New ABA book seeks to aid lawyers in recovery
There are more than 200,000 lawyers in recovery in the United States, and studies show that lawyers have twice the rate of addiction as the nation as a whole. A new book tries to help them.
“The Lawyer’s Light — Daily Meditations for Growth and Recovery,” a new book of meditations by attorney Kevin Chandler, addresses the feelings and issues confronted by lawyers who are in recovery.
“It took me maybe five minutes in recovery to realize that I was different from the others around me,” Chandler said. “While we all shared one big thing in common, my mind, trained in the law to think linearly and logically, didn’t mesh with a lot of the leaps of faith asked of everyone in the program.”
Chandler said his legal training, while valuable and essential to his career in the law, was a barrier in recovery, and so he set out to write a set of meditations that attorneys would quickly grasp and to which they could relate.
The book from ABA Book Publishing contains 365 meditations, one for each day of the year. Sources for quotations range from legendary jurists Learned Hand, Benjamin Cardozo, Louis Brandeis and Thurgood Marshall to such notable lawyers as Lionel Hutz in “The Simpsons” and Vincent Gambini from “My Cousin Vinny.”
“There are many theories as to why we lawyers are more prone to addiction,” Chandler said. “But it doesn’t matter. What matters is the recovery, and it is my hope that this book will provide comfort and support to my fellow attorneys, just when they need it most.”
Chandler earned his law degree from The Catholic University of America and went on to serve in the U.S. Justice Department, on the staff of a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee, as a Minnesota state senator and in the Minneapolis law firm of Opperman and Paquin. He lives in the St. Paul suburb of White Bear Lake, Minn.
Book helps lawyers find free legal research resources online
With cost-conscious clients scrutinizing legal bills, lawyers cannot afford to depend on expensive legal research databases, especially when reliable free resources are available. A new book from the American Bar Association Law Practice Division, “Internet Legal Research on a Budget: Free and Low-Cost Resources for Lawyers,” will help lawyers quickly find the best free or low-cost resources online and use them for their research needs.
The authors share the top websites, apps, blogs, Twitter feeds and crowdsourcing resources that will save lawyers time, money, and frustration during the legal research process. This book will help attorneys locate and use:
• Legal portals and directories (government, academic and commercial)
• Case law databases (government and commercial)
• Casemaker and Fastcase
• Cite-checking cases
• Dockets
• Federal statutory research
• Federal, legislative and congressional materials
• Starting points for state, local, territorial and tribal law
• Practice area research via websites, blogs, Twitter and more
• Background information about attorneys, judges and legal professionals
• Foreign, international and comparative law resources
“Internet Legal Research on a Budget” is written by co-authors Carole A. Levitt and Judy K. Davis. Levitt, of Rio Rancho, N.M., is the founder and president of Internet for Lawyers and the author of “Google for Lawyers” and “Find Info Like a Pro,” Volumes 1 and 2, also published by the ABA Law Practice Division. Davis is a law librarian and adjunct assistant professor of law at the University of Southern California.
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