idealawg

The Practice of Law: Your Job, Your Career, or Your Calling?

Excerpt:

After seven years as a hospice volunteer and four years as an integral coach to the legal community, I have witnessed tremendous suffering - remarkably, more among those “living” in our legal communities than those dying in our public hospitals. What is it about our work that brings about such outcomes?

In 2002, a middle-aged partner of a prominent San Francisco law firm was exiting the UCSF Cancer Center after a quarterly checkup. It had been 10 years since his original prognosis when he was told that he might only have two years left to live. As he reached the street door of the center, which also gave access to the adjacent hospital, he ran into a founding partner of his firm, a man 15 years his senior whose cancer was metastatic and highly advanced. They had seen one another at the office that morning, but this would be the last time that they would meet. The senior partner died three days later. The surviving partner then vowed that his last day in life would not be in the office, unless his work became his calling.

Click to read the rest of "The Practice of Law: Your Job, Your Career, or Your Calling?" (Los Angeles Lawyer).

Neuroscientist Jeff Schwartz talks about brains of jurors in Conrad Murray trial

Click to watch the interview of Dr. Jeff Schwartz by Colleen Williams of NBC LA. Click for more interviews of Dr. Schwartz.

Until September 30: 15% off CREATING YOUR OWN FUNERAL OR MEMORIAL SERVICE

If you buy my book Creating Your Own Funeral or Memorial Service: A Workbook this month, you will get 15% off the purchase price. Use coupon code FALLSAVINGS305. Maximum savings with this promotion is $100.

"Yoga and therapy dogs: What law school is all about"

Excerpt:

Law school can be tough on even the most talented, dedicated go-getters. With the high rates of burnout and depression among law students, something has to be done to lighten the mood and relax those frazzled legal minds. Fortunately for those studying at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, they've got Rachel Hawkinson in their corner.

Aside from being the student bar association president, Hawkinson, a third-year law student, is also coordinator of the recently founded student wellness initiave. The initiative started last year as a way to combat the mental and physical fatigue that often accompanies a demanding career in law. Students spend their days and nights at desks poring over documents, which can lead to lack of sleep and nutrition as well as repetitive stress injuries. With this in mind, Hawkinson spearheaded the wellness initiative.

Click to read the rest of "Yoga and therapy dogs: What law school is all about" (The Concord Insider).

Denver woman's post-law career: Pumpkins!

As Halloween approaches each year, I always think of Kea Bardeen and her career path after she left the practice of law. I also recall sitting in a meeting at a mutual friend's home in the late '80s as Kea wielded scissors all evening to manufacture the products she sold in her next career. What did she walk on down the career path to do after law?

Pumpkin carving—and she was very successful!

From Answers.com:

The original Pumpkin Masters carving kit took three years to develop. During that time, Bardeen's wife, Kea, retired from her law practice to help Bardeen launch the new company, Pumpkin Ltd., with headquarters in the Bardeen home.

Test-marketed in local grocery and craft stores, the kits originally retailed for $10 each, but the Bardeens quickly decided to scale back the kit's contents and reduce its cost to around $5, a more reasonable price for a seasonal impulse item. Sales continued and even improved. The Bardeens were ready to serve a larger population.

In fact, the Bardeens had the kits in stores across the United States within four years of their company's inception. This was largely due to innovative marketing, as the company worked to convince people of the need for special pumpkin carving kits when they already had perfectly serviceable knives in their kitchen.

Click to read the rest of the story. More of the tale: Always thinking, Kea "introduced watermelon-carving kits to generate summer sales." And she sued Martha Stewart, Kmart and Kraft for patent infringement.

I wonder what Kea is doing now? Anyone know?

October in Albuquerque, New Mexico: Mentoring conference

The registration deadline of September 30 is almost upon us. From the conference Web site:

The Mentoring Institute at the University of New Mexico invites you to participate in its fourth annual conference on mentoring, October 26-28, 2011 at Student Union Building (SUB) ballroom located at the main campus. Last year, over 250 professionals and students from a variety of fields participated in our conference.

The theme for this year is “Learning Across Disciplines”. The intent of this year’s conference is to bring together mentoring professionals from around the world who offer practical applications, high quality research, hands-on workshops, and demonstrations of innovative approaches and developments in learning and performance through the establishment of mentoring relationships.

The keynote speaker for the conference is David Clutterbuck, co-founder of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. He is one of Europe’s most prolific and well-known writers and thinkers with more than 50 books and hundreds of articles published on cutting edge management, mentoring, and coaching themes. His books on these subjects include, among others, Everyone Needs a Mentor, Learning Alliances, Mentoring in Action, and Making Coaching Work.

Click to read the rest.

Stanford Law grad and former mediator is a world-renowned line dancer

She has always been high-energy, artistic, and a bit quirky. When I was still practicing law in the Bay Area, I enjoyed my friendship with Hedy McAdams, for those attributes—and because she is just, plain fun! After I left California, she visited me once or maybe twice, and we now only occasionally exchange a quick and newsy e-mail.

But I have followed her career path. After earning her JD at Stanford, she became a mediator. She also became one of the best-known choreographers of line dancing in the world. Hedy did not set out to do the dancing thing, but she visited a class with a boyfriend, fell in love with country line dancing, discovered her aptitude for it, and soon was enjoying great success. (The boyfriend has long been history.)

Here are a couple of articles about this Stanford Law School grad doing something other than practicing law. From "Choreographer Has Line On Lively Steps" (San Francisco Chronicle):

During the day, Palo Alto resident Hedy McAdams negotiates domestic crises in her job as a family law mediator.

But at night, she guides enthusiastic dancers through the steps of country line dances . . .  .

"I'm the only Stanford Law School graduate that I know of who is teaching country western dancing,'' she says.

An article "Rhapsody in boots: Local lawyer brings elegance to country line dancing" (Palo Alto Online) tells more of McAdams's story, including that she promotes and studies line dancing in part because it is a way to keep the aging brain active.

In 2007, Hedy closed her mediation practice but she's still dancing.

Click to watch YouTubes of her dancing:

• "Younger Men"
• "Prairie Strut"
• "Fly Like a Bird"
• "Kodiak Jack"
• "Shipwrecked"

Note: Part of the above post is a repeat of one from 2006.

2011 Futures Conference: Hey, lawyers, the future includes the brain

I happened to see the brochure for the upcoming conference [pdf], being held in Chicago, which will focus on "Challenging the Law Practice Management Model." Looks like it includes some excellent presentations. And I have a question . . .

Neuroscience, the science of understanding the brain, has key information for components of the practice of law, including marketing, managing, advocating, learning, counseling, creating, remembering, mentoring—indeed almost any activity in which a lawyer participates. And yet the event includes not one presentation on how what we are learning about the mind and the brain can affect and improve the practice of law in this new century?

Odd that a futures conference leaves out this huge piece of the future. By looking at the huge explosion of books and seminars on how the brain impacts personal and professional development, management of self and others, decision-making, leadership, persuasion, and much more, we can say that neuroscience is also a part of the present, too.

I am curious. Where in the legal profession is attention being paid to this valuable information? Isn't it an integral piece of a conference on the future of the profession? This gap gives a new twist to the meaning of "no-brainer."

"In good relationships, folks don’t call lawyers"

Excerpt from "A $42 Million Gift Aims at Improving Bedside Manner" (New York Times):

“To care for a patient,” Dr. [Mark] Siegler said, “you have to care about a patient.”

If it seems like a lot of money for teaching good bedside manners, researchers point to many studies that indicate a good rapport between doctors and patients strongly correlates with favorable health outcomes.

...

“The modern world of medicine,” Dr. [Laura] Roberts said, “has become bureaucratized, distant, regulated.”

...

The subject has stirred passions and debate for as long as people have been treated by doctors. Some 2,500 years ago, Plato complained about the paternalism that characterized some doctors. “He gives off some empiric treatment with an air of knowledge in the brusque fashion of a dictator,” the philosopher wrote, “and then rushes off in haste” to the next ailing subject.

[Some research shows] that patients who had good relationships with their doctors were more likely to follow health regimens and to overcome illness.

...

Dr. Wendy Levinson...has written that tone, or the way a doctor says something, can be as important as the substance. Primary care physicians who use humor, she noted, are less likely to have been sued.

That comes as no surprise to Robert Kreisman, a medical malpractice lawyer in Chicago. “In good relationships, folks don’t call lawyers,” he said. “What I hear a lot is that doctors were rude or uncaring.”

"Effect of Mindfulness Meditation on the Neural Substrates of Emotion Processing and Resting State in Experienced and Beginner Meditators"

Abstract:

Mindfulness meditation promotes emotional stability, yet little is known of the brain mechanisms through which this is achieved. The impact of mindfulness on the neural and subjective responses to negative, positive, and neutral pictures in experienced meditators and beginners was investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Mindfulness attenuated emotional intensity via distinct neural pathways for each group. For beginners, mindfulness induced a deactivation of the amygdala during emotional processing compared to meditators. For meditators (relative to beginners), mindfulness induced deactivations of areas involved in the evaluation of emotional significance and the default mode network (DMN) across all picture categories (medial prefrontal cortex [MPFC], posterior cingulate cortex). The DMN consists of functionally connected brain areas typically activated at rest and deactivated during goal-directed tasks. It remains unknown whether meditation training influences functional connectivity within DMN regions, and if so, whether these effects persist beyond a state of meditation per se. Functional connectivity within DMN regions at rest was examined using fMRI in beginners and meditators. Relative to beginners, meditators exhibited decreased connectivity between MPFC subdivisions, and increased connectivity between the right inferior parietal lobule and three other DMN regions. These findings may reflect that early beneficial effects of mindfulness on psychopathology are due to deactivations of limbic regions involved in emotional reactivity. On the other hand, long-term effects of meditation on emotional stability may occur through a down- regulation of prefrontal and cingulate regions involved in the evaluation of emotional significance, and altered functional connectivity within DMN regions at rest.

Click to read the rest of "Effect of Mindfulness Meditation on the Neural Substrates of Emotion Processing and Resting State in Experienced and Beginner Meditators" [pdf].