legal sanity

I’ve explored the connection between self and work in posts like this one on avoiding self-less lawyering and this one on valuing your self in the practice of law.

Last week, I received an email from career coach/lawyer Michael Melcher announcing the “birth” of his new book, The Creative Lawyer: A Practical Guide to Authentic Professional Satisfaction. I have the book (thanks, Michael!), am eager to read it and will review it here soon.

In the interim, you can sample a bit of The Creative Lawyer’s offerings in a post by Gretchen Rubin that asks: Do You Know Yourself? “Lightly” adapting a quiz from the book, Rubin poses seven questions to help us pinpoint what interests us. While they’re all important self-inquiries, the one that really resonates for me is: What types of activities energize you?

I believe that we can learn a lot about ourselves and our relationships by exploring what energizes and depletes us. This is an anchoring premise of my training and development programs for lawyers. It’s also a point that I highlight in an article on Critical Relationship-Building Skills For Associates that appears in the current issue of The Complete Lawyer.

Someone who has taken affirmative steps to connect her self with energizing work is this blog’s co-producer, Lori Herz. Lori started her own business writing and communications consulting venture a year ago. Last week, she launched her companion blog, Write for Clients. As she explains in this LexBlog interview, the blog aims to help service professionals better understand how business writing can be a powerful relationship tool that connects you to people you work with and want to work with.

I encourage you to visit Write for Clients and join in the conversation about writing for your business success.