience that tests your character. One of the reasons why it is so uncomfortable is that we often think of failure as an inherently bad thing. If we see failure as inherently bad, then we have no choice but to feel bad when we experience it. On the other hand, failure is absolutely essential to growth; plain and simple. You cannot grow, progress, or get better at something unless you fail. The key is to think of failure as a helpful step, own your failures, and learn from them.

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Forgiveness versus Replaying the Offense

The idea of forgiving someone who has hurt/wronged us is an unnatural idea. As human beings, we both crave control in our lives (this makes us feel safe) and we are motivated to avoid pain (this also makes us feel safe). These two basic desires make it very difficult for us to forgive others and to let go of offenses. After all, we want to have some control over preventing bad things from happening to us in the future. Our desire to protect ourselves makes sense, however the way in which we go about it often leads to our continued harm.

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The Reason Behind your Decision matters – Fear is not your friend

In many areas of life, much weight is put on the reasons why we choose to do one thing and not another. For example, in the area of moral development a person’s reason for his/her decision is much more important than the actual decision. This is often demonstrated in scenarios of moral dilemmas where a person is asked what they would do (e.g., Your child needs an expensive medicine to survive but you cannot afford it. Do you steal it to save your child?), and then asked for their reason for making that decision. The actual decision does not tell you anything about the person’s moral development, but the reason behind the decision does (e.g., I would steal the medicine because my family would be mad at me if I didn’t; versus, I would steal the medicine because my child’s life would supersede the agreed upon laws and my good reputation and I would be willing to accept any consequences of breaking those laws in order to protect my child.).

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“Yes, And…”: How learning a little Improv can help you manage stress and anxiety

Stress management is a big industry these days. Whether its relaxation techniques, meditation, yoga, mindfulness or therapy, there are many options for how we can better manage our stress and anxiety in life. When lawyers come to talk with me about how to manage their anxiety and stress more effectively, they often expect to be told to practice some mindfulness or deep breathing technique (which are great by the way, so yes, please do them). But for some types of stress and anxiety, a different approach can be more effective, and more fun.

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Giving Constructive Feedback

I am regularly asked for suggestions on how to give others constructive feedback. This can be an uncomfortable task as most people do not want the recipient to feel criticized while at the same time they do want to communicate information regarding something that needs to change. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to how to give feedback without the other person feeling criticized. On one hand, you cannot control how another person receives feedback. On the other hand, you can control how you deliver that feedback. So here are so general tips that will help guide your practice of giving feedback, however they are in no way a guarantee that the recipient will be happy afterward.

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Positive thinking during your Work Search: It’s not delusional optimism

In the midst of searching for a job, it is an all-to-common experience to feel discouraged and pessimistic about your chances for success. Given the job market, the number of applicants, the specific requirements of each position, and the experience of rejections from potential employers, it is easy to focus on the immediate evidence that points to a negative outcome. You apply for jobs and go on interviews, you wait to hear a response from the potential employer, and you get disappointed when you hear nothing or an outright rejection. If this happens more than once, we start seeing it as a pattern and the old adage of “the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior” starts to suggest that rejection will be the future as well. When this happens, we start to expect rejection or failure. When our expectation is set, it is human nature to look for evidence in our lives that support our expectations. If we expect to ultimately fail, we look for evidence that suggests we will fail.

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When Problem-Solving becomes a problem

There is something very rewarding about solving a problem. Recognizing an issue, seeing a need, figuring out a strategy, and being able to figure out how to make things whole again is a rewarding experience that makes our work meaningful.  In fact, many lawyers go into practicing law because they specifically like helping others solve problems. So it is not surprising that most lawyers are comfortable playing the role of problem-solver for their clients. And if every problem had a straightforward answer, the story would stop here. The reality, however, is that many clients have problems that do not have a simple solution or they do not respond to a viable solution in the way you expect. At times, despite a simple solution, the client can continue to respond in a way that indicates that the problem is still present. You offer a solution or plan and the client is no more relieved than when he/she first started talking to you. There is even a possibility that the client is more upset after you offer a viable solution. This unexpected result can baffle a skilled problem-solver. After all, there are few things more frustrating than having a problem that is left unsolved even though you know how to solve it.

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