idealawg

Tennessee Commission on Continuing Legal Educational allows credit for coaching and seeks ways to "encourage high quality mentoring"

The Commission recently changed the definition of Ethics/Professionalism for purposes of CLE, included credit for coaching, and announced it will be investigating mentoring. From the announcement "Commission Action August, 2009":

Definition of Ethics:

... This section describes the types of sessions in courses that can receive Ethics/Professionalism (Dual) credits. Dual credits are those that can count either toward the three-hour E/P requirement or toward the 12-hour general requirement. They do NOT count twice. Under this definition, most types of E/P credit will be dual. ...

5H. Ethics and Professionalism (Dual) Credit
1. Dual credit will be granted to programs or topics within programs to the extent that the subject matter is the Rules of Professional Conduct or ethical considerations applicable to attorneys.
2. Dual credit will also be granted to programs or topics:

a) designed to sustain or increase the capacity of attorneys to strive for and to achieve the highest, aspirational levels of professionalism, including programs aimed at increasing attorney well-being, optimism, resilience, relationship skills, and energy and engagement in their practices,
b) designed to help lawyers re-connect with, strengthen, and apply their values, strengths of character, and sense of purpose toward achieving outstanding professionalism,
c) designed to protect lawyers or help them recover from the deleterious effects on professionalism of stress, substance abuse, and poor staff, financial, or time management, or
d) designed to support the development of organizational cultures within firms, law departments, and legal agencies that recognize, support, and encourage outstanding professionalism.

3. All programs accredited under this section must be clearly and primarily designed and intended for attorneys, not a general audience. 4. Programs and topics focused on advertising legal services will be denied all credit, except to the extent they deal with the ethical restrictions concerning advertising. 5. In addition to the other requirements set forth in this Regulation 5H, in order to qualify for credit, the topics must be presented in a session separate and apart from the general credit topics, with specific time allocated to only such topics.

And the coaching provision . . .

Credit for Coaching:

The Commission adopted the following new Regulation 5J:

5J. Credit for Individual Coaching
The Commission, after consideration as a body and not through staff, will give dual credit for “Courses” consisting of individual coaching sessions on topics described in 5H.2 above if:
1) The coaching sessions must be submitted in advance as a complete offering involving 

APA press release - Smarter Than You Think: Renowned Canine Researcher Puts Dogs' Intelligence on Par with 2-Year-Old Human

From the American Psychological Association press release:

Although you wouldn’t want one to balance your checkbook, dogs can count.

They can also understand more than 150 words and intentionally deceive other dogs and people to get treats, according to psychologist and leading canine researcher Stanley Coren, PhD, of the University of British Columbia. He spoke Saturday on the topic "How Dogs Think" at the American Psychological Association’s 117th Annual Convention.

Coren, author of more than a half-dozen popular books on dogs and dog behavior, has reviewed numerous studies to conclude that dogs have the ability to solve complex problems and are more like humans and other higher primates than previously thought.

"We all want insight into how our furry companions think, and we want to understand the silly, quirky and apparently irrational behaviors [that] Lassie or Rover demonstrate," Coren said in an interview. "Their stunning flashes of brilliance and creativity are reminders that they may not be Einsteins but are sure closer to humans than we thought."

Other coverage of the presentation: Dog lovers hear how smart their dogs are at APA session (APA Convention Blog), "Rover's as smart as the average tot" (Toronto Star), and "Pooches, people have more in common than previously thought: scientist" (The Canadian Press).

How does our brain sense danger? Is the ability innate or can it be trained?

If you are interested in the answers to those questions, you will want to read "In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable" (New York Times). Excerpt:

Everyone has hunches — about friends’ motives, about the stock market, about when to fold a hand of poker and when to hold it. But United States troops are now at the center of a large effort to understand how it is that in a life-or-death situation, some people’s brains can sense danger and act on it well before others’ do.

Experience matters, of course: if you have seen something before, you are more likely to anticipate it the next time. And yet, recent research suggests that something else is at work, too.

Small differences in how the brain processes images, how well it reads emotions and how it manages surges in stress hormones help explain why some people sense imminent danger before most others do.

Studies of members of the Army Green Berets and Navy Seals, for example, have found that in threatening situations they experience about the same rush of the stress hormone cortisol as any other soldier does. But their levels typically drop off faster than less well-trained troops, much faster in some cases.

Is this ability to sense and handle danger naturally better in some individuals? Can one be trained to improve?

“The big question is whether these differences perceiving threat are natural, or due to training,” Dr. [Martin P.] Paulus said.

The question is still being studied. This article provides some pieces of the puzzle.

Note: Other articles in this series on Brain Power:

• "At the Bridge Table, Clues to a Lucid Old Age" A study of people 90 and over without a trace of dementia has begun to alter understandings of the aging brain.
• "Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory" An influx of money and talent into neuroscience has led to an experimental drug that could block certain memories.
• "H. M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac, Dies at 82" Henry Gustav Molaison, or H.M., was recognized as the most important patient in the history of brain science.

Image credit: Dave's Eye.

Is teamwork overrated? Maybe for lawyers

The authors of I Hate People! are not big fans of teams in the workplace. I agree with them to a certain extent and believe teams are often used unwisely, particularly with lawyers, and have written about teams in law firms before. From my post The profession of half-empty glasses: The unique personalities of lawyers and an antidote:

In my article "Team-Building Frenzy Reaches Law Firms," [pdf] I talk about what I learned from Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation (and later from the Highlands Assessment Battery) about the lawyer's need for autonomy, critical approach, and competitiveness.

And now an excerpt from "Troubles in Cubicles," a Wall Street Journal review of I Hate People!:

Littman and Hershon [the authors] insist that contemporary corporate America puts too much emphasis on teamwork. "Four decades ago, Fortune did a study of the most valued characteristics in an employee. The magazine found that teamwork was ranked tenth. . . . Jump forward to 2005, and Fortune's follow-up survey showed that teamwork had climbed to #1."

Teamwork, the authors say, suffocates creativity and has its own limitations. They describe a classic experiment done nearly a century ago by French agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann. He

Great article on "strategic allocation of attention," metacognition, personality theory, and self-control

I highly recommend to you this article from The New Yorker by Jonah Lehrer. Take a few minutes and read "Don't!." Let me know what you think. And then let me know what you think about what you are thinking.

Blog Glob: Framed!

Excerpt:

Luckily, the way we think about abilities is not permanently inscribed in our genes. It is within our power to change whether our nation's students see ability and intelligence as fixed or as something that can be improved with effort and hard work. In a powerful demonstration of this, psychologist Lisa Blackwell and her colleagues showed seventh-grade students how the brain grows and makes new connections when we learn, much like muscles becoming stronger. The exercise reminded the students that "You can grow your intelligence." In subsequent testing, these students improved their math achievement across the difficult transition to junior high school, whereas another group of students, who had not been exposed to Blackwell's lessons, showed a decline.

Click to read the rest of "Framed!" (Greater Good Magazine).

Some good career advice from HARVARD LAW RECORD

This article presents a nice overview of what to consider when choosing your work. Click to read the flesh on the below skeleton outline.

I. How Do You Want to Use Your Law Degree?

II. Clarify a Vision Behind Your Work

A. Decide: Whose Life Is This Anyway?

B. Evaluate Your Ambitions and Values

C. Evaluate the Nature of the Work and Work Environment That Fits You

D. Learn About What Lawyers Do

E. Sample What Interests You

F. Money and Your Job Choice

G. Consider How You Define Success

III. Your Career Will Evolve

Read the whole article.

New! Lawyer Avenue: An impressive and complete one-stop resource for lawyers

Take a trip on Lawyer Avenue to see a valuable new online site serving the legal profession. Plan to spend a few minutes (at least) at the Avenue to explore all that is being offered. You will find resources for

• Career (includes career counselor locators, career books, and a job bank)
• Practice (legal outsourcing, trial consulting and support, practice/performance coaches, and much more)
• Self and family (a wide range from personal finance to a lawyer assistance program locator)
• And even Travel (several offerings to make your trips easier)
• Plus a blog with law-related posts.

From the About Us at this brand-new lawyer Web site:

LawyerAvenue Press, and its imprint – DecisionBooks – has been publishing books for a life in the law since 1989.

Our books – among them, Solo By Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Always Wanted to Be – have been endorsed by the ABA, adopted by law schools and bar associations throughout the country, and have become classics in the field of legal career counseling (selling nearly 200,000 copies in the process).

This year marks our most significant expansion with the introduction of LawyerAvenue.com, a legal Web site unlike any other that brings together career and practice resources AND an online shopping platform that provides select items for the legal community and their families.

What you see today is Phase One, and we hope you’ll return. In the meantime, we look forward to your suggestions (and first impressions). Send them to editor@lawyeravenue.com.

Send your suggestions and impressions. I have known the publisher of Decision Books for several years and know that Mark Jaroslaw is not only knowledgeable about our profession but also very responsive. He listens. Congratulations, Mark, on a valuable and resource-rich new Web site for lawyers.

I recommend that you click now to start exploring Lawyer Avenue.

In the big top, a spotlight on that personality test: What's PT Barnum's Myers-Briggs type?

If you have been reading idealawg for a while, you may recall that I am not a big supporter of self-report tests. For those of you interested in personality testing, I recommend The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves by Annie Murphy Paul. In the book's chapter on Myers-Briggs, Paul describes one reason why I am skeptical of personality tests.

But what about all those "aha" moments? Could thousands of Myers-Briggs devotees have been deceived? Once again, science's conclusion is blunt: yes, they could. Psychologists explain the test's overwhelming popularity with reference to what they call the "Barnum effect." The phenomenon is named after the famous showman P.T. Barnum, who liked to say that a circus should have "a little something for everybody." MBTI [Myers-Briggs Type Indicator] personality descriptions, it's suggested, also offer "a little something for everybody": enough hedged statements and vague commonplaces to allow any individual to read one and think, "Yep, that's me."

The first research on what would later be termed the Barnum effect was conducted by psychologist Bertram Forer in 1949. After administering a personality test to a group of subjects, Forer handed back the results—but the participants' ostensibly individualized personality descriptions were actually all the same, lifted from an astrology book Forer had purchased at a newsstand. ...

Participants were then asked how accurate they found their profiles. On a scale of 0 (poor) to 5 (perfect), the subjects gave their reports an average of 4.2, with more than 40 percent awarding a flawless 5. Subsequent research has demonstrated other intriguing aspects of the Barnum effect: that people are often unable to tell whether the results they're given are derived from a test they've taken or made out of whole cloth , for example, and that given a choice, we actually prefer the invented feedback. A finding with particular relevance for the Myers-Briggs is that individuals are more likely to endorse positive accounts of themselves, a phenomenon scientists call the "Pollyanna principle."

Paul also devotes a chapter each to the Rorschach, the MMPI, and other tests revealing "the surprising and disturbing story behind the tests that claim to capture human nature." This book will get you thinking.

Image credit: clarita.

"Law is a 'slash' profession": Some career advice

From "Off the beaten track: Once you have the basics in place, you can take an advanced degree in all kinds of unusual directions" (The Boston Phoenix):

"I always tell people it isn’t a law degree that gets non-traditional, it’s you," [Maris] Abbene [the director of career services at Boston College Law School] says. She explains that most people with law degrees do go on to work at law firms first, but that, armed with the ability to analyze on their feet, negotiate, and a host of other marketable skills, people with a law degrees can go anywhere they want. Helen Long, director of the Career Development Office at Boston University School of Law, cites David Kelley, producer of the Boston-based law-firm show Ally McBeal (among a host of other shows) as one of BU Law’s most famous graduates, and a good example of someone who took his law degree in an atypical direction. She also mentions another BU Law grad, who founded Barrister Books, a bookseller directed at lawyers.
...

But how to decide if practicing law is right for you? "It’s the same type of advice you give anyone taking their career in a new direction," says Long. It’s a combination of knowing what you want to do, what your skills are, and which of those skills you like to use. "Law is a ‘slash’ profession. There are a lot of lawyers/journalists, lawyers/poets, lawyers/CEOs." Law school’s primary purpose, explains Long, is training lawyers. "You need to go through the creative process on your own to decide where you want to go."

I suggest that "the creative process"  should include assessing your values, interests, and aptitudes. What do you suggest?

On a related note: Click to read about some research showing that affirming your values can lessen stress.