This week I’m in Dallas speaking at a law school orientation about aligning your career with your values and strengths. The same week, my daughter Allison starts law school.

A couple of weeks ago our family was in El Salvador, where two other young women are pursuing legal educa...

“I was fine all day. Then I snapped at someone over nothing.”

I hear that from legal professionals constantly, usually with a little embarrassment attached. Right alongside a second version: “I had the whole day blocked to work on the thing that actually matters. I never got to ...

Something important is happening in the way this profession talks about well-being.

I noticed it on the very first day of the Professional Development Consortium Summer Conference in Atlanta last week, sitting in a session where "shared responsibility" came up. I remember thinki...

I turned 50 last week. I almost didn’t celebrate it.

For months, I’d been meaning to plan something meaningful. For months, it kept getting pushed aside. Too busy with client work. Too many presentations. Too much on the calendar.

Then I heard myself say:

The legal profession has a language problem when it comes to emotional intelligence.

For years, EQ has been filed under “soft skills,” a category that in most legal organizations signals “nice to have but not essential.” Partners don’t make equity based on empathy. Associates do...

Most legal professionals I talk to can describe the feeling precisely, even if they can’t explain it. The day wasn’t unmanageable. The work went fine. But by the time they got home, they felt emptied out in a way that a good night’s sleep doesn’t fully fix.

This isn’t a stamina ...

For years, the standard advice on imposter syndrome has been a version of the same message: silence your inner critic, push past self-doubt, "fake it until you make it."

If you've tried this approach, you already know how well it works, which is to say, not very well at all.

Ro...

Somewhere on your team right now, someone knows something that isn't being said. Not because they're withholding, but because they believe that openly raising mistakes, blind spots, and missteps won't be met with support, but with judgment.

It's a dynamic that Amy Edmondson, a r...

In 2017, the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being published a report that made a statement most of the profession wasn't ready to hear: "To be a good lawyer, one has to be a healthy lawyer."

The report went further. It argued that well-being is an indispensable part of a law...

People don't disengage because they stop caring. They disengage because they no longer feel safe enough to say what they need.

It starts small. A schedule conflict you don't mention because you don't want to look inflexible. A concern about a case strategy you keep to yourself b...

Every legal team has someone who holds it together.

Not the person with the highest billable hours or the biggest book of business. The person who makes everything else work. The one who onboards the new hire without being asked. Who notices when a colleague is struggling and qu...

The legal profession has a retention problem. And it's not the one most organizations think.

Not a recruiting problem. Firms and legal departments know how to attract talented people. Not a compensation problem. Most organizations pay competitively. The problem is what happens w...