A recent seminar focusing on member resilience served to highlight a number of techniques members can adopt to sustainably manage their welfare and practice at the Bar.
A panel featuring Ms. Justice Emily Farrell, Paul Aherne, Performance Coach as well as contribution from Femi Daniyan BL and Andrew Robinson BL, provided practitioner insights in to the important and growing priority of member-welfare. Sinéad O’Callaghan, EDI and Wellbeing Coordinator for The Bar of Ireland, outlines key takeaways for members below.
Resilience Building Strategies
Sustaining a successful career as a barrister inevitably involves facing challenges. These may be in the form of difficulties securing briefs, losing a case, feelings of isolation and loneliness, and at times stress from balancing a busy schedule with conflicting demands. With each of these in mind, it’s important to recognise the value that being resilient brings to your practice.
Resilience refers to our ability to overcome challenges, to bounce back from failures or adversities, and to demonstrate an adaptable emotional strength in the face of setbacks. Without doubt failures and challenges are a component of life.
Notable behaviours that people exhibit when they have developed resilience include adaptability, optimism, problem solving skills, emotional regulation and strong social connections.
Listed below are some essential resilience building strategies legal professionals can adopt to ensure they can effectively navigate the challenges that arise during the course of their work.
1. Planning
Do your utmost to prepare well. Consider the case from all angles, plan specifically for how the opposition may deconstruct the weakest point in your case. Plan this from your side and from the oppositions side. If you have a query, lean on a more experienced colleague or your devil family for support.
2. Manage Expectation
Manage your client and solicitor’s expectations. From the outset trust your skills and manage the expectations based on the evidence in front of you. No one sets out to lose a case, however inevitably this will happen from time to time. Once the judgement is provided, know that you’ve done the very best you could. Acknowledge the loss and the emotions that you’re feeling, then move on.
3. Foster Friendships with Colleagues
Build friendships and develop connections inside and outside the Bar. Having a network of good colleagues within the legal sector and external to the legal sector can be beneficial and rewarding. Having a social network and friends to talk to is critical for your mental health and wellbeing. Lean on each other and also know that there are several clubs and societies available to you as a member which you can join, for more information visit our Clubs & Societies page. In addition, the Specialist Bar Associations are another avenue to meet colleagues and build a network.
4. Develop a Growth Mindset
Stressors and challenges will happen. Overcoming difficulties can be rewarding and will result in personal growth and development. Maintaining a growth mindset will help you to develop resilience and practise adaptability as second nature. Another way of looking at this is to develop a mindset of abundance and to lead your practice with purpose. Reflecting and developing new perspectives can enable you to grow from situations. According to Paul Aherne (Ascend) ‘I like to think of resilience as a skill set or a tools that enable you to navigate the stresses and challenges that we all encounter in our professional and personal lives’.
5. The Challenge Versus Threat View
How do you respond to being pushed out of your comfort zone? Does this feel like a threat, is it uncomfortable? Or do you lean in to change, embrace new experiences and explore new areas of law? Take for example the development of AI or the emerging themes in certain disciplines – do these topics excite you or entice fear? If you can rewire your mindset to view challenges as opportunities to allow you to develop your skills and to grow, you will be successful in developing your resilience mindset.
Further Supports
For an in-depth insight into the advice of our guest speakers The Hon. Ms Justice Emily Farrell and Mr Paul Aherne, Principal Performance Consultant, Ascend, on the topic of ‘Building Resilience whilst building a Practice’ members can view the CPD seminar here.
Mental Health & Wellbeing
The Bar of Ireland offers members two dedicated Mental Health & Wellbeing supports namely
‘Consult a Colleague’ and ‘Mind Your Mind’. These initiatives can support members with both personal and professional issues. For more information please visit the Mental Health & Wellbeing page on the Member’s Section of our website.
Alternatively, if you would prefer to email, you can reach out to the Bar’s dedicated EDI & Wellbeing Coordinator Sinéad at sinead.ocallaghan@lawlibrary.ie. Sinéad can provide more information on the supports available to you or can offer you a 1:1 Wellbeing Consultation.