Time for What Do You Think Wednesday!

I'm starting a new practice here at TGFJ - "What Do You Think?" Wednesday will be a !hopefully weekly staple where I share news stories serious, practical and fluff.  I may or may not share my own thoughts, but I would love to hear yours, or get you talking in your offices and homes. Each week I will add a story or two suggested by one or more of my kids and another by one or more of my clients.

Megyn Kelly and Newt Gingrich Talk Sex - Predators That Is

(If it had been a male interviewer, would Gingrich have maintained the same exact language?)

Fashionista Rebel Says She Would Hate This

(And I just think it should be a criminal act to name all your kids with the same first letter if you have more than two or three kids.)

November is National Adoption Month

Justin Timberlake, This is For You 

Supreme Court Takes on.....Bathroom Use?
(Pssst - I'll Go With You)

Is There an Expiration on When You Can Wear Jeans?
(Who knew I was ahead of my time?)

Get the Vote Out

More on meditation and mindfulness for lawyers

As I was trying to articulate yesterday, the practice of law is uniquely stressful.  The latest statistics indicate that as many as forty percent of us suffer from depression. Years of study suggest that lawyers also have higher rates of suicide, anxiety, and substance addiction issues than the general population.

If these numbers are to be believed, why is this not seen as a crisis, central to education starting in law school and continuing in CLEs? Is there a really obvious reason?  I think there might be.

Lawyers are expected, in most cases, to work long and serious hours in order to make billable hour requirements annually.  Back when I was a new lawyer, working for a county as their only GAL in abuse and neglect cases, I was often in court from eight a.m. till eight p.m., many times with only half an hour for lunch and no bathroom breaks at all.  The rest of the week was spent in a flurry of emails and calls that I look back on with true sorrow.  It was necessary at the time, because of my state's GAL rules, and yet it could not have served my clients. Why?

There were many hours each day when I would be on two or even three calls at once, switching back and forth between them to be sure I heard at least part of each meeting.  As a GAL, I am obliged not to just be dead wood in a meeting or a court hearing, but to fully participate, so I did try hard to provide useful information, comment or suggestion.  But looking back - how did I think that would even work?

If that sounds crazy, it's because it was.  Yet I did it for almost four years, and I even maintained that through pregnancy bedrest.  Were those practices mindful? Not even close.  Did they feel necessary? Yes.  I was working a sixty hour week on a part-time job pay, and even that much time was not truly mindful of my clients or of my own health.

At that time I was raising all four of my daughters, and Smarter than Me Survivor suffered the worst loss of her young life.  Right around that time I started to take an accounting of my own life, partially in response to how exhausted and out of step I felt with my kids, and in part because my own mental health was starting to suffer.

It is incumbent upon lawyers to protect themselves, so that they can also protect their families and their clients from a lawyer who is too depressed, anxious or exhausted to function.  I've been forthcoming about my own difficulties in this area, but it was really dang hard to find another attorney to talk to, be authentic with, about my struggles.  And that just should not be the case.

Even just taking five minutes to assess where you are in life and your career, and where you truly feel you belong, is a start.  I've been working on The Five Minute Journal after reading here and here about the value in writing out what you are grateful for each morning, as well as an affirmation, and then revisiting the journal each evening.

It may sound like I am spending a lot of time in 'self care' between a walk each day, the journal, and the meditation, but in fact the three add up to less than an hour. I take a kid along on my walk from time to time, which adds not multitasking but single focus on one child, and also teaches kids to value the quiet and exercise and nature.

None of these things are set in stone, and I don't want anyone to think I have cornered the market on how this works.  There is no one perfect way to work in mindfulness and a bit of meditation into a day.  For some lawyers, a short walk while purposing to clear the mind of all thought could happen at lunch; for another lawyer the practice of yoga and prayer might be the right answer.  I don't think there is a "bright line law" on this - but I do think each lawyer should do a bit of research and experiment with things that will work for him or her.  Your clients, your family and your own mental health will thank you.

Meditation

Yesterday's post made me think about the ways a lawyer, and specifically a GAL, can avoid secondary trauma, or at least cope with it.  One of the very best things I have discovered is meditation, or mindfulness.  I think this is something that can benefit anyone, although I realize there are lots of very common arguments people might make (to themselves or to others) against meditation.

One of those is that Christians, especially, cannot meditate because it is a sneaky way of falling into Eastern religion practices.  Ignoring the obvious historical and biblical facts that Christianity was actually started in the Middle East, there are some other confusions about meditation as opposing Christian beliefs.

            "Instead of meditating, just pray."  OK, prayer is important for many people, and often it is done in silence, when one is alone.  But prayer really does not replace meditation; prayer is a discussion or at least an entreaty to another.  Meditation is silencing all thought, allowing your mind to experience true calm. So if this is an argument you hear or you make to yourself, do both!

             "As a Christian, you should not follow any Eastern religion rituals or you are risking dishonoring God."  But that argument already has a fallacy, right, since Christianity began in the Middle East? In addition, how is God dishonored by the fact that human beings help each other learn better ways to manage stress?  I consider this one to be much like the "you shouldn't do yoga because it means you are worshipping other gods" comments that were popular before yoga got so prevalent in our fitness arenas.

The other most common idea that keeps people from meditating is the idea that a restless or ADHD or anxiety prone mind cannot possibly meditate because of those very issues.  But the funny thing is, meditating is probably best for those who have chemical or behavioral (or both) difficulty concentrating.  Meditation is famously known among those who have given it a fair shake for helping focus and concentration.

More on this tomorrow, but I would truly advise a peruse through The Anxious Lawyer's podcasts, or Chel Hamilton's Meditation Minis.  Both are short, to the point, and so helpful for beginning to take your anxiety, worries, focus and mindfulness into your own hands.

Scandal and Reputation

It's a thorny topic.  The lawyers I know who have dealt with it are not eager to talk about it, but it's an open secret among us.  Scandals.  They happen.  They happen frequently.  I don't know about other areas of practice; it seems somehow less likely that say, tax or corporate lawyers end up in the scandal position as often as family law and juvenile law practitioners.

And juvenile and family lawyers might have a different kind of stress.  Secondary trauma is very real, and though lawyers wouldn't seem to be as close to most clients as say, social workers or therapists, in some cases we are.  And it is certainly true that hearing about so much first hand trauma (abuse, addiction, neglect, sexual wrongs, and so many unbelievable traumas that humans endure) can grow into a mental health issue for anyone, lawyers included.

Secondary trauma is its own mental conundrum, and one that is often ignored until an attorney loses his or her ability to make good decisions.  At that point, there is often a scandal, sadly - an attorney might act in ways that worry others, drink too much or take illegal substances, become anxious or depressed, or even consider, attempt or commit suicide.  In any other career, these issues might be the subject of gossip, but in a legal career it becomes a scandal (and possibly a bar standing offense) which almost always affects the attorney's reputation. Usually forever.

I don't want to be one of those "my friend heard of" people so let me just admit that I myself suffered some pretty awful depression and anxiety which caused me to lose friends that I once considered close at least in the legal community.  Now, most of the real friends remain, and most of my legal community friends are still here. I left a job that was causing me a huge amount of stress, and allowed my health a chance to catch up, since in three years I had e coli, c diff, MRSA, prolonged high risk pregnancy bedrest, a hysterectomy, a broken foot, many blood transfusions and infusions, and numerous other infections and health problems.  They seemed too much to bear with a job where things were very - sketchy- and a marriage and new family with its own stresses, and my mind really took a beating.

So, I had something of a mini-scandal in leaving a job within a year of starting, with so many hospitalizations and some trusted people who had their own agendas (not to bag on them too much - some of the agenda was to dump the friend who was sure seeming off with so many hospital and doctor visits). My reputation did suffer, and it has taken and is still taking some time to totally recover. I made some enemies through my erratic absences and others in my tough legal stances (those I don't regret at all!). Every legal community is small, and lawyers with problems, any problems, get known really quickly.

Now, I didn't face bar discipline at all, but I did come to know a few lawyers over the years who did end up somewhere down that road.  A friend I graduated with was disbarred, for conduct before she was even a bar member.  She's out of the legal community (by force), but she isn't out of the $100K student loans and she has not escaped the endless attacks on her personal reputation, even though she is not anywhere near the legal field. She was disbarred several years ago and yet she is still talked about negatively, her reputation sullied so that she could never reapply for the bar in this state.

Another person I knew, not as well, simply went a bit over the edge, knew she was in need of help, tried to get it from her (county) employer and could not do so without resigning her job.  She was not disciplined, but just like me, she was still gossiped about, her reputation bandied about as if she had actually done some disciplinable offense.  In fact, she had been in a position of secondary trauma for fifteen years - with no in house or encouraged or provided therapy or other methods of coping.  She experienced mental health issues which were not outside of the norm for the kind of delicate and stressful work she did with no breaks in career path. She was an ace lead attorney in a highly contested abuse and neglect court, and now she lives from disability and a few here and there jobs.  She got meds and therapy and has a totally healthy life now, but she couldn't get a job anywhere near kids in need ever again - not because of her, but because of her now completely in tatters reputation.

I could go on and on, but it's time for my meditation and my medication, the two ways I am working to stay out of that kind of reputation assault.  My health got better after I left the job that felt weird and wired and worrying - a job where other lawyers also agreed all was not ok, lawyers who could not afford to walk away and whom I am still friends with. I am still happily working contract jobs and looking out for kids.  My reputation damage was limited in part by my true friends who stopped a couple of rumors from spreading about my health, but in the end, what if I had truly had mental health issues?  Why is it so scandlous to need, ask for, and receive mental health treatmnt when we think nothing of getting help for c diff, MRSA, appendicitis, and the like?

And even if the "scandal" is something potentially discplined, why do we have to make it worse with gossip and scandal and reputation besmirching? How does that help the legal profession to be more honorable, how does it help individuals in the system to be better, happier, anything really but just gossips?  Thoughts for the day, but not for meditation.

Please leave your comments - I would love a discussion on this topic!

Things that happen in real court proceedings

1) People cry, or yell (at their lawyer, at other parties, at the judge - you name it!), or stare into space like they don't know they are in court.
2) Parties come to court drunk or high.  Yes, this happens, and yes, if I suspect it, I will ask for an immediate, same day, urine drop.  And yes, the judge will order it, because believe it or not, we have seen it many times and you aren't fooling us.  Those pupils, your breath, your tweaking, the slow response time, and many other involuntary clues give you away.
3) Hearts break - and even though you might not think your judge or the social worker or the GAL or your attorney have emotions, some of us will cry all the way home to release the emotions of participating in your case.  We know your heart, or your child's heart, or other parties in your family or close friends are hurting, so we will hold our own emotions until you are gone.
4) You are right that most of the court employees and attorneys know each other.  We have lots of cases together, in most cases, and we have relationships outside of the proceedings - sometimes good ones, and sometimes not so good.  Sometimes those relationships do affect how cases end up.  It should not be that way, but it does happen.
5) The attorneys and sometimes the judges have "gallows humor" privately.  It's our way of sloughing off some of the stress that comes with being involved with dozens or hundreds of sad, horrifying, angering or tragic cases.  If you happen to see attorneys and judges laughing together, it is not at you - it is at ourselves, really.  We are very aware of the heavy role we play in the lives of real people.
6) Many parents or guardians don't have attorneys, and fall into a grey area where they might technically have difficulty getting a court appointed attorney due to owning a house and having a job.  Ask the judge or the juvenile officer for a detailed form that also considers your debt, if you want an attorney appointed by the court.
7) On that note, there is a trend I am noticing of people not wanting a court appointed attorney because of the idea that if the attorneys know other attorneys on the case, they won't zealously represent a party they are appointed to.  While this might be true occasionally, far more often the attorney having good relationships with other attorneys and court personnel is extremely helpful to the parent or guardian they are representing. If I were a parent involved in an abuse or neglect case, I know who I would want as an attorney and as a guardian ad litem for my kids - and all of those attorneys practice exclusively in the CAN courts, and they know each other and the regular faces quite well.  I would never hire an attorney who didn't practice regularly in the CAN courts.
8) Child abuse and neglect cases are a very specialized kind of court proceeding.  If a party hasn't been to court before, then it might not be shocking, but for those who have been to court on DUIs, divorces, traffic tickets, and the like, a CAN court can be quite offputting.  The rules of evidence are often different, and the cases are often very prolonged, with many hearings through the life of a case.  More people talk in our cases, and the judge often directly questions kids and parents about how things are going.  As noted above, a party can be ordered to drug and alcohol testing directly from a hearing; some courts have testing available right at court so that it will happen immediatly.
9) Children often attend the hearings.  If yours do, please be calm and don't approach them if the court order doesn't allow for it. It will only upset them-and make trouble for you also. Please don't curse or be disruptive, and please remember that your child is stressed and traumatized by this whole ordeal also.  Please?
10) Parties come to court dressed in inappropriate clothes, makeup, shoes, hair.  This is my last point but it's a crucial one.  When you appear in court, you should wear clothing that covers you. No shorts, no sleeveless, no wife beater tanks, no super short skirts, no crazy weird hair or makeup, no slits or cleavage, and no drooping pants.  Think church clothing, or something you would go see your grandmother in - anything that helps you choose clothes that won't get you thrown out of court.  I have seen people (even my child clients) be removed from court or be taken to the jail to put on jail clothes temporarily so the hearing can go on. If you attend court in a super short skirt and a midriff baring shirt with a spackle of makeup and high high heels, you are sending a message. It may not seem fair, but if you look like that, or you wear a wife beater and droop your pants - it's hard to take you seriously.  It's on you to project the image you want us to receive.

Files and files and files

This week begins my attempt to clean out all my files - I have ten years of client files which have all been saved in the cloud, but which I also have all the paper copies of.  It's been quite a reminder, a memory jog that burned no calories, going through each file to store the physical copy more efficiently.

One of my first cases was a sexual abuse victim and siblings, and when I read through the paperwork I recall being so horrified, so sure that this was a unique and almost singular situation - a young girl abused by her mother's paramour, with the result a pregnancy which ended in the death of the fetus in a sketchy way.  The young girl was a hero - and still is to me  - but the situation of the mother's paramour being abusive (and perhaps a pedophile, if the suppositions I had as the case progressed were correct) and getting away with it is all too common.

In that instance, there was not enough criminal evidence to have this man charged; it was mostly shoddy police work in preserving DNA from the fetus remains.  The work of the police, while probably standard at the time, was so poor that the man not only went free, but also the woman who had chosen him as a psuedo father to her several young children never quite believed he had done this despicable act.

In the balance, several young children were removed from their only known parent, and placed with another relative of questionable ability to parent.  Their biological mother waffled back and forth and didn't quite know whom to "believe" in the case of her eldest child and her paramour.  Finally she chose the children, although none of us working with the family was quite convinced her choice was about the children so much as it was about the lack of financial help (food stamps, housing allowance, SSI, etc) she received without them in her household.

All of this was very dramatic and dire, just as it sounds.  But it was not nearly so rare as I thought at the time.  I can't even count the number of households where I have seen a very close parallel to this story - a mother, her kids, and a man who is not the father of all (and often, indeed, not the biological father of any) of the children, and an act of abuse.  Often, it is a sexual abuse, and many times it is on multiple children.  And in my estimation, about half of the time, perhaps slightly more, the mother chooses to remain with her paramour, even up to and beyond the point of her children being removed from her.

Now let me pause here to say that I was horrified - and I am still horrified - that a mother could choose a man over her child or children.  But in the next breath I will say that my judgment of such women is much more clouded than it once was, both legally and personally.  I would like to say that this situation never happens, and that when it does, the woman is a horrible, evil person with no real love for her children.

That isn't the case.  Just for a moment, as hard as it is, put yourself and your spouse in this situation:  One of your children's friend's parents has called social services with grave concerns that one of your children is being abused sexually.  This other adult doesn't know for sure, but she overheard a conversation your child and her child had which pointed towards an adult in your child's life behaving inappropriately.

Your child told her child about a "game" that the man in her household played with her.  He would tickle her whole body, and told her not to tell anyone. Immediately, many of us have ears that prick up at the "not to tell anyone" portion, and maybe even at the "tickle her whole body" comment.  Some of us are mandated reporters, and if your child's friend had a parent who was mandated to report suspected abuse, the right thing for her to do would be to call the abuse hotline.  She might or might not also speak to you, the parent, about what she had overheard.

The next thing you know, social services is at the door, wanting to speak to your child personally, without you present.  What would you think?  What would you do?  Are you sure?

In the next hour, if you allowed it, your child would be questioned, and if the worker feared the allegations were true, your child might very likely be removed from your home to be questioned more and to be placed in temporary care of a foster home.  Your paramour or spouse would come home to find you shattered and confused.  Would you believe he had done something wrong at that point?

More on this in the next post - but just for a moment, think about your home, your kids, your partner.  Are you very sure you jump to believe that your partner had done something horrific?

Interruptus Gesticaticus

The sloppy title hopefully gives it away - I have been absent from my inept attempt at blogging due to a sudden onset of gestation!

Which is pretty weird since a) I am not married (no biggie there), b) I was on birth control when I got knocked up, and c) I haven't done this in more than a decade - the youngest around here is eleven.  But, the more the merrier, etc, and onward we go, if a bit green around the gills and way too old and tired to enjoy the joke yet.

On the job front I am keeping this schtum, mainly since, haha here's more irony, I am something of a role model in my GAL role and perhaps an unwed, unplanned, late in life pregnancy won't be well met in my court or with my other coworkers.  This isn't too easy with my often twelve hours straight through court days where I now MUST take pee breaks (and no one else including the judge ever does).

The job is already a bit tense, since I may be having my pay cut significantly as my job splits in the new year.  My current job is both GAL and delinquency defense, and frankly, I have too many clients to be ethical at either job; new state laws regarding GAL standards have put the onus on me to inform the court of this overage of clients.  I have done so and the solution is apparently to split the job (which is needed very badly, not only due to head count but also due to raging conflicts of interest that are coming up in at least one-fourth of the cases - call it small town, everyone knows/screws/deals/perps together or on one another - a very sick version of Cheers).  The bad news is, the county can't pay me my salary and still actually pay a delinquency defender...so instead, my pay gets cut.  Gotta figure out some way to make the numbers crunch in a way that doesn't leave us homeless with a newborn. 

I might add here, with every understanding that I begin to sound pitiful, I also have no health insurance outside COBRA from my divorce ($$$$) and no time off unless I pay a replacement.  I'm a contract employee, which I now understand to mean "screwed."  There is a job on the horizon which I could take, one which would give me insurance and time off and the whole normal spiel, but it would be far less flexible than my current setting, where I have some ability to work from home at least. 

In spite of all the shocking and/or nearly Dickensian sounding news here, I am pretty happy and the kids are thrilled that we will have a baby next year.  Who knew this was the direction we would take, with one graduating and leaving for college in 2012?  What fun, to have a small one again! 

Typed while munching broccoli and carrots and swigging back not rum and diets but Crystal Light ;-)