Lawyer Coaches

The Texas Bar Journal has a brief introduction into life coaching for lawyers here.  Not surprisingly, many lawyers seek coaching for business development (how do I find more/better clients?) and end up seeking deeper answers related to career direction, area of law, and purpose in life.  The article opens with this quote,

"I'm just waiting on my bonus check to hire a business coach and make plans to get out of this firm."  - Five-year attorney, mid-sized firm.

Comments

[Ed Poll]

In my experience as a law practice management coach and consultant, I've found that those lawyers who are unhappy generally have no one with whom they can confide about how to better serve their clients, increase the quality and quantity of client matters. When they do, they generally find both greater peace and increased revenue when they focus on their operations.

[Bill Dueease]

We have assisted a number of attorneys to look within themselves and discover who they really are, what they really want to do or not do and what their real integrity boundaries are then design and obtain their dream life, whether within the law or elsewhere. They have amazed even themselves. The key to life coaching is that your life coach will not change or fix you. Instead your coach will reveal you to you (As we say, you will become the world’s leading expert on you) so you can change the conditions around you to fit what you want, who you are, and how you want to live. Changing the conditions around you is much easier than you can imagine, when you KNOW what you want them to be.

Engaging a coach is the fastest, most accurate and least costly (in time, money or emotional stress) way to discover you. That is what your life coach will do.

[peter vajda]

The approach that has worked best for my clients is to look at themselves as a "person" first who, by the way, is an attorney. Not the reverse. From this reframed, "beginner's eyes" perspective, one looks at the values that drive their behaviors and bring them the greatest degree of happiness and upset. From this perspective, folks often gain new perspectives on their life at work, their life at home and their life at play, new ways of be-ing and do-ing...from a healthier and more honest and self-responsible big picture perspective, purpose-driven life, i.e., the "larger painting" as opposed to the limiting, narrow-focused perspective of one corner of the painting called "my job."
Very freeing, and enlivening.