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Career & Practice Concerns

What’s the difference between Anxiety and Fear?

I have been asked many times to help people make a distinction between what is healthy and helpful fear versus unhealthy and unhelpful anxiety. The difference between them can be difficult to distinguish at times. One reason for this is because they have the same physiological effects. Healthy fear and unhealthy anxiety both activate our Sympathetic Nervous System which activates the Fight or Flight Syndrome in order to charge us up and prepare us to act (to either run away from or to attack the threat). The clear differences between the two exist in their reaction to compliance and their impact on your life.

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Maximize Your Impact by Boosting Your Internal Image

The art of presentation is an integral aspect of the legal profession regardless of your particular practice.  Whether you are providing direction and counsel to a client, wooing potential referral sources, or influencing a judge or jury at trial, good presentation skills matter.  Essential to your presentation skills is the ability to project confidence and power to those you wish to influence.  This goes for new and experienced practitioners alike.  And, it all begins with the way in which you view yourself.  If you don’t believe in your abilities, then how can you persuade others to trust and respect you?

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How Threat Perception Shapes Your Stress

Our minds and bodies crave balance. When we have the proper amounts of both rest and activity, we function closer to our optimum level. Needless to say, when we experience too much activity (particularly the unhealthy, stressful type) and not enough rest, we function at a much lower level than is possible. Merriam-Webster describes stress as “a state…of bodily or mental tension resulting from factors that tend to alter an existent equilibrium,” or in other words stress disrupts our internal state of balance. The quickest way to disrupt one’s sense of relaxation or equilibrium is to introduce a threat. We all face threats in our lives, some real and some imagined. The body’s reaction to a perceived threat has more to do with your perception of the threat and less to do with the objective nature of that threat. When thinking about how we perceive a threat, we must be aware that inherent in our appraisal of the threat is our appraisal of ourselves in comparison to that threat. For example, if you perceive getting into a physical altercation (someone you are dealing with becomes so upset they threaten to hit you) and disappointing others (making people feel bad, having others think poorly of you) as the same level of threat, and you see yourself as being unable to handle both threats, your body will have the same “Fight or Flight” reaction (activation of your Sympathetic Nervous System) leading to prolonged stress.

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You Don’t Have to Be a Punching Bag

If the main rules of real estate are “location, location, location,” then the main rules of thriving emotionally in the field of law are “boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.” You can preserve your emotional and mental health by establishing firm boundaries early in the legal career. These boundaries will help you successfully navigate all of the ego-damaging obstacles along the way.

Some boundaries, like drawing the line about how late you are going to check that flashing BlackBerry on a Friday night, are obvious. Other boundaries are equally as crucial, but it’s slightly more difficult to recognize their importance when you are just starting out your legal career and are eager to advance. The determination to excel and the mental stamina required to climb the metaphorical legal ladder are very admirable. It takes a special kind of personality and strength of character to be willing to compete in the field replete with aggressiveness and power games. The legal discipline embodies survival of the fittest at its best.

To survive, developing the instinct of self-preservation is a must. In this case, we are talking about the preservation of a stable self-image, which leads to the preservation of the emotional and mental well-being.

The self-image of a young lawyer can get attacked from a myriad of directions:

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Many New Lawyers are in Rough Shape – Tell Me Something I Didn’t Know

A report published last month by Wisconsin’s state bar, based on a survey of new lawyers, found that newly admitted attorneys faced “huge law school debt, unemployment, underemployment, or inadequate pay,” along with fewer opportunities for training.  The result, of course, is not only economic depression but emotional depression.  (Click here to read the Wisconsin Bar article.)

None of this comes as a surprise to me as a clinician at LCL, 

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