Wyzga On Words

Q&A Tuesday: How Does An Empty Boat Help You?

Q:    What's the use of an empty boat, especially at trial?

A:    It keeps you cool, calm, clear-headed, and collected, focused on your case and client, impervious to the devious distractions of your opponent designed to mess with your head and throw you off your game.

One of the Dharma talks I listened to during the "Be. Here. Now." retreat I attended at Deer Park Monastery was given by a monk who referred tongue-in-cheek to himself as "Young Brother" although he is actually quite an old brother. He told to a story I had not heard before which traces its telling back to Chuang Tzu, a Taoist sage living sometime before 250 B.C.  Briefly, it goes like this:

 “If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff, even though he be a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear. If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing. And all because there is somebody in the boat. Yet if the boat were empty, he would not be shouting, and not angry."

His point was how to practice staying the course of calm in the face of some perceived action or word by another that might provoke us to unnecessary anger or rage.

So often it's our perceptions that make us crazy.  Zen Buddhism would say that most of our suffering is caused by our own perceptions.  And the notion of "colliding with an empty boat" is way to remind us that even if life is suffering we do not have to seek crucifixion.

In trial so often I've seen good lawyers go off the deep end because their opponent is just "messing with their head." If an emotion is true and serves you, by all means use it.  Those that distract you from the task at hand only dilute your effectiveness.

If you would like to read a bit more on the teachings of "An Empty Boat" click here to read David Nelson's post as he muses on the teachings during his drive home from our retreat on the mountain.

David's post is a good reminder that I have many many miles of river to practice.  At the very least I more fully appreciate a bumper sticker I saw recently that read, "When Jesus Christ said, 'Love your enemies' I think He probably meant 'Don't kill them.'"

Q&A Tuesday: Do You Love Your Work & Your Firm?

Q:    Do you love your work and your firm?

A:    In back-to-back articles the attorneys of Cravath, Swaine & Moore reflect on how culture and doing things differently keeps the firm and its lawyers together.

James B. Stewart writing for the NYTimes, "A Law Firm Where Money Seemed Secondary," reflects on his personal experiences as a new associate at the Manhattan Plaza headquarters of the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore.  Stewart notes with some affection the values that kept the firm together decades ago - and apparently does today.  Excerpt.

"Finally it came to me: The one thing nearly all the partners had in common was they loved their work.

This came as a profound revelation. Of course they worked long hours, because it didn’t feel like work to them. They took great satisfaction in the services they rendered their clients."

Eventually Stewart leaves the firm.  But he says that by doing so he was paying the firm the highest compliment.  Excerpt.

"You couldn’t fake this. The partners seemed to have some sixth sense. I enjoyed my work. But I had to admit I didn’t love it the way they did.

At times I found this mystifying. How could anyone tackle a complex tax problem with such enthusiasm? Or proofread a lengthy indenture agreement? Why couldn’t I love a prestigious, high-paying, secure job like they did?

At the same time, it was liberating. It was obvious to me that someone who loves his or her work, whatever that might be, has a huge competitive advantage, not to mention a satisfying and enjoyable life. Somehow people who love what they do seem to make a living. So I started pondering what I might love as much as some of my Cravath colleagues loved practicing law."

A turn of the page finds yet another article on Cravath.  This one by Peter Lattman, "Culture Keeps Firms Together in Trying Times," again reports the similar theme: a way of being among lawyers in a firm that to some may seem trite and out-dated is actually the respectful and business-savvy glue that holds it together.  Excerpt.

"“The big question was not whether she [Christime A. Varney] was a good lawyer, but whether she was a Cravath partner,” said Evan Chesler, the firm’s outgoing presiding partner. “Would she be a good fit?”

A few weeks later, the Cravath lawyers assembled and unanimously voted her into the partnership. She received no signing bonus, no guarantee, no special deal. Instead, Cravath is paying her according to the firm’s seniority-based, lock-step system, which sets the spread between the highest- and lowest-paid partners firmly at 3 to 1.

“We’re not going to buy a lawyer with a big guarantee,” Mr. Chesler said. “That’s not how we do things. That’s not the Cravath way.”

The Cravath way? Really? One might dismiss such high-minded rhetoric as idealistic poppycock from a white-shoe lawyer hanging on to antiquated notions about the practice of law.

But the Cravath way, and Mr. Chesler’s impassioned views about law firm partnerships, may be worth paying attention to at a challenging moment for corporate law firms."

As another class of law school graduates readies themselves to take the bar exam and enter the legal profession, they could do a lot worse than looking to align themselves with firms whose culture fits them, that they respect, that they can come to love as much as the work they will be doing over their lifetime. 

 

Listen Well - A Website Of Spoken Word You May Enjoy.

As was told to me yesterday by a long-time litigator, the law is not only a jealous mistress, she can be a lethal one.  Peace, quiet, a moment of serenity, the opportunity to breathe and listen are not often part of the litigator's (or litigation consultant's) lifestyle.  But we can adjust that.

You never know where you'll find an idea.  One of the delightful features of The New Yorker magazine is the side column advertisements, each one about the size of a postage stamp.

Here is a site you may enjoy visiting:

Listen Well: a spoken word website of stories.

 

Do You Really Want & Need That High-Priced Law Degree?

Hidden on a back page of the NYTimes instead of prominently displayed on a front page is a piece by Lincoln Caplan, "An Existential Crisis For Law Schools" that bears serious attention by law students, lawyers and, most critically, law schools. 

A few decades age you went to law school, took the bar exam, passed the test and got a job.  A good job.  One that would help pay down that $50 grand of tuition debt.  Like many other things in the legal profession - one of my litigator gurus predicts no more trials in 5 or 10 years - the promise of a job after law school has shifted.  Excerpt.

"Only 55 percent of 43,735 graduates in 2011 had a law-related job nine months after graduation, said William Henderson of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, who analyzed recent data from the American Bar Association. Twenty-eight percent were unemployed or underemployed. And at the 20 law schools with the highest employment, 83 percent of graduates were working as lawyers. At the bottom 20, it was a dismal 31 percent.

These numbers are far worse than jobs data going back a generation and should be a deep embarrassment to law schools, which have been churning out more graduates than the economy can employ, indulging themselves in copious revenues that higher tuitions and bigger classes bring in. A growing list of deans acknowledge that legal education is facing an existential crisis, but the transformation to a more sustainable model will be difficult and messy.

The number of law office jobs began to decline in 2004, well before the recession. And demand for new lawyers isn’t expected to grow much even when the economy recovers. Outsourcing of legal work to places like India and greater efficiencies made possible by smarter software to search documents for evidence, for example, are allowing firms to cut the positions of multitudes of low-end lawyers. In 2009, twice as many people passed bar exams as there were legal openings — a level of oversupply that may hold up for years. There is, of course, tremendous need for lawyers to serve the poor and middle class, but scant dollars to pay them.

Law schools have hustled to compensate for these shifts by trying to make it look as if their graduates are more marketable, even hiring them as research assistants to offer temporary employment. But those strategies won’t fix legal education, particularly when students are starting to see that a high-priced degree, financed by mountains of loans, may never pay off. The number of people taking law school admissions tests fell 24 percent in the last two years, to the lowest level in a decade. Law schools will be crushed if they don’t remake themselves, said Frank Wu, dean of Hastings College of the Law at the University of California in San Francisco. “This is Detroit in the 1970s: change or die.”"

TIP:    Law firms are slow to change; law schools are even slower.  It's up to you to decide what you want and need for your life.

TIP:    Do you cut your losses and quit or press on?  This post might give you something to think about: "Cut Your Losses Or Finish."

TIP:    A few years old, but the wisdom and observations are relevant: "A Lot Can Change In A Year."

Sometimes You Just Need To Step Away. And Rescue A Swarm Of Bees.

So there I was working away on business at the computer in the office when the call came.

A swarm had taken up residence in a plum tree in a backyard.  The family's two-year old toddler had been sitting at the base of the tree playing happily when the parents noticed what was over his head about 6 feet up.

I was told that the swarm measured about 18 inches across and 12 down. 

So now what?

Sometimes you just need to step away and rescue a swarm of bees.

I waited til mid-afternoon, suited up, put my gear in the trunk of the car and drove over to the home.  I gotta tell you, this was a beautiful swarm: healthy, quiet, peaceable, looking for a place to call home, raise their brood, have something nutritious close by to eat and a source of water to drink.

Before a swarm leaves the colony with the old queen, maybe some virgin ones, the worker bees gorge on honey.  Who knows when and where the next meal will be.  The queen is starved to slim down so she can fly.  At a signal, the queen and a number of her worker daughters leave home.  They may go only 200 yards away and alight in a safe rest stop while scout bees seek new real estate.

In this situation the bees are relatively calm: they are exposed, perhaps chilled, protecting the queen.  Of course, it's no excuse to go up and poke them.  But the homeowner and I stood just underneath the swarm and watched and listened to the quiet hum.

When I was ready to get to work as a volunteer bee rescuer, the homeowner and her toddler son watched from inside the house.  I like to spritz a little honey water on the swarm to give them a bit of food and distract them as they lick off their bodies.  I don't use smoke - there is no need.  After positioning a tall step ladder under the swarm I balanced a hive body on top and climbed up on the stone wall you see in the photo.  Once close to the swarm I gave the branch a big WHACK! to encourage as many of the honeybees as possible to drop into the box in a clump.  There was quite a flurry of bees in the air but they were not interested in me.  Many of them regrouped on the limb before they realized that the queen was in the box. 

Over the next hour we watched as bees stood along the rim of the hive box fanning their wings to let the rest know that the queen was in the box and they better hurry "home."  When I was sure that I had just about all of them I covered and secured the hive box, slid it into the trunk of my car and took the swarm to my apiary.  Finding a good spot to locate the new colony I removed all the screening and duct tape, reduced the hive entry to the size of a single bee so the colony could defend itself against any robbers, and then sat for a while realizing that at that moment I was the luckiest Lady Bee Wrangler in the world.

It's not a waste of time to break up the day, get outside, take in a breath of fresh air, listen to natural sounds, or even rescue a swarm of bees.  Our souls need such times.

 

Does Depression Have A Function?

It's no secret, there is depression among us.

Asking the question, "How many Americans suffer from depression?" pulls up a plethora of information, articles, research and studies.

It appears that many of us experience a wide range of responses from the blues to severe clinical depression.

A University of Virginia psychiatrist who has been treating patients with depressive disorders for over thirty years believes that depression is an evolutionary paradox.  Sierra Bellows reporting in "The Evolution of Depression" tells us more about Dr. Andy Thomson and his unorthodox ideas.  Excerpt.

"Since the dawn of the species about 200,000 years ago, humans have evolved in response to the environments in which they’ve found themselves. In Northern Europe, lighter skin helped early inhabitants get enough vitamin D during the dark winters. In places in Africa plagued by malaria, many people have a genetic mutation that makes them immune. Like all living things since the first protozoa, the human body has been shaped by natural selection. And evolutionary psychology suggests that the mind has as well. Evolutionary psychologists look for the advantages of different behaviors and mental traits that might cause them to spread through the population.

For more than 30 years, U.Va. psychiatrist Dr. Andy Thomson (Med ’74) has been treating patients, and most often he treats them for depression. Major depressive disorder is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States, and each year clinical depression affects more than 17 million Americans.

Thomson and his collaborator Paul Andrews, now at McMaster University in Canada, believe that depression is an evolutionary paradox. If it didn’t confer any advantages, it should have been selected against and occur only rarely in the population. What kind of evolutionary advantage might depression have?

“Depression, psychic pain, alerts you to the fact that you have a problem, stops business as usual, focuses your attention,and can provide a signaling function that you need help,” says Thomson. “Basically, it forces you to think. Now with all its stressors and the myriad ways of evading them, modern life doesn’t encourage you to think deeply. But thinking deeply works. It’s doing what the mind was made to do.”

Not everyone agrees with the theory.  Some take issue with the premise that depression helps in problem-solving and other executive functions.  Perhaps, as is suggested, we need to reconsider how we define "depression" and not lump everything from "feeling blue" to suffering from chronic suicidal ideations in the same basket. 

You may wish to read on to gauge the full range of professional disagreements and decide for yourself: What use is depression?

Here's my experience: I have learned when enough is enough and I have to step back from the rigors of the world.  I call it time out in the natural world or sitting on the curb to look and listen while the parade marches by.  I have expanded my capacity for empathy, understanding and compassion in the face of enormous daily global suffering encountered in the work I do.  I have developed resilience born of experience.  My mantra is, "Fall down 7 - get up 8."

Maybe the key is this: how we play the hand we are dealt to find something life-affirming in the grimness of a disease, condition or situation we did not ask for.  Here's an example of one man's return After Disaster Strikes.

Q&A Tuesday: What's The Rush?

Q:    What's the rush?

A:    Fill in the answer yourself.

Last week I was in New Orleans. For the year prior I had been working as co-chair of the American Society of Trial Consulants' Annual Conference. The conference was a huge success: more attendance than seen in the past four years, excellent content, and a whole lotta fun that folks can have only in New Orleans.  But I was busy.

What's the rush? 

There were board matters (I am an active member of the board of directors) to attend to, a long and tedious board meeting, speaking on a panel as a stand-in for a member who could not make it, meeting with trial consultant wannabees, making sure things were running well and smoothly, visiting with vendors, huddling with board members and attendees on other organizational issues, and the work that continues long distance while one is away.

What's the rush?

Coming home I was confronted by an article in the NYTimes reporting on high schoolers inhaling Adderall to get the academic edge that would assure them a college seat: Risky Rise of the Good Grade Pill.  Excerpt.

The drug was not cocaine or heroin, but Adderall, an amphetamine prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that the boy said he and his friends routinely shared to study late into the night, focus during tests and ultimately get the grades worthy of their prestigious high school in an affluent suburb of New York City. The drug did more than just jolt them awake for the 8 a.m. SAT; it gave them a tunnel focus tailor-made for the marathon of tests long known to make or break college applications.

“Everyone in school either has a prescription or has a friend who does,” the boy said.

At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and competition for college admissions are encouraging students to abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with students, parents and doctors. Pills that have been a staple in some college and graduate school circles are going from rare to routine in many academically competitive high schools, where teenagers say they get them from friends, buy them from student dealers or fake symptoms to their parents and doctors to get prescriptions."

What's the rush?

What I'm even more concerned about is what happens when these young people get to college.  What will keep them amped up to get good grades then?  And what happens after graduation? 

What's the rush?

A fellow alum from the University of Virginia raised this same question in an article published in the Summer 2012 issue of The University of Virginia magazine, "What's the Rush?"  A mother talking to her 6-month old daughter addresses the personal toll the pressure for success raise when we push the pace of life.  Excerpt.

"Seven years ago, when I was 25, I had a mini breakdown over my lack of accomplishments. I had just completed my master’s program and—gasp—had not written the book I was supposed to write. I had no city to call a home, did not own a house and could not have been more lost or confused. Later I discovered this was so common with my generation, that it was dubbed the “quarterlife crisis.”

The Internet has made it so easy to announce and seemingly measure success that our expectations of how fast we should achieve our goals have become severely skewed.

At the time of my “breakdown” I was living in London working for the U.N. Having this full-fledged panic attack about being a loser in life, I had no idea how many of my peers were having the same doubts.

Our desire for speed has distorted our concept of how fast our life should be moving. If we expect to save the world by the time we are 26, what do we expect of ourselves at 50?

What is even scarier is that many of my peers are actually doing it. Recently I was chatting with my college buddy Bilal Qureshi (Col ’04), who went to U.Va. and Columbia’s school of journalism before becoming a producer at NPR, all by the time he hit 25. We were talking about a friend whose ambitions had caused her to collapse. Her body had literally given up, and she was undergoing tests to find out what was wrong.

It made me think, What is the rush? What are we rushing for? What are we rushing toward?"

At the ASTC Annual Conference I sat in on a program about blogging and social media marketing.  I was reminded AGAIN! to make my content relevant, useful, substantive.  There was no mention of beauty, inspiration, joy, prosperity, life-affirming work, community, and the like.

What's the rush?

As the wise ones say, "Days are long but years are short."

Laughter Is As Necessary As Food, Air & Water.

 

No matter  who we are or where we are; no matter our race or creed or gender; no matter our skin color or language - we all laugh the same.

We just don't do it often enough.  Maybe we forget.

The older I get I find there is plenty to laugh about.  As a former nurse I can tell you with certainty that laughter is the best medicine.

Art Linkletter thought so, too.  Time out of mind Linkletter worked in a TV station playroom asking children questions and listening for their responses.  As you'll see, what made it all work so  well was how Linkletter made the kids feel: as if someone was really listening to them.

Here are a few that might bring a smile to your face:

Kids Sat The Darnedest Things1

Kids Say The Darnedest Things2

Kids Say The Darnedest Things3

If kids are not your thing, perhaps The Laughing Buddha might be.

Or, if you prefer puppies, have I got the farm for you.  Juniper Moon Farm and Day #1 of their three-week old Maremma puppies on Day #1 eating solid food.  Kinda reminds me of growing up with 6 siblings.

TIP:     Laugh well and often.  It certainly makes folks wonder what you're up to.

Dance And Be Smart.

Time out of mind I took every class offered by The Arthur Murray Dance Studios.  I competed in ballroom dance.  My favorites were the cha-cha, Samba and the waltz.  I had a pair of silvery regulation dance shoes with the kidskin soles that were carried in a bag and used only on the dance floor. 

As the story goes, my mother named me after her college roommate, Diane Blue, a woman who dreamed of becoming a professional dancer.  Instead, like many women of her time, she married; and gave up dancing.  I should have paid attention.  I married a fellow with no sense of rhythm and two left feet - and then my used-to-be-husband danced away. 

Still, I'm a dancer at heart.  I shake what my mama gave me at Zumba classes.  I love watching dance movies.  And Fred Astaire.

Imagine my delight to learn that 9 years ago The New England Journal of Medicine proclaimed dancing as the exercise associated with reducing your risk of dementia and making you smarter.

In a nutshell, here's how Dancing Makes You Smarter:

"We immediately ask two questions:

Why is dancing better than other activities for improving mental capabilities?

Does this mean all kinds of dancing, or is one kind of dancing better than another?

That's where this particular study falls short.  It doesn't answer these questions as a stand-alone study.  Fortunately, it isn't a stand-alone study.  It's one of many studies, over decades, which have shown that we increase our mental capacity by exercising our cognitive processes.  Intelligence: Use it or lose it.  And it's the other studies which fill in the gaps in this one.  Looking at all of these studies together lets us understand the bigger picture.

Some of this is discussed here (the page you may have just came from) which looks at intelligence in dancing.  The essence of intelligence is making decisions.  And the concluding advice, when it comes to improving your mental acuity, is to involve yourself in activities which require split-second rapid-fire decision making, as opposed to rote memory (retracing the same well-worn paths), or just working on your physical style.

One way to do that is to learn something new.  Not just dancing, but anything new.  Don't worry about the probability that you'll never use it in the future.  Take a class to challenge your mind.  It will stimulate the connectivity of your brain by generating the need for new pathways.  Difficult and even frustrating classes are better for you, as they will create a greater need for new neural pathways.

Then take a dance class, which can be even better.  Dancing integrates several brain functions at once, increasing your connectivity.  Dancing simultaneously involves kinesthetic, rational, musical and emotional processes."

 

TIP:     No matter how or when or with whom, your style or your size,  dance!

                        
                                                
                                                        

                                                                    

Q&A Tuesday: What Do You Do When?

Q:    What do you do when you think you've had enough?

A:    Dream radical.

Today is the day I am supposed to be writing about tips to use to become a better litigator.

I've been thinking about a movie I watched recently: We Bought a Zoo with Matt Damon and that rugged, raspy voiced heart throb, Thomas Haden Church of Sideways. 

The movie is based on the true story of Benjamin Mee who bought a zoo and still lives there.

TIP:    We're not here for a long time, but a good time.

TIP:    “This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.” Rumi

TIP:     Dream radical.