Examining the Role of Thought Distortions in an Ethical Attorney's Practice: How to Control Your Brain's Automatic Thought Patterns and Communicate More Effectively

Ever wonder why clients, co-workers, or court personnel misconstrue you even when your message was crystal clear? Have you ever had to "take back" your emotional reaction to a communication or event? Can you remember a time when you overreacted to a message from someone else, which disrupted your professional life? Wonder why that happened? The answer is in this course.

Our brains have an uncanny ability to believe things that aren't true. When left unchecked, these inaccurate thoughts can lead to such negative outcomes as poor decision-making, ethical lapses in your law practice, all the way to severe depression. Both consciously and unconsciously, the tendency toward concluding inaccurate thoughts can provide clues about our underlying beliefs about ourselves and those around us. When events occur around us, we have an emotional response. When our thoughts are distorted, it results in distorted, and often inappropriate, emotional reactions. Learning to recognize your thought distortions and corresponding emotions will help you know when your thoughts are out of sync with the situation at hand. This awareness will help you avoid inappropriate reactions and improve your communication skills.

This course will explore hypothetical scenarios from law practice in order to explore thought distortions and teach attorneys how to apply a three-step emotional management tool in order to disrupt thought distortions and avoid inappropriate emotional responses and unethical behaviors when dealing with clients, colleagues, and the court.

This program will benefit attorneys seeking to become better decision-makers and problem solvers, and more effective communicators and influencers in all spheres of your professional and personal life.

1. Review the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility, especially identifying those areas of your professional life that are most at risk from "Thought Distortions"

2. Improve communication with clients (ABA Model Rule 1.4)

3. Identify "Thought Distortions" and how they negatively influence your emotional responses, interfere with effective communications, and disrupt your practice as an attorney

4. Assure your communications, reaction, and perspective with the tribunal remains accurate (ABA Model Rule 3.3)

5. Be confident in your communications with opposing counsel (ABA Model Rule 3.4)

6. Implement a 3-Step Process to gain control over "Thought Distortions" for more accurate emotional responses, develop more effective communication skills, and ensure that your work as an attorney lives up to the highest standards of professionalism and ethics

7. Exemplify excellence as a leader in your firm (ABA Model Rule 5.1) or step up to a leadership role (ABA Model Rule 5.2) as a junior attorney