New CLE urges lawyers to rethink work-life balance
For lawyers caught in the high-pressure cycle of long hours, constant deadlines, and emotional fatigue, a new CLE video training offers a simple message — sustainable legal careers start with healthy relationships, not just with clients and colleagues, but with yourself.
That’s the main takeaway from “Work-Life Balance for Attorneys,” a free CLE presentation offered by The Florida Bar’s Standing Committee on Professionalism in conjunction with Community Legal Services.
Presented by trauma therapists Zac Dodson and Jesse Lyon, co-founders of Trauma-Focused Hypnotherapy, the course focuses on how emotions and the subconscious mind shape attorneys’ professional behaviors — and how unchecked stress can quietly undermine long-term well-being. Dodson and Lyon define work-life balance as “the ability to maintain harmony between your professional responsibilities and personal life, creating space for sustainable productivity and emotional health.”
The presentation offers tools to help lawyers develop healthier mindsets.
Lyon says especially in the legal profession, it can be easy to define success by professional achievement, “but if you focus on that, you are going to miss all the underlying things that bring you satisfaction out of life.”
Dodson and Lyon say people sometimes put the cart before the horse, implementing ineffective tools to find balance. The approach they advocate is to start by accurately identifying your mindset because the behavioral tools vary according to each person in the context of their goals, environment, and the situation(s) they are coping with.
They say the demands of the legal profession make work-life balance especially difficult because success often breeds greater stress and the “pace of work, grueling schedule, and constant deadlines” don’t readily allow time for self-reflection to ask, “Am I happy?”
And that answer can change. The path to happiness a person lays out for their life during law school might not align 10 years into a legal career.
They compare the need for self-reflection to the need for sleep, saying self-reflection allows you to process your emotional alignment with your life objectives in the same way that sleep allows you to process what you experienced during the day.
Coping with dysfunction is the premise of the law profession, say Lyon and Dodson.
“It’s not about ‘not having dysfunction,’ it’s about paying attention to whether or not we are OK managing it while you are accomplishing what you want to accomplish,” says Dodson.
“Work-Life Balance for Attorneys,” course #9378, has been approved by The Florida Bar Continuing Legal Education Department for 1 hour of General, 1 hour of Professionalism, and 1 hour Mental Health & Wellness credit.
