Junior Lawyers: Mental Health & Resilience Training
Besides the academic prerequisites for success in the legal profession, the relentless pressure and demanding work environment require exceptional levels of mental fitness and resilience. Along with the pressure of billable hours, intense deadlines, and the cognitive demands of the role, it often entails working closely with people in a variety of emotional states, trying to establish as much detail as possible to further your clients' interests. At the same time, modern-day work is global, and remote working means communicating regularly across different channels with people on varying frequency levels. Research from the last ten years has highlighted the health impact of these challenges and demands on lawyers' mental health and wellbeing at all levels within firms.
Furthermore, research conducted specifically on junior lawyers emphasises the notable gap between their technical excellence and the essential self-management skills required to thrive in a high-pressured environment. Regardless of what stage of your legal career you’re at, 2020 certainly demonstrated that sustainable success in the sector requires much more than academic and technical excellence. Instead, it is a lawyer's psychological, physical, and emotional resilience that has the most significant impact on their capacity to translate their potential into results.The good news is that while certain factors might make some individuals more resilient than others, resilience involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that anyone can learn and develop.
Unsurprisingly then, the National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing recommended that one of the most important things law firms and organisations can do to help build lawyer wellbeing is to offer courses, information and workshops on developing resilience. With that in mind, this course has been designed for TCLA members to support aspiring lawyers to achieve sustainable levels of elite performance by equipping them with the skills and understanding of how they can mentally and emotionally manage the intense pressures of the legal sector.
Your Instructor
Claire is one of the leading resilience coaches in the UK. After training and qualifying as a litigator at a Magic Circle law firm she retrained as a coach and has since worked exclusively within the legal industry. With her legal background she fully understands the pressures that fee earners face in their roles.
After a difficult traineeship, where Claire lost her father to motor neurone disease, Claire knows how challenging it can be to balance the pressures of work and life. She is passionate about empowering the next generation of lawyers to create sustainable success in their roles and to reduce the loss of top talent within the legal industry.
She is the host of Leading Mind’s podcast which has thousands of listeners each month from the legal industry.
Marie is an international trainer specialising in integrative mental health and positive psychology for peak performance. Her corporate background, breadth of experience in the health sector and a passion for harnessing human potential underpins her unique approach.
Marie's personal experience of health challenges during her time in senior management fuels her drive for empowering people to achieve sustainable high performance and fulfilment in their career.
She is a qualified Mental Health First Aid Instructor, NLP Practitioner, Nutrition Advisor and has led the design and development of multiple national health campaigns.
Marie Dillon, Leading Minds