The blog of the NCBA Professional Vitality Committee

Ergo? What? My Aching Back

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The NCBA Professional Vitality Committee creates sourced articles centered on reducing inherent stress and enhancing vitality in the lives of legal professionals and offers those resources as a benefit for members of the North Carolina Bar Association.

By Theresa Joan Rosenberg

We lawyers are terrific listeners. But . . . do we listen to our bodies?

Many of us go into our respective offices – whether it’s in a spiffy office building, or, now, since last year’s initial COVID-19 “shutdown” – at the kitchen table, in a niche adjacent to a stairway, or the basement. Most of us log in to a computer and move forward with tasks of the day. How do you feel in your current workplace?

In 2021, a freelancing marketplace reported that about one-fourth of the American workforce will be remote. Two of five American respondents to a survey about working remotely since COVID-19 reported new or increased pain in back, shoulder and wrists.[ii] A digital health company found almost half of their surveyed workers had back and joint pain; almost three-quarters said the pain was new or worse.[iii]

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A Note To My Younger Self

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The NCBA Professional Vitality Committee creates sourced articles centered on reducing inherent stress and enhancing vitality in the lives of legal professionals and offers those resources as a benefit for members of the North Carolina Bar Association.

By Coleman Cowan

Life is a journey. We all learn from our experiences. And if we’re paying attention, we become better people and lawyers not only from our successes but also from our failures. When I first started practicing, I made an effort to soak up as much knowledge and insight as I could from older, more experienced lawyers. Now that I’m one of them, I’ve taken on mentoring roles to help young lawyers just beginning to practice. If I’m honest, more time has passed than I would like to admit, but I still remember what it was like to be young, inexperienced, and fighting for my place at the table.

What appears below is a note to my younger self, with a bit of knowledge and experience I gained since I started practicing law more than 25 years ago. The idea was to help young lawyers – and maybe some not so young – learn from the experience of others, and perhaps come to terms a bit with the stress and pressure of being a new lawyer finding your way in an adversarial profession, whether in a transactional or a litigation practice.

A complete list of guidance would be endless, and there are likely as many good pieces of advice as there are practicing lawyers in the state. What appears below is in part unique to my experience, but also broad enough that others might benefit.

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A Gift

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The NCBA Professional Vitality Committee creates sourced articles centered on reducing inherent stress and enhancing vitality in the lives of legal professionals and offers those resources as a benefit for members of the North Carolina Bar Association.

By Coleman Cowan

I started a trial on Feb. 17, 2020, four weeks before the coronavirus covered the Earth and began to shut down our lives. Before that, there was a week of pre-trial motions. For five weeks – and really even before that – I had long days, followed by late nights and early mornings. I was living week to week, and more often, day to day.

I try not to bring work stress home, but there was no hiding it. My wife Angie could see how worn down I was when I got home from court, knowing I still had several hours of work to get ready for the next day. Every night she would ask, “What can I do to help?” There was nothing she could do, but the thought was helpful in itself.

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‘Murphy’s Law,’ or How an Aphorism Can Sum Up the Legal Mind

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By Erna Womble

In the legal profession, we’re trained to envision and prepare for worst case scenarios. We devote significant time and mental resources to thinking about catastrophic outcomes. But how do we balance this often necessary professional mentality with our daily lives?

I had a mild epiphany the other day when I found myself prefacing an email to a fellow lawyer with the words “unless Murphy’s Law has prevailed…”

Murphy’s Law. The idea that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. (Or, if you’d rather hear Matthew McConaughey’s slightly more optimistic take on it, click here. But I digress.)

It wasn’t intentional on my part, but in acknowledging the prevalence of Murphy’s Law, I realized that I had snagged a common thread that runs through most legal minds. Perhaps many lawyers and judges, regardless of their natural proclivities or personality types, may share a chuckle of recognition at our customary professional pessimism.

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