Being Mindful With The Spiritual Litigator

My fellow litigators: sometimes you will be so sure that your case strategy will work and that someone else’s suggestion will not. And sometimes you will be completely and utterly wrong. If you do not accept that, you will experience the unnecessary emotional and physical consequences of failing to manage your mind. In this week’s podcast episode I talk about an employment case I worked on a few years ago where, based on statutory and case law, I thought the employer’s defenses were weak and disagreed with the partner’s stubborn insistence that we tender a final unreasonable settlement offer I believed was doomed for rejection. If it was not accepted, I was responsible for handling the trial. I was so irritated and frustrated and had anxiety about trying a case I did not believe in. In the two weeks of settlement negotiations, I started experiencing stomach cramps, waking up in the middle of the night worrying and becoming less productive at work as a result. When I communicated the final offer to my adversar