Michael P. Maslanka, assistant professor of law, UNT Dallas College of Law. Photo: Danny Hurley

At the end of 2019, I read an article in The New York Times, "Eight Ways to Be Kinder to Yourself in 2020," by Tim Herrera. Hmm, kinder to yourself? Now, there's a revolutionary idea, especially for lawyers. It reminds me of a favorite lawyer movie, "Defending Your Life," written by and starring the inestimable Albert Brooks. He's a yuppie (remember them?) killed in a head-on bus collision while driving home from a car dealership in his new BMW.  He ascends to  "Judgment City," is appointed a public defender and told by the PD his life will be reviewed by a panel of three judges who will decide if he gets promoted to the next level of existence (if not, he gets tossed back into the maw of the universe). An astonished Brooks asks essentially whether he is going on trial. A nonplussed PD remakes, "first of all we don't like to call it a trial, and second of all yes."

The hinge-point of the movie follows with Brooks pleading that he was a nice person while alive and should therefore move on. Exhibit 1: he gave money to the homeless; sure he doesn't have any receipts but he implores, "You don't get receipts" for that sort of stuff. A somber PD replies that he knows that Brooks was a nice person but that he wishes there was one person he would have been nicer to. Astonished Brooks asks "who, who?" The PD replies: "yourself."  So here are five ways for lawyers to be kinder to themselves, while there is still time.

No 1: When it's over, it's over

When you get an adverse ruling and feel worse than the client, stop and re-orient yourself. This means you are too close to the matter. As professor David Crump of the University of Houston Law Center astutely points out, a good lawyer's personal commitment to a client works against the lawyer when the lawyer loses. A commitment to excellence morphs what should be an impersonal defeat into an all too personal rejection. Like mourning death, lawyers should work through the grieving process, prying themselves lose from the stages of denial and anger and instead adhering themselves to the stages of learning and acceptance. A way to help do so is performing an "After Action Report," just as in the military, on what you learned from the past and how you will apply those lessons to the future. As Austin based writer Austin Kleon, in his new book, "Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad," say, "When the sun goes down and you look back on the day, go easy on yourself. A little self-forgiveness goes a long way. Before you go to bed, make a list of what you want to get done tomorrow. … A day that seems like a waster now might turn out to have a purpose or use or beauty to it later on."

No. 2:  Let's Just Be Friends

In his book "Law v. Life," lawyer Walt Bachman writes that many disciplinary matters stem from a lawyer's well-meaning belief that when a prospective client is in trouble the lawyer must  come to their aid. I have students in professional responsibility write in a weekly journal and one assignment is to pick the three mistakes (out of a list of the 10 most common) they will most likely make in practice. Invariably, year after year, it is that they will let their emotions override their judgment and represent a person they knew they should not have (this is an exercise from professor Barbara Glesner Fines in "Professional Responsibility: A Context and Practice Casebook"). To return to Bachman, lawyers are not a public utility and in forgetting that lesson we contract "L.A.S.: Lawyer Avoidance Syndrome," and end up neglecting work for a client we really should not have taken on in the first place. The pain is avoidable.

No. 3: Play Small Ball

Lawyers are inbred with the desire to aspire: to hit homers, to sink the hole in one, to drain three pointers from beyond the paint. My advice: aspire elsewhere. Seek motivation through incremental wins, not huge ones. With the second, there is always a lot of talk but never any action. Saying "I will write a book" is fun to say, daunting to do. But saying "I will write an outline for chapter one is achievable." And once you achieve it, you are then primed automatically to do more. The incremental accomplishment fuels other accomplishments. Want to learn more? Read "The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Get the Motivation to Win," from Jeff Hayden.

No. 4: You can't change anything, you can only deal with everything

The dysfunctional populate our lives. Other lawyers refusing to play by the rules; making practice needlessly aggravating; imparting, as the expression goes, heat but no light. Clients or judges or chance and circumstance often do likewise. The Stoics taught us that we have 0 percent power to change our circumstances but 100 percent power in determining our reaction to those circumstances; an excellent book on this concept is Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." So, only invest your precious time and your limited emotional energy in your reaction to your circumstances.

No. 5: Be yourself, everyone else is taken

That's Oscar Wilde. Yet we reject the counsel, insisting that we compare ourselves to others. Some advice: change mindsets. When I was a kid, I was watching golfer Tom Watson at a golf tournament press conference. He was asked how he held it together on the course. After all, consider the pressure: applause from other greens and the Leader Board towering above the course and men in sports coats whispering commentary to the TV audience. His reply is the ultimate antidote to pointless comparison, "When I am out on the course, it is me versus the course. Period."

Riddle me this Batman: why is it often easier for lawyers to be unduly critical of themselves rather than kind to themselves?  I think because, as Type A personalities, we delude ourselves into believing we deserve the first but not the second. This belief is unfair to ourselves but more importantly unfair to someone more important than us — our clients. Lack of kindness to ourselves — whether from unrealistic expectations, poor decision making, relentless self-attack — wreaks havoc on our ability to serve clients. So, be kind to yourselves. You and others can only benefit.

Michael P. Maslanka is an assistant professor of law at UNT Dallas College of Law. His e-mail is [email protected].