embodiedliving

How does the practice of law need to change in the next 5 years?

TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF REBELS.......

Are you as curious about this question as I am?  The ABA Legal Rebels is presenting two days of conversations to address this question on October 14 and 15 through webinars, live chats and online radio shows.  Here is the schedule:   Enjoy!

OCTOBER 14

8 a.m.
Essay: The Legal Landscape in 2011
Paul Lippe, founder of Legal OnRamp

9 a.m.
Essay: Disaster Ahead for Lawyers Unwilling to Change
Richard Susskind, author of End of Lawyers?

10 a.m.
Live Debate: Twitter: Waste of Time or Marketing Goldmine?
Rex Gradeless, founder of Social Media Law Student
Larry Bodine, founder of Larry Bodine Marketing

11 a.m.
Essay: Ethics Rules Are Spinning BigLaw Into ‘Death Spiral’
Larry Ribstein, professor, University of Illinois College of Law

12 p.m.
Live Webinar: Why Twitter Matters to Lawyers
Essay: Smart Lawyers Will Use Twitter for Client Development
Kevin O’Keefe, founder of LexBlog

1 p.m.
Essay: State Bar Admission is Irrelevant
Bob Ambrogi, founder of LawSites

2 p.m.
Live Radio Show: Putting Value Into Practice
Paul Lippe, founder of Legal OnRamp

3 p.m.
Essay: Bring 3Ls on as Unpaid Interns Doing Real Work
Rob Bodine, contributor to What About Clients

4 p.m.
Live Twitterview: Lawyers & Social Media
Nicole Black, founder of Practicing Law in the 21st Century-A Law & Technology Blog

5 p.m.
Essay: Profession Needs to Clean Up After the Boomers to Move Forward
Mazy Hedayat, founder of Practice Hacker

6 p.m.
Essay: Work-Life Balance Lessons for (and from) Micro-Firm Lawyers
Lisa Solomon, founder of Lisa Solomon Esq., Legal Research & Writing

7 p.m.
Essay: The Billable Hour is a Disservice to Lawyers, Clients and Justice
Mike Skoler, CEO of Sokolove Law

OCTOBER 15

8 a.m.
Audio Chat: Working Collaboratively Works Best
Tom Mighell & Dennis Kennedy, co-authored Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technology

9 a.m.
Essay: Charon QC: Education Costs Money, But Then So Does Ignorance
Charon QC

10 a.m.
Audio Q&A: Law 2.0
Jason Mendelson, Mendelson’s Musings

11 a.m.
Essay: ‘We Don’t Run This Show Anymore’
Jordan Furlong, Law21

12 p.m.
Essay & Audio Q&A: Students Need to Learn to Become ‘Whole Lawyers’
Max Miller, director, Innovation Practice Institute, University of Pittsburgh law school

12:30 p.m.
Essay: Students Need to Learn About The Profession They’re Joining
Ann Southworth, professor, UC Irvine

1 p.m.
Blog Talk Radio: Why Openness & Transparency at Law Firms Matters
David Lat, founder, AboveTheLaw.com

2 p.m.
Essay: It’s Time to Abolish the Role of the State Bar
Bruce MacEwen, founder of Adam Smith, Esq.

3 p.m.
Blog Talk Radio: Why Are Lawyers So Tech Shy?
Denise Howell, This Week in Law

4 p.m.
Essay: Lawyers Must Evolve or Face Extinction
Sam Glover, co-founder of Lawyerist

5 p.m.
Essay: Improve Legal Education Via Technology & Online Learning
Audio Q&A: Aren’t There Already Too Many Lawyers?
Barry Currier, Dean of Kaplan’s Concord Law School

6 p.m.
Essay: Trust Young Lawyers & They Won’t Let You Down
Jay Edelson, partner KamberEdelson

7 p.m.
Live Chat: Law Practice Plus: Solos and Entrepreneurship
Carolyn Elefant, MyShingle
Lisa Solomon, Legal Research & Writing Pro

Cheryl Conner-A New Thought Leader in Law, Economics and Business

The ABA's Legal Rebels is touring the country interviewing extraordinary lawyers.  They just published an interview with Cheryl Conner, a wonderful woman who is, in my experience, pretty darn close to being enlightened.  She is a Buddhist who taught a course on The Reflective Lawyer at Suffolk University Law School.

Cheryl truly sees our system from the 10,000 foot level.  “The way our legal system has developed, with a primary emphasis on being an adversarial system, … it sees that we are all separate and that we focus more on our intellectual sides or our technical or professional sides,” she says. “The holistic approach integrates all the other aspects of human experience that are always present when we are lawyering.”

She views law in the context of evolving relationships, music to my ears. Conner sees the need for change in the law, even changing the U.S. Constitution. “The law is what our last set of agreements was—about how human beings should operate together,” she says. “And we forget the law is just about what we’ve agreed upon, about how our relationships should be. Right now those relationships are still the dynamic. They are evolving.”

My experience of Cheryl is that through her own Buddhist practices and connection with the earth, she has moved through much of the baggage that runs the lives of many of us.  She is like a live tuning fork for inspiration and ideas that she is bringing into reality in creative and grounded ways.  Right now, she is my hero.

Check out her live interview and her music based on the Declaration of Independence!

Clean Up Your Environment the Easy Way

Because I love the physics of energy, I have been working with the phenomenon of the  "field" in my coaching practice.  Most of us think of the space between us as empty.  In fact it is filled with energetic activity that we cannot see, but that we can feel.

Have you been in a breathtakingly beautiful place, where the air seems so clear and pure that it is almost like a crystal?  Did you "feel" energized and inspired?  And, have you ever been around people who you thought were unsafe and felt as if there was a "slimy" feel in the air?  Or experienced a "heavy" feel in a funeral home or a place where there is a lot of grief?

Our environments have powerful effects on our bodies and minds.  I find that feeling gratitude is a potent transformer of our space.  Heartmath offers a 5-10 minute meditation that can dissipate the negative emotional density cloud that surrounds our earth.

To help transform the mental and emotional density cloud that surrounds the earth, do the following:

1. Imagine radiating love and care from the heart into the density and seeing it dissipate, the way the sun dissipates clouds.

   (You can imagine that your heart is like the sun streaming gold light into the density cloud. For some people, this adds more texture to the experience, but it’s not necessary for effectiveness. It’s the feeling of genuine care that counts.)

2. Close with a few minutes of seeing the planet in a coherent state, experiencing peace, harmony and heart-based connection. (It can be helpful to add this to the end of any technique.)

Start by Assuming the Best--- Jones Day Associate Teaches Us

The ABA recently reported about a Jones Day associate assigned to work with a demanding, "ornery" senior partner.  Without knowing it, she applied one of the NLP (neurolinguistc programning) presuppositions that I have found to be most helpful in relationships. Here it is--Assume that everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they believe they have available to them at the time.

In her words, she decided to look at his motivation, realizing that he was nearing retirement and facing pressure to train young lawyers. "Once I understood his motivation, I decided to take responsibility for changing the dynamic," she said. "I demonstrated interest and enthusiasm whenever we'd interact, and eventually he became my mentor." 

When we take things personally, it almost always leads us into a no-win situation.  This associate did the following things that turned the situation around:
1. She did not take the senior partner's behavior personally;
2. She became curious about his motivation and assumed the best;
3. She took responsibility for what she wanted in the relationship and modeled that, with success.

Just who was mentoring whom??

Remembering Our Song

This is a reprint of the feature article from my May newsletter.

Trance Music

A friend is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it. —Alan Cohen

 

Have you noticed the contrasting images that surfaced in the media this last month? On the one hand, Susan Boyle captured the hearts of the world by opening her mouth and sharing her beautiful voice with all of us—even after we judged and laughed at her. On the other hand, we’ve been swamped with photos of people wearing masks over their mouths to protect against the outbreak of swine flu. These photos are metaphors for the way that fear “masks” our voice and self-expression.

I first watched Susan Boyle with curiosity. As she talked backstage before the show, she seemed an odd mix of childlike openness and old-fashioned British countryside. But as she walked out on stage and began talking, my whole body began to constrict. The judges and the audience members rolled their eyes, sneered and laughed—at her age, her clothing, her hip-shaking responses to their questions. I felt pure dread in my stomach when I heard her say she wanted to be like Elaine Page, the first lady of British musical theater. I found that I projected my own fear of failure and rejection outward in anger toward the judges and audience (I love defending the underdog).

Then when Susan began to sing in her deep, resonant voice, a sense of awe and wonder rose from a deep place inside of me—a place even deeper than the fear place. I felt so genuinely moved in that moment. My fears transformed to an almost ecstatic delight. My heart stirred and my body felt the vibration of her song. I was resonating with Susan, hanging on each note. She could have been Godzilla and it would not have mattered. In sharing her song, she looked and felt beautiful to me.

And I was not the only one. The audience was moved to tears. The judges could not stop talking about their own surprise and thrill. The feeling in the room was one of truth and love, not fear. Susan Boyle’s song had the power to move us all past our fears and judgments to the place where our own dreams live.

We all have a dream, whether we are aware of it or not. We were each born with a “heart’s desire,” and it is up to us to express that desire while we are here. This is our legacy to ourselves and the world.

How do we connect to that legacy?

First by connecting to our own unique song.

Ancient traditions, and some contemporary ones, teach that each living being has their own song. Through the vibration of these songs, there is a way to communicate beyond words, to respond to the resonance of the essence of that being.

In his book Wisdom of the Heart, Alan Cohen describes this phenomenon in an African tribe. Before birth, a child’s song is discovered by the women in the community. It is sung to the child at birth, and at all life and death passages. When a person commits a crime, the village gathers in a circle and sings that person’s song. “The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behavior is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another.”

When our “masks” of fear show up, often in the form of judgments, projections, or (as Amanda noted on Britain’s Got Talent) cynicism, our true song cannot be heard.

Susan Boyle’s song demonstrated freedom from fear, freedom from masks. By just being who she was, she took us beyond our masks, our judgments and labels and biases, to our deepest feelings and essences. To where we felt a universal connection to humanity. 

So how do we let go of our masks on our own terms?

Name them as you discover them. Don’t shove them back into the cave, but sit with them at the campfire and discover their story. Accept them and see them for their true size, not as a looming shadow in the dark.

Feel the feelings that come up. Notice especially the uncomfortable sensations in your body. Tune in. Inside each of us, there is a whole world of priceless information just waiting to be recognized, heard and felt. By acknowledging your feelings, you give them permission to soften. Until you acknowledge them, they will scream and crash to get your attention.

As the masks begin to fall away, notice what wants to come through you. What gives you the deepest pleasure, stops time, brings you alive? What are your gifts, talents and treasures? Spend some time remembering and also inviting forgotten passions back into your life. Literally write down your dreams, so your unconscious can assist you in the process of reclaiming your song.

This is your path to conscious awakening. Our treasures are in our gifts and our songs, not in our possessions, acquisitions, or external recognition. And the paradox is that when you value your own song, it will magnetize others to do the same. Your song will actually radiate energy out from you, in the same way that your heroes—whether the Dalai Lama, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama or Susan Boyle—radiate fields of energy that magnetize you.

As J.K. Rowling, quoting Plutarch, said in her commencement address at Harvard last year, "What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves.”

Life does not need to be hard. That is the old tape. We are not here to suffer, to resist, to strive, to survive. We are here to thrive, to sing our songs, to play from our passion, to taste the fruit of knowing. The only “sin” is our cynicism. We can sing our own songs and those of our friends, family and community. And the world will applaud.

References

Alan Cohen, Wisdom of the Heart, (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2002)

J.K. Rowling, 2008 commencement speech at Harvard, http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2008/6/5/entire-text-of-j-k-rowling-harvard-commencement-speech-now-online, accessed May 3, 2009

What Would You Do if You Knew You Could Not Fail?

Week 1 Possibilities

This past Saturday, Betsy Gutting and I co-lead a CLE for women lawyers on Cultivating Your Vision: Awakening Passion and Presence in Your Work and Llife.  One of the exercises was asking the participants to reflect on what they would do in their work/lives if they knew they could not fail?  It is such a juicy question because it really invites you to play with the possibilities. How would you answer the question if there were really NO limits?  Is the answer a surprise? 

I find that this is a great exercise to do while you are on a walk. Once the ideas are popping, try making a vision board to see what surfaces from your unconscious.  Directions for making one can be found on Christine Kane's blog.

Guest Blogger: Clare Myatt-- The Path to Mastery

Clare Myatt is insatiably curious about what makes us inspired, empowered and satisfied in life. She is a dear friend who I met in somatic coach training. She also has a degree in law! Clare now lives in Britain with her husband.  Partnering with her clients to reveal their dreams and aspirations, Clare uses a compassionate yet practical approach to help shift insight into action through collaborative design of embodiment practices. She works with executives in need of the soft "EQ" skills, singles and couples to enhance their relationship skills, somatic students for supervision and anyone invested in self-development and possibility. Clare has degrees in law and psychology, is licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist in California, certified as a Master Somatic Coach and member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy.

Ever have those days when, having tried to get a smidge too much done before leaving the house, the consequence is the strong possibility of being either right on time or a couple of minutes late for an appointment?  Well, I had one of those days last week.  And with it came a great lesson, made up of a series of minor irritations that at the time did not feel like a great lesson in the making.

The first irritation came in the shape of traffic light controlled roadworks letting through three or four cars at a time; the second a tractor which had three miles to traverse at a snail’s pace on a road where no overtaking was possible; the third a learner driver under instruction.  Of them all, the third, a young, tentative learner driver was probably my greatest teacher.  As he kangaroo’d along, attempting to master that difficult balance of clutch and accelerator control, I remembered to take a very deep breath, let go the outcome of potential lateness, and pay attention to the here and now.  The beautiful pink spring blossoms of the trees and hedgerows, the dainty bluebells appearing here and there along the verges, the white billowy clouds scudding across a bright blue sky.  Oh, what a beautiful day I had been missing amidst my hurry and intolerance.

Several deep breaths later, I began to pay attention to the trials and tribulations of the learner driver ahead and cast my mind back to those intense times, all those years ago, when every single minute behind the wheel of a car took intense concentration and focus.  What a difference several decades has made.  No longer do I have to focus on synchronizing the clutch and accelerator, pay much more than cursory attention to traffic, checking mirrors, indicating, pulling out to overtake, indicating and pulling over again.

Such is the path to mastery.  What a great reminder.  Whenever I take on a new practice - lately it’s been walking with a balanced gait after knee surgery - I am reminded of how clumsy we feel with something new and how it’s only practice that embeds habits and routines into the body.  I’m using a new phrase these days, one I picked up from a conversation with a retired psychiatrist who in turn heard it from his tennis coach.  “Practice makes permanent.”  I’ve always heard “practice makes perfect” but this new rendition makes much more sense to me.  As I sit and watch people walk, interact, eat, drink coffee – whatever they do – there’s a certain way in which who they are shows up in all they do.  In other words, whatever they’ve been practicing has become permanent in their structure.

 So the new question for myself and for my clients is this – what are you practicing?  If practice makes permanent, then be careful what you practice! 

 

Failure and Imagination: Bookends for Success

Flickr

Many of us will be attending graduation ceremonies this spring.  I love to listen to inspiring commencement speeches and found this one by JK Rowling (Part 1) from 2008 at Harvard.  She focuses on failure and imagination, her own formula for success at finally writing the novels that she dreamed of doing when she graduated from college.

One of the best lines in her speech, is "There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction." (This is my gift to my mom for Mother's Day!) So you have a choice when you feel like you have "failed."  You can blame, regret, and go to a place of shame, or you can look "failure" in the eye and thank it.  "You will never truly know yourself or the strength of your relationships until both have been tested by adversity.  Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won and it has been worth more than any qualification I have won." (Part 2)   Facing your own fear of failure or feeling that you have failed will lead you into the lion's den, where you will discover your courage, imagination and deepest values.

 Rowling goes to the heart of the matter when she tells us that imagination is not only the source of all invention, but that it enables us to empathize with others whose experiences we have never shared.
Quoting Plutarch, she offers, "What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.  We do not need magic to transform our world.  We carry all the power we need inside ourselves...  We have the power to imagine better."  (Part 3)

She urges all of us to move from "failure" through imagination into compassion for others, and to use our voices for others, especially those who have no voice, who are powerless, and who have less than we have.  So when you feel as if you have failed, look inside yourself for your owl, your broomstick and your wand. Then pull them out and pass your gifts on.

When We Walk into Our Fear, It Disappears

Flickr Photo

It is amazing what we will do to avoid discomfort.  When I have feelings of fear, I manage to avoid feeling them by staying busy, going for a run (yes, even those "healthy habits" can be distractions), talking on the phone, eating something sweet......

When I take the time to go into my body and notice the sensations of that feeling, choosing to be present and open, something amazing happens.  My presence, acceptance and love shifts the energy and the fear or discomfort lightens.  Sometimes it disappears altogether.  Eckart Tolle talks about this phenomenon of the "power of now" in his books.  If you have not yet read A New Earth, order it today.

I am including a poem in this post by David Whyte, one of my favorite poets. The poem speaks to this topic eloquently.

IMAGINE MY SURPRISE

Imagine my surprise,
sitting a full hour
in silent and irremediable
fear of the world,

to find the body
forgetting
its own fear the instant
it opened and placed
its unassuming hands
on life's enduring pain,

and the world for one
moment
closed its terrifying eyes
in gratitude,

Saying,
"This is my body, I am found."

David Whyte

Lawyers: Think Out of the Box for Your Own Career

To think out of the box....

You have probably seen Michael Melcher's name.  He wrote  The Creative Lawyer: A Practical Guide to Authentic Professional Satisfaction.   In a recent column in the ABA Journal, he writes about why thinking like a lawyer is bad for your career.

He offers the following:

When you apply thinking-like-a-lawyer to your own career—whether your objective is to build your business, develop a new specialty, or contemplate alternative paths—there’s a good chance you will:

• Analyze rather than explore.
• Focus on flaws and potential problems.
• Look for clear precedent.
• Require solutions of general applicability (“what would work for lawyers”) rather than specific applicability (“what would work for me”).
• Defer action in situations of uncertainty.
• Be skeptical about possibilities.
• Avoid taking risks.

Sound familiar?  So how do you shift gears when you are contemplating  your next career move or bringing in new business for your firm?  Our brains are wired to conserve energy.  They will choose the well worn grooves--our customary way of thinking-- over a new approach.  You have spent thousands of dollars and many hours creating those analytical grooves.  So shifting gears to a more creative, right brain, big picture, risk taking mind is not comfortable. And, if it is difficult and uncomfortable,  your brain is probably changing.

In my work with clients, I work creatively and somatically (through the body) to help them make the shift. Some of them become so excited at what begins to emerge that they feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ coming home at last. 

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Because of the nature of our work, lawyers have a BIG inner critic.  Listen for that voice and lovingly reassure it that you will be safe, even when you take a risk or think creatively.  You are not just the voices in your head. They are usually formed between the ages of 0 and 6 and most of them want the opposite of what they tell you to do (the busy ones want peace, the fearful ones want courage and safety....). They are trying to take care of you and need to be reassured that you can take care of them!

2. Get a big piece of paper and do some mind mapping.  Use whatever is appealing to you-circles, spirals, triangles, wheels-let your ideas flow out onto the paper in relationships, not lines and logic. Draw from your body, not from your head. Write a word that has to do with your issue and then draw lines or squiggles out from that word as you write any other associations that arise for you.  Here is a great resource of mind mapping tools. Mind mapping is an effective and fun tool for seeing the big picture and relationships, and for allowing your intuition and creativity to flow.

3. Move out of your head and into your center before thinking about your issue.  Take deep breaths, spiraling the breath up your back and down your front, relaxing and broadening your muscles.  Deepen your breath into your belly so that your focus is your center, not your head.  Feel the effects of gravity on your body, allowing it to relax your jaw and shoulders. Bring your attention to the field of energy around you and "tune in." You should "feel" the field--it is energetic vibrations of tiny particles/waves.  This is how we connect to the "flow" of information that is all around us, but that we often miss.  The name given to information in the flow is "synchronicity."

Once you are centered, allow the issue to come to mind and notice what arises.  Don't look for the answer, try to solve the problem or "fix" anything.  Nothing is broken.  You are allowing all of you (body, mind, heart, spirit, intuition and the "field" )to create something new.  It is a process of discovery that is fun and inspiring if you allow it to work through you!