"Brain Management: Law Firm Leadership on the Neuro Frontier"

How may we use the gems we are learning from brain and mind research to inform law firm management? For some answers, read an article I co-authored with research psychiatrist Jeffrey M. Schwartz. Larry Smith, editor of  Of Counsel: The Legal Practice and Management Report has kindly  given me permission to link to the PDF of Jeff's and my article "Brain Management . . . Law Firm Leadership on the Neuro Frontier."

The article begins:

The practice of law is very cerebral, cognitive, and brain-based. As a lawyer drafts, analyzes, and strategizes, the brain, compared to the rest of the body, is using a disproportionate amount of energy. When working, the brain can use fuel— glucose and oxygen—at 10 times the rate of the whole rest of the body.

This hungry little organ sitting in each lawyer’s head holds the key to the mysteries of winning law firm management.

We have learned more about the inner secrets of the brain in the past few years than in all the remaining past of recorded history. Neuroscience is opening up a new frontier, a frontier that most of us cannot see but one that will have as big an impact as the discovery of new lands and continents.

How does this neuro frontier inside our skulls specifically inform law firm management? By peering inside the brain, we can see how its owner takes in information, makes decisions, changes and resists change, remembers and recalls, and responds to people. What we are learning about the brain affects three factors critical to law firms and to each individual lawyer: control, communication, and competence. Let’s take a tour of some of what’s been learned and see how the new information can be useful.

Read the rest of "Brain Management . . . Law Firm Leadership on the Neuro Frontier."