The Meditation Advantage for Lawyers
When I was a young law student over a decade ago, I interned at the Department of Justice for a well-respected and now-retired lawyer, Mike Underhill. He was an experienced litigator in a complex and technical area of environmental maritime law. He handled cases of local and international significance with confidence and elegance. He was the lead attorney handing the government’s case against BP for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest oil spill disaster in U.S. history. It was no accident he was selected to lead the team. Mike meant business. He took center stage in many other pressure-cooker cases of notoriety. It is almost guaranteed that anyone reading this article has encountered his work one way or another.
Mike had the kind of qualities one would expect of a lawyer of his caliber: hard working, organized, diligent and thoughtful. He mentored law students and offered internships to students from his alma mater. He was somewhat of a legal celebrity and on the cover of lawyer magazines. When I was still a law student, he gave me advice on how to do well in court. Years later, I still think of his words; “Channel your nervous energy into focused thought,” he once told me. “Don’t try to minimize your nerves, use your nerves to your advantage.” It was an insight that made me a better litigator immediately.
It surprised me to learn that on most days late in the afternoon, I would find this titan of a lawyer sitting on the floor of his office in silent meditation. Eyes closed, legs folded, posture straight – quiet and focused. I knew enough about him to know that meditation was not merely a quirky facet of his brilliance, like Einstein’s disheveled hair. No, there was something more to this he was tapping into. I didn’t understand it, he didn’t mention it, and I didn’t ask him about it. I just knew that if a guy like him was meditating every day, there had to be something to it.
About 13 years later, I tried meditation for the first time. I had been a family lawyer for over 10 years, and prior to that, I worked on death penalty cases. My work had taken me to one of the most high-conflict areas of the law, filling my waking life with stressful events, stressed-out people, relentless deadlines, and difficult legal issues. Sound familiar? I needed to try something in my life to help me manage it better.
For the first four or five days, I could only handle about three minutes of silence at a time. My goal was to observe my thoughts like passing clouds in the sky, gently releasing them down wind before they turned into involuntary chatter. Mindfulness. Eventually I was able to increase my meditation time to 20 minutes, and then an hour. I learned to treasure the moments of silence – sometimes fractions of a second – before the next intrusive thought busted in.
Most of our thoughts are like domineering houseguests that take a seat at our kitchen tables, barging in and demanding to be entertained with endless streams of coffee, tea and cookies. Many of these thoughts are automated and not usually helpful. We are so habituated to having a constant parade of thoughts that they no longer have to knock on our front doors to get in. They climb through the mail slot, climbing over us, our furniture and each other making incessant demands for attention. The familiarity of this circus tricks us into believing these are our native thoughts.
Meditation helped me realize that openly inviting the circus over for tea and cookies was exhausting. The act of observing the circus and setting the intention to let each thought “go” slowed down the parade of unwanted guests. Even a modest amount of inner observation reduced my anxiety, increased my focus and confidence, and left room for real clarity, insights, and creative thinking. I am a better version of myself on the days I meditate. And a better lawyer.
But don’t take my word for it; neuroscientists have much more to say about its benefits than I do. In an article published in Nature magazine in April 2015,[1] researchers found that mindfulness meditation involves, “a process of enhanced self-regulation, including attention control, emotion regulation and self-awareness.” It is associated with, “changes in brain structure,” resulting in enhanced attention, improved emotional regulation and reduced stress. Research about the effect meditation has on the neuroplasticity of the brain shows that meditation helps our brains “re-wire” in beneficial ways similarly to the changes happening in the brain of a violinist mastering music.
On the flip side of all that beautiful meditation data is the reality of what mental health looks like for lawyers. The California Lawyers Association participated in research which showed that, “lawyers with high stress are 22 times more likely to contemplate suicide, and all lawyers are two times more likely to experience suicidal ideation than the general population.”[3] The study showed that gender-specific risk factors affected women lawyers more. Another study showed one in every five lawyers are challenged by alcohol abuse, the majority of which self-reported that their issues started in law school.[4]
To combat these issues, the California Lawyers Association recommends – you guessed it – mindfulness meditation for improving mental clarity and reducing stress. Don’t get me wrong, no one is suggesting you quit your job to become a monk; however, maybe introducing daily meditation, even for only 15 minutes a day, is worth the cost of a raised eyebrow or skeptical look. In a job that prizes mental clarity, focus and memory, wouldn’t it make sense to put a pause on the circus going on in your head even just once a day?
[1] 1. Tang, YY., Hölzel, B. & Posner, M. The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nat Rev Neurosci 16, 213–225 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3916
[2] 2. Ricard, Mattieu, Lutz, Antoine, Davidson, Richard J. “Neuroscience Reveals the Secrets of Meditation’s Benefits”. Scientific American, Vol. 311 No. 5 (November 2014).
[3] 3. https://calawyers.org/california-lawyers-association/impaired-colleague-addressing-attorney-competence-warning-signs-and-getting-help/
[4] 4. https://americanaddictioncenters.org/workforce-addiction/white-collar/lawyers