The Flourishing Lawyer - by Heidi K Brown (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book is about how all of us can thrive-in good times and in arduous periods. This book is about focusing on more dimensions than just our intellect so we can be prepared for, and rise to, challenges like the ones we have been navigating since Spring 2020"--

Book Synopsis

The Flourishing Lawyer offers an empathetic guide for members of the legal profession to cultivate their personal and professional well-being, identify and develop their individual strengths, and define success on their own terms. Drawing from lessons and research from the fields of psychology, health care, sports, and medicine, this book is an affirming guide to becoming a better contributor to the profession while living a flourishing life.

Review Quotes

The Flourishing Lawyer: A
Multi-Dimensional Approach to Performance and Well-Being, by Heidi K. Brown
(ABA, 2022) Lawyers are readers by necessity - and also by choice. President
Harry Truman once said, "Not all readers become leaders, but all leaders must
be readers." This column will feature all sorts of books that lawyers may find interesting,
both professionally and personally. Subjects will include nonfiction, fiction,
biographies, popular culture, professional development, and more. Ideally,
topics of books will mesh with the themes contained in the subjects addressed
that month in the magazine. For this introductory column, we'll take a small step
backward to address an important topic covered in the October 2023 issue: the
wellness and well-being of lawyers.

....

Another refreshing component to
this book is Brown's well-rounded approach to incorporate other disciplines
into lawyer well-being, including art and sports, to find one's personal "flow."
She's an avid boxer, which explains the heart-shaped boxing gloves on the
book's cover. The training exercises encompass all types of fitness - mental,
physical, and emotional - and call for the elimination of a one-size-fits-all approach
to legal education and training, and how success is defined in the practice of
law. She also discusses professionalism and civility at length, calling on all
lawyers to change the general tone of our profession, stating:

Of course, our jobs are demanding
and we're all going to encounter intense moments in which everyone is stressed.
Naturally we're all going to have bad days when our emotions get the best of us
and we say things less artfully than we should. But when that behavior becomes
a pattern, the norm rather than the exception, we must stand up for ourselves and
others.

In the not-too-distant past,
lawyer well-being was not widely discussed. This book is an important addition
to a new area of legal discourse that will, hopefully, continue to flourish.■

--Kelly Lynn Anders

About the Author

Heidi K. Brown is a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and a former litigator. She is the author of The Introverted Lawyer: A Seven-Step Journey Toward Authentically Empowered Advocacy (ABA 2017) and Untangling Fear in Lawyering: A Four-Step Journey Toward Powerful Advocacy (ABA 2019).