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25 Years as a Lawyer: Life Lessons About Addiction, Cancer, and Resilience · Coopers' Code

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  Howdy, and welcome to the show. Groupers Code examines legal
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  issues and the practice in various ways.
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  And if you note that the intro here is a little bit different,
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  that's because this show is a little bit different.
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  And what we've decided to do is take a little bit of an
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  opportunity at the halfway point for my career to sit down and
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  talk about the areas that I've learned along the way.
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  And when I say halfway point, what do I mean?
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  I'm 52 years in. When you look at the math, I've
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  got 25 years that I've already gotten through in terms of my
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  career and hopefully you can't see the wood that I'm knocking
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  on. I've got another 20-5 more to
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  go. During that time I've had the
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  privilege of having some some great mentors, some great
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  partners, some wonderful colleagues in terms of who I've
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  worked with. I've had both good fortune and
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  bad. I've battled addiction.
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  Our family's been through our daughters cancer battle, we've
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  done extensive self work in terms of who we are and how we
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  present both to be better trial wares, better advocates for our
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  clients and just better humans. And we have daily opportunities
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  to learn, iterate and refine. So within that, there are
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  certain areas that I thought it would be useful that I've felt
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  have been Seminole in terms of our work and and the learnings
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  that I've learned from other people.
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  In that vein, a core area is knowing yourself in order to
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  know and help others. It is foundational to know
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  yourself and that involves a variety of of things.
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  Most people spend their whole lives getting to know
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  themselves. One way that you can help dial
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  that in is is take action. And taking action, you can
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  determine your own personal values.
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  This was an exercise that I did not do until about 6:00 or seven
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  years ago. And your personal values, there
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  are a variety of tools out there that you can use to to look this
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  up. If you Google it, they'll help
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  you winnow down. They start out with a whole
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  bunch of different things and long lists and you circle them
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  and you're fine, you're fine, you're fine.
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  I found after doing this that my personal values were wisdom,
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  challenge, and growth. And as I worked through it, I
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  also realized that a a fourth one that I didn't identify right
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  off the bat is joy. It's one of the things that I
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  seek in my life. Other methods for getting to
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  know yourself better are they're nothing new.
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  They're what some people might refer to as the oatmeal of life
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  or broccoli. If you like broccoli, that's
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  journaling. Writing down your thoughts
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  Doesn't need to be fancy, doesn't need to be lengthy,
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  doesn't even need to be in a journal.
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  Just writing things down with a pen to get the thoughts out of
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  your head and process through your hands can help you learn
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  more about yourself. Having time to reflect, whether
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  that's meditation, quiet walking, however you do it, and
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  reading and reading. Not just within the area of the
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  law, the reading stories, reading non fiction, reading
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  biographies, reading histories, doing things where you share the
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  stories of others and how they do.
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  An insight from this is that the self is is constantly evolving.
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  And one of the important pieces of this is forgiving yourself.
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  That when you make mistakes, you learn, you apologize for those
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  mistakes, you make amends and then you let them go.
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  One of the challenges for me is is carrying around that bag of
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  bricks of past harms that I've caused.
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  And when you carry those, they interfere with your day-to-day
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  ability to engage with other people.
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  So while not letting go of the lessons learned from making
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  mistakes, do let go of the guilt, the shame, the other
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  pieces involved. Establishing routines for energy
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  and self-awareness are also critical.
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  Different people have different ways that that works for them.
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  For me, I I find every morning that I do something active
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  before I do other things, whether that be ride a bike,
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  yoga, weights, short walk, anything just to get the blood
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  flowing is a better day for me. Those are days where I am I'm
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  happier. One way for establishing these
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  routines and becoming self aware is doing a little time
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  journaling. Take a a time log, keep track
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  not only of what you're doing, but how it makes you feel.
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  Scale it from 1:00 to 5:00, for example, and it you'll start
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  noticing patterns. You can even drop something like
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  this into AI and how to do the analysis for you now to help you
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  identify what are things, what are routines that help me be
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  happy, help me be successful. The tension here is not to let
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  routine become overwhelming. It's very easy to become so
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  regimented that one becomes sclerotic in one's behavior, and
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  that's something that can interfere with the whimsy and
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  the joy of the everyday experience.
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  I there are times where I don't wake up and do exercise right
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  off the bat, and that's because I have an opportunity to do
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  something different or I'm on vacation and that's something I
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  just choose to let go for that time.
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  The second major area in terms of life lessons is to do less
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  and to do less well, I am doing intentional pauses in this
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  punctuation. And if I were to spell it out, I
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  would be spelling it out as do less comma.
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  Well, a significant problem for work is that litigation is all
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  consuming. And there's particularly true, I
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  find with the plaintiff slurs that I hang out with.
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  There's this, yes, I'll help, yes, I'll jump in.
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  Gosh, that's awful. It may not be a case where I
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  generate a fee, but it's an area where I can fix it for you and
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  it will take me very little time, but it would take you a
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  long time to do it. There's your family, there's
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  your firm, there's fitness, there are hobbies.
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  All of these end up being 300 hours crammed into what is, if
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  you do the math, a 268 hour week.
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  There's really only one solution to doing this, and that is to
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  subtract You subtract it down to the essentials.
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  Why do you do this? An overflow mind produces
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  insufficient processing power. So if you're trying to
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  strategize a case and you're trying to solve four other
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  problems at the same time, what you'll find is that you'll do
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  many things poorly, but not one thing well.
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  A way to be able to do this is to create deep work windows.
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  These are times where you turn off emails, text, phone.
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  I typically will put my phone in another room when I'm doing a
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  deep work period. There are tools where you can
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  disconnect from the Internet so that you don't get pinged by
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  things. As a side note, I, I highly
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  recommend Calum Youport and any of the work that he's done on
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  digital detox. But turning off all of your
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  alerts so that you can just focus on what you're doing is,
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  is critical. The world will not end when
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  you're disconnected. There are so many ways that
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  people can get in touch with you in other ways.
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  And so having that time, that commitment to, to really digging
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  in and thinking is, is critical to doing the big problem sets
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  that we in our business tend to do.
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  The final piece of this is learning how to say no politely.
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  And that that is a challenge. So a way to do this is to get in
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  the habit of never saying yes immediately when someone
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  approaches you with a new thing, an opportunity.
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  Say, for example, you're asked to be on the board of an
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  organization. It's an honor.
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  And the tendency might be to say yes without realizing how much
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  that's going to impact the other things that are already on your
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  plate. So if you default to saying,
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  I'll think about that, it's a lot easier than to say I've
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  thought about it. It is important to me to only do
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  things where I'm 100% able to commit, and I have too many
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  things going on in my life right now with my work and my family.
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  I'm going to have to say no from now.
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  It's something that I might be interested in doing in another
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  five years. That's an easy way to say no
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  thanks in the moment. The third area of, of wisdom
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  learning along the way is that there is a balance and a flow to
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  life. Some people refer to this as as
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  harmony. And why do I bring this up?
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  I bring this up because there have been periods where people
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  have worked insane hours and that's been the expectation.
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  There have been periods where people have come in and said,
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  tell me about your work life balance.
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  And the expectation there usually is that they don't want
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  to work in the same hours as a litigator as a trial.
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  Where what I've come down to is that there is no such thing as
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  work life balance. There is only balance or
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  harmony. There are times where one will
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  be unbalanced on one side and there will be times when one
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  will be unbalanced on the other side.
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  An example as one's getting ready for trial 1 might be
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  putting in, you know, eighty 9000 plus hours a week into work
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  for the trial prep and trial itself.
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  At that point, your exercise, your family life, your all your
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  other things, they're way out of balance.
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  There may be other times where a case settles just before trial
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  is about to start and you have the next three or four weeks
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  blocked out because you're supposed to be in trial.
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  Suddenly there's an opportunity to rebalance.
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  So there are times where you are all in on one thing and all in
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  on another. Overall, there's a fluidity of
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  back and forth. Being out of balance is OK
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  Balance returns with that pendulum swing.
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  And there are times where one should take the opportunity to
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  be quiet, to be calm, and to be in, in essence, in a phase of
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  retreat to restore one's energy. The 4th area of wisdom is to
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  surf life's sets. And for those who've been in the
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  ocean for any period of time, you'll notice that they'll be
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  regular small waves, small waves, small waves.
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  And then every so often, every 5 to 10 minutes, a a set will come
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  in a series of larger waves. The universe creates patterns
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  and creates energy, and one will notice in one's practice and in
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  one's life that there are moments when everything hits.
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  Momentum is just going. Everything pops off.
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  These are the the periods where where it's time to go all in.
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  It's a time to be out of balance and just grab that momentum and
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  use it to propel yourself forward.
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  Use that energy for effortless motion.
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  There will also be times when that momentum dies and it feels
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  like 1 is fighting the sea. What I've learned from this
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  initially was I would just keep fighting the sea, and an analogy
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  here as we're conching with the ocean analogies is the riptide.
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  If you try and swim directly against the riptide, you will
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  eventually run out of energy and you'll be sucked out to the
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  ocean and you will drop. If you swim parallel to the
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  coast during the riptide, you'll get yourself out of that RIP and
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  you'll find yourself in a different position and you won't
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  have to put more effort. In my sense, when that momentum
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  dies is to not waste the energy fighting it directly.
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  See if there's another way, you know, can you get out of that
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  doldrum in another way? It is also time to surrender,
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  surrender, reflect, retool, rest and know that in that pendulum
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  swing of energy, that momentum will return.
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  The 5th area that that I've learned along the way is that it
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  is challenging in our social circle not to make comparisons
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  to others. So here in your social circle of
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  lawyers, family, friends, do everything in your power to
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  avoid making comparisons. It only brings misery.
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  There will always be someone more successful.
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  There will always be someone less successful.
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  When you see a great verdict, don't think to yourself, you
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  know, there goes somebody with their firm and they're they're
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  just going to the moon. Think about the fact that that
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  great verdict lifts all of our boats in terms of what's
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  happening in our field and with insurance companies and
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  defendants and defense counsel. Same is true in terms of looking
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  down at others. There will always be people,
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  people less successful. And if you feel the need to to
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  gloat, it will not carry you forward.
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  The tension here in terms of avoiding comparisons is that one
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  of the ways that we get great is by picking skilled adversaries.
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  And what do I mean by that? Because it's in a lot of our
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  cases, we don't really pick who our opponents are.
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  The insurance company assigns an attorney with the defendant,
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  selects a lawyer and we're up against whoever we're up
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  against. When I say pick skilled
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  adversaries, I am suggesting that even within our field, we
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  are in competition with the people that we do business with
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  and and in the same area. So if you are running a firm,
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  consider who else is in that area and look at who is running
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  the best from around. Think of that as a competitor, A
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  skilled adversary and don't do anything harmful in terms of
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  relationship. It is a collaborative bar for
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  the most part, but one reaches greatness through challenge and
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  through seeing what others are doing and, and trying to to meet
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  their level. Competition raises that bar in
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  that same area of, of social focus work to develop deep
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  friendships. Here I reference Arthur Brooks
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  from strength to strength and and he talks about what he
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  refers to as deal friends versus real friends.
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  And once you hear the phrase, you almost immediately fill in
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  the rest of the information. We have a lot of people in our
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  work environment who we might have coffee with, have lunch
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  with, have a drink with. But if we weren't lawyers, we
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  may not be engaging with those people.
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  Those are our deal friends. They're still good friendships.
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  They're not the same as that. That depth of connection that
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  comes from a a real friend, a true deep roots friend.
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  Real friends transform life quality.
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  Now it's very hard with a busy practice and family to maintain
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  those friendships. It's requires regular effort.
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  It's almost like keeping a friendship flywheel spinning in
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  terms of reaching out and maintaining those friendships.
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  The ways to do this is to identify the people who you
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  start feeling a deep connection with and just keep keep touching
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  that wheel. And by touching that wheel, I
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  mean, you know, this is somebody who, while I was talking about
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  cases, I really, I loved what they had to say about Carl Jung.
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  I loved their thoughts on AII love that they came from this
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  background. I want to spend more time with
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  this person. I want to get to know them.
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  You can start reaching out more frequently and just maintaining
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  that friendship. And, and these are the types of
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  people who can help see you through when you have tough
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  times and help give feedback to you in terms of who you are and
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  how you engage with the world. Final piece on the on the social
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  area is have an exit strategy. What do I mean by that?
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  For some folks in our field, they love the job so much that
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  shortly after they stop, they die.
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  It, it was what Ward nurtured and fed them.
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  We've probably all seen lawyers who are like that for for a lot
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  of others, it. It's a combination of a passion
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  and a job, and those people may not be the ones who benefit from
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  going into the office until their dying day.
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  Try to figure out where you are along the spectrum and set some
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  landmarks for yourself to know when you're done.
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  Do you need to have a certain amount of money?
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  Do you need to have a certain thing?
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  Do you need to have done certain things?
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  One of the challenges in our field and with the reality that
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  even though we shouldn't compare ourselves to each other, we have
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  a tendency to do so, is this this what, what one might call
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  mission creep, that, oh, I'll retire when I've got $3,000,000,
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  five million dollars, $10 million, a $100 million as one
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  does it, there's a tendency to keep raising that.
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  If you love what you're doing, awesome.
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  If there are other things that you might want to be doing with
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  your life, it's time to start thinking about how do I cut
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  back? How do I alter?
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  How do I change my practice and and have that exit strategy so
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  that one spends time with loved ones.
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  Whatever one chooses to do, living fully and with intention
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  and loving is the way to win. Dying with the most toys isn't.
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  That's it. That's what I've picked up from
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  the quality people that I've had the opportunity to be around
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  over the last 25 years of practice.
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  I want everyone to to grab your calendar right now.
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  If you need to, to press pause to to look around for it, mark
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  2050. That's 25 years from now so that
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  you can be ready for the 25 year update where hopefully I'll
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  still be kicking and sharing what I've learned from all the
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  vulnerable people that I'll have the opportunity to work with
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  over the next 25 years. For those of you who enjoy the
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  podcast, we always appreciate folks who give us five star
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  reviews. If you liked this, I would ask
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  that you share it with a friend. For all of you doing justice out
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  there, happy hunting.