Amid a growing concern about substance use and mental health disorders in the legal profession, a book from the American Bar Association released in September explores how improving an attorney’s emotional intelligence can assist lawyers to be smarter, more productive and physically and mentally healthier.
Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence delves deeply into the benefits for a lawyer to recognize, understand and regulate their own and others’ emotions. The book follows the concept known as EI or EQ that was advanced in the early 1990s, and puts emotional intelligence in the context of how law departments and firms can profit from higher levels of performance and lower costs of attrition, health care and professional liability.
Written by Ronda Muir, founder and principal of Law People Management in Greenwich, Conn., Beyond Smart provides steps and resources for lawyers and organizations to develop four critical components of emotional intelligence — recognizing one’s own and others’ emotions; being emotionally empathic; understanding how emotions evolve and affect behavior; and knowing the best strategies for managing emotions. Muir, a frequent speaker and publisher of the LawPeopleBlog.com, argues that the legal profession should take a page from the business world and the medical profession and recognize that emotional intelligence is more important than IQ in predicting and producing superior individual and organizational performance. Both fields have incorporated emotional intelligence into their education, hiring, training and management programs, she points out.
The book comes out at a critical time in the legal profession, as a coalition of groups, including the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, released in August a comprehensive report, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change, which can be found at www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/images/abanews/
ThePathToLawyerWellBeingReportFINAL.pdf. The report, by the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, includes several dozen recommendations and represents the most ambitious roadmap yet related to addressing the problem of substance use and mental health disorders of lawyers.
The book was sponsored by the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution.
Title: Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence.
Publisher: ABA Publishing
Product Code: 5100033
Price: $129.95
Orders: 800-285-2221 or shopaba.org
What others are saying about Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence:
“Emotional intelligence is one of the most important, yet overlooked, areas of law practice. ... Ronda Muir has written what is instantly the standard in the field. It is a gift for lawyers and legal educators alike.” — Daniel S. Bowling, III, Duke Univer-
sity School of Law, recipient, 2016 Outstanding Professor
“Every managing partner needs to read this book. ... The good news is that there are things that can be done to improve emotional intelligence.” — Sir Anthony Salz, British lawyer and former chair, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
“Muir provides the scientific background for what many of us have long suspected about what makes for a successful lawyer or judge, and couples this science with practical advice to address problems all lawyers face.” — Christopher L. Kaufman, senior M&A partner, Latham & Watkins, LLP
“Muir gives us compelling examples of lawyers who have gained from high EI and those who have suffered from its absence. ... Attorneys appear to underrate EI as a critical skill. Muir challenges us to think more deeply about EI and how it can help us to become more accomplished lawyers and have more satisfying personal lives.” — David Katsky, founding partner, Litigation Department Leader, Katsky Korins
With more than 400,000 members, the ABA is one of the largest voluntary professional membership organizations in the world.
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