Roundup: Wellness Week
In partnership with the Law Society of Manitoba and the Law Society of Saskatchewan, CLIA hosted Well-Being in the Legal Profession Week, May 12th to 16th. Building on the theme of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Mental Health Week of Unmasking Mental Health and the results of the National Study on the Health and Wellness Determinants of Legal Professionals in Canada, we shared blog posts and free daily webinars available to members in CLIA jurisdictions. Below is an overview of the week. Note that free recorded versions of the webinars are now available on the Law Society of Saskatchewan website.
Being a lawyer means we need to provide sound advice to our clients and pay close attention to detail. Striving to produce quality work product can easily lead to us overworking by revising again and again. See this post for questions to determine if you have perfectionist tendencies and how striving for excellence rather than perfectionism might help.
We all know the concerns around mental health in the legal profession. Many of the measures to address it are either about supporting people in distress or encouraging them to be more resilient rather than addressing the causes of the distress. The Mindful Business Charter (MBC) is a movement of law firms and their clients aiming to reduce unnecessary stressors in the workplace. CEO Richard Martin provides practical concrete examples of how the MBC can be applied in any workplace. You will also learn more about the MBC and how to get involved with the valuable work they are doing to create a healthier profession for the future.
Join us for a conversation about law student mental health and well-being, featuring insights from the College of Law’s wellness initiatives. This session explored common challenges students face, how supports are provided, and why building a culture of well-being in legal education matters for the future of the profession. Judy, the College’s Well-being Coordinator, also infused strategies and supports for mental health and well-being in general that can support personal and workplace well-being.
We often think of well-being as an individual problem, solvable with simple fixes such as doing more yoga, drinking more water, getting more rest, and setting boundaries. Yet the research continues to show that personal solutions are not enough to combat the systemic, structural, and cultural elements of the legal profession that keep people unwell. If lawyers don’t take care of each other…who will? The responsibility for driving well-being change in the legal profession is on all of us. Incorporating actionable and replicable goals and strategies to drive true culture change, this presentation will explore how a community-based approach to lawyer well-being can remove the often artificial, unnecessary, and outmoded barriers that prevent legal professionals from being able to perform at their best.