Valuing persons and communities in doing wellness for law well

Abstract

This chapter presents resilience as a personal quality that emerges from a dynamic relationship between the individual and his/her environment. Building physical resilience through regular fitness activities incorporated into lifestyle can establish a foundation for the next step in developing cognitive resilience. Sleep deprivation is widespread in society, and given the propensity of lawyers to overwork, it is common among law students and lawyers. Lawyers may be particularly prone to some biases, such as overconfidence, which may be facilitated by competitive workplace environments and client expectations. Representativeness' is a cognitive bias risk relevant to lawyers, and involves inductively presuming a cause is likely to be similar in size and nature to its effect. An effective strategy for improving cognitive resilience through minimizing biased cognition is mindfulness, a practice often associated with its power to moderate anxiety. Ethical resilience is the capacity of lawyers to endure the challenges and resist the opportunities to act unprofessionally in legal practice. Show more