Mental Health/Resilience Training For Aspiring Lawyers?

[Jaysen]

Hey guys,

With our premium section, we're looking to go beyond teaching 'technical' skills and provide a range of courses on softer skills (tailored towards working in the highly pressurised corporate environment).

We're currently in discussions with a company to deliver courses on mental health/resilience training for you guys. These will be designed to prepare you for the intensity of the environment within commercial law, teach you methods to manage stress and burnout, teach you about emotional intelligence, and support you if you deal with feelings such as imposter syndrome etc. The company typically provides this training to law firms, but I think we'd benefit from giving you guys these tools earlier in your journey.

Mental health is an area I'm hugely passionate about, but before we go ahead, I wanted to get a sense of what you guys thought. Would this be of value to you to learn about before you secure a training contract? Would you be keen to complete this course?

PS: Your name won't come up when voting, so feel free to be as honest as possible.

Thanks,

Jaysen

 

[Jessica Booker]

I think this is a fantastic idea!

 

[Daniel Boden]

Hey guys,

With our premium section, we're looking to go beyond teaching 'technical' skills and provide a range of courses on softer skills (tailored towards working in the highly pressurised corporate environment).

We're currently in discussions with a company to deliver courses on mental health/resilience training for you guys. These will be designed to prepare you for the intensity of the environment within commercial law, teach you methods to manage stress and burnout, teach you about emotional intelligence, and support you if you deal with feelings such as imposter syndrome etc. The company typically provides this training to law firms, but I think we'd benefit from giving you guys these tools earlier in your journey.

Mental health is an area I'm hugely passionate about, but before we go ahead, I wanted to get a sense of what you guys thought. Would this be of value to you to learn about before you secure a training contract? Would you be keen to complete this course?

PS: Your name won't come up when voting, so feel free to be as honest as possible.

Thanks,

Jaysen

Completely agree with @Jessica Booker - I think this would be brilliant!

 

[Alice G]

100% agree - this would be incredible!

 

[Sagal Mohamed]

As someone who is starting to apply for VAC schemes, this topic has been on my mind recently and I would very much look forward to any course tailored to it.

 

[Jony]

Great idea Jaysen - not sure how you would go about doing it but I think it's something lots of folks here would want. I'd go on about ali abdaal and wim hof, but personally from my time in the military (and life after!) the following really helps.

1) SEAL Team Visualisation exercises. Emergency Conditioning, also known as “battle proofing” or “battle inoculation,” is a way for soldiers to become mentally ready for combat scenarios by envisioning them beforehand. The more complex and vivid the conditioning is, the better the soldier will perform when that situation occurs in real life. This relates to workplace issues and all etc. When I was huddled in trenches kind of starving, with night missions in store, I always sought to visualise my end goal - accomplishing the mission with no casualties and having McDonalds once I was back on leave. Lol. I've used this to prepare for my ACs as well to pretty good effects!

2) Resilience exercises. Doing things every day that challenge you! For me, it's starting my day with a swim at Hampstead Heath at 7am daily even when I feel like an absolute wreck - cold water immersion does wonders for the body. Also doing something that you never thought you'd be able to do! I did this when I challenged myself to walk from London-Brighton in a day, and I think it's never really left me since.

Gonna stop preaching here, but maybe inward-focusing introspection exercises would work better for most people than the above. But I've REALLY found going out and doing things to BUILD resilience practically the most helpful for my school/working life!

Stay hungry

 

[Jaysen]

Great idea Jaysen - not sure how you would go about doing it but I think it's something lots of folks here would want. I'd go on about ali abdaal and wim hof, but personally from my time in the military (and life after!) the following really helps.

1) SEAL Team Visualisation exercises. Emergency Conditioning, also known as “battle proofing” or “battle inoculation,” is a way for soldiers to become mentally ready for combat scenarios by envisioning them beforehand. The more complex and vivid the conditioning is, the better the soldier will perform when that situation occurs in real life. This relates to workplace issues and all etc. When I was huddled in trenches kind of starving, with night missions in store, I always sought to visualise my end goal - accomplishing the mission with no casualties and having McDonalds once I was back on leave. Lol. I've used this to prepare for my ACs as well to pretty good effects!

2) Resilience exercises. Doing things every day that challenge you! For me, it's starting my day with a swim at Hampstead Heath at 7am daily even when I feel like an absolute wreck - cold water immersion does wonders for the body. Also doing something that you never thought you'd be able to do! I did this when I challenged myself to walk from London-Brighton in a day, and I think it's never really left me since.

Gonna stop preaching here, but maybe inward-focusing introspection exercises would work better for most people than the above. But I've REALLY found going out and doing things to BUILD resilience practically the most helpful for my school/working life!

Stay hungry

Thank you for sharing. I am actually familiar with Wim Hof, although I've never personally tried his method!

They've actually started working on the course, but this will be mostly a detailed introduction, and we hope to provide more courses on this over time. Your input on this is very useful and clearly you have a lot of life experience.