What We Know Right Now

Mindfulness is an exploding research field, with hundreds of articles now being published every year. Here are some of the critical findings right now.

• Mindfulness practice reduces stress, including physical markers of stress as well as perceived stress.
• Even short mindfulness training results in more focused, steadier attention.
• Focused, steady attention supports happiness; multitasking is a myth; the wandering mind is an unhappy mind.
• Brief kindness and compassion trainings significantly increase the long-term happiness of trainees as well as those with whom they interact.

For more information, please see the Papers & Articles section below.

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Why Mindfulness Is Essential for Lawyers: The Legal Profession Has Joined The Mindfulness Revolution

Lawyers position ourselves on the front lines of personal, moral, ethical and cultural battles. Our work places us directly in the midst of conflict and hostility. We signed up for that, and we’re good at it. Some might say we excel on the battleground.

Yet being a truly effective advocate requires composure and clarity. How can we be passionate advocates while remaining cool, calm and collected? And how can we do that, while protecting and even increasing our own wellbeing and that of our clients, communities, and society?

Mindfulness.

Mindful lawyers report having a better understand how the legal mind works and how to cultivate intentional states of mind that enhance effectiveness and wellbeing. They’re more powerful than colleagues who are not mindfulness practitioners, can more positively influence their cases, clients, colleagues, and community, and make better, more impactful decisions.

Mindful lawyers also feel better. They experience less depression and anxiety, and when they do encounter the inevitable difficulties of practicing law, they remain calm, discerning, non-reactive, and generally positive.

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Legal Education & Training: An Un-Mindful Start

The lawyer’s brain, like all human brains, operates through two basic message centers. The primitive brain sends messages of danger and wellbeing. The cognitive brain interprets those messages and adds reason and understanding.

In law school and practice, we learn to manage huge volumes of difficult work while being intensely competitive and critical, inside of a framework of persistent conflict and hostility. This training – essential to practicing law well – also activates the primitive brain, sending the following persistent danger signals:

• “Handle more work than you possibly can, and do everything perfectly.”
• “Anything can blow up at any time. It’s your job to make sure it doesn’t.”
• “Always be right. Uncertainty is not an option.”
• “Everyone is your adversary.”

Our training is like ringing a never-ending alarm, sending constant signals of stress and their attendant commands to fight, flee, freeze or collapse. It incites anger and triggers frustration.

It also overpowers cognition, obscuring reason, thoughtfulness, discernment, and other paths to effective lawyering and fundamental wellbeing. It discourages open-mindedness and creativity. It explains why so many lawyers are unhappy.

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Mindfulness for the Legal Mind

The good news is that the lawyer’s mind, like all human minds, is trainable. Neuroscience confirms that the mind remains plastic and malleable throughout life. It also indicates that one of the most effective tools for training the mind is mindfulness.

Scientific research on the effects of mindfulness has increased exponentially over the last ten years. Studies on the effects of mindfulness on the brain show the following results, so far:

• Increases in gray matter in regions of the brain involved in learning, emotion regulation, and perspective-taking
• Enhanced coping with rapid-fire signals from the primitive brain
• Greater capacities to approach rather than withdraw from challenge
• Better focus & attention
• Less anxiety
• Greater control over anger, frustration and rage
• Greater happiness

A stressed, reactive, unhappy lawyer is probably a lawyer whose brain has been in fight/flight/freeze/collapse mode for a while. The primitive brain is overpowering the cognitive, discerning brain. Such a lawyer may be brilliant and diligent but have little understanding in how to ground powerful advocacy in wisdom and compassion.

Mindfulness cultivates those and other important qualities like empathy, reduced reactivity, and more fluid, healthy relationships even with very difficult people. It increases resilience, reduces stress, and helps lawyers make better choices.

The Path to Lawyer Wellbeing

In 2016, two studies were released by the American Bar Association, on lawyer wellbeing and law student wellbeing. Both were conducted by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP) and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. The lawyer study collected data from nearly 13,000 practicing attorneys and provided the first information of statistical significance on wellbeing in the profession. The law student study collected data from 15 American law schools and over 3,300 law students, and was the first significant multi-school study in 20 years. In 2017, the ABA published the Path to Lawyer Wellbeing Report, which summarizes the two studies. The Report begins with this preamble:

To be a good lawyer, one has to be a healthy lawyer. Sadly, our profession is falling short when it comes to well-being. The two studies referenced above [the Lawyer and Law Student Studies] reveal that too many lawyers and law students experience chronic stress and high rates of depression and substance use. These findings are incompatible with a sustainable legal profession, and they raise troubling implications for many lawyers’ basic competence. This research suggests that the current state of lawyers’ health cannot support a profession dedicated to client service and dependent on the public trust.

The legal profession is already struggling. Our profession confronts a dwindling market share as the public turns to more accessible, affordable alternative legal service providers. We are at a crossroads. To maintain public confidence in the profession, to meet the need for innovation in how we deliver legal services, to increase access to justice, and to reduce the level of toxicity that has allowed mental health and substance use disorders to fester among our colleagues, we have to act now. Change will require a wide-eyed and candid assessment of our members’ state of being, accompanied by courageous commitment to re-envisioning what it means to live the life of a lawyer.

Recommendation 8 of Appendix B of the Path to Lawyer Wellbeing Report urges high quality education on lawyer distress and wellbeing, offering a ringing endorsement for mindfulness meditation, which states,

Mindfulness meditation is a practice that can enhance cognitive reframing (and thus resilience) by aiding our ability to monitor our thoughts and avoid becoming emotionally overwhelmed. A rapidly growing body of research on meditation has shown its potential for help in addressing a variety of psychological and psychosomatic disorders, especially those in which stress plays a causal role. One type of meditative practice is mindfulness—a technique that cultivates the skill of being present by focusing attention on your breath and detaching from your thoughts or feelings. Research has found that mindfulness can reduce rumination, stress, depression, and anxiety. It also can enhance a host of competencies related to lawyer effectiveness, including increased focus and concentration, working memory, critical cognitive skills, reduced burnout, and ethical and rational decision-making…. Evidence also suggests that mindfulness can enhance the sense of work-life balance by reducing workers’ preoccupation with work.

Essential Mindfulness for Lawyers: Case Studies

Here are some case studies from lawyers who have taken our Basic Training course:

Stress Relief. A corporate associate working long, hard hours felt like she was drowning. After an EML course she reported experiencing less of the “duck syndrome,” where, for the sake of appearances, she felt she had to look calm and serene on the surface, but underneath she was paddling for her life. With EML she was able to settle and focus her mind. She could manage the volume and difficulty with greater efficiency, and felt less stressed.

Understanding, Compassion and Joy. An assistant district attorney mid-way through a nine-week Mindfulness for the Legal Mind basic training course reported that when someone stole his parking space on a busy Saturday night, he exclaimed to the driver with joy, “Have a great night!” He couldn’t say whether he or his wife was more astonished. Plus, it was four days later when he reported the incident, and he was still feeling good about the parking-place thief, and, remarkably, about the other assistant district attorneys and even assistant public defenders he was seeing day to day.

Family. A corporate attorney who took Basic Training said her husband reported she was “just better” to him after the training.

Effectiveness. In the middle of a training, a trial lawyer decided to employ compassion towards the other attorneys. After he trounced his opponent, he received a call. “Thank you,” one losing attorney said. “I appreciated how kind you were to me during the trial.”

Courage. In one Basic Training, attorneys brought to mind a very difficult person and then sat for a few minutes with how uncomfortable or even disgusted they were with the person. Pulling out their computers, they were then instructed to address a letter to the person, beginning with, “I may be misunderstanding the situation, but…,” and ending with “I wish you well.” They were free to fill in the middle however they chose, using kindness and respect, even if they believed they would not be met with such positive qualities of mind. The exercise, called, “What about the other guy?,” is an opportunity to employ the courage to be mindful even when the other person is not. The MCLE credit for the exercise is ethics.

The results were encouraging. Nearly all participants were easily able to see the difficult person’s point of view. They understood that training and circumstances rather than irredeemable personality traits were causing the “other guy” to be unreasonable or nasty. They could also see how kindness and respect would shift the dynamic. And they realized they now had the courage to employ mindfulness, and how much more effective they could be by making that choice.