Ed. note: This post is by Jeena Cho, a Legal Mindfulness Strategist. She is the co-author of The Anxious Lawyer (affiliate link), a book written by lawyers for lawyers that makes mindfulness and meditation accessible and approachable. She is the creator of Mindful Pause, a self-paced online program for creating a more sustainable, peaceful, and productive law practice in just six minutes a day. Jeena offers actionable change strategies for reducing stress and anxiety while increasing productivity, joy, and satisfaction through mindfulness.
For many years, as I traveled across the country, talking about lawyer well-being and mindfulness, lawyers would come up to me and ask about writing. I offer the advice that’s often repeated — just write. Of course, it’s never that simple but that’s truly the only way to write. As Anne Lamott says, write the “shitty first draft.”
Each Wednesday, I grab my journal and drive to Oakland, CA, where I sit around the table with six or seven other women. We are invited to radical self-expression, free from judgment. It’s free-form writing, meaning the only “goal” of the session is to keep the pen on the page and keep writing. Sometimes, I write long-winded complaints about life’s injustices or irritations. Other times, a memory, long abandoned.
The Next Step In Legal Document Automation
LexisNexis’ ‘multi-doc’ feature for Automated Templates will add new efficiencies to your practice. Here’s how.
As lawyers, we are perfectionists so doing anything “shitty” is terrifying. However, it’s through this experience of getting the words down on paper — good, bad, or simply passable, that we’ll be able to polish and slowly make our way to the final draft.