LAP Publications are released throughout the year featuring clinical information on important topics written by LAP’s team of experts for the legal profession.

For more information about LAP Publications or to be added to the LAP Publications distribution list for your office, association, or agency contact Shelley Sandoval: ssandoval@illinoislap.org

Developing resilience through practice, learning, and rest.

Resilience is the ability to adapt, learn, grow, and thrive during times of adversity, challenge, and change. Every person and group of persons has the potential to be resilient. Read on to understand the mechanics of resiliency in today’s legal practice.

Imposter syndrome results in people feeling like they lack the skills, knowledge, and/or competence to do their jobs despite years of education, training, and recognition.

Listening too much to your internal critic creates a cycle of catastrophic thinking. Click to read about the phenomenon, its cycle, and traits such as maladaptive perfectionism, high expectations established in childhood, and fear of failure. 

Feelings of anger, resentment, depression, anxiety, disdain for the practice of law are unfortunately not unusual in the legal profession. Judges, lawyers, and law students experience mental health and substance use issues at unusually higher rates than the general population.

This article identifies burnout in a clinical perspective and offers methods for identifying and coping with burnout as a profession.

In working with law students, lawyers, and judges we are often confronted by the high internal and external expectations that legal professionals face and set for themselves in their professional and personal lives.

Maladaptive perfectionism is a term that embodies the “refusal to accept any standard short of perfection” (Oxford Dictionary), viewed clinically as a multidimensional concept with several different components.

While anxiety can be helpful in normal amounts to motivate and accomplish goals, at its worst, it can cause serious impairment and can lead to feelings of depression, alienation, deficiency, and potentially thoughts of suicide…suffering in silence is not the answer. When anxiety crosses the threshold from normal to excessive, it’s time to seek help.

Mental well-being, everyday conversations, and achieving your best practice.

Throwing out the standard “how are you” script in an effort to move beyond mental health stigma. Identify, consider, align and validate your communication in your personal and professional life when it comes to well-being.