Lawyer Wellness: The Elephant In The Room
A 2016 ABA study showed that approximately 28%, 19%, and 23% of practicing lawyers are struggling with some level of depression, anxiety, and stress. The study also revealed that between 21% and 36% of attorneys qualify as problem drinkers.
The problem is so widespread that in 2017, the ABA House of Delegates approved Resolution 106 amended the ABA Model Rule for Minimum Continuing Legal Education (CLE) to include a requirement for lawyers to receive at least one hour of mental health, substance abuse credit every three years.
After this 2016 study set off alarm bells on the mental health of the legal profession, lawyers finally started talking about the elephant in the room. These conversations started a movement to improve the health and well-being of the legal profession.
A Virtual Cookie Swap
In recognition of National Cookie Day, December 4, 2020 we are kicking off a 2 week long cookie swap. To keep our family and friends safe from COVID, we are hosting our cookie swap party virtually this year. But don’t fret: now we can invite all of you to participate!
What Will Be Different?
Instead of swapping our favorite cookies, we will be swapping our favorite cookie recipes, and our guests will receive a digital recipe book as a keepsake.
Be sure to submit your favorite cookie recipe by December 18, 2020 for your recipe to be included in our digital recipe book.
Wellness For Attorneys and Paralegals
At Beyond Paralegals we are all about working smart and avoiding burnout. Part of our success is keeping a strong mindset. To do this our team works-out together every Weekday @ 5:30 am and Saturday’s at 8 am. If you would like to join our workouts Join Our Community here (mention you want our workout sheets) and we will send you copies of our daily workouts.
In addition to this, we will be adding Wellness articles to our Resource Center from Ariella Coleman; an attorney who has dedicated her career to helping attorneys learn how to incorporate wellness practices into their busy lives.
Stay tuned to learn more about Ariella Coleman and her blog the The Wellness Esquire.
Knowledge Sharing Is Our Secret Sauce.
At Beyond Paralegals we created a business model around knowledge sharing. In fact, the success of our business depends on how well we can combine the potential of our team, the quality of the information they possess, and their willingness to share it.
For the past 14 years we have been fortunate to have worked with some really smart people on some really great projects. We are humbled to have clients that continue to include us in their projects. From each project we build on our processes and improve our services.
By constantly looking to improve our services, we have caught the attention of our clients. Our clients now look to us as a source for creating processes and procedures; guides; and other training material tailored to their company’s culture and brand.
Rainmaker Document Technologies is one of our Trusted Partners.
Our goal at Beyond Paralegals is not only to deliver exceptional work— but to make our clients look good in the process.
In our early day’s before accepting a new litigation project we had to map out the process to ensure we had the bandwidth to support our clients through trial. After partnering with Rainmaker this was no longer a concern— we can now accept these projects with confidence.
Rainmaker is a part of the equation that helps us make our clients look good.
Beyond Paralegals Is Happy To Be Working With Cindy Villanueva.
Cindy Villanueva is an experienced global marketing and communications professional with a passion for connecting people and ideas. She believes in the power of storytelling, and relishes in the process of creating unique ways to express a brand. Cindy is an inspirational leader and has a strong record of building high- performing global teams.
Cindy’s experience extends to brand strategy and management, speech-writing, presentation coaching, public speaking, and inspirational leadership.
Beyond Paralegals is happy to have someone with Cindy’s experience on our team. Cindy will be assisting with our personal branding, executive coaching, and public speaking initiatives.
4 Tips To Foster Company Culture.
Our goal at Beyond Paralegals was never to be a big company— it was to create an environment that attracts top talent and promotes ingenuity.
To achieve this we intentionally created a culture that energizes and encourages each other, fosters connected relationships and great teamwork, empowers and enables our team to learn and grow, and provides an opportunity for us all to do our best work.
Many companies don’t take the time to be intentional about their culture. As a result they have allowed their culture to be created by default. If your culture was created by default, it is likely that unintentional values or norms exist.
8 Tips For Effective Delegating.
Most of us have heard the maxim —you are only as strong as your weakest link. Right?
At Beyond Paralegals we approach delegation as a teaching opportunity. We use delegation as a tool to strengthen our staff’s skill set and invest in our staff. In return, we receive a stronger pool of talent to pull from in those inevitable crisis situations when we require —all hands on deck.
Here are a few tips we have learned over the years to help us delegate effectively.
4 Pro Tips For Increasing Your Productivity.
In our line of business we often hear that hiring the right paralegal /executive assistant is a challenge, because of the personal chemistry and one-on-one dynamics that are so important in this role. For this reason, executives will take our paralegal/ executive assistant with them from job to job.
At Beyond Paralegals we understand this dynamic very well and know just how crucial a good paralegal /executive assistant is to your overall productivity. Over the years our team has learned the best way to increase your productivity— is to protect your time. Here are 4 tips we use.
5 Effective Tips For Managing Your Calendar.
One of the biggest mistakes we see people make when it comes to their calendar is they give too many people editing privileges. A good rule of thumb is: the fewer people touching your calendar —the better.
Part of our job at Beyond Paralegals is to calendar and manage deadlines. For a select number of clients, we go beyond that to include being their gatekeeper. So we know a thing or two about managing and protecting calendars.
Having a well-organized calendar not only adds calm to your day but helps you find pockets of lost time you didn’t know you had. Here are 5 tips we use.