40. The Resilient Lawyer, with Henry Su

Being a trial lawyer is a challenging job even apart from the actual, technical work of lawyering in the courtroom. Legal advocacy often places emotional burdens upon trial attorneys that can be a lot to manage. Henry Su joins the podcast to dissect the various stressors associated with trial work and offers his insights into managing stress through mindfulness.

Topics

3:27   Occupational hazards of being a trial lawyer 

10:09 Toll of adversarial work

14:11 Basic obligations to the client

16:13 Managing when conflicted

19:33 Role of fear

26:07 Mindfulness training

30:45 Learning from critiques

32:49 Developing distress hardiness

37:15 “Goblin mode”

39:27 Managing electronic intrusions

42:13 Resources on wellness

Quote

“You want to create distance. What you also want to do is to avoid is dissonance. Dissonance is when you allow the work that you’re doing to kind of infect you, such that you have internal conflict. You’re torn up about it. You’re torn up about why you’re doing this, and that this is not ‘you’ and that these aren’t the values that you hold dear. You want to avoid dissonance, you want to maintain distance.” Henry Su

Resources

Henry Su (bio)

Stress Hardiness and Lawyers (article)

Integrating Mindfulness Theory into Trial Advocacy (article)

Institute for Well-Being in Law (website)

The Anxious Lawyer (book)

Motion Skills: Online (April, August)

Deposition Skills: Online (November)