Real Confidence: Essential Mindfulness Skills for Law Practice and Life

There are loads of books, articles, courses, and seminars intended to help us lawyers "overcome", "power through" or "conquer" self-doubt and imposter syndrome. When professional life changes as much and as rapidly as it has in the last few years, one wonders whether this is truly possible. Moreover, the ever-present factor of stress and conflict in law practice can make the idea of confidence as a lawyer hard to imagine. 

This session doesn't promise secret ingredients or magic bullet solutions to workplace stress. It does, however, offer a new perspective on confidence and time-tested and research-based practices that can help you find it and build it for yourself. Lawyer, author, mindfulness and compassion teacher, and founder of the Brilliant Legal Mind blog, Claire E. Parsons, will explain to you how the stress response affects how we feel about and do our work and how the tools of mindfulness and compassion can help you stay steady in challenging times so you can get the job done and feel better doing it.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify ethical obligations and the intersection of confidence, diligence, and competence

2. Reframe the concept of confidence from an emotion or trait to a process that allows for room for change, growth, and humanity

3. Discuss impediments to confidence and attorney well-being, including stress and imposter syndrome

4. Examine the ways in which mindfulness and compassion cultivation can assist lawyers in cultivating confidence in law practice

5. Explore and demonstrate tangible practices that attorneys can use to support themselves through stress, difficulty, and change