"Resilient Lawyer" CLE Scheduled Feb. 26 In Pinehurst

Article Date: Friday, January 01, 2010

Written By: Russell Rawlings

By John L. Sarratt
Alan Dershowitz taught me criminal law. He didn’t teach me much criminal law, which is one reason I am not a criminal lawyer; but he did say a lot of clever things. One of my favorites is: “Some people say they have thirty years experience, when they really just have one year repeated thirty times.”

Robert Kegan

Robert Kegan, who shares with Mr. Dershowitz the distinction of being a Harvard professor (School of Education), offers a parallel quote from his recent book Immunity to Change: “There is life after adolescence,” by which he means that adulthood must be a time for ongoing growth and development.

If you will join Professor Kegan and me in Pinehurst on Feb. 26, (Dershowitz can’t make it), we can learn together how to overcome our resistance to change.

According to the book jacket of Immunity to Change: “A recent study showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don’t change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through successfully. Desire and motivation aren’t enough: even when it’s literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive.”

In a nutshell, our immunity to change is essentially an internal means of self preservation: as we struggle to preserve life as we know it and maintain our old comfortable ways, we keep something locked deep inside most of us that stands in the way of following a course of growth and development. Professor Kegan can help us to unlock that potential in ourselves and in our legal organizations whether they are large law firms or small, corporate law departments, or government agencies.

John Sarratt

Along with Professor Kegan, the Feb. 26 CLE – under the title “The Resilient Lawyer” – is designed to help each of us to find new ways to address the present challenges of our profession. The consequence for some lawyers, as they struggle with unprecedented personal challenges, may include substance abuse, depression, or, all too often and too sadly, suicide.

On the same program with Dr. Kegan, Dr. Sally Johnson of the UNC School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, who performed the psychiatric evaluations on Reagan’s attempted assassin John Hinckley and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, will speak to us on ways to identify colleagues who may be susceptible to suicide attempts.

Former UNC Law Dean and now Burton Craige Professor Judith Wegner, along with her colleague former Assistant Vice Chancellor Audrey Ward, will discuss the possibilities, best practices, and ethical constraints regarding social networking such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

For more information on this CLE and registration, log onto www.ncbar.org, click on “CLE,” and then find your way to the Feb. 26 program, “The Resilient Lawyer,” in Pinehurst.

See you there!

John Sarratt practices law in Raleigh and serves on the NCBA’s Committee on Lawyer Effectiveness and Quality of Life, which joined with BarCARES of N.C. Inc., and the N.C. State Bar’s Lawyer Assistance Program to plan this CLE program.