8 Simple Ways Lawyers Can Reduce Stress (And Increase Productivity)

Stress

High stress levels and burnout is an occupational hazard for lawyers, as most jurisdictions show that physical and mental health in the profession continues to plummet, but there are some key steps that lawyers can take to avoid the effects of their stress.

A recent report in Australia, from Executive Health Solutions, found that lawyers have dropped from first to seventh place in overall health, with similar falls in mental health (12 to 16.)

And Australia is similar to most other Western jurisdictions where mental health and burnout issues in the legal profession continues to cause concern.

As firms everywhere grapple with a variety of health-risk issues ranging from high rates of attorney addiction, depression and suicide, the focus has increasingly been placed on how law firms handle such issues.

Client demands for fast turnaround times, even on non-urgent matters, can leave outside counsel in constant crisis mode, as Law.com reported recently.

But lawyers can do much themselves to handle these major issues.

And workplace concerns lead to personal problems and a range of ancillary health issues affecting lawyers n their everyday lives.

Author of the Australian report, Stuart Taylor, noted that while the findings in the health report were confronting, they were not unsurprising, either.

“Unfortunately, it is all too common to miss the signs of burnout until they’re already there, but the long-term consequences of “overdoing it” can be damaging to our work life — resulting in a lack of focus and engagement, poor time management, and heightened worry and anxiety. “

He spoke of emotional ‘spillover’ where workplace stress lead to major effects on the lawyer’s personal life.

“Over time, spillover can give way to “crossover”, where higher exhaustion levels begin to impact on workplace performance, eventually leading to burnout. This was confirmed in our own study released in 2018 which revealed that fatigue was the highest factor related to burnout or, inversely, to resilience.”

Building Resilience

The good news for lawyers is that resilience as a defense against stress and its related problems is not innate, but rather a learnt competence that can be purposefully built and skillfully maintained.

“In our 2018 study, we found professional services had only average resilience but were very responsive to interventions aimed at building resilience. This means that legal professionals who invest in building their own personal resilience are more likely to be able to master stress and prevent the onset of burnout.”

Establish Boundaries

Establish a boundary between work and home life, which involves the following:

1. Funnel negative stress into something productive. Too often, we reserve our worst behaviour for those we care about the most. Going for a run or cooking dinner for the family can be healthy ways to channel the negative energy boiling under the surface and avoid any unpleasant outbursts. 
2. Catch, check, then change. One of the most effective things we can learn is how to reframe our thinking to avoid “thinking traps” that lead to unhelpful responses and emotional spillover. Learn your personal emotional cues to identify negative behaviours and shift your attitude into a more constructive and beneficial response.
3. Express gratitude. Take time every evening to appreciate and celebrate the positive things that happened in the day. The simple act of recalling and magnifying the positives will mean your focus is no longer on deadlines and work stress, allowing you to channel your energy towards hobbies or personal relationships.

4. Engage with family and friends. Take the time to maintain healthy and emotionally stimulating relationships outside of work and explore ways to connect with people in meaningful ways. For example, go for a nice walk after work or eat a meal with friends or family as often as possible. 
5. Get into a structured sleep habit. Aim for seven to eight hours a night and wake up at the same time every morning (even on the weekend). A good sleep routine can be a welcome boost to those who continually function at a fast pace and high-performance level.
6. Divide your day into segments. Allocate time for certain work tasks, time to move your body and time for mental breaks. 
7. Find a way to be active every day. You can stretch, stand up or take a walk around the block. This is also a great tool to help you refocus. Just 30 minutes a day can work wonders for your brain and increase your resilience long-term.
8. When in doubt, breathe out. Controlled breathing can help you improve your cognitive performance, effectively manage stress and help you become more resilient by improving concentration, increasing creativity and improving productivity to help you power through.

The likely pressures in legal life will not cease, but having appropriate defenses against the unhealthy side effects will lead to greater fulfilment and greater productivity as well.

Source: Law.com; LawyersWeekly




New Connecticut Health Care Laws Show Positive Change in the Legal Climate

Health cover

Kate Harveston* The last few thousand years have advanced our technology and our civility considerably. But there’s still plenty of work ahead for government, the law, and each of us, when it comes to expanding what it means to be a citizen. When we use our tools for the good of the many, we can bring about tangible improvements in our quality of living, our ability to participate in the economy, and our national competitiveness.

It is past time in America for its people to use its government and its laws to make sure all people have reliable health care. The good news is, states like Connecticut are helping change the legal climate as well as the public’s perception of what an acceptable health care system can look like.

Why the Legal Climate Needs to Change

Briefly, let’s explore why the current legal climate surrounding health care isn’t where it should be in the U.S. and why there’s lots of work left to do.

The goal of the Affordable Care Act was to turn uninsured Americans into health insurance customers. But its industry-centric approach left many millions behind by continuing to let insurers charge high premiums, letting pharmaceutical companies get away with price-gouging, and letting insurers turn away paying or prospective customers for pre-existing conditions.

The ACA was a half-measure that helped move the Overton Window on health care as a right of citizenship. But it preserved most of the biggest problems in the health insurance market, one of which was turning away would-be customers for maladies they have no control over.

But some of the other failures are still going under-talked-about as the public debate over health care rages on: mental health is still barely an afterthought in the U.S. health care market. This, despite the fact that health experts regularly tout mental wellness as absolutely vital for a person’s holistic health – and the fact that mental illness represents one-third of all adult disabilities across the globe.

The question cannot be “Why should government do something about this?” We know poor bodily and mental health affects the greater economy and erodes our productivity and our happiness. The question has to be, “What must government begin doing today to fix this?”

How Connecticut Helps Lead the Way

We are deep in a presidential election cycle and big ideas aren’t in short supply. In the meantime, states like Connecticut are using their legal systems to redress shortcomings in our existing health care laws, including the Affordable Care Act.

The governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, (left) recently signed a law that requires health insurance companies to provide “parity” for behavioral, mental health, and substance abuse conditions, alongside diseases and injuries of the body.

In other words: patients with health insurance can, by and large, already expect that conditions requiring emergency surgery are partially or fully covered under their plans. Now, in Connecticut, patients who require treatment for substance use disorder and other afflictions of the mind can expect equally ready access to treatment, without insurers placing artificial restrictions on mental health claims.

There are several positive steps forward within Connecticut’s Public Act 19-159 (“An Act Concerning Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Benefits”). In addition to parity, insurers must also report each year on whether they are still in compliance and the measures they are taking to remain that way.

Connecticut’s new laws aren’t just about mental health, either. A second bill, Public Act 19-134 (“An Act Expanding Health Insurance Coverage for Pre-existing Conditions”), ends discrimination in Connecticut in the form of insurance companies excluding customers with pre-existing conditions. In 2015, that kind of discrimination would have barred 522,000 non-elderly patients from securing care in Connecticut before the Affordable Care Act, or nearly one-quarter of that same population.

Representatives Sean Scanlon (D) and Brenda Kupchick (R) and several others helped see these laws over the finish line. In Connecticut, these laws now serve as a hedge against the President’s and Congress’s attempts to neuter or remove the ACA’s existing protections.

Connecticut isn’t done expanding its bulwark against greed in its health care markets. Representative Scanlon has claimed drug prices as one of his marquee political issues, and in 2019 he hopes to make Connecticut one of the first in the U.S. to allow patients to import drugs from Canada.

As Connecticut fights that battle at the state level, presidential contenders like Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) are bringing the issue to the masses. In late July, 2019, Sanders took a bus filled with American diabetes patients over the border into Canada to buy insulin, where it’s not atypical for citizens to pay one-tenth the prices that American patients are accustomed to.

Connecticut Joins a Movement

There are health care companies, and medicine companies, and then there are companies that price-gouge sick human beings to death. Connecticut is calling out some of these companies in an enforceable way now, and helping make sure those who live with mental illnesses – those who often find themselves stigmatized and on the fringes already – have a place to turn, and financial support, when they need it.

We know a lot more about the body and the mind today than we ever did before, and we’re beginning to understand how badly we’ve failed some of our most vulnerable citizens. We must hold companies and institutions accountable now that we know addiction is a disease and that some human beings will never achieve financial solvency with drugs and surgery at their current unsustainable prices.

In passing these laws, Connecticut’s government and citizens are contributing to a movement, a moment, and, quite possibly, a revolution. Health care as a human right isn’t a new idea. But piece by piece, we’re codifying that idea in our laws from the bottom up.

*Kate Harveston is a young writer pursuing a career in journalism. She holds a Bachelors in English and minored in Criminal Justice, so she enjoys writing about anything related to politics, law and culture. If you would like to read more of her work, you can visit her blog, Only Slightly Biased

About The Author

1 thought on “New Connecticut Health Care Laws Show Positive Change in the Legal Climate”

Show Comments

Stay ahead in law news. Subscribe now.

LawFuel has been breaking news for lawyers since 2001. We're still first to market with the news that powers lawyers - get our weekly headlines.

    We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at any time.