Attorney Wellness Boundaries
| Publication year | 2023 |
| Citation | Vol. 29 No. 1 Pg. 0062 |
| Pages | 0062 |
Lawyers with a strong boundary practice are able to reduce their personal and professional stress, decrease burnout, increase happiness, make stronger decisions, enjoy healthier and more robust relationships, and create more business and money.
BY TARA R. SIMKINS
News Flash #1: You are a lawyer and a human. Which means, you have human needs. Needs that must be met to maintain your well-being. Needs like sleeping, eating, exercising, socializing, spending time in nature, working on meaningful projects and having fun. Needs you often sacrifice because you are inadvertently being sucked dry by your technology or by prioritizing other people's needs over your own.
News Flash #2: You can meet your needs and serve your clients and family more effectively when you know how to set and honor boundaries.
This is why the Attorney Wellness Committee sponsored a Boundaries Workshop CLE at this year's Annual Meeting. Keep reading for some of the takeaways from the Boundaries Workshop, which will soon be added as an on-demand CLE if you missed it.
Setting and Honoring Boundaries: You and Your Technology
Boundaries are foundational to achieving work-life balance in today's 24/7, always on and available culture. When you think about setting and honoring boundaries, the first thing that may come to mind is your mother whom you feel guilty about not having seen all week, the work colleague who is adding work to your plate because he is not pulling his weight or the belittling counsel who requires every ounce of restraint you can muster not to give a piece of your mind"”all of which are workshopped for you in the on-demand Boundaries Workshop.
Learning to set boundaries with other people is important, but there is an often-overlooked area of your life in which learning how to set and honor boundaries could have an even greater impact on your well-being: boundaries with your technology. Unlike challenging people, you interact with your technology on a daily basis. Thus, the payoff is much greater.
Forty years ago, the practice of law looked much different. Courts closed for the month of August. Telephone calls were handled during office hours. Fax machines, overnight mail delivery services, cellular phones and the internet had not infiltrated your life or your practice.
Today, however, technology has eroded...
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