Are you wondering how to manage stress in the legal industry?

The legal profession requires a high achiever. It involves a lot of work and the pressure to win in all battles you engage. It is also a profession treated with glamour but it takes a lot of hard work to achieve it. Such a professional environment results in a lot of stress.

A successful lawyer must find a way to manage stress. The stress is real for new entrants and experienced lawyers alike. It also affects successful and not-so-successful lawyers. Here are proven tips to help you manage stress in the legal profession…

Win cases

Winning is therapeutic. It makes the body and mind relaxed. It also takes away psychological and financial pressure. Winning will also raise your profile in the profession. A high profile comes with greater recognition and money. You use the money to enjoy the fine things of life and avoid stress. Win cases!

It is impossible to win all the cases you present to the court. Think of it like a batting average.

You will have the confidence to face opponents and convince the judge that your position is right.

Accept outcomes

The legal profession involves a lot of winning and losing. You will handle a high-profile case that throws you into the limelight, putting a lot of pressure. Your job is to do the best that you can for your clients.

Even a good argument is sometimes beaten. Do not succumb to pressure because of a loss. While you are allowed to lose cases, psychologically prepare for any outcome. You can’t change the facts of the case.

One of the ways to accept the outcome is by doing your best for every case, regardless of its profile. Read intensely and make mock presentations in front of a mirror.

Make all possible arguments in court so that you are not left to regret it. Consult colleagues and professionals regarding the case. If you are sure you gave your best, it will be easier to accept the outcomes without stressing about it.

How to manage stress- Evaluate your clients

Who do you take as a client? Clients will stress you or give you an easy time. Do not pick a client because he has appeared at your door. Some are just troublesome and will make unrealistic demands.

Choose the quality of clients who give you an easy time even with the most difficult cases.

Specialization is one of the tricks to land predictable clients. For instance, you will understand the mind of a criminal if you are a criminal lawyer, making it easier to manage them.

If you are a business contract lawyer, you have better experience handling such clients. It makes your work easier and more predictable. You can see a stressful client from a distance and avoid him.

Not only that but having a stressful client means managing a ton of work. It’s best to store all of your client’s information in one spot so you never have to think twice about where it is.

Having a cloud storage drive specific for your clients can help them manage stress, stay organized, and better meet their needs.

Built a strong social life

Life is more than legal practice. build a social life to support the hours you spend on the desk preparing for cases. Each evening, meet friends and family away from your legal world.

It helps you to blow steam and forget the legal jargon that is likely to stress you.

You can use LinkedIn to find and talk to other lawyers and attorneys.

Social life will also make you more insightful. If you spend all your time with lawyers and in court, your ideas will be similar. However, spending time with other professionals enhances your thinking.

You can understand more ideas than the legal jargon you are always repeating in court.

Exercise

Exercise is a silver bullet in stress management. It strengthens your muscles, giving you more physical energy. Beyond that, it will pump more blood into your head, making you more insightful at work.

Exercise also releases the feel-good hormones. Exercising while stressed will instantly improve your mood. It is not mandatory to register at the gym. You can improvise around the house or office. The idea is to keep healthy and manage your body.

Take a walk around the neighbourhood once in a while. Stretch at the park or take a hike. You may also go for a picnic with friends and family. Help you to relieve stress and focus better at work.

Meditate

It helps you to reflect on issues that could be affecting your life as a professional, individual, family, and social person. It clears the mind to allow you to make the best decisions.

Meditation may take the form of yoga. You do not require a professional instructor to achieve the best results through meditation. Once you find clarity, you can change the course of your life for the better.

You avoid entering into a cycle that keeps you stressed throughout.

Remain busy

An idle mind will generate a lot of stress. You begin thinking about the losses you have made or get anxious about upcoming cases. You may also begin building castles in the air, causing more stress. Keep yourself busy over work hours and beyond.

You must plan your day. Allocate time for important activities like preparing for cases and attending court sessions. Consider the time you need to rest alone as well as engage friends.

Create time to grow professionally and at an individual level. A busy person has no time to think about stressors.

How to manage stress – Have a mentor

A mentor will guide you through the profession. Choose a passionate legal practitioner whose path you would like to follow. Mentors help you to avoid very common mistakes.

They also enable you to take advantage of opportunities that come your way. Since they are seniors, they will assist you in making the right professional decisions.

Further, they introduce you to clients and other professionals who help you to grow.

Whenever you have a challenge, talk to your mentor. He or she has likely faced a similar situation. You avoid panicking about ordinary issues because you are facing them for the first time.

Take time off your law practice. Visit friends, enjoy parties, and read, among other activities that relieve stress. Monitor the issues that stress you to avoid them in the future.

Once you manage stress, you will be an extremely productive and successful lawyer.

Eat food that is good for you

Eating food that is good for you is such a vital part of keeping a healthy and stress-free lifestyle. Most people love a nice juicy burger but keep everything in moderation.

Focus on making sure your body is getting the necessary nutrients required and your body, in return, will make you feel a lot better.

Now, I am not saying that you need to diet and cut calories. Just focus on eating foods with organic ingredients or even learn how to cook a few meals yourself.

Uber Eats and Doordash sure are handy tools but they can get very expensive and most of the time the foods you are getting from there are not the healthiest of options. Eating too much junk, carbohydrate-filled foods will lead to your body feeling weighed down.

If you start eating more foods such as lean meats, fruits, vegetables, and just a little bit of carbohydrates, your body will feel much lighter.

When you are trying to be less stressed, having a mind and body that is not weighed down by junk food is crucial.

Just eating healthy can give you a great jump start to the lifestyle you want to live in the legal field, and after you eat be sure to take the supplements that your body might have missed out on in your meal.

How to manage stress- Try taking vitamins

I don’t want to sound like a parent here, reminding people to take their vitamins, but taking vitamin supplements is very important in maintaining a healthy body and mind. By maintaining a healthy body and mind you will ultimately be less stressed in return.

The majority of people know vitamins are listed with a letter from the alphabet but most do not know what each vitamin does for the body.

Vitamin A helps with vision, the immune system and even the reproductive organs. The B vitamins might be one of the more important supplements if you are looking for less stress as it impacts energy level and brain function.

Vitamin C is one of the more complicated ones and is used for tissue repair, collagen production and even producing certain neurotransmitters.

Vitamin D helps build and maintain your bone health. Now we have Vitamin E, which has more benefits to the body than any other vitamin listed so far! Vitamin E helps maintain vision, skin, brain, and blood health, wow!

There are still many other vitamins out there, all with awesome benefits to them. But just from the ones listed here, it is obvious how taking some of these supplements could lead to a happier less stressful lifestyle in the legal field.

How to manage stress- Find a hobby

You could be having the worst day at your job, everything is going wrong, the boss is yelling at you, you lost a client maybe, but by having a hobby that can distract you from what a terrible day is, you can be much happier.

Whether it be working out, or playing basketball, just having something to do to take your mind off of your job throughout the day is crucial to creating a less stressful lifestyle.

Even if you cannot find time throughout the workday to enjoy your hobby, it will always be there when the workday is finished. Make sure to take that time to yourself and do what you enjoy, because it will make you happier.

Everyone needs something that releases endorphins when you are stressed and finding the right hobby will greatly help with that.

Maybe you have had a hobby for some years now, but it does not help with stress. Well, it may be time to get out there and begin exploring some new hobbies.

Maybe you have been playing sports your whole life, it might be good to try a hobby that does not involve as much physical activity but instead brings more peace.

Learning to draw or, as corny as it sounds, knit, can bring a good balance to someone’s life and the new hobby may help them even more.

Listen to podcasts throughout the day

Having a voice in the background as you work throughout the day can make a huge difference. Maybe you are into true crime stories, then you are in for a huge treat as there are seemingly an infinite amount of true crime podcasts out there.

Most comedians nowadays have podcasts you can listen to, so if you need a good laugh at any point, you can just turn on the podcast of your favourite comedian.

Basically, for any topic in the world, there is a podcast for it. Maybe you want to learn more about your new favourite hobby of sewing, there is bound to be a sewing podcast out there you can listen to while filling out that legal paperwork.

Combining a podcast with your hobby can reduce stress in your work life even more. All these tips are here to help reduce stress, and I am not saying they will completely remove stress from your life, but they sure can help with managing it.

Being Happier As a Lawyer

Stress is in everyone’s life and there is no escaping it, but learning to cope with stress is a very important skill that everyone needs to learn. It can be hard and even seem hopeless at times but pushing through and persevering are more important than anything.

Because at the end of the day, jobs suck sometimes and you will feel stressed.

A lot of people are becoming spiritual during a divorce. Many people create fake profiles to bash their exes online. But being a jerk online can kill you.

I see people on Instagram share a motivational meme saying something to the effect of “One small act of kindness, one giant leap for humanity.” I then see them fat-shaming a celebrity.

How to manage stress

People love negativity because it makes them feel better about their boring life. I have many friends who work a 9-5 pm job and dream of starting a business. The problem is that they have a mortgage or rent, they must buy groceries, and they don’t want to fail.

If you can’t be successful, what can you do? You can try and stop others’ success.

Being a jerk online might make you feel better in the short term, but did you know that it could take 12 years off your life?

The average life span in Canada is 82.30 years. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, people live 12.5

longer when they are positive. The study followed 71,143 people for up to 30 years.

Let’s say the average negative person dies 6.25 years earlier than average, and the average positive person dies 6.25 older than average.

This would mean:

If you are negative, you will die at around 76.05 years old.

If you are positive you will die at around 88.55 years old.

So being a jerk online could take 12.5 years off your life!

Stress Can Kill You Early

Besides dying earlier, negative people will never be in the 1% of income earners. To be an entrepreneur is to take a leap of faith and to be okay with the risk. People will want you to fail, and you must accept the hate.

I was in the army for seven years and I always commit to tough things. The military taught me how to persevere and I developed my stamina and now use it as an entrepreneur. Starting a business is a journey with many speedbumps. There is no finish line.

If you are not okay with being uncomfortable, then don’t start a business. It’s hard and sometimes depressing.

Many people know deep down inside them that they don’t have what it takes to be famous and/or successful. The best they can do for themselves is to tear others down.

I know this because I was once like this myself back in University. If a friend got a better car than me, I would have thoughts about them crashing it. I noticed that negative news spread a lot faster than positive news.

Being A Jerk Online When Evidence Doesn’t Matter

Look at all the popular business documentaries (Fyre Festival and Elizabeth Holmes) and popular business movies (Wolf of Wall Street and Boiler Room), they are all negative and involve death and arrests.

People don’t want to hear about the person who started a company, that grew by 10% every year, and now after 10 years, they have a company with good cash flow. That’s boring and people don’t want to hear about it. Most businesses don’t end up with death and arrests.

I run a company, and I am constantly trying to manage a lawyer’s bad reputation. Lawyers have a reputation for only caring about money.

I always encourage the lawyers at my company to believe that kindness can be its motive.

What family lawyers do is like emergency room doctors. People come to a law firm broken, and the attorneys try to fix them. They don’t have a 100% success rate, which is the same in the emergency room.

How to manage stress as a lawyer conclusion

Lawyers put themselves in a position to take on their clients’ issues, so the clients can sleep better at night. But the lawyers need to focus on finding ways to be positive, or they will end up with a heart attack.

I wrote this article in hopes of getting people to realize their passive-aggressive ways.

I recognize that not everyone shares the same goals as I do. Not everyone can get wealthy, but everyone can be happy with what they have built. Stop being a keyboard warrior and go and build something that improves the world. At the very least, change your ways and live 12 years longer.

Being a jerk can kill you, so stop doing it. Hopefully, all these tips listed here will help you in your law career and will push you to be the best lawyer you can be!

I hope you found this guide on how to manage stress in the legal industry helpful.