idealawg

Today is the 9th annual Create a Great Funeral Day: Might be a good time to make this suggestion to some clients (and yourself)

Several times I have blogged here about the many benefits to your clients and their families (and to you and your family) of designing your own unique end-of-life event. Here are a couple of those posts to read more:

• Heaven must be missing a lawyer: Kind-hearted counsel for some clients
• The marriage is ending: Are your clients marking this or any other changes with rituals?
• 7th Annual Create a Great Funeral Day: A gift, not a joke
• Reminder: The benefits of you (and your clients) designing your own funerals or memorial services

In brief, some of those benefits are:

• You relieve those you leave behind of many decisions during their time of grief.
• You give the bereaved the emotional satisfaction of knowing they are carrying out your wishes.
• You may open up new areas of discussion with your family.
• You are able to create an event that truly reflects your life.
• Reviewing your life for the purpose of creating the service allows you to evaluate how you want to use your future.
• And this gentle reminder of your mortality has an effect on your decisions about today.

Have you planned yours yet? Doing so is a good idea regardless of your health or age. Try it!

Note (added November 11, 2008, 8:05 PM Mountain): One woman planning her own funeral. Excerpt:

Plans are underway for a "Plan Your Own Funeral" party the end of November. While this might sound morbid, it will allow Mom to take time to let us know what her wishes are for her memorial service. This will help us so we won't have to make some very important decisions in the immediate hours and days after her death and while going through the initial stages of grieving.

Image credit: FreeFoto.com.

Interview with Steven Waldman: Liberating the Founders

In the introduction to her interview of Steven Waldman, Krista Tippett says:

Warning: this conversation may not mirror what you learned in school. The culture wars of recent years, journalist Steven Waldman says, hijacked Americans' understanding of the country's founders and of the meaning of religious liberty. This hinders people from grasping what is really at stake in the current debates about the relationship between government and religion. It may even distort the wisdom we might bring to young democracies around the world.

Waldman is the author of Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America. An article by Waldman: "The Framers and the Faithful" (Washington Monthly).

Blog Glob: "Setting the Stage for Lawyers: Trends in Strategic Marketing for Lawyers"

Excerpt from "Setting the Stage for Lawyers: Trends in Strategic Marketing for Lawyers" (Rocky Mountain LMA - written by Janet Raasch):

Imagine that you have arrived at a theater where the stage is set but the actors have not yet made their appearance.  You can anticipate a lot about the play just by looking at the set.  It is bright and cheerful?  Dark and gloomy?  Modern, traditional or old-fashioned?  Before the actors have even opened their mouths, you have formed a pretty strong impression of what’s to come.

“I like to use this metaphor to explain the role of institutional marketing at a law firm,” said Norm Rubenstein.  “The lawyers are the actors – the individuals who ‘make the sale’ of legal services.  The marketers are the set designers and directors – the individuals who set the stage and orchestrate the process in order to facilitate the ‘sale’ of legal services.
...

“Today, at the best firms, legal marketing has become strategic,” said Rubenstein.  “Senior

One blogger reports on the keynote given by Jeffrey Schwartz and Henry Stapp at the Neuroleadership Summit

Here's a blog post from SpaceSuit Yoga about the Neuroleadership keynote last night. A couple of excerpts:

Yawzaa! Talk about brain training for neuro-leaders at the quantum level!!!! The first night of the NeuroLeadership Summit 2008 in New York City has blown everyone’s mind with a turbo charged presentation by Jeffrey Schwartz, M.D., UCLA and his mentor, the visionary Quantum Physicist and Author Henry Stapp.  Schwartz, who appears to nearly jump out of his skin with enthusiasm when speaking, uses baseball metaphors for delivering ”fast balls” on the question of ”attention” in Q.M. ...

One can now acknowledge the fact of neuroplasticity —  the brain creates the mind and the mind creates the brain – and how it is generated and conditioned by  asking questions, by being curious, by the act of paying attention, by making inquiry, by learning and sharing information;

... Workers are not mindless cogs in a machine but rather brain/mind attentive information ”workers.” ...

The Twitter:  WOW!!!!!!Quantum Mechanics Dates Neuroscience and finds an attractive mate!!!!!!

If I see other posts about the Neuroleadership Summit, I will add links here.

Added later:

• SpaceSuit Yoga blogs about Day 1 of the Summit: NeuroLeaders Pay Attention to Brain/Mind/Body Connections.
• SpaceSuit Yoga blogs about Day 2 of the Summit: The Implications of Brain Based Leadership.
• SpaceSuit Yoga blogs more about Day 2: The Implications of Applied Neuroscience to Training Leadership.
• Beginning November 3, Peter Clayton of Total Picture Radio will be podcasting about the Summit.

I will link to the Clayton podcasts when they become available.

Professional responsibiity to listen like a cow?

Yesterday and Monday I heard Charlie Halpern speak. Among many topics, he talked about the need in the legal profession for mindfulness and wisdom. To facilitate those traits, he recommends (as do I) meditation. Halpern talked about signs of revived wisdom in lawyers. One indication: when a lawyer does not always make immediate judgments but instead "sits on it for awhile." Although a lawyer sometimes needs that skill of immediate assessment, so does he or she need the skill of reflection.

Today I was delighted to read a post at Arnold Zeman's DIALOGIC entitled Listening like a cow. I was delighted for two reasons. First, as I may have mentioned here before, I have an extreme appreciation for cows. Frankly, I am mad about cows! I have all kinds of cow paraphernalia that have been given to me as gifts, including a cow hat complete with ears, nose, and big eyes. So of course, when I read Arnold's post, I smiled from ear to human ear.

The second reason for my smile was because I thought the post described very well that sign of wisdom Halpern had also described. Read the post now and see if you don't smile. Perhaps I like cows because they are so obviously wise. And maybe some lawyers should be sent to the farm?

Image credit: jade.

Blog Glob: "Elder Mediation"

Excerpt from "Elder Mediation" (New Jersey Lawyer) [pdf]:

Aging is a time of transition. With Americans living increasingly long lives, coping with the physical, emotional and cognitive changes attendant to the aging process is a challenge faced by a growing number of elders and their loved ones. How a client deals with the transition brought by the aging process can have a lasting effect on the client's well-being, and on the well-being of family members and loved ones. Often the changes experienced by aging parents lead to disagreements among family members.

Disputes involving the elderly may reach the point at which adult siblings feel their only hope of resolution is through litigation. When such conflicts have reached a crisis - ideally, well before that point -attorneys may wish to recommend their client consider the option of elder mediation to resolve the conflicts.

Click to read the rest.

Blog Glob: "Future lawyers are to get 'life coaches'"

From "The Water Cooler" (Times Online):

Future lawyers are to get "life coaches" to help them surmount obstacles in entering the legal profession, Lord Bach has announced. Under a project called "Barriers Leading into Law", students trying to pursue a career in law can be alloted a sponsor or "lie [sic] coach" who will act as a mentor. The Ministry of Justice project is open to undergraduates reading law and those holding graduate diplomas in law, the Bar Vocational Course or Legal Practice Course qualifications. Initially 32 students will be "coached" by selected MoJ staff with relevant experience. The aim is to improve diversity in the profession.

Information about the Neuroleadership Summit beginning tomorrow in New York

To learn more, read my post at Brains on Purpose.

Blog Glob: "How to get happy? Thinking positive is a good start"

Excerpt from "How to get happy? Thinking positive is a good start" (SunJournal.com):

In the past few years, ..., cognitive neuroscientists have made considerable advances in unraveling the enigma of human happiness. One of their basic findings is that more than 60 percent of a person's propensity for positive emotion is due to nature - genetic makeup - but the rest is all nurture, meaning the brain's happiness is highly dependent on an individual's experiences, emotions and thought, and thus capable of being "learned."

Just looking for the bright side, it seems, can stimulate the brain and reset its circuitry to more easily find those silver linings.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of "The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want," believes positive feelings are not only capable of being learned, but are general skills that can be reinforced every time we find value in a negative event.

"Sometimes I think our country has gone nuts," Lyubomirsky wrote in a blog three weeks ago. "We 

A second guest post from The Estate Lady Julie Hall: Terrific tips on handling the "stuff" after a parent's death

Today Julie Hall, author of The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents' Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff, is going to talk about what happens when reality sets in after the death of a parent. How do you deal with all the "stuff"? How do you help your clients at such a time?

Earlier this month, she wrote another very helpful guest post; click to read it. Julie, thanks for this return visit.

Her book is now #2 in Amazon categories Wills and Estates & Trusts. Looks like I am not the only one who sees that what Julie has to say is both needed and insightful.

I now turn this post over to Julie . . .

It had been a week since Dad’s funeral, and life was getting back to normal for Sharon. Despite the sadness of the occasion, it had been nice to be with her brother and sister and their families. She hadn’t been to her dad’s house since he went into the hospital and dreaded walking into the empty house, knowing it contained a flood of memories. As she got in her car to drive across town to the house she grew up in, the lump in her throat grew. She thought about all the happy times around the dinner table and how her dad taught himself to cook when her mom began showing signs of Alzheimers. But as she unlocked the door and stepped into the house, emotion gave way to panic:

“What are we going to do with all this stuff?”

I describe Sharon’s response as the “deer in the headlights” look, and I’ve seen it hundreds of times as I’ve helped people settle their parents’ affairs. The sadness of losing your last surviving parent quickly turns to dread, frustration, even anger, as a lifetime of accumulation hits you like a brick. Some families struggle for months to liquidate their parents’ estates, but by following a few simple steps, you can clear out your parents’ home in less than two weeks. Here’s how: