Path to Well-Being in Law

pathtowellbeinginlaw
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A podcast presented by the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, powered by ALPS

  1. 10/11/2023

    Path to Well Being in Law - Episode 30: Javoyne Hicks

    Chris Newbold:  Hello, well-being friends and welcome to the Path to Well-Being In Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being In Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, executive vice president of ALPS malpractice insurance, and I'm once again joined by my favorite and only co-host of the podcast, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how's it going today?  Bree Buchanan:  Good answer, Chris. It's going great. Great to be here with you.  Chris Newbold:  Obviously most of you know Bree. Bree continues to be a forceful advocate in the well-being space working for Krill Strategies and doing a number of different speaking engagements around the country. So again, most of you know by now that our goal here is to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the well-being space, in the legal profession, and in the process build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. And I got to tell you, one of the things that I think I've come to realize the more work that I've done in the well-being space is the power of storytelling and the power of what motivates people to get involved in things that are close to the heart or things that have had a personal impact on individuals. And today's guest I think really epitomizes when something can happen in your life that changes the course of life.  There is certainly a notion of that propelling a passion and an interest in an issue, and that certainly is the case with somebody that we really love in the well-being movement. One of the newest additions to the Institute for Well-Being in Law's board of directors, and that's Javoyne Hicks out of Georgia. I'm going to let Bree introduce Javoyne to the listeners, but just know she's one of my favorite people. It's really a joy to bring her on this particular podcast, and so much of why I do this work is because of stories like you're going to hear from Javoyne. So Bree, love it if you could introduce Javoyne to the listeners.  Bree Buchanan:  And I've just been so happy that Javoyne has joined us on the board of directors and she just has this quiet, persistent, persuasive nature to her, and you're going to hear about all the things that she's been able to achieve. So Javoyne Hicks serves as the chair of the State Bar of Georgia's Lawyers Living Well Committee and is a member of the executive committee for their State Bar's Board of Governors. She helped develop the State Bar of Georgia's first Wellness and Practical Skills, 12 hour CLE, which now, which is coming up in just a few days, is really blossomed into a wellness institute, and I'm excited Javoyne to get to be one of your speakers at that too. She has spearheaded the movement to create a wellness center as part of the State Bar of Georgia, and really just all of these developments have her fingerprints on all of them as a catalyst for what's going on there.  Javoyne's goal is to normalize the attention everyone should be paying to their own well-being and minimize the stigma that exists that keeps people from seeking help when needed. As such, Javoyne serves on the board of IWIL and the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. In her day job, and yes, besides all of that, she also is the chief senior assistant district attorney in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office. So welcome Javoyne. Thank you for being here today.  Javoyne Hicks:  Thank you so much, Bree, for having me. I'm really excited about being here. Just as excited as I'm about being on the IWIL board. Very excited.  Bree Buchanan:  Absolutely. Javoyne, I'm going to ask you the question that we ask everybody on the podcast at the beginning to tell us why you are such a passionate advocate for well-being in the legal profession. What is in your life that really drives that passion?  Javoyne Hicks:  Well, Bree, that question is one that most people ask, but it started over 18 years ago. It was 19 years ago now when the father of my children and a very exceptional lawyer was dealing with depression and refused to get the assistance that he needed because he said, "I'm a good lawyer. I know that despite the confidentiality that exists, good lawyers can get past those guidelines and can get access to information." He did not want people to know that he needed help, so he wouldn't go get help in August of 2004, so it's been 19 years, he died by suicide because he would not get the help that he needed. I have two extraordinary daughters who were five and seven at the time.  And I had to watch them like hawks. It was apparent that there were mental issues in his family that existed and were known, and he had examples of his uncle was a member of the bench in Detroit for 30 years. He was diagnosed, he took medication, and was still successful. But yet, and still even having that example that you could deal with it and still be successful, he still didn't want anybody to know he needed help. And so my fight, and the reason I do this work is to normalize the conversation around mental health and wellness and how it is okay not to be okay. And it's important that you get the help that you need, and like I told my children, "We are not going out like that. We are going to make sure that every way possible that is available for you to get help. If you need it, we're going to get it." My oldest is now an attorney herself, is an assistant DA like me.  Bree Buchanan:  Oh my goodness. Wow. That's exciting.  Javoyne Hicks:  But she does work that is human trafficking work and it is very difficult for her. Sometimes because she takes it home, because she wants to help these children and she can't help the children and the justice system doesn't necessarily help these children. And just yesterday it's like sending her a new list of people to choose from to find a counselor to release that pressure. She knows it's okay to get help because we've had that conversation so that she won't be like her dad. And I have to add that his sister also died by suicide a few years after that. So it's just ingrained that if I can save a life, I'm going to do that.  Bree Buchanan:  And I have no doubt that you have already through all the work in the advocacy that you have done, and your daughter is a new lawyer too.  Javoyne Hicks:  She is. She's only been practicing two years.  Bree Buchanan:  The extra pressures that young lawyers are dealing with too.  Javoyne Hicks:  Yes.  Chris Newbold:  Javoyne, tell me about, again, this notion that so many lawyers are prone to suffer in silence. And just give me your impressions of, I mean obviously I think a lot of us surmise what the why is, right? But the notion of, in the time that's went by, do you feel like there have been positive evolution in this area within the legal profession that it's as bad as it's ever been? What's your general sense of where we're at in terms of, again, lawyers being willing, able, and making that step to be able to talk about issues as opposed to suffer in silence?  Javoyne Hicks:  I do believe, Chris, that we have made major strides in lawyers going and deciding to get help and not suffering in silence in the same way. And a lot of that has to do with the work that we all are doing here as far as just giving it a voice. Because a lot of times people didn't know that other people were dealing with the same stressors. Unfortunately though that number that still feels like if they need help as a lawyer, if they tell people they need help, then people won't come to them for help and therefore they won't be able to be the lawyer and have their livelihood that they need. Because if you can't, people just think, "Well, there's something wrong with them, so let me go to another lawyer." That's the reason it's so important to normalize this conversation. When people realize that we all have mental health issues, it's just in differing degrees of what's happening in their life at the time and that it's okay, then you won't see someone and judge them.  There's that stereotype that, and I don't know why we have placed this different attack on the mental health versus physical health. There's a difference. And until we conquer that, we're going to have to continue to deal with that issue. But it has gotten better and a lot of students, the law school students, because law schools are talking about it and including wellness as part of their processes, even if it's not part of the curriculum, they have someone in the schools who address mental health. And so there are a lot of younger lawyers that aren't putting up with some of the things that we, as I would say, seasoned lawyers had to deal with in just expressing our growth. I work in the office and I've been a prosecutor off and on for most of my career, and now I'm back into it and there was no saying, "Mental health day, okay, well take your file with you and come back tomorrow."  I mean, that just wasn't part of the conversation. And now it is. You can take a sick day if you need it to regroup. And one other thing that we also tell people is that you don't have to wait until you're in crisis. As we spread that message that has helped to be able to say, "Hey, reach out, talk to somebody. You're not in crisis. You just had a bad day." Because you want to get to the point where you're not waiting until you're in crisis in order to get that assistance. And that helps across the board.  Bree Buchanan:  It makes such a difference. And because of that stigma, when I was a director of a Lawyers Assistance Program, what I saw over and over again, what you'd always think after you'd answer the phone is, "How could this person wait so long?" And that really is an issue. People terrified of the blowback, and so they just don't ask for help. And it's not that it's too late, but it's just so much more difficult too.  Javoyne Hicks:  So much more difficult.  Chris Newbold:  An

  2. 09/20/2023

    Path to Well-Being in Law - Episode 29:Julian Sarafian

    Chris Newbold:  Hello friends. Welcome to the Path to Well-Being In Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being In Law. I'm your co-host Chris Newbold. I'm always thrilled and to be with my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing?  Bree Buchanan:  Doing great, Chris. How are you?  Chris Newbold:  Good, good. As our listeners know, I just want to reset this. Every time we do a podcast, I think we're welcoming new listeners in to the wellbeing movement. And Bree, one of our passions is to continue to introduce thought leaders doing meaningful work in the wellbeing space within the legal profession and in the process build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift in the profession. And I think we are super excited about our guests today because the ability for us, I've always thought that the secret sauce of creating a culture shift in this profession is the ability to engage in storytelling and the realities of what people's lives have been like in law and to give people platforms to tell their story.  And we are really thrilled to be welcoming Julian Sarafian to the podcast, a noted social media influencer who is really a champion for mental health based upon his own personal story and what appeared to be just a straight direct success track in law. And so Bree, why don't I hand it off to you to introduce Julian, and we're really excited about where the conversation's going to take us today.  Bree Buchanan:  Absolutely. And I think Julian and his ability to do the storytelling and pull people in, and another thing I'm excited about, Julian, having you today is somebody that is of a younger generation than us because that's critical. One of the things I often say is that the legal profession will change. It will, because as the younger generations come up to positions of power, I truly believe they're not going to tolerate basically the working conditions that predominate through the legal profession right now. So it's inevitable. But I would say Julian is somebody who is accelerating that change to his work. So I'm going to give you a quick introduction of him and then we'll get to meeting Julian really quickly here. And I also will say, Julian, that you have such a humble bio. I am really impressed with that. So I try to refrain from pumping it up, but there's a lot of humility here and I see that as a great sign for somebody.  So Julian Sarafian is a lawyer and content creator, but owe so much more. That was my editorial. His law firm For Creators by Creators PC is the premier law firm focused on representing content creators and social media influencers. As a content creator himself, Julian produces videos and blog posts related to the legal profession, law and mental health on TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram where, drum roll here, his cumulative following is nearly 350,000. He's given multiple TEDx talks, the cost of success that he did dove into what originally made him viral, his mental health story as a high achiever who faced mental health challenges along the way, culminating in him quitting his job in Big Law during the COVID pandemic. And there's a story there. He has written and published op-ed pieces in the American Lawyer, Law360, Business Insider, Bloomberg Law, and CNBC. And his advocacy for mental health has been covered by the New York Times and Bloomberg Law. So Julian, welcome. We are so delighted that you're here with us today.  Julian Sarafian:  Thank you Bree and Chris for the very warm introduction, and I'm very happy to be here, excited to talk about these really important issues with you guys.  Bree Buchanan:  One of the things I really appreciate so much and looking at, thank you for giving me this excuse to spend a lot of time on TikTok, by the way.  Julian Sarafian:  Oh man. I don't know if I'll say you're welcome to that one.  Bree Buchanan:  But it's been, you really are such clearly a spokesperson for what I find is so important, which is humanizing the practice of law, realizing that we are human beings with basic needs and honoring that. And so tell us a little bit about why you're so passionate for this work, because it really does come through. You've been doing this work for a good number of years and are so consistent, never let up the throttle on this. So tell us your story.    Julian Sarafian:  Yeah, yeah, very happy to. And I'll give the shortened rundown version of the mental health story that you alluded to earlier, and this is the thing that brought me into social media. I've always been the stereotype and archetype of "success in academic world." Valedictorian in high school, UC, Berkeley in three years, worked at the White House when I was there, onto law school at Harvard, and now I'm in Big Law at 24 years old, making the $225,000 salary, including bonus at the time. But it wasn't all starry-eyed and fun and games on the inside. When I was studying for the LSAT, I had panic attacks. There were periods of extreme loneliness and isolation in college. I had a nausea and breathing disorder for most of my twenties. That was stress and anxiety induced, but I didn't know that at the time.  And throughout this entire period, the world is telling me, you're doing fricking awesome. You are getting the best grades, you're going to the best schools. You're getting the best job opportunities. You're a winner, Julian. This is exactly what you should be doing. Everything you're doing is right. Even though on the inside there was a lot of turmoil and my life in many ways could have been a lot more enjoyable and fulfilling. This culminated in the pandemic when I think I'm not alone as a lawyer or even as a professional when I say that it was a very tumultuous and rough period on the mental health front. Personally, I was stuck in the same room week after week after week after week. And Big Law at the time was only getting busier ironically, I think clients wanted a way to feel powerful and in control, and an easy way to do that was to boss around their Big Law associates and their attorneys that they have on staff.  So work accelerated. My mental health and the habits that I had built to this point in my mid-twenties were not sustainable, to put it mildly. That resulted in burnout. It resulted in anxiety developing and taking over more and more of my life, basically making me feel like I couldn't enjoy or even sit and relax something as simple as a TV show or a movie. And that eventually led to mild depression and feeling like everything was turning gray. I didn't feel like I had purpose anymore, and I felt completely helpless, no matter what I did to try to fix this it wasn't working, working out wasn't going to work, watching TV wasn't going to help, playing video games that didn't cure this. So I took the step of accepting, you know what? I have no idea what I'm doing here. I'm going to go and check myself with the mental health services with my then medical provider, Kaiser, and see what they say.  I get handed the diagnosis of severe anxiety and mild depression at the time, and it was definitely a wake-up call. Okay, this is a lot more serious than I realized. This is going to take a lot more effort, energy, and time to heal from and learn to manage than I originally thought. And so that led ultimately to me investing time in therapy, in journaling and meditation and all of these fundamentals that I encourage everybody out there to practice regardless of how they feel their mental health is, because I think it's just a good balance, especially in our day and age of being constantly overstimulated, speaking of TikTok, Bree, that's what that app is. And eventually it came to a point where I felt like I was gaining a lot more out of my time spent advocating and working on my mental health than I was doing the Big Law associate corporate job at my old firm, Wilson Sonsini, which was frankly earning me a big paycheck and looking good on a resume, but I didn't find the work intrinsically gratifying or fulfilling.  And certainly the culture was not one, in my opinion, that was steeped in innovation, pushing the envelope or prioritizing wellbeing. And that's not to say that Wilson specifically was bad, if anything, I think my old firm is excellent in that regard, but it's an industry-wide phenomenon, which I'm sure we're going to talk about in this conversation. So I ended up quitting that job outright, not knowing what I was going to do next, posted my mental health story, which I just described to you on LinkedIn, out of the blue and on a whim, no real impetus or motivation behind it other than if this helps one person, then great. Because I went through this and I think it's important for people to know that, and ended up going viral. I get thousands of messages supporting me, telling me that it made a huge impact on people's lives, and I see that there's clearly value here.  And I ran with that momentum. I went onto every social media platform that I could think of. I wrote articles about mental health, and I continued telling my story everywhere that I could, which led me ultimately to TikTok of all places, which at the time in 2021 for a millennial like me was, isn't that the dancing app for people in Gen Z? But it's very much more than that. And it's been the engine of growth for thousands of creators. And now being a creator, myself and attorney for creators, we can talk about that angle of its importance and relevance. But to make the answer short, Bree, I think the thing that led me to social media was the importance of advocating for mental health because I thought that it was important for other people out there who may be going through similar things that I went through to know that they're not alone, number one. And to know number two, that there is a path out of it and that there is a sense of community out there for them that welcomes t

  3. 04/25/2023

    Path to Well-Being in Law - Episode 28: Tara Antonipilla

    We are on the cusp of one of IWIL's most notable programming events of the year, Well-Being Week in Law, and we have a very special guest with us today to talk about one of IWIL's highest priorities. That's Tara Antonipillai, who is serving this year as our Chair of Well-Being Week in Law. — Transcript: Chris Newbold:  Hello and welcome to this special edition of the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast. My name is Chris Newbold and I'm here with my co-host Bree Buchanan. Bree, how's it going?  Bree Buchanan:  Great, Chris. How are you?  Chris Newbold:  Good. I'm actually pretty excited actually because we are on the cusp of one of IWIL's most notable programming events of the year, Well-Being Week in Law, and we have a very special guest with us today to talk about one of IWIL's highest priorities. That's Tara Antonipillai, who is serving this year as our Chair of Well-Being Week in Law. Tara, how's it going?  Tara Antonipillai:  I'm great. Thanks for having me, Chris and Bree. It's nice to be here.  Chris Newbold:  Yeah. So let's first of all get right to the dates. Tara, when are we queued up to go on Well-Being Week in Law for 2023?  Tara Antonipillai:  Well, Well-Being Week in Law is exactly two weeks away. So it's May 1st through the 5th, 2023, Monday through Friday.  Bree Buchanan:  And what amazes me is that this is our fourth annual, boy as time go by. So tell us, Tara, is how this week is structured, how is it set up?  Tara Antonipillai:  Sure. So just a little bit of background. Well-Being Week in Law occurs the first week of May to launch Mental Health Awareness Month. So it is meant to focus on folks in the legal profession who may be struggling with mental health and alcohol use disorders, but also on those that while not dealing with a diagnosable illness, may not be fully thriving in their work in their life. So the aim of this is really to raise awareness about mental health and encourage action and innovation across our profession. So the week is structured in themes. So each day has a theme and as you look through it, you can see Monday is physical wellbeing, Tuesday is spiritual wellbeing, Wednesday is career or work wellbeing. Thursday is social wellbeing and Friday is emotional wellbeing.  Bree Buchanan:  Wonderful.  Chris Newbold:  I was going to say, one of the things that I think is really awesome about this particular week, and I want to give a lot of credit to the founder of this particular week, and that was Anne Bradford back several years ago. She said, "Listen, if we can get a date on the calendar in which we can shine the light on wellbeing as an issue, we can organize around that. We can talk about issues, we can set out the welcome mat, so to speak, to organizations, law firms and individuals to advance the dialogue." And it certainly feels, Tara, like that concept has really worked and worked well. And we continue to see growth in this opportunity.  Tara Antonipillai:  That is definitely true. I mean, we owe a huge debt to Ann for both the idea and also for the structure and many, many of the resources that serve as the foundation for Well-Being Week in Law. She put a tremendous amount of her intellectual capabilities and her really just her hard work into this and so to build it into what it is today. And I think we should be thankful to her and I think she's very happy to see what Well-Being Week in Law has become.  Bree Buchanan:  And Tara, one of the things that is so amazing about this... Well, two things. It's free for everybody, but also the amount of resources that are available on our website, lawyerwellbeing.net. Can you talk a little bit about what some of those resources are and how people can have their own Well-Being Week in Law?  Tara Antonipillai:  Yeah, for sure. So the way that we have set up the website is so that really it's a hub for folks to plan their own Well-Being Week in Law if you happen to be inside an organization or if you are an individual to participate in Well-Being Week in Law using the resources that are there. So each day there is a live event. So we sponsor one live event each day this year. Those are at 1:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time, each day for 60 minutes. And they key to the daily themes. Those webinars are free to participate in, although you do have to just register so that you get the link.  And then we also have daily posts, which are very popular. Those are great for people who might be very busy. They have some really small things that again, are related to the daily themes. So each day there is a read this watch or listen to this and do this item. So those are meant to be small things that you can do to improve that element of wellbeing. And then the other thing that is on the website are a tremendous amount of activity guides and really detailed planning guides for organizations, for bar associations as to how they might go about organizing a Well-Being Week in Law inside their organization.  Bree Buchanan:  So Tara, I was just going to say, what's the first step to get involved? What are we asking folks to do?  Tara Antonipillai:  Yeah. So the best thing that you can do is, you can register as an individual or you can register as an organization. And that allows us to directly funnel the information to you, send all of the webinar information to you and make sure you receive all of the daily posts as well as access to the webinars. And then the other thing is if you'd rather not register, it's not required, it is free, but you can also go ahead and just start to check out the website and see what you find. One of our other really popular resources that's been updated for this year is the Mental Health Awareness Month calendar. And many, many people and organizations have told me that they use that calendar extensively throughout the month of May. It is linked to a lot of our resources. It includes an activity, something small each day that people can do to improve or focus on their mental health and wellbeing. So really that's just another way that you can use what we have available in a way that suits you.  Chris Newbold:  So again, just to reiterate there, all of the resources for Wellbeing and Law Week are on the lawyerwellbeing.net website. I think everything is easily accessible through a click in the upper right-hand corner of that. Tara, I think it's fair to say that once they click on that, there's then a pathway to say, are you an organization? Are you an individual? You pick your journey so to speak. And I think one of the things, and I know that we're still two weeks out, but if memory serves me, we already have a over 150 different organizations who have already come in and registered to participate. That's an incredible number. And again, I think it demonstrates a couple of things. One, how much this issue is being talked about within the legal community. How many different types of organizations and stakeholders ultimately want to get engaged, and how many of them are ultimately coming to IWIL as part of us being able to provide resources to help them structure a very productive week in that first week of May.  Tara Antonipillai:  Yeah, I think that's really true. I have been really floored with how many people have registered. I think right now we have 172 organizations registered as of today. And it's fun to see how people are participating, which actually reminds me, we do have a participation challenge again this year that relies heavily on one of our sponsors, Canyon Ranch, who donates a really great three day prize getaway for anyone who participates. And all you really have to do is fill out a survey that's very easy to access online. You'll see it multiple times on the website that just says, tell us how you're participating in Well-Being Week in Law. And it can be anything from participating in one of our webinars to I've gone for a walk every day at lunch. It can be very simple and that enters you for a chance to win some really great prizes. So it's been very popular in years past and I expect it will be this year as well.  Chris Newbold:  Just give us a brief sampling of, because again, I think when we say organizations that are participating, I got to think that there's a real interesting diversity not just in diverse groups, but diverse stakeholder groups that are opting to participate from, I got to guess, law schools and perhaps regulators, insurance carriers, law firms. I'm guessing it runs the gamut because everybody is looking at the issue just from a different perspective or lens.  Tara Antonipillai:  That I think is very true. So even if you look at the first few on our list, we've got Akin Gump, it's a large law firm, and then we've got the Alabama State Bar Quality of Life and Health Wellness Committee. We have the Aramark Legal Department and then Armstrong Teasdale below them. And then we have the Brooklyn Defender Services and several law schools, the North Dakota State's Association. So just this really wide cross section of organizations that are not only participating but are collaborating with us to get the word out and encourage their members to participate.  Bree Buchanan:  That is really exciting. Tara, one of the things we like to talk with our guests about too is, if you could just tell us what has driven your passion for wellbeing and law? How did you get to working in this space?  Tara Antonipillai:  Well, I was a lawyer. I was a tax lawyer at a large firm in Washington DC. I did mostly nonprofit tax work and I have a lifelong interest in yoga and meditation. So when I stopped practicing law, I found my way, coincidentally back into law firms. My old firm, Arnold & Porter asked me to come back to teach some stress management programs and I just became super interested in it. I never really thinking that it would be a second career for me. Ultimately, I went back to graduate school and to

  4. 04/06/2023

    Path to Well-Being in Law – Episode 27: Nathalie Cadieux

    In the latest episode of the podcast, Chris and Bree sit down with Professor Nathalie Cadieux, Ph.D. with the University of Montreal, a specialist on the mental health of professionals in a regulated profession, to learn more about her national research project on the mental health of Canadian lawyers. Transcript:  Chris Newbold: Hello, wellbeing friends and welcome to the Path to Wellbeing and Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Wellbeing In Law. My name is Chris Newbold, I'm executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And we're excited to kick off our 2023 menu of speakers. And as most of you know, our goal here on the podcast has always been to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the wellbeing space and within the legal profession. And in the process build and nurture a network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. And I have, am always excited to introduce my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing? Bree Buchanan: I'm doing great, Chris. And I will just say even better that now I am immediate past president of I-Well presently. Chris Newbold: Kind of exciting news for us on the institute front that after two really incredible launch years for the Institute for Wellbeing and Law, Bree Buchanan was our president and in many respects also our executive director. And she was the one who steered us to just an incredible launch of the organization. And I know on behalf of our board of directors, Bree, a heartfelt thank you for that commitment. You're not going anywhere and I know that you're going to be actively engaged as we continue to move ourselves forward. But again, it's been a real honor watching Bree lead this movement in the United States. And I know again, her contributions, there are many on the horizon sure to come. Bree Buchanan: Thank you, Chris. That's so kind. Chris Newbold: Yeah. Bree Buchanan: It was a pleasure. Chris Newbold: And so the other part of that is then who did the baton go to? And, Bree, do you want to drop that news? Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. And so I looking at who would be the best person. We brought along, I reached out to Chris and he was gracious enough to agree to take the baton from me. And so I've gladly passed that on. And Chris is just the right person, the right leader at this time as we really start to develop a long-term vision. And that's something. He is a visionary and that's something that he's really great at doing. So after two years it was time to have a switch of leadership. And so Chris has stepped into that place, my podcast co-host. And I'm really excited about what the future holds. Chris Newbold: And again, it's an exciting time for us. Bree was really visionary in getting all of our leaders together back in August to kind of launch a strategic plan for us. And, Bree, I think it's safe to say that the pillars that we created in terms of the areas that we wanted to focus our work. And just want to take a quick minute to ensure that all of our wellbeing advocates are aware of where that's going. We've done such a great job I think on the raising of education and awareness around wellbeing. In fact, this is a perfect time to make a plug for our upcoming Wellbeing in Law Week, which is set for May 1st through the 5th this year. Again, contact us at I-Well, if you're interested in plugging into what will be just a fantastic menu of activities going on each day during that week. So education and awareness. I know, Bree, you've been very vocal about our need to continue to be a strong voice, particularly when we think about systemic opportunities for change in favor of wellbeing. And so we're looking at amplifying our advocacy voice. We're definitely also looking at on our strategic plan, the ability, which is the focal point of our podcast today. Which is elevating our research and the data accumulation to understand where the opportunities are, how we outline our priorities, and where we go next? So we'll obviously spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about research. And then the last part that I think is noteworthy is I-Well's opportunity to be a facilitator of dialogue amongst stakeholders. And whether that's wellbeing directors at large law firms, whether it's solo practitioners, regulators, professional liability carriers. There's a real opportunity for I-Well to bring these stakeholder groups together to advance action oriented plans to continue to move toward our ultimate mission of the culture shift. So again, really excited about the future of where I-Well is and where we're going today. But let's turn to the podcast today. And again, I've previewed it a little bit. That I'm really thrilled today to kind of broaden our scope a little bit and actually look beyond the US border. And we're really excited to welcome professor Nathalie Cadieux, who's an associate professor and researcher with the Sherbrooke University's Business School. Bree, I'd love it if you could, I know that you've met Nathalie before and talk about groundbreaking research related to the Canadian legal profession. We're really excited about the conversation that's on tap for today. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. And so yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting Nathalie at a conference in Canada a few years ago. And it really, what it seems, it's a Federation of Law Society's Conference, which is the bar there is organized a little bit differently than the United States. But we all came together, this was a focus on regulators. And out of that conference there were so many ideas around wellbeing for lawyers and it truly became an incubator for great ideas. And so it is so exciting to be able to report and bring Nathalie in to talk about what all has transpired and has come out of that one conference. And then just the beauty of being able to bring together passionate advocates and the law and see what can come from that. So just a little bit more about Nathalie. She is been leading a national research project and is the principal investigator on mental. Then this project is around the mental health of Canadian lawyers. And the project, the research was conducted on 7300 lawyers, which is a really great population group to get data from. And it's a two phase project and have completed the first phase and published that report and recommendations. And we're going to hear some more about that from Nathalie. So we are thrilled to bring Nathalie Cadieux to you, to our listeners. And Nathalie, one of the things that we always start off with is just to learn a little bit about the background of our speakers, our guests, to find out what has drawn you to this area. So how did you become interested in researching the legal community? Because you're not a lawyer but an academic and a researcher. And what makes you so passionate about this work? Nathalie Cadieux: In fact, Bree, it was at the intersection of several events that led me to become involved in the topic of mental health among lawyers and later among other legal professionals. Not many people notice, but I will tell you a confidence, Bree, I was in law school myself when I started my university and I left after only a few days. And I have to admit that it was really difficult. And I have to admit that the culture particularly and the pressure to perform and the competitiveness between the student, for example, killed my career intention at the end. And nevertheless, it was just a coincidence that I became interested in the mental health of legal professionals, because after leaving law school I began studying in industrial relations, particularly related to my interest in the labor law. And then I did a master's degree in professional ethics and I realized that professionals in a regulated profession, are subject to particular stressors on a daily basis. Such as decision making in complex situations, professional accountability, ethics, and ethical pressure. So I therefore did the PhD thesis to better understand these stressors. And my thesis demonstrated that the models, the stressors that we included to understand occupational stress or wellness in the knowledge-based economy, do not capture the complexity of the professional realities of regulated professionals specifically. So once my PhD was completed, I was determined to go back to the real world and to better understand. And as I began my career as an academic researcher in 2013, I observed a very significant increase in request to the Quebec Bar Member Assistance Program. And I therefore concluded a partnership with the Bar of Quebec to understand why, and later with the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and the Canadian Bar Association. So in short, to answer your question, these last 10 years I've been invested in the Legal community and there are so many challenges. So I could never think of being interested in another profession. So it's a coincidence that I went through a law school, but you can understand that today with the benefit of this perspective, it helps- Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. Nathalie Cadieux: Me to make sense of this trajectory and to be sensitive to the challenges that professional face from the moment they enter law school. Chris Newbold: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, today obviously we're talking about the first comprehensive research on mental health in the Canadian legal profession. Nathalie, tell us about how we got there. Who commissioned the wellness study? What led to it being a priority? We're just always kind of interested in the kind of how did you get to the point of idea to publication? Nathalie Cadieux: The following first study conducted between 2014 and 2019 in Quebec, in the province in Canada, in which more than 2700 Quebec lawyers participated. We were able to establish that a significant proportion of lawyers experience psychological distress and many are also exposed to professional burnout.

  5. 10/11/2022

    Path to Well-Being in Law – Episode 26: Jennifer DiSanza

    Transcript: CHRIS NEWBOLD: Good afternoon, well-being friends. Welcome to the Path To Well-Being In Law, an initiative of the Institute For Well-Being In Law. I'm your cohost, Chris Newbold, executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. Most of our listeners know why we're here. Our goal is to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the well-being space within the legal profession. And in the process, we're working to build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. Let me be the first to introduce my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you? BREE BUCHANAN: I'm doing great, Chris, thank you. I am so excited, you know, about this episode because we have just increased our staff at IWIL. I'll let you finish, but I'm just excited. CHRIS: Well, I was going to say that there's a couple notable things about this, right? Bree, you and I have been at this for least going well beyond five years now, but a couple things that I think are really unique about this particular podcast, first of all, our 25th podcast. I'm totally excited about just the incredible people that we have met on this journey. It's a reflection point, so to speak. I just think it's been a great ride for us as we've introduced people from around the country and welcome in new listeners to the podcast. BREE: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. CHRIS: It has. And then I think the big point and I think maybe a little bit of historical perspective is good to share with the listeners today that obviously the Institute for Well-being in Law started now just over 18 months ago. Really the intent was as a natural outgrowth of the National Task Force on Well-Being in Law was that we wanted to look toward a greater level of sustainability for the movement. Bree and I and many other leaders in the movement got together and we ultimately decided that the creation of the institute as a national think tank to be able to work and lead efforts on a national basis was the move. CHRIS: A lot of that was with the intent of being able to hire a full-time professional staff that could work on this issue, not just for the short-term, but for the long-term. Again, without further ado, we are super excited about today's guest, which is our friend Jennifer DiSanza, who is the first executive director of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I know that we are really excited to introduce her to our listeners, talk about the vision, talk about where the organization's going, talk about her own personal journey as it relates to well-being. CHRIS: Bree, why don't I kick it to you for an introduction of somebody who I think will be a pivotal leader, spokesperson. I know she's thoughtful. Again, we're just super excited to have Jennifer on board. BREE: I'm going to let Jennifer talk about her background, but I'm going to talk about as way of introduction how we got her to us. Like you said, there was this whole plan of how we were performing IWIL and then be able to fundraise and then be able to hire staff, and Jennifer's the first one of that. We went out and did a national search, really cast the net wide and far. We had over 80 applications to the position. It took us a good number of months to go through all of those, many interviews. Ultimately, I'd say at least it was a six month search process, we found our Jennifer DiSanza. Jennifer, we're finally going to let you talk now. JENNIFER DISANZA: I have to say, after that introduction, I feel like an athlete, like I should have had play on music or I should have some theme music, because that was quite the introduction. Thank you, both. BREE: It was really a buildup. What I was thinking is that in the old radio shows that they had the button you could hit with the applause. All that too. JENNIFER: I heard it all in my head, Bree, so it was good. But no, I appreciate both of you so much. It was a long process, but one of the things that attracted me to this, and I've told this story, so those people who know me who are listening know this story, is that I was really looking for an opportunity to be entrepreneurial. But I didn't necessarily want to go out on my own. For those people who can work for themselves, that's great. When this position was posted, I had been following IWIL because my background is in legal education and nonprofit work. I'd been following the organization and just wonderful things that I knew about it. JENNIFER: I had friends on the advisory board involved in different ways. I really believed in the mission. I have never felt so strongly about something as I did when I saw IWIL was hiring an executive director. What brought it home for me is so many people sent it to me because they knew what I wanted to do. It was a confluence of events, I feel. I am so grateful to the search committee, to the board, because I really feel like I'm doing my life's work here at IWIL. BREE: Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Jennifer, we're going to start you off the way we have started off all of our guests, which is to ask you about what are the experiences in your life that drive your passion for well-being in the legal profession and clearly you have a passion? Tell us about that. JENNIFER: Again, it really comes from my background and experiences. A lot of times you go through your career and you're doing things that you're well-positioned for, that you're well-skilled for, but not necessarily something that drives you past just an everyday job. From a personal standpoint, it really came to me when I went to law school oh so many years ago. Actually, not to date myself, this is our 20th anniversary from graduating. It's been 20 years since I was in law school. But from a personal standpoint, even before that, I struggled with depression and anxiety throughout my life, but law school was the point where it was at the most difficult. JENNIFER: I faced my most difficult challenges. I chose to go to school part-time while working full-time and getting my master's degree. There were a lot of different layers on that, but I really didn't have the resources. I actually didn't even have the language at that time. I was very much of the standpoint, "I got to get through it, I got to get through it," without really thinking about what toll it was taking on me mentally and on my health just in general. Well, I didn't realize the context. I was a first gen student. I never had met anyone that went to law school. I really thought it was going to be like graduate school. JENNIFER: I'd go a couple nights a week. I'd do my homework on the weekends. After being in law school education for almost 20 years, I realize that's an impossible thought. I incorrectly assumed that. It's no secret to those people who know me that I really did not enjoy my law school experience. CHRIS: It's so interesting when you go back and you talk to folks who have went through that experience. Some love it, some it was a terrible experience. That forms a lot of how you think about coming to the law and making some decisions about, "Boy, did I make the right decision here?" Jennifer, I think one of the things that's interesting I know as on the hiring committee that we thought was really pertinent was your career in legal education. Can you tell us a little bit more about your professional journey after graduating from law school that you think has prepared you for taking the leadership baton here and running with it? JENNIFER: Sure. I think most people are like, "Well, if you hated law school so much or didn't enjoy the experience, why did you stay there for an additional 20 years?" But the reality is that I was lucky enough to have someone at my law school who I could go talk to, and it made my experience better and I realized that I could continue doing that. I could be that person for other people. I had been in human resources, in manufacturing and well-being at that time, it was the late '90s, early 2000s, I had safety as part of my human resources responsibility and it was really about physical safety. There was no holistic approach to employee well-being. JENNIFER: But I took what I learned as an HR manager to law school student affairs. I worked at three different ABA-Approved schools. You get students. They come in as you find them, basically. Some of them have preexisting issues, whether it's mental health or substance use, whatever it is. But I knew once they got to law school, whatever it was either started in law school or became much more exasperated while they were in law school. Really over the years of working in legal education, I tried to focus on ways to make the experience better. JENNIFER: The majority of my time during those almost 20 years was counseling students or developing programs to support students in finding out better ways to handle their stress or their anxiety, providing accommodations for students. But I also think one of the things that's sort of a catch 22 in the legal education world is that we're preparing people to have resilience. I was just having this conversation with a law firm well-being person last week. Resilience in itself says there's something you have to be resilient about. There's going to be something difficult in this process. I'm not saying law is easy or should be easy, but we're creating this expectation that they're already going to find difficulty in it. JENNIFER: Well, we had to, in the law school environment, create these programs to deal with life after law school. The reason I love IWIL is we want to fix those issues. We want to look at it and say, "What's causing the burnout? What's causing the turnover so we can make it better?" Even with my last position for the last three years, I was working in financial wellness issues with law students, it's also better to understand the financial pressure students went in, why they went into maybe big l

  6. 10/04/2022

    Path to Well-Being in Law – Episode 25: Helen Wan

    Today, on the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, co-hosts Bree and Chris hear from Helen Wan, a lawyer and the author of the 2013 novel, The Partner Track, which just launched as a new TV series on Netflix. On this episode, Helen discusses her journey towards writing her novel, how to get other stories told, and how getting senior leadership to show up for important discussions on inclusiveness and equity can shift a firm's culture from one of competition to one of community. Transcript:  CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, well-being friends. Welcome to the Path To Well-Being In Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I am joined again by my great co-host, Bree Buchanan. My name is Chris Newbold, Executive Vice President of ALPS. Bree, I'm pretty excited about our guest today. How about you? BREE BUCHANAN: I know. We've got somebody who's really famous. CHRIS: That's right. That's right. It's always great to bring... I think it's fair to say that the legal profession in general, perceptions of it can be driven by media, television, movies, books. And I think that we are super excited to have a guest today that is really kind of sharing her novel was the basis for a Netflix series that is pretty popular right now. And so our guest today is Helen Wan. And Bree, if you could quickly talk a little bit about Helen and who she is. BREE: Absolutely. I would love to. And Chris, when you were talking about the history of portrayal of law in the media, I first thought of Legally Blonde. CHRIS: Yeah, Yeah. I always think of L.A. Law, right? Again, these are not oftentimes real perceptions of the legal profession, but the reality is people, particularly folks considering law school and other things, I think it does have, even going back to the old Perry Mason days. I think it does actually have folks look at the law through the lens, and I think the media creates some of that lens. So that's why I think this will be a really fun conversation, particularly given Helen's, the subject matter that she tackled based upon her own personal experience. BREE: I know, and I think of Helen creating this lens through which so many up-and-coming law students may see the profession. So enough about you, me, Chris. Let me talk about Helen. Helen Wan is an author and a lawyer and a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Virginia School of Law. She's the author of the 2013 novel, the Partner Track, which just launched as a new TV series on Netflix. Incredibly exciting. It's the story of an Asian American woman and her law colleagues as they compete in the culture of a prestigious global law firm. The book is taught in colleges and law schools and first-year seminars and ethics courses, and is used by law firms and companies in dialogues about DEI. And the book is being translated into several languages, including Turkish. I just think that's so interesting that partner track began as subway scribblings on a legal pad when Helen was a first-year associate at a large New York law firm. She writes primarily about how race, gender, socioeconomic, class, and culture impact am ambition in our pursuit of happiness, and I will add wellbeing. And Helen has written for the Washington Post. In fact, she has appeared on the cover of the Washington Post magazine, CNN.com, The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post among others. Before becoming a writer, Helen practiced media and intellectual property law in New York, both at law firms and as an in-house council. At the time, Inc. Division of Time Warner, Inc., A&E television networks and the Hachette Book Group USA. You could follow her on Twitter, @HelenWan1, the number one, and visit her website, at HelenWan.com. Helen, we will now let you speak. How are you? Welcome to the podcast. HELEN WAN: Hello. Thank you both for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here. BREE: Yeah, it's so great. And so Helen, I'm going to jump in and ask you just the question that we really like to start off our podcast, to take us into a place that is personal and just in our background and where we come from and how we see the world. So tell us about what are the experiences in your life that made you care about and be, I would say, even passionate about the wellbeing of those and the legal profession, particularly those from a diverse background? HELEN WAN: Sure. Well, just by way of a little background about how I even came to law school, I was born in California, but raised on the East Coast. And I went, went to undergrad in Massachusetts and then I went directly to law school. And it wasn't based on any sort of burning desire to be Perry Mason that I went directly to law school. It really was that when I was a senior trying to decide on a career path. I grew up the eldest child of first-generation Chinese American immigrants. And so there were certain kind of family-approved or culturally or society-approved careers such as law, medicine, engineering, finance, accounting. I was trying to decide on a career path and I thought, well, what is it that I'm passionate about? And it was words, working with words. And so truly, the calculus was not much more complicated than that. It was really kind of like, okay, well out of this group of careers, well, lawyers work with words. BREE: Yeah. Right. HELEN WAN: I guess, great. So I suppose, let me try the law school, the legal profession path. And I went and took the LSAT and I did well enough, I got into law schools and I picked the one where I knew I was going to get a good legal education, plus in-state tuition, because I had grown up in the northern Virginia suburbs. So there I was in law school. And then my first job out of law school was literally like Ingrid, the protagonist of the Partner Track, my first job was in the corporate mergers and acquisitions department at a large law firm in New York City. CHRIS: And Helen, obviously, I think a lot of law students, when you make that jump into that first career position, what'd you think? Did you like it? Did you detest it? Talk about your emotional mindset as you went and took that leap. HELEN WAN: Sure. So when I first landed at that firm, I truly didn't know what to expect. To be perfectly honest, I didn't have any specific expectations for that first job. But when I got there, I realized, "Oh wow." I might as well have landed on the moon because it was such a, to me at least as a young freshly minted lawyer to have landed there, it just felt like such an alien culture to me. And at that point in time, now, obviously, just to date myself, it's been decades and decades obviously since I have been in law school. But I felt like law school did not really prepare people for the cultural entry into your first law job. BREE: Right, right. HELEN WAN: Everyone there obviously had the academic goods, otherwise you're just not going to be at a place like that. But on top of that, there needed to be this extra kind of familiarity or knowledge of how the game was played, what rules really applied, and what rules nobody followed. And I just kind of felt like I didn't have the decoder ring. I felt like everyone else did. Somehow I was absent the day they passed them out. BREE: Helen, can you give some examples of that? Anything? HELEN WAN: Just the very, very first weeks we were there, they had us attend a very thorough, well-executed and beautiful orientation for the new recruits, for the new associates. And it was in a hotel ballroom. And the person sitting next to me, also, obviously another entering junior lawyer, turned to me and said, he introduced himself with his law school name and that he was on law review and that he hoped to, in three years, have done X and, in six years time have done Y. And then had everything all mapped out, his whole career plan. And I just thought to myself, oh wow, I just kind of want to get through this orientation week. He turned to me and he said, "Well, what about you? Where to you see yourself in five, 10 years from now?" And I said, "I just want to have found meaningful work and be pretty satisfied with where I am with my career and family, or what other things that I've chosen to do in life." And he said, "Oh, okay. Well, I'm in it to win it." He said to me, "Well, I'm in it to win it." BREE: I know that guy. I think we all know that guy. HELEN WAN: Oh, Bree, you know him as well? Oh, okay. It's a small world. And he said it totally unironically, totally unironically. I actually am still in touch with him, and he is a partner now. He's a senior partner. BREE: Of course. CHRIS: There you go. HELEN WAN: So it worked. BREE: Oh my gosh. Well, tell us about your book, Partner Track. HELEN WAN: So my novel, the Partner Track, which I think as you mentioned, was originally published back in 2013. It's been very interesting and I feel very fortunate that it's kind of gotten, I guess, fresh life breathed into it now, almost a decade later. I think, because there's more of a cultural lens focused on these topics, on these DEI topics now. It's timely. But I started writing the book because while I was working these 80-hour work weeks and I just needed sort of a creative outlet. And I literally started putting literal pen to paper, on paper, and I would journal about these observations and patterns that I was seeing, like who was sitting with whom in the corporate cafeteria, in the law firm lunchroom, who was being invited along on certain client pitch meetings and who was not, who was finding themselves spending good quality bonding time with certain mentors or sponsors, and who was not getting that kind of face time. So all of those kinds of things I began writing down as little sketches. And then when I found that I had a critical mass of sketches and pages, and I started showing them to a group of trusted friends, like confidants, who by the way, were not all lawyers, they were working all different kinds of industries a

  7. 08/10/2022

    Path to Well-Being in Law - Episode 24: Kori Carew

    CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, wellbeing friends. Welcome to the Path To Well-Being In Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. As you know, my name is Chris Newbold. I serve as executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. You know, our goal here on the podcast is to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the wellbeing space within the legal profession, and in the process, build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. As always, I am joined by my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing today? BREE BUCHANAN: I'm doing great, Chris. Great to be here. CHRIS: Good, good. As you all know, Bree is the president of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. Bree, we have some really exciting news to share about the institute and the journey that we're on to engineer this culture shift. Would you maybe give us a clue as to the breaking news that I think that we were so excited about? BREE: Nobody could be more excited than me because you said, you know, Bree is the board president. Well, up until this news, I had two jobs. I was the acting executive director, so I am just delighted to let people know we have hired our first full-time staff person and that is our inaugural executive director. Her name is Jennifer DiSanza. She comes to us with a whole host of experience in wellbeing issues and particularly with the law students. For many reasons, we wanted to bring Jennifer on board, but also strategically, we really realized that's where she's coming from is the future of our profession. And also, aside of where we know there's a lot of behavioral health distress and stress on the youngest members of our profession and the law students. So we're just thrilled to have Jennifer on board. CHRIS: Yeah. See, I had the privilege of serving with you Bree on the hiring committee. Boy, we have a dynamic leader now that will be working day-to-day to think about advancing wellbeing in our profession. You know, there's so much work to be done as you well know. We're actually planning on having Jennifer as our next podcast guest, which will be awesome to be able to just talk about the vision, why she's passionate about this work. It will also happen to be after the conclusion of some strategic planning that we as a board will be doing. So things are just really aligning well with both what has transpired, where we're going, and then focusing on what lies ahead in terms of some big issues that we have to tackle as we think about the wellbeing of lawyers and legal professionals in the profession. With that, today we're going to circle back to, we've spent considerable time in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion. You know, we had anticipated a three part series on this, but sometimes you extend an offer and you get somebody who's so awesome that you sit there and go, we have to expand this even further. Right? BREE: Along came Kori. Yeah. CHRIS: That's right. Along came Kori. And when Kori came along, we're like, okay, we're breaking the rules. We're totally bringing Kori into the mix. And so we were really excited to welcome Kori Carew to the podcast. Bree, would you be so kind to introduce Kori? And again, this is I know a podcast that we've been very excited and looking forward to. BREE: Absolutely. So Kori is a people inclusion strategist, an advocate, a speaker, a writer, a status quo disruptor. Got to love that. Child of God, wife and mother of two curly-haired, wise, energetic, fierce, spitfire daughters. Her family is multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-religious and spans multiple nationalities. She brings a fierce love of community and belonging that transcends differences to work, ministry and life. She loves to sing, cook, entertain, dance in the hallways at work, we need a video component of that, and read. Equipping leaders to be inclusive, to interrupt bias and disrupt the status quo. At her day job, she focuses on developing and implementing strategies for individual career and diversity and inclusion success, and helps organizations build bridges across differences and improve inclusion. BREE: When she's not working, she focuses her voice and talent on issues of gender equity and rights, inclusion, and human and civil rights, serving in her church and community, and cherishing her phenomenal tribe and community. She's energized by helping people live their very best lives. Kori was the Director of Strategic Diversity Initiatives for seven years at Shook, Hardy. And then she came over to Seyfarth and is now the Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer there and oversees their really spectacular wellbeing program, Seyfarth Life, and a whole host of other initiatives we're going to hear about. So Kori, welcome to the podcast. CHRIS: Yay. KORI CAREW: Thank you. I appreciate you inviting me to be on this podcast and also very much the work that you are doing. This conversation of wellbeing for attorneys is such an important conversation. It's one that we probably started having too late, and it's one where diversity and inclusion, there's more work to be done than time. I'm super thankful for all that you do and all that you do to help our profession be better, so thank you very much. BREE: You bet. Kori, I'm going to start off. We ask all of our guests a variation of this question. What experiences in your life are drivers behind your passion for work around diversity, equity, and inclusion and belonging and wellbeing? KORI: Thank you for that question. And of course, you're causing me to go down a bit of memory lane. You would think this is an easy question, but it actually is not. It's not as easy because it forces you to look in the rear view mirror and try to understand where the dots connected to where you are. Before I do that, I do want to make one small correction. Seyfarth Life is an incredible initiative at Seyfarth that I am super proud of and one of the things that energized me about joining the firm. It has a steering committee that leads it. It's four partners at the firm, all of whom have a connection to wellbeing and mindfulness. My department and my role actually does not oversee Seyfarth Life, but we do work very closely with them. Because as one of the founding members, Laura Maechtlen noted from the very beginning, there's that intersection between inclusion and diversity and belonging and wellbeing, and the two work very closely together. But my department does not oversee Seyfarth Life. So just wanted to make sure I give credit to the right people. BREE: Absolutely, give credit where it's due. KORI: You know, because they're awesome and they do great work. In fact, if I may brag on them, out of the steering committee members, one of them is the chair of the largest department in the firm and an executive committee member and co-chair of the national diversity and inclusion action team. Oh, wait a minute. No, that's not right. Three are office managing partners. They're part of this steering committee, this leadership group, because they actually practice wellbeing and mindfulness and meditation in their own personal lives and allow it to influence how they lead. So I know Seyfarth didn't pay me to do a promotion, but I felt like I needed to shout some guys out. BREE: Absolutely. KORI: Our talent team helps them quite a bit in terms of organizing programs and handling the administrative and logistic things. Okay. So to answer your question, what are the experiences? I often say this and it is true that when I look at my life in the rear view mirror, how I ended up where I am makes a lot more sense as I connect the dots in ways that I probably couldn't have foreseen. For example, I never intended to be a diversity and inclusion professional. I actually never intended to go to law school. I started my university career as an electrical engineering major. When I came to the U.S., I wanted to build planes. That was my thing. I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. I wanted to build planes. I loved science. I could spend hours in the lab. One of the best gifts I ever got was a lab coat. My dad had a custom drawing board built for me when I was a teenager that I carried with me everywhere because technical drawing, engineering drawing was one of my top subjects. KORI: So a lot of things make sense in hindsight. I look at my family composition and my sisters and I were all born in different countries. We have different passports. We grew up in Nigeria, a country with over 300 different ethnic groups with different languages and traditions and customs, so there's that. My family is multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-racial and there's just so much diversity there. You know, in the family tree, there's a granduncle that's a Methodist church bishop, and one that's an Imam. And my grandfather's father was a teacher, was a teacher of the Quran. And so all of that diversity is there in the family, but it probably influenced how my parents raised my sisters and I and how even through childhood, I was always the person who was connecting the dots between similarities between people. And today we would call that cultural fluency, this ability to recognize cultural differences and not judge them but just adapt to them and be able to say, okay, you know what? KORI: It looks to me like person A is looking through a lens that's different than person B, but they're looking at the same thing. So how can I get these two people to be on the same page? So there's that family dynamic. But another thing that happened when I was growing up that I do think influenced me quite a bit. I grew up in Nigeria. Most of my childhood, we had one military dictator after another. So I grew up with coos happening more often than I would prefer. There were times that things broke out into religious violence. You're talking about incidents where a few people are

  8. 05/31/2022

    Path to Well-Being in Law - Episode 23: Manar Morales

    Chris Newbold: Hello, wellbeing friends. Welcome to the Path To Well-Being in Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host Chris Newbold, executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. As most of you know, this is the place that we are welcoming advocates and activists in the wellbeing space, all intent on building and nurturing and national network of folks intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. Very exciting that we are about to wrap up our third installment of kind of a mini series on the interconnectedness of diversity, equity and inclusion and wellbeing. And I'm always thrilled to introduce my co-host Bree. Bree, how's it going? Bree: It's going great, Chris. So glad to be here with you as all always. And I'm going to go ahead and start off with our introduction of our guests today. So Manar Morales is a national expert on women's leadership diversity and workplace flexibility. She serves as president and CEO of the Diversity and Flexibility Alliance. She's a frequent speaker on workplace topics, such as flexibility, diversity, inclusion, women's leadership and individual strategies for success. Prior to founding this Alliance, she served as the ed for the project for attorney retention. And in that position, she led all of their initiatives, programs and operations. And we certainly know that attorney retention is a huge issue right now. Bree: She played an integral role in forming the diversity and flexibility connection, a series of discussions between prominent general counsel and law firm chairs, leading to best practices for the retention of diverse attorneys, including those working on flex schedules. She began her career as an employment litigator, representing clients in all aspects of labor relations and employment law, and has experienced litigation experience in federal courts and agencies as well as an arbitration. She's also served as an adjunct faculty member of Georgetown University has taught classes in labor, employment law and entrepreneurship. So Manar, welcome today. We're so glad to have you with us. Manar Morales: Thank you Bree. Thank you, Chris. I'm excited to be in conversation with both of you today. Bree: Absolutely. And so Manar, I'm going to start you off with a question that we asked just about everybody that comes on our podcast. And if you could talk about, what are some of the experiences in your life that are drivers behind your very evident passion for work in this space and the work and looking at the diversity, flexibility and its intersection with wellbeing? Manar Morales: Yeah. I would say that my work with flexibility really came out both of a personal, a very personal story with it as well as then a professional passion for it. I started when I was an employment litigator 21 years ago, almost 21 years ago that I had my first son and started to think about wanting to go on a reduced hour schedule at that time, which wasn't really prevalent at that time. And the experience that I had where it wasn't really thought that I could continue to be a litigator and continue to go reduced hours. And so it really came out of this experience of having to create my own path where I could continue to do what I was passionate about, which at the time was litigation and continue to do what I wanted to do in my personal life. Manar Morales: So over time I developed that career for myself and that path for myself, where I could do things like I could teach and I could... I found a firm where I could continue to litigate and also be reduced hours. And what happened over time was that women then would come up to me and say, well, if I could have done it the way that you did it, I wouldn't have left. And it really began me down this path of why can't we create an environment where more people could do that. And I really felt like for me, it was out of necessity to pull together what I wanted and what I viewed and what I called a 360 life for myself. And then starting down that path of, well, why can't we create organizations where more people have those opportunities? Bree: Absolutely. Chris Newbold: I'm guessing you're professionally satisfied at this point? Manar Morales: Yeah. Two more children later, I now have three boys. Three boys and a husband, maybe four boys. But yeah. So I think that really right now it is... I've hit my sweet spot of what I really do enjoy doing. Chris Newbold: Nice. Bree: That's wonderful. Chris Newbold: Hey, Manar, tell us a bit about the Diversity and Flexibility Alliance, how did it get started and what, as you, conceive the concept, what were you hoping to change in the legal profession? Manar Morales: I founded it in 2012, so we're at our 10 year anniversary this year, which is exciting. And really it was about, I think it was about bringing together... So for us, our sort of three pillars of the Alliance are community collaboration and content. And it really, it was bringing together a community of organizations that were really committed to wanting to have the conversations around diversity and flexibility and create real change, and each one at its own pace. So what's exciting for us, I think, in working with organizations, we certainly have some of our members who are the innovators and say, come to us and tell us what nobody else is doing and we want to do that. And so it's an exciting opportunity for us that we are thinking about, what would we like to see happen in the legal profession, in the corporate? Manar Morales: We're not just limited to legal, but that's a majority of our members. What do we want to see happening? And how can we create that change? And really partner with our members to say, look, I want to make sure you're having the right conversation, because I think so much of this gets derailed by not having the right conversation within your organizations. And so a lot of the work that we're doing is, let's make sure everybody's having the right conversation. And we have a set of best practices. We have a set of things that we believe should be happening. And for some of those best practices, it's what nobody is doing. And some are really things that we're looking at, the trends. So sometimes it's exciting for us because we can be creating trends and we're also monitoring the trends and looking at what's happening, and being able to share that with our community. Manar Morales: So like I said, I think, some of our members are the ones who are innovators and I can really see the change happening and we can introduce something and they're willing to run with it. And then what often happens in the legal profession is, we have some members who are what we would call those proven results, where they're going to look to what... Look to their left, look to their right and say, come to me when you have a trend here and then we're going to do that. And then there are others who really just want to be on the forefront of knowing what's happening and their culture will catch up over time. I think for us to be able to see those changes and to be at the heart of those conversations at the center of those conversations in organizations has been really something very exciting for us. Chris Newbold: And I got to think for a variety of reasons that business has been pretty good of late. Manar Morales: Yeah. So it is interesting. I think right before the pandemic, I was giving a presentation to a managing partner, round table, where I had about two hours. And it was probably about maybe 10 days before everything happened, where everything really did shut down and everybody went virtual. And I spent most of my time in those two hours really building the business case for flexibility. And then the pandemic happened and suddenly all of our conversations were around well, okay, well, how do we make this happen? We don't need to talk about the why right now, because we just really need to know, how do we make this happen? Manar Morales: How do we actually work in ways that nobody ever imagined. I couldn't would not have imagined that all of a sudden everybody is going to be dealing with a 100% virtual organizations. And so we very early on with our membership base put on presentations, how do you lead in a virtual environment? How do you succeed in a virtual environment? What should organizations be doing right now and really help to rally all our members and talk to them about, here are the strategies, here's what you should do, here [inaudible 00:08:39]. Bree: That's just amazing. To talk about having the right message at the right time and just being there on the spot. I mean, that's amazing timing, Manar and congratulations for that. Manar Morales: Yeah, Bree: We've definitely seen that with the institute. All the trauma and tragedy with the pandemic and the highlight around wellbeing and it's just made it for us so much of an easier conversation to have. Manar Morales: Yeah. And I think with our members that we're already doing some of... The members that are already really invested in flexibility and understood it and, telecommuting policy certainly existed long before the pandemic, they were better situated. They were better situated to be able to handle it, but certainly nobody considered or thought that flexibility would be part of their business continuity plans. That was never something considered as part of that conversation. Bree: Just reading the studies across the board, we're really starting to see how the effects of the pandemic and the isolation and just how long it has gone on has rained down so much harder on people of color and especially women of color. Based on the research and your observations, could you talk a little bit about why that is? Manar Morales: Yeah. I mean, I think that all of the experiences and all of the things that people have had to bear and thinking about the impact on women and women of color

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A podcast presented by the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, powered by ALPS

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  • Creator
    pathtowellbeinginlaw
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2023
  • Episodes
    30
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    Path to Well-Being in Law