When Gary Powell advises his fellow lawyers to try meditation, he usually hears one of two responses: "They understand that meditation is good for them, but they either say they don't have time, or the other one that I think is funny is … 'I can't do meditation, that will make you soft and take away your edge.'"

But Powell, who is a general counsel at Emery Oleochemicals and runs his own private practice in Cincinnati, has had a different experience altogether. "It does the opposite of dulling your edge—it actually sharpens it and give you better focus."

And as someone who has been meditating for over a decade, Powell, who sits on the Cincinnati Bar Association's health and well-being committee, wants other lawyers to give it a shot. Last week, he officially released a meditation app named "Legally Mindful," designed specifically for attorneys.

A product of over two years of work by Powell, Legally Mindful encompasses nine meditation exercises across two expertise levels. The first level focuses on relaxation, obtaining a deep meditative state, and practicing gratitude and compassion. Powell explained that one exercise, for instance, is similar to a "Buddhist love and kindness meditation where you basically express gratitude for yourself and others. And you send out compassion to someone else who has meaning for you … and you also do it for yourself, which sometimes, for attorneys, is hard to do."

The second level's exercises build on those in the first, though the focus is now on improving concentration with a single task. Powell said the level's "'creative space' and 'meeting room' exercises are designed so that someone can do work while they're in a deep meditative space."

Each level's initial exercise is free to access on the app, which was designed by a Cincinnati-based development company and made available on both Apple's App Store and Google Play. But for full access, users have to pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee.

Still, this is not exactly your traditional meditation guide. To help users achieve and maintain meditative states, the app employs an audio technology called Spatial Angle Modulation (SAM), which it licenses from Virginia-based research nonprofit The Monroe Institute.

A few years ago, Legally Mindful may have seemed out of place in the legal industry. But with the recent focus on addressing mental health issues among legal professionals, it's one of a growing number of solutions looking to help attorneys better handle long hours and demanding work.

Powell specifically cited a report published in 2017 by the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, for example, as the impetus behind his app. "In the legal profession, it's clear that lawyers need a better way to balance work-life issues, and meditation was one of the cornerstones of the task force report."

To be sure, Legally Mindful is far from the only lawyer-created mental health app on the market. Others include Healthpiper and Happy, which connect users to professionals trained to handle mental health issues. There's also nCourage, an app designed by a legal technology professional to help users better deal with their stress and anxiety. Beyond tech platforms, there's likewise a host of mental health services, from coaching to dedicated psychotherapy practices, targeted specifically for lawyers.

Still, among the various resources, Powell, believes meditation plays a pivotal role in ameliorating attorneys' mental health issues—and, by extension, improving their practice. With meditation, "you're able to more easily focus on the task at hand or an argument that's being made," he explained, adding, "I think I have a better attention span than I used to, and I think I listen better."

Powell first became dedicated to meditation in 2008, when he joined The Monroe Institute following his sister's battle with breast cancer. He credits the institute's SAM technology with his success and ability to use meditation in his daily practice.

"The technology is so important here, it allows you to do something that traditional meditation really doesn't. … Sound-assisted meditation is kind of the 21st century way of meditating because you can be productive."

During the early years, Powell kept his meditation experiences largely to himself. "I couldn't tell people what I was doing—going to a meditation retreat was not typically something that lawyers do."

Perceptions, however, have changed over the past decade, something that Powell attributes to the new lawyers entering the market. "I think a lot of the younger generation of attorneys are getting meditation experience in law school and understanding some of the benefits to experiences outside of their work."

Yet Powell believes the industry has a long way to go in accepting mediation—and integrating it in lawyers' daily lives. "I think the culture is going to have to change … allowing associates, for example, in large law firms, time to actually meditate because it helps their overall health and well-being, but doesn't help the bottom line. I see that starting to change, but it has a long way to change. In may be more prevalent in some firms, but in many firms it's not [there] yet."

 

Read more – Minds Over Matters: An Examination of Mental Health in the Legal Profession