THRiving aT BayLoR LaW ScHooL and in THe PRofeSSion: Finding Harmony

By Stephen l. riSpoli

Forget balance, find harmony. Lady Justice has a set of scales, and we advocate every day to ensure those scales remain fair and balanced for our clients. It makes perfect sense that we might also seek balance in our personal and professional lives. But, in that regard, balance is misleading. It implies that we should have a formula for allocating equal time to work, family, friends, and other personal activities. That thought alone creates a heightened sense of anxiety. Instead, find ways to integrate different parts of your life to reduce the stress of juggling all the activities simultaneously. In music, harmony is described as the art of combining different pitches into cords. Still, a harmony doesn’t have to be “harmonious.” Harmonization occurs when there is a blending of “tense” and “relaxed” moments.

Victor Flores14

The practice of law can be stressful. The pressure can come in many forms. Whether it is demanding clients, imminent trials, or aggressive negotiations, these high-intensity situations all call us to be at the top of our game. That stress can have a profound impact on our mental and physical wellbeing. By not learning healthy ways to deal with the stress of the practice of law, we are not serving our clients, or ourselves, well.

The research tells us that after the basic needs of food and shelter are met, wellness emerges from nourishing six dimensions of your health: physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual, and occupational.15 Trying to balance all of these facets of health can seem daunting. However, with intention and routine, lawyers can learn how to harmonize all aspects of our life.

At Baylor Law, we hope to help students learn to find their own harmony while in law school. We know that the practice of law will bring unique challenges for every graduate, but we want them to learn how to handle the pressure and face those challenges in healthy ways before graduation. We want every student to leave Baylor Law with a toolkit of skills that will serve them well in the future.

Building that toolkit starts at our 1L orientation, where we underscore the importance of wellness and wellbeing. Those messages are reinforced with quarterly presentations about wellness in our Professional Development Program.16 In these presentations, we discuss the statistics about mental health and substance abuse in the profession, but we also discuss healthy mechanisms for handling pressure and stress, such as the im- portance of healthy eating and physical exercise, maintaining mental health, and practicing gratitude. Other quarterly events include dog park socials, support during finals, and a mentorship program for our Practice Court students. We also participate in national awareness initiatives, such as wellness week and suicide awareness and prevention week. (The law school also recently received a grant from the Texas Bar Foundation to help fund several of these activities this past year.) In addition, we include a “Weekly Wellness” message in the weekly “Student Announcements” email that is sent to every student each Monday. These experiences culminate in our third-year, required Practice Court program, where the skills of grit,17 growth mindset,18 and resilience19 are all discussed as the keys to success in the practice of law and managing physical and mental wellbeing.

Baylor Law also offers several services to assist students with developing these skills or handling a crisis. Our students have access to the Baylor Counseling Center20 and the Baylor Health Center21 to monitor and maintain their mental and physical health. Through the Baylor FitWell program,22 students can participate in a wide variety of exercise classes, work with personal trainers, and engage with nutritional consultants. Students experiencing a crisis have 24/7 access to a mental healthcare professional with the Baylor Telehealth program.23 Also available is the Baylor Care Team, which is a group of experts solely dedicated to making sure that students get the care and help that they need.24 The Baylor Law faculty and staff are also actively engaged with students, reminding and reinforcing these messages.

“Work-life balance” is often referred to as “impossible” for lawyers. But we do not believe that is necessarily true. While “work-life balance” may not be a daily occurrence, “work-life harmony” can occur over time. It is our goal that we give our graduates the skills to enter the profession seeking harmony in their personal and professional lives.

Stephen L. Rispoli, Baylor Law J.D. ‘12, Texas Law LL.M. ‘18, is the assistant dean of student affairs and strategic initiatives at Baylor Law School.