Starting a new law job after law school is exciting, yet also can be a bit fear-inducing. This webinar offers a different approach to helping us address the understandable fears that may arise when we start a new law job. Instead of ignoring, repressing, or dismissing the impact of fear on our minds and bodies, let’s untangle fear. Let’s adopt new mental and physical strategies for stepping into performance-based lawyering activities with enhanced and authentic fortitude. Through understanding how fear affects our brains and bodies, we can enhance self-awareness, make subtle shifts in the way we substantively, mentally, and physically prepare for lawyering activities, and become powerful and impactful advocates.

1. Starting Your First Law Job:
Untangling Fears
Professor Heidi K. Brown
Brooklyn Law School
Author of The Introverted Lawyer, and Untangling Fear in
Lawyering
www.theintrovertedlawyer.com

2. My Journey Untangling Fear in Lawyering

3. Some of us grapple with fear. Let’s untangle it.
● Public Speaking
● Oral Arguments
● Failure
● Criticism/Judgment
● Mistake-Making
● “Losing” a Case
● Networking/Rainmaking
● Not Being “Cut Out” for the Law
● Feeling “Stuck”

4. (Not-So-Helpful) Messages We Hear About Fear
● Just Do It!
● Fake It Till You Make It!
● Get Over It!
● Face Your Fears!
● Do Something Every Day That Scares You!
● If Your Dreams Don’t Scare You,
They’re Not Big Enough!

5. The Science of Fear
Fear blocks learning and performance.
So messages like “just do it” don’t help.

6. New Approach to Fear
Instead of downplaying, minimizing, ignoring, or shrugging off fear,
OR lauding it as the world’s greatest motivator…
LET’S UNTANGLE IT

7. Let’s Lay a Solid Foundation for YOUR Success
● Acknowledge: This is just the beginning of a multi-decade career arc
● Ponder: What it means to be a “whole lawyer”
● “Know Thyself”: Your personality, productivity preferences, how you thrive
● Recognize: You are not going to know things; you are not going to be perfect
at this right away
● Reject: Cliché messages about fear (and what it means to be a “successful
lawyer”)
● Adopt: Four Steps to Fortitude

8. This is just the beginning.
● Think of your legal career as a multi-decade arc.
● The first few years of practice are your training ground.
● You are not going to know how to do a lot of things.
● You are going to make mistakes, even though you are going to try
really hard to do excellent work.
● This is just the beginning of a long trajectory of successes that will help
put periodic missteps into context.
● No lawyer is perfect. We ALL have made mistakes.

9. Ponder what it means to be a “whole” lawyer.
● Consider yourself a scholar-athlete.
● Athletes certainly focus on performance skills and train their bodies. But
the great ones also take care of their minds.
● In addition to diving right into our substantive and intellectual
performance, let’s set up frameworks for healthy brains, minds,
and bodies.
● Check out the Well-Being Tool Kit for Lawyers
https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/lawyer_assistance/ls_colap_Brafford_Tool%20Kit
.authcheckdam.pdf

10. Socrates encouraged, “Know thyself.”
● Give yourself permission to reject the stereotype of what a “successful
lawyer” looks like. Or let’s redefine “success.”
● Get to know yourself:
○ Are you an introvert? An extrovert? An ambivert?
○ Check out www.16personalities.com
○ Check out Erica Ariel Fox’s book, Winning from Within
■ “Big Four”: Warrior, Thinker, Dreamer, Lover
○ In what type of workspace do you
produce your best work?

11. Socrates encouraged, “Know thyself.”
● Extroversion v. Introversion = Energy management and processing of
stimuli
● Shyness/Social Anxiety: Fear of judgment

12. Quiet individuals bring important assets to our profession.
Source Attributes of Quiet Individuals
Laurie Helgoe. Ph.D. “Deep thinking”
Sophia Dembling “Active listening”
M.F. Fensholt “Creativity and emotional sensitivity”
Susan Cain “Alertness, sensitivity to nuance,
complex emotionality”
Steve Flowers “Empathy and compassion”
Erika B. Hilliard, MSW, RSW “Sensitivity to nuances, to subtle
differences; empathy for others”

13. Cultivate a workspace in which you thrive.

14. You’re not going to know how to do some things.
● Many practical tasks required in the first year of practice are not taught in law school.
● It’s also impossible to start off knowing all the substantive law relevant to your
clients’ issues.
● That’s OK!
● You do know how to research:
○ Treatises, bar journals, Continuing Legal Education (CLE) courses, “blawgs”
● Find an approachable mentor in your law office, and/or reach out to your law school
alumni office or local bar association to be paired with a senior lawyer.
● Seek out sample documents and examples.

15. You’re not going to be perfect at this right away.
● As much as we strive to avoid them, missteps happen in the practice of
law—to everyone.
● The best lawyers build character and fortitude by:
○ talking about mistakes to understand how they happen,
○ collaborating on how to remedy mistakes ethically, and
○ endeavoring to prevent mistakes from happening again.

16. Four Steps to Fortitude
● Comparative Fearlessness
● Mental Reboot
● Channeling Our Inner Athlete
● Cultivating a Culture of Fortitude

17. Step One: Comparative Fearlessness
● Recognizing other areas in our non-lawyer personas where we feel
“swagger”
● Are there areas in our lives where, by society’s standards, we “should”
feel fear but we don’t?
● Are there areas in our lawyering lives where, by the profession’s
standards, we “shouldn’t” feel fear but we do?
● What is the difference?

18. Step Two: Mental Reboot
● Consider the REAL root of the fear
○ Past fear of judgment? Past fear of failure?
● Listen to and transcribe the PAST messages we are applying in the
PRESENT
● Recognize their irrelevance in this new lawyering context
● Draft new relevant messages for our current lawyer persona

19. Step Three: Channeling Our Inner Athlete
● Enhance self-awareness  BODY SCAN
● Fortify our machine
● Align posture (like pillars)
● Balanced stance (like an athlete)
○ Check out Professor Amy Cuddy’s “power pose” TED Talk
● Focus on breathing
● Use our appendages
● Forge eye contact
● Project our voices
● BE THE BLUSH!

20. Step Four: Cultivating a Culture of Fortitude
● Be a change-maker
● Understand the science of fear and how it affects our brains and bodies
● Together:
○ Let’s debunk stereotypes/messages about fear, failure, and
mistake-making in lawyering
○ Let’s open up about fears
○ Let’s ask questions to avoid/prevent mistakes
○ Let’s cultivate character when mistakes happen

21. You are not the “difficult people whisperer.”*
If you encounter a challenging interpersonal dynamic in your law practice:
• stop, take a moment, breathe, and remember you are only responsible for your
behavior, not theirs;
• remind yourself of the work you have invested in doing the best job you know how;
• recalibrate your physical stance and stand tall (adopt your athlete’s balanced stance);
• consider making an affirmative assertion such as, “Respectfully, I’m striving to do a
great job but raising your voice at me is not conducive to my best work.” Or
“Demeaning me is not conducive to moving this case forward.”
*Quote paraphrasing Scott Stratten, author of the book UnMarketing.

22. Other Fear Resources
● Exhibit: Discussion topics for Untangling Fear groups or workshops
● http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/face-fear-dont-fake-it
● http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/fear_of_lawyering/
● http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/navigating-introvert-
hell-legal-networker
● The Introverted Lawyer book
● Untangling Fear in Lawyering book

23. Let’s Empower One Another.
If I really listened to my fear, I could’ve clearly assigned value to what
moved my spirit:
Writing.
Painting.
Pulling something from nothing.
Meera Lee Patel
Author, My Friend Fear

24. Let’s Untangle Fear Together.
Professor and Author
Heidi K. Brown
Brooklyn Law School
Heidi.Brown@brooklaw.edu
www.theintrovertedlawyer.com
Twitter: @introvertlawyer
Instagram: @introvertedlawyer