From Burnout to Bliss for Attorneys
Why Your Negative Thoughts Are The Key And How Positive Thinking Makes Burnout Worse
A Continuing Legal Education Self-Study Credit
Taught by Hannah Hembree Bell and Marla Mattenson
Why This Training Is For You – The Ethical Attorney:
As an attorney, you’re more than a professional — you’re a lifeline for your clients, often carrying the emotional weight of their challenges while navigating a demanding workload. At the Ethical Sales Institute, we’ve worked closely with attorneys, especially in high-pressure fields like family law and immigration, who have faced the all-too-common battle with burnout.
Burnout doesn’t only affect your well-being. It jeopardizes your ability to deliver exceptional service to the clients who rely on you. Just as our Sell The Way You Serve principle emphasizes integrity and fulfilling client relationships from the start, addressing burnout regenerates your ability to show up for yourself, your clients, and your career with purpose and energy.
Just like not knowing how to share, talk about, and sell your services to connect with clients who need them is prohibitive to your business, so is burning out and wanting to quit altogether – or becoming so overwhelmed and shut down that you are forced to step away, even if you don’t want to. If you’re not able to fulfill your services like a rock star because you haven’t recognized the early signs of burnout, you’re limiting your ability to work with new clients and serve more people.
Here’s a scientific truth that’s being studied more and more: positive thinking alone won’t fix burnout. This CLE dives into why your negative thoughts hold the key to genuine recovery and how recognizing, not repressing, those thoughts can lead to lasting relief. Learn how you can approach stress with real-time tools and awareness that take less than 10 minutes, enabling you to reclaim the joy, clarity, and success that led you to law in the first place.
If you’ve experienced any of these signs of burnout in the last 6 months, this CLE is designed with you in mind:
- Personal Strain: Your relationships are tense, and you can’t remember the last time you truly relaxed.
- Professional Overwhelm: Missed deadlines, client frustrations, and mounting anxiety are daily occurrences.
- Emotional Fatigue: Joy feels like a distant memory, and you’re short-tempered, exhausted, and tempted to walk away.
- Physical Symptoms: You struggle with getting enough sleep, overeating or undereating, or maybe you’ve even experienced heart palpitations or panic due to the stress of work.
If your career feels like a stress source you can’t escape, this CLE offers you a solution to move from burnout to bliss.
What You’ll Learn
By the end of this training, you will:
1.
Recognize Burnout at Its Core: Understand the neuroscience of stress and why burnout thrives in high-pressure environments.
2.
Leverage Your Negative Thoughts: Discover the power of your negative thinking, and how to turn it into a usable, productive energy source.
3.
Restore Balance Without Overhauling Your Life: Simple, science-backed strategies to improve stress instantly and reconnect with joy in your work.
4.
Align Your Career and Well-Being: Find the equilibrium that allows you to fulfill your clients’ needs while preserving your mental health, and remembering why you became a lawyer in the first place.
This training aligns with our leading-edge, complimentary polyvagal training “From Freakout to Freedom” and the 3 Core Principles of Ethical Sales — empowering you to serve without sacrifice
What Attorneys Are Saying:
“Amazing presentation!!! Loved it. Super applicable to all walks of life, especially us in City gov’t.
I was thinking (out loud), ‘Oh my gosh, I am not the only one who thinks like this?’ It was spectacular.”
— Robyn Katz, City of Austin Law Department
Legal Objectives:
Texas Rule 1.01: Competent and Diligent Representation
(a) A lawyer shall not accept or continue employment in a legal matter which the lawyer knows or should know is beyond the lawyer’s competence, unless:
- (1) another lawyer who is competent to handle the matter is, with the prior informed consent of the client, associated in the matter; or
- (2) the advice or assistance of the lawyer is reasonably required in an emergency and the lawyer limits the advice and assistance to that which is reasonably necessary in the circumstances.
(b) In representing a client, a lawyer shall not:
- (1) neglect a legal matter entrusted to the lawyer; or
- (2) frequently fail to carry out completely the obligations that the lawyer owes to a client or clients.
(c) As used in this Rule neglect signifies inattentiveness involving a conscious disregard for the responsibilities owed to a client or clients.
Texas Rule 1.03: Communication
- (a) A lawyer shall keep a client reasonably informed about the status of a matter and promptly comply with reasonable requests for information.
- (b) A lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation.
Accreditation Notes:
1. This CLE was originally taught as an in-person event for attorneys and was accredited by the state of Texas. The training references several Texas ethics rules. However, the training is applicable to a larger audience as the cited rules overlap with the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The value of this training is ultimately applicable for all attorneys.
2. After watching, you may qualify for a CLE credit in your state; if this interests you, we invite you to please do your due diligence and find out what the process is for your state. We provide you with the slides to facilitate this: click here to see the slides PDF.