idealawg

David Solie looking for guests for his radio talk show: His focus is communicating with seniors

David Solie writes:

I am looking for guests for my BlogTalk radio, which will resume in the fall 2010 and run through the spring of 2011. You can listen to previous radio shows at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/solie. 

The shows are recorded on Saturday mornings, 9:00 AM, Pacific.  They last 30 minutes.  Guests call into the show, which are are conversational and fun to do.  If you have topic related to aging parents, adult children or the non-linear journey through the  "second half of life," let me know ([email protected]).

The shows are recorded and available to for a variety of uses by the guests.

Past topics have included rewiring your brain (on which I was the guest), life story writing, and social networking for seniors. Click to see all the past show topics and listen to them, too.

Florida Bar article on the value of mindfulness for lawyers and law students

The University of Miami School of Law continues to offer its students classes in mindfulness. The program has just been the topic of an article in The Florida Bar News. Congratulations to my friend and colleague Scott Rogers for the continued success of the program he founded at UM.

From "Mindfulness Studies gains traction at UM":

Some of the most popular and well-attended courses at the University of Miami School of Law aren’t part of the core curriculum or required for graduation. Instead, the classes are part of the primarily voluntary mindfulness program, only in its third year at the school.

The program’s success comes as no surprise to its creator Scott Rogers, the director of the Institute for Mindfulness Studies in Miami Beach.

“[These classes] transform the law school education into one that is full of opportunity and excitement and makes the law school educational experience a much more fulfilling one,” said Rogers.

“Ultimately, the program prepares students to have a much more extraordinary law school career where their performance is at a high level and their well-being is intact.”

Rogers believes mindfulness plays a major role in ensuring that emotional and mental well-being remains a priority. The goal, he says, is for law students — and later,

Lawyers should be more right-brained? Another journey into the simplistic world of left brain versus right brain

The dichotomy of the left and the right brain seems firmly entrenched in pop psychology. It got a real boost by the presentations and writing of Jill Bolte Taylor, about whom I have written critically in the past here and here.

Reverence for a simplistic notion of the right brain has recently appeared in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin. Although the article makes some good points about possible shortcomings of the way some lawyers approach problems and people, the discussion of the brain dichotomy lessens the author's credibility. The article would have been much improved by her leaving those references out.

From "Do What's Right: The Secrets of Success":

In the headline to this article the word right has a dual meaning. There is the moral sense of right as used by Thane Rosenbaum in The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What’s Right. Then there is the right brain, with its feeling and emotion, and all its relational, artistic, creative and spiritual qualities. The two meanings are related. By incorporating more of the right brain’s emotional intelligence and heart into our rational left-brain system of law, we can supply the moral and emotional components that have been missing. We can become more professional. We can become happier and more successful. We can do what’s right.

Why law firm writing consultants may be better teachers than composition instructors

Excerpt:

Composition teachers and dermatologists are very much alike: In both cases, their patients never die, but neither are they ever completely healed. Therefore, they have to keep coming back for more help. In both cases, there seems continually to be a nagging sense of at least partial futility, of the impossibility of progress.

Why, for 200 years before the 1980s, had there been no real progress made in this country in the teaching of writing? Because most of the people involved in that effort were teachers of Fresh- man Composition. What are the professional results for these teachers at the end of the term? If they teach it poorly, what is the punishment? They have to teach it again next term. If they teach it well, what is their reward? They get to teach it again next term. There is no accountability. But if they were writing consultants for a world-class law firm, they would have to come up with some- thing that works, that works fast, and that makes a permanent difference, or they would not be invited back. It makes sense that the first great breakthrough in the teaching of writing came, therefore, from a world-class writing consultant. ...

Click to read the rest of "A Tribute to Joseph Williams on the Occasion of His Being Presented with the Pen Award by the Legal Writing Institute" (The Journal of the Legal Writing Institute) [pdf].

"Why So Many Bright Students and So Many Dull Papers?: Peer-Responded Journals as a Partial Solution to the Problem of the Fake Audience" by George Gopen

Excerpt:

I. The Problem Dis-covered

Descend, please, into a memory. Recall the first day of class when you were a college student —any course, as long as it assigned papers. As numerous handouts are making the rounds and the instructor is scribbling something on the board, you explore the syllabus, trying to get a sense of whether or not this course is for you. At the bottom of the page, you notice the category en- titled “Writing Assignments.” It says something like “Three short papers and one long one.” I ask you: At this moment, does your heart leap up? Do you think to yourself, “I just can’t wait until October 1, when that first paper is due!” I think not.

Most students look upon these academic papers as a burden. They are part of the academic bargain, in return for which they will receive not cash but credit. They approach these exercises, for the most part, with an air of compliant servitude. As a result, perfectly bright students turn out a great many perfectly dull papers—acceptable as a response to the assignment, but pedestrian, even to the extreme of foot-sore.

Let the years pass. You are now a college professor. Your class can be any course, as long as it assigns papers. You have assigned the three short papers and a long one, the first of which is due today. It is the end of the class hour. Students are filing out of

Perhaps another reason to teach mindfulness practices in law school?

Interviewers of candidates for law firm hires are looking for more than just pure intellectual skills and aptitudes. From "Behavioral Interviewing Gains Momentum in Law Firm Hiring" (The Legal Intelligencer):

No longer does the ability to quickly analyze a court opinion or a lawyer's status on law review earn a guaranteed spot in a summer program. Though still important, intertwined with questions about GPA and resumes are ones that probe how attorneys will handle tough or unexpected situations. They are pretty typical for a job interview, but the goal for law firms now is to see how new attorneys can handle the sometimes stressful law firm environment and, even more, whether they can provide real world value to clients beyond just handing in strong work product.

Training in mindfulness or contemplative practices typically will help with those  "tough or unexpected" situations."

Law professor Bruce J. Winick: R.I.P.

Therapeutic jurisprudence pioneer and law professor Bruce Winick has died. I received the sad news on the therapeutic jurisprudence listserv this morning.

From Professor Winick's Web page at University of Miami School of Law:

Bruce J. Winick is a Professor of Law and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.  The co-founder of the school of social enquiry known as therapeutic jurisprudence, Winick is Director of the University of Miami School of Law Therapeutic Jurisprudence Center.  He was the first the recipient of the Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professorship during the 2009-2010 academic year.
 
...
 
Winick is Chair of the American Association of Law Schools’ section on Balance in Legal Education.  He is co-editor of the American Psychological Association Books book series, Law and Public Policy: Psychology and the Social Sciences. Winick is also legal advisor

Metaphors: How 50 people used them to open minds, close deals, & wow crowds

You may get a free taste of metaphor guru Anne Miller's new book by downloading two chapters. Unfortunately Make What You Say Pay! is not available on Amazon, but her earlier book Metaphorically Selling can be purchased there.

Important note added later: The new book is available on Amazon by clicking here.

Here's a post I wrote a while back about Miller's work, and about metaphors and the brain. I have long been convinced of the persuasiveness of the metaphor. Metaphors grease communication. They are words' ball bearings. Okay, maybe I need to read the new book . . .

From the new book's Web page:

If you have to get things done through influence or persuasion--and who doesn't?--then Make What You Say Pay! is written for you. 50+ stories from across the business and media spectrum prove how you, too, can open minds, close deals, clear up confusion, and inspire others, all with a simple language tool as old as Aristotle and as new as the Internet: the metaphor. Tap into its power and revel in the results.

If you read the book, send me a review, please.

Blog Glob: "Phys Ed: Does Music Make You Exercise Harder?"

Excerpt:

[T]here are limits to the benefits of music, and they probably kick in just when you could use the help the most. Unfortunately, science suggests that music’s impacts decline dramatically when you exercise at an intense level. ... The noise of the body drowns all other considerations. Even so, about a third of the runners in the 2004 study told the researchers that they liked listening to the music, especially at the start of the run. It didn’t increase their speed or make the workout demonstrably easier. But it sounded nice.

And that result, obvious as it seems, may be the ultimate lesson of how and why music is effective and desirable during exercise, says Nina Kraus, a professor of neurobiology at Northwestern University in Illinois, who studies the effects of music on the nervous system. “Humans and song birds” are the only creatures “that automatically feel the beat” of a song, she said. The human heart wants to synchronize to music, the legs want to swing, metronomically, to a beat. So the next time you go for a moderate run or bike ride, first increase the tempo of some insidiously catchy Lady Gaga downloads (or Justin Bieber or Katy Perry or whatever reflects the current popular taste in your household), and load them on your iPod. “Our bodies,” Ms. Kraus concluded, “are made to be moved by music and move to it.”

Click to read the rest of "Phys Ed: Does Music Make You Exercise Harder?" (New York Times).

Blog Glob: "30 Ways for First Year Law Students to Achieve Success"

Abstract:

Law School is a scary and mysterious place and incoming students often have very little idea what to expect. Students eventually catch on to the difference between legal and undergraduate educations: fact-pattern analysis versus memorization of facts. This article is based on a series of presentations I made under the auspices of Texas Tech University School of Law’s Hispanic Law Student Association (HLSA), which offers a boot camp for incoming students and a second round of orientation after the first semester. This article provides practical advice from a Torts Professor and a successful third-year law student on how to succeed in law school. It presents information for the incoming student about what distinguishes a student who gets As from one who gets Cs. In its second part, it addresses students after they have their first semester grades and advises them on how to assess their performance and make changes if necessary.

Click to download the rest of "30 Ways for First Year Law Students to Achieve Success" (SSRN).