The ALPS In Brief Podcast

ALPS In Brief — Episode 40: How to Have a Family and Stay Active in Your Practice

By instituting newer concepts prioritizing work-life balance like flexible hours and an in-house, certified childcare center, one firm has found a way to attract (and keep) great talent that’s often overlooked: new moms who would prefer not to work full time. ALPS Underwriting Manager Leah Gooley and Brooke Barney, a founding member of Barney & Graham in Sheridan, Wyoming, go over some tips and practical advice for firms interested in supporting their employees’ commitment to their families.

 

Transcript:

LEAH GOOLEY:                

Okay. Welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, coming to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula. My name is Leah Gooley, and I'm the underwriting manager here at ALPS. On the personal side, I'm also a new mom to a now four month old daughter. And every day is really a learning experience in the delicate balance between work and family. There are two things that I passionately love, but that creates some very challenging days and prompt some very challenging decisions. So to explore one of this part of this topic, today we have Brooke Barney, a founding member at Barney & Graham in Sheridan, Wyoming. So welcome Brooke. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today.

BROOKE BARNEY:            

Thank you for having me, Leah.

LEAH:                

Brooke has an impressive track record in her practice in bankruptcy and family law, helping her community and positioning herself as a leader in the profession. But today she's here to talk about those impressive work accomplishments and how she blended those with personal ambitions. So Brooke, to get us started, would you tell us a little bit about your own journey into law?

BROOKE:            

Sure. I think my journey probably began just as long ago as I can remember, I've always wanted to be an attorney. My father is an attorney and so I just grew up with that. Obviously I wasn't discouraged to go into the legal profession by my dad. I don't know that he pushed it on me at all. That's just as long as I can remember it's been in my head that I wanted to be an attorney. So that was always a goal of mine. I grew up in a law office. I remember my dad meeting with clients and I'd be in his other conference room. And so it's just probably something subconsciously that rubbed off on me. But no, I always had the goal of becoming an attorney, not necessarily what particular type of attorney. I kind of found through law school what things I was interested in. And of course, you really don't know what you enjoy until you're actually practicing, actually taking on real clients. And so, kind of found my field that way once I actually began practicing.

LEAH:                 

Did you at the time entering into the profession, whether in law school or after starting your own practice, start to think about that in combination with a family?

BROOKE:          

So really I think that when I thought about having a legal career, I don't know that I factored in how I would balance that with being a mom or to have a family because when you're 19, I think you're very focused on next step is getting my bachelor's. Then the next step is getting into law school and then passing the bar. But of course, once you find your significant other, you get married, that definitely becomes more into focus. And I have two children, I have a four year old daughter and you just have your four month old daughter. I have a two month old son that I've just had.

LEAH:                 

Brand new, very good.

BROOKE:        

So I have two kiddos, both of which were very much planned and anticipated. And so I really tried to mold my practice and make that conducive to the time that I was going to be having kids.

BROOKE:          

And so I focused the majority of my early practice, probably 10, 11 years on primarily family law or domestic relations. I've always been a guardian ad litem, so I represented children in abuse, neglect cases and had a contract with the state for juvenile work. And then I've also practiced bankruptcies when I was anticipating that I was going to try for our first child. I really had to plan that about a year in advance because when you're in litigation, trials around here in our docket, they get scheduled nine months a year out. So I didn't want to have a trial, if possible, when I was also going to be having a baby. So I purposely started scaling back on taking consultations for cases that I didn't want to accept and then be committed to having trials all stacked up right when I was going to be having a baby.

BROOKE:         

So that was how I did it, that was my planning to try to balance that litigation. And then of course resumed taking cases again once the baby was actually here. With my second child, I tended to kind of shift the type of practice that I've had because I've found that with family law, it's just a different type of clientele. They're more high maintenance. The clients just just need you to be more accessible. So I've really tried to shift in the last couple of years, my type of practice to more of bankruptcy because I found that that lends a little bit more to having a family. So again, anticipating having a second child, and it's taken years to kind of shift and phase out. I, I still have domestic cases, but not primarily, which is what I had when I had my first child. So now with the bankruptcy work, it's a little bit easier with two kids.

LEAH:                      

That's so interesting. And just something you don't consider, certainly outside of the law profession, I don't think folks realize the amount of planning and strategy that then goes into to starting your family.

BROOKE:          

I don't know if everybody's like that, but that's how I did it. I'm very much a planner and so I knew that I couldn't have that type of caseload or litigation practice at the same time that I was trying to have... At least I wanted to be able to focus on myself, my health. I didn't want that extra stress at the time that I was trying to conceive or trying to have a healthy baby.

LEAH:                     

Right.

Brooke Barney:            

So that's how I did.

LEAH:                   

Yeah. Well, and one of the other interesting things, so tell me I guess how Barney & Graham got started and kind of your approach to work life in that aspect as well.

BROOKE:          

Sure. So I moved to Sheridan and because I accepted an associate position out of law school and I practiced with an attorney here for probably about four years. And then my husband was working for a title attorney in town doing oil and gas work. We actually ended up practicing in the same office with my former employer.

BROOKE:          

And so we actually decided to start our own firm. So we've been in business I think seven or eight years now. So we decided to start it. So I'm the Barney and my husband's the Graham of the Barney & Graham. We've now been in business, yeah, I think probably going on eight years. And since that time we've opened up a satellite office. So we are located primarily in Sheridan. There's another office that we have about an hour and a half away in Gillette, Wyoming. And we've hired two associates and we just actually hired two more associates. So we're going to have six total attorneys in our firm.

BROOKE:          

And so we've kind of grown from just Weston and I, my husband and I, to to now having four other employees. So we're excited about our new hires. They actually are new moms as well. One just had a baby in September. Yeah, one had a baby in September, the other had a baby in October. So we're going to have two new babies come in with my two month old. And I think part of the [inaudible 00:10:19] suppose to our firm is we have a childcare center in our firm. So these new associates are new moms and they are kind of looking to work part-time and still be moms. And I don't think that a lot of firms looking for new associates are interested in part-time, new moms.

BROOKE:          

So we are extremely flexible in our firm. We really highly value the balance of home life, prioritizing your family and being able to work. This is what we do, it's not who we are, it doesn't define us. I very much enjoy my practice and really value working with my clients. But I also understand that really what is important is family and my kids. And so I don't know if anyone ever achieves the perfect balance. I feel like it's more juggling most of the time than balancing anything.

BROOKE:            

I once heard someone say, really there is no way to balance it all. Being a mom and being a practice, you feel like your failing on one end and so you overcompensate and you're going heavy that end. Then you overcompensate on [crosstalk 00:11:39] and that's why I see more of kind of the juggle then than really a balance. But yeah, so that's something that we're excited about.

BROOKE:          

We're having two new associates here starting and what we have in place in our firm is an infinite work program. And so employees can bring their children to work, essentially their babies and they can be in their office with them up until six months. And so that's kind of a step below of the childcare center. So new moms might not want to put their baby with someone full time and so they can bring their baby to work, have them in the office as long as they're not a disruption to the office or to other people working. And how it works with the infinite work program is they can designate an alternate care provider and the alternate care provider, as long as they agree, can watch baby while maybe they need to take a phone call or need to go down and meet with clients. They just need to have baby free time so they can work. But really mom is the designated primary caregiver when they're at work under this program. So I, for example, have a little momaRoo rocker set up in my office and so I can bring in baby and he rocks while I get my work done at the office and we're going to have swings and things available for new associates, for them to have their babies. We're starting.

LEAH:                        

What an awesome concept. Then past that six months, do you then have an actual childcare facility?

BROOKE:         

Yes, yes we do. So we have a licensed and certified childcare center. So we have that available. I mean that's available as well. Really the state doesn't allow infants younger than six weeks to come in and be part of the childcare centers. So anytime after six weeks up until kindergarten we can have kiddos down and it's actually located onsite in our building. Clients don't know that we have this going on and we don't advertise it. But you know, well right now below me in my conference room is our childcare center and so we can have kiddos below us and moms and parents because my husband's here too. So dad's too, can go down and check on their kids and be able to see them during the day, which has been really nice.

BROOKE:           

We really kind of ventured into that when we moved into this building about four years ago and I was having my first child, we checked in with staff and other attorneys that we had at that time about what would be the best benefit to them, because we're still a younger firm and identifying what people would like, retirement or health care. And really resoundingly everybody responded childcare. We had two staff with one or two year olds at that time. We had another associate attorney who also had a young child, and then we had our new child coming. So we decided to, we had the space, and it was a need of both staff and attorneys in our firms, so we decided to create the childcare center.

LEAH:                     

That is such a unique and differentiating way to attract great talent and take advantage of those folks who want some more balance as we like to call it or juggling, but not want to be full-time, 60, 80 hour a week attorneys. Which kind of leads me into my next question. We've talked about in the past that law school classes are roughly 50:50 male:female these days, but overall there's just a large excess of women leaving the legal profession. Do you have any thoughts on to what's playing into that specifically?

BROOKE:           

Yes, I mean I [inaudible 00:15:37] for women. And I know that society is very different. The fathers, I think of our dads, their contribution I suppose to childcare was very different than I think our husbands these days. Dads are very involved in helping, but I think it still falls to women to be the default primary caretaker. What I've observed is even with my female attorneys, they have a better paying job than their spouses. They have probably more flexibility. But if the child is sick, it's them who's going to be taking work off. It's not husband. That personally what I've observed as an employer. I've seen that with my staff. I've seen that with my attorney associates. It just always seems to fall to mom to take care of kid and that's regardless of their status or their job position.

BROOKE:            

So that's very difficult. So when we're talking about balancing or prioritizing, you have two roles, you have two responsibilities. You're an attorney, you need to service your clients, but you also have the responsibility of being a parent. And when you're trying to run your practice and service your clients, but your kid gets sick or daycare ends at five o'clock or 5:30, you have to check out. You have to go take care of your second job, your next responsibility because there's no one else who's going to cover for you. And so what I found again was talking about planning for what type of practice I would have that would lend to having a family. What I've found is your time is so much more limited when you have children. When you don't have a kid, you can put in as many hours as you want, and I did. I would work late, I would come in early, I would come in on the weekends. And it's just because that's what it took to keep up with the practice.

BROOKE:           

When you have children, unless you're going to completely put your kid on the couch and ignore them all night. But infants, they need more time, they need all of the attention.

LEAH:                    

They do.

BROOKE:            

It's so much more difficult. So it can still be done, but you have to find the hours elsewhere. You're up all night with the baby, but then you're going to have to keep staying up to get in those four or five hours in the morning to work on your laptop or stay up late after the baby goes down, or your kids go down. So you can find the hours, but they're going to be cutting into maybe sleep time or whatever.

BROOKE:        

I've responded to emails with this new baby at 1:45 in the morning and clients think that's odd, or I'm very dedicated to their case because I'm up 1:45 responding to emails. But I'm up anyway and that's when I found a few extra hours and the extra time to work. So when we're talking about, to get back to your question, we're talking about why we see that. I think that it's a challenge I think for women, especially with the expectation for billable hours.

BROOKE:            

Like I say, I think our firm is very unique in that we're extremely flexible. We prioritize the work-life balance. I mean we still expect everybody to get their work done and to provide quality work for our clients. But I think for the traditional law firm, that model is very hard. Especially for women with pre-K kids. Once they're in school, I think that kind of changes a little bit. But childcare is a huge obstacle I think. And I've heard stories from classmates of mine who, and this is applies to dads too. I hear about dads in bigger cities, right? We're in Wyoming and you're in Montana. We don't experience the commuting issue, right? The extra hour or two it takes to get home. But you hear stories about people working late at night and then they drive their hour or two to get home just in time maybe to catch reading a book before bed? And that's all the time that they really get with their kids.

BROOKE:          

I've heard of that even in Montana, in some of these bigger firms with the expectations of how much they have to work, they're really isn't any time with their kids. And you're essentially just paying for someone else to raise your children for you in childcare. And that's hard. And I think that again, men and dads are much more involved I think with the raising of children. But it seems that it still, I think, falls to women and to mothers to be primary caretakers. And so that challenge is once they start having kids, how do they still practice? And for these two new associates that we have, it's because we're going to allow them to have a part-time position and to- And eventually they may go full time and they can phase that practice back more into their lives. But yeah, I think that childcare, having a family, and continuing to keep up with the expectations of the billable hour, that is probably a huge reason for lack of advancement for women in law firms. And also for women deciding to leave the profession.

LEAH:                       

Right. So that does lead also then into kind of my next question. In this experience, through your business model in blending it with a childcare center and a law firm practice. Acknowledging these challenges that women specifically, and you have mentioned absolutely there's dads in the mix and it's a family juggle, but specifically women do face a little bit more of that burden or what I've heard called the mental load. Making sure that people have the appointments on the calendar they need to have for shots, making sure there's groceries in the fridge type of thing that typically falls to the females in the relationship. In looking at your business model and trying to solve that from the piece of childcare, what have you learned out of that experience?

BROOKE:          

Well, I found that us offering that benefit has definitely contributed to having employees stay longer. So I think it's been a benefit to the firm to offer childcare because I think there's more job satisfaction. Parents are able to focus on their work because they know their children are being cared for. They can personally go down and see their kids and check in on them, make sure they're doing fine and get that gratification of seeing their kiddo. Maybe when they're feeling burnt out, they could go down and get refreshed, give your kid a hug and then be able to come back up. So I think it helps the job performance. It's helped with longevity, with keeping employees here. And I think that people are happier because again, they have that flexibility where they can bring in their infants, or infants can be with them in their office and then when they get old enough that they need a different type of care, we have an onsite care so they can go down and do that. So I think that's the benefit that I've seen with implementing that benefit in our firm is it's has helped the firm in our performance and with our employees. So it's been a good thing for us to do.

LEAH:                        

Fantastic. Last and just kind of a closing thought here, it's definitely clear that starting or growing a family comes with these challenges. So for those thinking about kind of the future balance and or those juggling their way through it now, any advice?

BROOKE:            

Well, I think if you're planning on having a family and you want to stay actively in your practice, I think it does take some planning. I mean it will help the transition I suppose if you plan. You need to have a childcare plan, a solid childcare plan. So I know that there's, at least in our community, and I'm reading about in other communities in the state of just the difficulty of even getting childcare, getting into a center. So get wait-listed as soon as you're expecting to try to conceive. That way you can have the peace of mind of having childcare in place. Have a support system, have backups. If you can utilize family or friends so that you might have your child in childcare, but then they send them home because they're sick. You still have courts and so you have to have a backup. You need to have someone lined up that's going to help support you.

BROOKE:          

So when they say it takes a village to raise child, it really does. So some people are fortunate than others to have a family and a big support system, extended family. If you have that, then that's wonderful to utilize. But if not, really try to facilitate and have those backups ready to go. So having a solid childcare plan is one.

BROOKE:           

But I think also really evaluate what type of practice that you want to have. Certain areas lend a little bit more to being able to have a little more flexibility, I suppose, with having a family. If you're a transactional attorney, I think that's a lot easier. Or I guess it will facilitate I guess a balance a little bit easier.

BROOKE:            

You can still litigate. You can definitely still have a practice where you're going to go to court but again, I think at least personally I've been able to find the balance a little bit more by transitioning and shifting the type of practice I've had. At least while I'm having younger children. I mean I see being able to phase back in when I can put in more hours because my children are older and can sustain themselves a little bit more. They're not so dependent on me but so when you're planning, I think, just how are you going to do it? What are logistically, how are you going to continue to practice, but when you have these other responsibilities? So having a solid childcare plan is key. And then thinking about also just what do you want? And does your current law firm facilitate that?

BROOKE:          

Do you still want to have the same level of practice that you have with as many clients and same case load and keep that plus having your kid? Or do you want to have a little more balance with more home time and so you just need to be honest with your employer so that they know what to expect of you after the fact. And hopefully that will [inaudible 00:26:45] in satisfaction on both ends so they're not upset because you're not having the same level of performance after you've come back from having baby. And having satisfaction with your job and still being able to factor in this new piece of your life and being able to have a family. So it's not easy. That's why they call it the balance, you know? No one has the the answer to really how do you do it. But at least personally how we've made that transition for myself, our staff and our other associate attorneys isto offer the flexibility and then to give them the peace of mind by having quality childcare onsite.

LEAH:                     

Well those are truly words of wisdom I think to ask yourself what you really want and then see what options are out there. Or in your case, create those options to meet the need and to support your firm. That's fantastic. I again, thank you so much for spending your time with us this morning. We think you're a rock star and we appreciate everything that you've provided for us today.

BROOKE:            

Well thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak about it and if anyone's interested in how to implement this similar program, you may be happy to visit with them. There are a lot of different ways you can do this. It doesn't have to be a full-on, onsite childcare facility. Even other ways of maybe providing that as a benefit to your staff is working with other local childcare facilities, maybe subsidizing their own childcare. Helping them, helping staff by being able to afford child care. I know we had staff who have been with us a long time, she's about to have her second child. And financially, it didn't make sense for her to continue to work because she's going to be paying for childcare with two children. And so we were looking at losing her again because we transitioned to having this on-site child care benefit, she was able to stay with us. But if we didn't have that, like other employers, perhaps considering that as a benefit of helping contribute financially to their childcare as a benefit, a way to keep staff. So that's an easier way maybe to implement that into someone's firm.

LEAH:                     

Excellent.

BROOKE:            

All right, well thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

LEAH:                       

Yes, great to have you. Thanks to everyone for listening and we will see you again next time for ALPS In Brief.

 

 

ALPS In Brief — Episode 39: It’s Okay to Hit the Pause Button on Work

A women-owned law firm in Fredericksburg, Virginia committed to accommodating family priorities into their work schedules. When a partner left the firm after her maternity leave and was asked back months later, a potential gap in her malpractice insurance coverage led the firm to ALPS Parental Leave Coverage. ALPS Underwriting Manager and new mom Leah Gooley sits down with Elizabeth LeDoux and Leah Dubuisson from the firm Strentz & Greene to discuss how this new coverage played a role in reducing stress and worry for one new mother as she returned to the practice of law as well as other ways firms can be supportive of working parents.

Transcript:

LEAH GOOLEY:

All right. Welcome to the latest edition of ALPS In Brief, coming to you from the historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula on this truly beautiful but very cold day. We are talking about the new parental leave coverage now available from ALPS.

As you may have noticed, I'm not your usual podcaster extraordinaire, Mark B. My name is Leah Gooley, and I'm the Underwriting Manager here at ALPS. In addition to that, I have recently become a parent to possibly the world's cutest baby girl this last July. I might be biased. It's been about a month since I returned to work from maternity leave, and I find myself constantly learning this new work/life balance routine.

I know our two guests today, as well as many of our listeners, can really relate to the challenges that come with balancing the family and career, and so that's why we're here to talk about the parental leave coverage. It's a way that ALPS has really helped address one of those balancing points.

First I'd really like to introduce our guests. From the firm Strentz & Greene in Fredericksburg, Virginia, we have Elizabeth LeDoux and Leah Dubuisson. Welcome.

ELIZABETH LEDOUX:

Hello.

LEAH DUBUISSON:

Hiya.

LEAH G:

I really want to thank you guys ahead of time here just for spending some time to talk about this coverage and how it's fit into your lives. Elizabeth, would you start us out talking about how you learned about this and what it's meant to you guys?

ELIZABETH:

Sure. I'm the office manager at Strentz & Greene, and we're a two-partner women-owned law firm in Downtown Fredericksburg. When our associate, Leah, went out on maternity leave, she eventually said, "You know what, I'm going to stay home with my baby, I'm not going to come back," and we hired a new associate to take her place. At that point I canceled her ALPS insurance because she didn't work here anymore, and signed our new associate up.

Then within a few months, I think about the nine-month point, we invited Leah to come back to work, and she was happy to come and we were so happy to have her back. Because we have these two partners who are moms and concerned about all the parts of attorney life and being a mom and mom life too, one of them said, "Be sure when you talk to ALPS and sign Leah back up that you get coverage for this gap in her time here."

I sent you guys a note and said, "I need to sign Leah back up, and I really want to make sure that she doesn't have a gap in coverage. Can you fill this in?" Shonda is our rep, and she wrote back and said, "I guess I'm going to send that back to the underwriters, and I'll get back to you." That was how we started this path.

LEAH G:

I actually remember learning about that from our underwriter at the time, who came to me and said, "This doesn't exist," this ability to add. Essentially what we're talking about are prior acts coverage for individual attorneys, who really want to maintain that control of the past work that they've done and make sure that they have coverage for that.

The way the industry functions now, that's typically not an option, if you've left a firm and you've broken that date and created a gap. What we looked at was actually going back and then being able to provide that retroactive coverage for those individual attorneys who qualify. You guys really laid the groundwork for us to be able to put this into action.

I'm curious, Leah, specifically from your point of view, when you decided to come back to work, was this a concern of yours, or just as being an attorney in general, was this something you had thought about also as a mom?

LEAH D:

I think as an attorney we're always, in the back of our minds, concerned about malpractice, but it's definitely not something that was at the forefront of my mind. When I did decide to come back and the firm offered me a modified schedule to make that possible, it was something that Elizabeth brought to my attention and said, "We're looking at getting you some coverage."

When she said that, I said, "Well, of course," because that would definitely be a concern for me coming back into the firm, and being sure that the transition is smooth. It's one less thing to worry about, among the many things that we worry about as new moms coming back into the workforce and as somewhat new attorneys

LEAH G:

It is. It is a big thing that fits into the bigger picture of as you start to put your pieces together for being a parent and fitting it into this career. I am curious also, tell me about, Leah, how you became an attorney. What went into that decision to start the career?

LEAH D:

I took not what you would call the traditional path. I started out thinking that I wanted to go to law school. I did political science undergrad, took the LSAT, and then I decided to try a couple of other things. I did a year's worth of master's work in public administration. I worked pretty much every different type of job you can think of. It took about five years before I got back on the law school path, and really realized that if I didn't do it, I would always look back and wonder.

This job really checks a lot of boxes for me, things that I like to do in my day-to-day life and the impacts that I see myself making as a professional. I went to law school and was lucky enough to get a clerkship. During that clerkship, I was fortunate enough to meet the partners that I work for now, and they hired me right out of my clerkship and have been my home for several years now.

LEAH G:

Wonderful. I always find that so fascinating, how folks end up where they ultimately are, and that's a wonderful thing that you took some extra time to get where you are now as an attorney, and that you have that additional experience. I think that also speaks to the work/life balance as a parent, because you bring all of those skills to the job in addition to just the work piece of it. Tell me again then about your decision. Not to make you talk the whole time, but when you decided to leave the firm and be a stay-at-home mom, what brought you back into the practice?

LEAH D:

I really missed being an attorney. I really enjoyed the time that I had with my daughter and it was really important to me. I wouldn't trade it for the world, but there is a commute involved with my position. I live about an hour away from the office. The idea of commuting five days a week with an infant was not in the plans for my family at that time. When I reached out to the firm and had a conversation about what it might look like if I did come back, they were willing to be flexible and offer me a modified schedule, to where I was only coming in three days a week and then working from home the other two days.

It removed some of that commuting strain, and also left open the possibility for me to be the parent that still gets to do the doctor's appointments and gets to still be involved with drop-offs and pickup and all of those day-to-day things that keep us connected to our child's lives.

LEAH G:

How true, so important. Absolutely. Elizabeth, I'd love to hear from you as well. You had mentioned originally when we opened this podcast that it's a female-owned firm. How does that work into your business model and how you view the firm, in the greater role that we see a lot of female attorneys coming to the practice, but then also leaving for reasons having to do with family or just a general disenchantment with the larger firm culture?

ELIZABETH:

Right. I am a part-time office manager in this office. I come a long career as a law firm librarian, and I've worked in a lot of big law firms across the country in my professional life. Once my daughter was born and I knew I wanted to be home with her, I wanted something close to home and I wanted somebody with a lot of flexibility. I'm friends with Stacey Strentz and she knew I was looking for a job.

She said, "Listen, I know there are all of these educated, super high-functioning, really smart engaging women in our town who need to be home at 3:30 to meet the school bus. It's my goal to try to co-op some of that talent. Why don't you think about coming and working for us? I can offer you this job as an office manager." I run the bills and the client bills. I pay the firm bills. I do the payroll, order supplies, that kind of stuff and it's the greatest job. I'm here two days a week, and I couldn't be happier to have something that I love and a place I love coming to. Then when I say, "I've got to go, I got to meet Josie," nobody ever flinches. Nobody blinks an eye. I'm here to work and then I'm out the door in the afternoon, because I've got mom duties to do also.

I'm sure there are lots of places that are supportive of working moms, but there's nobody more supportive than another working mom. To have two attorneys who are parents ... Stacey also has school-aged children, and then Brenda is ... she's got a granddaughter and a grandson who are school age, and we're all in this together, and we're an office full of moms with young children. Then we do have a male associate also, who is young and doesn't have a family yet, but we know that there's real talent in women, educated women, who then also have the responsibility of keeping all the balls in the air at home too.

LEAH G:

That is so true, and that is exactly right that it becomes a balls-in-the-air, who's got the the project management of the home and also the project management of the work life. It's so wonderful to hear that you guys are tuned into that aspect of the workforce, really, because there is a huge amount of just super smart awesome men and women who want to have a family balance, and you're providing that. That's fantastic. What other challenges do you see as parents in the law practice that you would like to see fixed in the next few years?

LEAH D:

I think that professional development career growth can be difficult to achieve, just given the nature of going out on maternity leave and then coming back. You see colleagues who either have chosen not to have children or not had children yet, or have maybe not taken as much time off. It starts to feel like it can be passing you by a little bit.

It can be stressful to not only come back into a position that you're comfortable with, but obviously the law is always changing. There are always new developments. You're catching up on that, and you're also trying to make make sure that you are moving forward in your career at the same time, doing those extra things that you have to do in order to continue advancing, outside of just your daily workload. It would be nice to see that be a little bit easier.

LEAH G:

Right, yeah. You then have to start making those decisions about where you allocate your time, and that's part of that decision, is do I spend more time with the family or do I spend more of that on the continuing advancement and professional development. That's a hard choice.

LEAH D:

Yep. I've gone to events, usually in the evenings. Bar events, bar meetings, all of that.

LEAH G:

Yeah. One thing I'm finding now is that I really value those evenings. During maternity leave I had the whole day to spend with my daughter, and now it's buckled down to that three hours between when I get home and when I put her down to sleep. There's just such a high value placed on that time now, it's hard to say yes to other networking events or other activities. It's a new bar.

LEAH D:

Yes.

LEAH G:

Well, I'd like to thank you ladies both for your time. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about as far as this parental leave coverage goes for you?

LEAH D:

I think it's great that you guys are doing it. It definitely made my journey a little bit easier, and I hope that this conversation continues in this industry and other industries as well.

LEAH G:

That's really what it is, is continuing that conversation and finding out ways that we as ALPS or the industry in general, the practice of law, can really help support women, support men, and that absolute necessary balance between life and then the value of work that people provide.

A big thank you to our guests today. I'm really thankful for the time that you were able to spend with us. I've enjoyed the conversation. I hope you have too. For our listeners, if anybody would like to know more, just please visit our website at alpsnet.com, or certainly feel free to reach out to me directly. My email address is lgooley, L-G-O-O-L-E-Y, at alpsnet, which is A-L-P-S-N-E-T, dot com. Thank you, and have a great day.

ELIZABETH:

Thanks, Leah. Bye bye.

LEAH D:

Thank you.

LEAH G:

Okay.

ALPS In Brief – Episode 38: Empower Your Employees to Make Smart Security Decisions

As an organization or law firm of any size looking to build a cybersecurity plan, your first step should be training your staff — making everyone aware of cybersecurity threats and how to spot them. Mark Bassingthwaighte sits down with Erich Kron of KnowBe4: Security Awareness Training to talk cyber risks threatening your firm and approachable steps to combat them.  

Transcript:

MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE:

We're going to break here for a second. Hello, and good morning, podcast listeners. This is Mark Bassingthwaighte, the Risk Manager with ALPS, and welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful Missoula, Montana, and what a gorgeous day it is. I am so pleased to have as my guest today, Erich Kron, and he is a security awareness advocate with a company called KnowBe4 and I have been a fan of KnowBe4 for many years and really am just excited to have the opportunity to talk with Erich.

Let me share just a little bit of information about Eric. Eric is a veteran information security professional with over 20 years experience in the medical, aerospace manufacturing, and defense fields. He is a former security manager for the US Army's second regional cyber center, Western hemisphere and holds ... I'm just telling you, folks. There's a long list of certifications here that, I got to tell you, Eric. That's pretty impressive. Eric has worked with information security professionals around the world to provide the tools, training, and educational opportunities to succeed in information security. So Eric, it is such a pleasure. Welcome to the podcast.

ERICH KRON:

I'm thrilled to be here. Always happy to be on things like this where we can share a little bit of information. It's funny, you mentioned the certifications but what's more important is just all of that experience and being around the different areas. It's something that I love to share with other people.

MARK:

Well before we jump into the topic at hand, I think it would be helpful if you could share with our audience a little bit about just sort of who and what KnowBe4 is about.

ERICH:

Right, okay.

MARK:

Can you fill us in sort of on the mission?

ERICH:

Yeah. So KnowBe4, what we really are, we provide a security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, right? So what that means is we really focus on the user problem in security these days. And we do that by helping to train the employees or give organizations an easy way to train their employees on cybersecurity issues and things like password hygiene, all of that kind of stuff that's important to do these days that oftentimes gets neglected in normal training. But then we also give the organization a chance to follow up on that training with some simulated phishing exercises. And what that really, that's kind of the idea is, if you've ever taken a course where you've gone in, watched an instructor teach or seen something online, you've learned a little bit from that, right?

MARK:

Right.

ERICH:

But when you do some lab sort of things afterwards like you actually do some hands-on work, it really sticks more and that's part of the simulated phishing. You get a chance to actually learn to spot these.

MARK:

Right.

ERICH:

Simulated emails.

MARK:

Right.

ERICH:

That's the idea there.

MARK:

Okay, I love it. As you're aware, we're an insurance company and exclusively in the legal malpractice space, although we in addition to writing legal malpractice insurance policies we do write cyber insurance, again exclusively for law firms. Our space is primarily, we are nationwide, but primarily the solo small firm market. We branch out of that a little bit, but that's sort of the core business for us. And when I visit with lawyers all over the country, one of the things that I often hear is, "You know, Mark. We're just a small law firm here on Poughkeepsie or Ames, Iowa," or whatever it might be. "We're not going to be on anybody's radar, and we really just don't need to worried about becoming a victim. Who's going to be interested in us?" Is there anything to that?

ERICH:

Yeah, you know it's interesting. It's not just from your industry. I hear that a bit in other industries as well, but here's the thing. We got to understand that they may not necessarily always be after you specifically when it comes to trying to breach information, but there's a couple things to consider. Number one, who are your customers?

MARK:

Yes.

ERICH:

Many times they've attacked organizations to get to their customers. Look at Target and the HVAC vendor-

MARK:

Right.

ERICH:

That got them in trouble there. Hancock Health was, they got hit with ransomware recently based on, the bad guys went after the vendor, got into the vendor and used the vendor portal then to get into Hancock Health and cost them a lot of issues. And the other thing is, we have stuff out there called ransomware, right?

MARK:

Yes.

ERICH:

And the thing about ransomware is, it doesn't really matter if your information is important to anyone else, it's important to you, so there's value to that, right? They lock it down. They keep you from getting to it. You can't continue doing what you're doing. It's valuable to you, and really that doesn't matter whether you're a single person practice or even at home, right? People at home have had their photographs and kids' pictures and all that kind of stuff encrypted by ransomware. It doesn't matter what size you are. If you have data, it's important to you and you're willing to pay for it. That's all they care about.

MARK:

Yeah. And am I correct in saying that a significant percent of the, for lack of a better description, attack factors are automated are being pushed out to hit anybody that sort of happens to fall victim, as opposed to very specific targeting? Is that accurate?

ERICH:

Yeah I mean the bulk of it is definitely just kind of a spray and pray if you will sort of will.

MARK:

Yes.

ERICH:

I mean it's phishing. You put the line in the water and you hope somebody comes by and catches it. They do this in bulk. I mean, just tons of emails a day, it's mind-boggling. However what's happening is, as things are getting more advanced, and they are getting more advanced, right? You got to understand, these are kids in their mom's basement drinking Mountain Dew, eating pizza, all right? This is organized groups and in some cases organized crime, even up to nation-states and things like that, that are automating the processes. So imagine this, right? There's a breach that gives you some of your information is out there and it seems like no big deal now; but they take automated methods to pull that together, put that information in there, and actually make it much more targeted without a lot of work because they're employing automation just like we are. So although the bulk of it is very, very generalized, what we're seeing is definitely an improved trend and at least some customization towards the individuals, just because your information's out there.

MARK:

Right.

ERICH:

I mean, let's face it.

MARK:

Right. I like that. What it makes me think about, not only do we have this increase in automation but lawyers will also say, "I'm a smart guy. I wouldn't be fooled by these things," and they're thinking the sort of old, early Nigerian prince kind of scams, you now, that are so just crazy and obvious, pouring [glashan 00:07:52] on and on. Did the scams today, are they as easily identifiable? Are we getting to be more sophisticated there as well? Do you see where I'm going in terms of proper English, that kind of thing? Can you affirm or deny for me as to where we're going with that?

ERICH:

Yeah. This honestly certainly has nothing to do with intelligence. These groups have gotten very, very good at their trade. We see physicians, we see all kinds of very educated people get hit by these because they are so good at what they're doing. And it's interesting, we have this dark web, kind of the underbelly markets that are out there, right, that support some of the cybercrime. There's actually services that will take what these people want to do as phishing emails. They will correct the grammar, they'll correct the spelling. They'll improve them for a fee and guarantee increased click rates, okay? So there's a whole market behind this, right. And that's what I think people a lot of times, they underestimate just how good they are. And again, this isn't about being intelligent. It's not about how smart you are. It's about being aware of the attacks that are coming and having a focus on watching for them. Because really, you're not too small and they're just so good at what they're doing these days, they really are.

MARK:

Right. And sort of what that underscores for me, with the exception of possibly the true solo who even has no staff, one of the other things we need to think about is that if I was ... I practice at a small firm. Let's say there's three or four lawyers and we have four or five staff, maybe even hire a high school kid during the summer, do a little running, a little filing or something. We are exposed in terms of all these users. So even though I may, as a guy that's very interested in security and I keep on all of this stuff, I may not fall prey but I do have to understand others in my employ, others that access to these systems, also represent a very real risk. In light of that, what kinds of steps can I take as a small business owner to try to limit becoming the next victim?

ERICH:

Yeah, it's tough. It's not easy.

MARK:

Yes.

ERICH:

There's no denying that, right?

MARK:

Right.

ERICH:

It is something that is difficult to do. However, when it comes to being a small organization the first thing that I say, and I mean this sincerely, not just because it's what we do, but training people, getting people aware of what's going on. At least if you make them aware of the threats that are out there, that's very, very helpful, right? Because we see all of these different types that are all very slick. Some are after gift cards.

MARK:

Right.

ERICH:

We've seen ones where they're redirecting payroll, you know? All of these things are very, very slick, how they're doing this. And making sure that people are at least paying attention to what's coming in is really, really important. What I find is a lot of people, it just slips their mind to even think about these as attacks. Now, generally speaking, email systems, watch for those flags that say, "This may be spam." Make sure that when you get something that has a link in it, you actually hover that link and make sure, put your mouse over it for a second, and make sure it's going where it says it's going. Whenever you're in a place where you're logging in, this is a trick that they use, they'll send you to a link that looks like you're logging into the email, but it's actually their own website and so they're pulling your username and password out of that. Look up in the URL bar up there and make sure it's actually going to Microsoft or Google or, you know, not something else because those are the tricks that they use, is when people don't look for those it makes them very susceptible to that. So that's some of the key things that you can do to, just the small things that you can do, when you're doing this. But again, we need to let people know to do that.

MARK:

Right. You mentioned earlier in our conversation here about ransomware, and maybe we should take a quick moment and just make sure everybody even understands what that is. What are we seeing in our cybercrime? What are lawyers becoming victims of sort of most frequently? One, it's just device theft. You either are good about handling your equipment, you know, your smartphone or whatever it might be. But the other two biggies, really we are seeing a lot of ransomware and we are seeing a lot of wire fraud and business email compromise. I mean there's all sort of different acronyms for how we get to wire fraud. Can you just sort of underscore, for businesses that become victims of these kinds of crimes, can you just underscore. What is the number one attack vector, for lack of a better term. How is it most likely? Is it really going to be email or are there other types of things? Could I get in trouble with a text message? Could I get in trouble with a voicemail? I kind of what to explore the lead vectors, but can you just confirm for the audience again, what is the number one vector? Do you have any idea sort of how, I mean is it 90 percent, 50 percent? You know, that kind of thing.

ERICH:

Yeah. So what we know is that 91 percent of successful data breaches start with spear phishing, okay?

MARK:

Okay.

ERICH:

That's the key thing. And 98 percent of attacks have some sort of a social engineering angle to it, which is tricking people. Basically the scams, the tricking people into doing something, right?

MARK:

Right. Right.

ERICH:

Text messages are absolutely something that's big out there. We all know somebody that's gotten a text message from the IRS saying, "If you don't send us a bunch of iTunes gift cards right away you're going to jail," right, okay?

MARK:

Yeah.

ERICH:

And it's funny because we see that and we kind of laugh about that, but we can do that from the outside. When they're putting the pressure on the person a lot of times, it kind of messes our thinking up, right? So those are actually still pretty successful. We see phone calls. And what's even more dangerous is I've seen cases of hybrid attacks. And what that means is, you may get an email in your inbox and a few minutes later you may get a text message that says, "I just sent you a very important email," and it looks like it's from somebody you know. "Please go check this email." Well now they've validated the email through text and the email's really a very targeted phishing email.

MARK:

Right. Right. Got it.

ERICH:

So, very dangerous. It puts your guard down because you think, "Oh they obviously know who I am." But really, it's not that hard.

MARK:

Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. There are days when I heard stuff like this. I want to go some remote island, go off-grid, and just sell juice or something. Just completely disconnect.

ERICH:

My plans are to come up there in Montana with you and I'm going to have a little place and dig a moat around it. I'm going to retire back there. No electricity, no nothing, man. I just, yeah.

MARK:

Okay. You and I are absolute in agreement on a lot of this stuff. You've been at this far longer than I have, but I really do believe that awareness and training is key. Regardless of what IT can do in terms of firewalls and patches, the user can circumvent those defenses and we can still be attacked and become a victim in ways that can be really devastating. So with that in mind, how often do you feel some type, have there been any studies? How often do we need to kind of put these reminders, this training, out there? Is there some guidance in that? Is it the kind of thing, oh we talk about this once a year at a firm meeting, a get a little pizza? "Please, everybody. Don't click here!" Do you have any thoughts on that?

ERICH:

Yeah, I mean that's obviously very successful, right? No. If you think about it just think about it from that standpoint. Yeah, you give somebody training in January and you expect December they're still thinking about it. That just doesn't happen, so what's really important is that you get some training out there. Now what I really advocate for is yes, once a year you do a big training. And especially if you're in a organization that's large enough, you got to deal with compliance, you do have to check those boxes. But you do the big training once a year, okay? Make a big hub bub about it, longer stuff. And then at least quarterly put out four to five minutes of training. And what I like to see people do is make it something that's relevant, especially to that time of year or what's coming up, right? We know first quarter's always going to be tax fraud. It's tax, tax, tax.

MARK:

Yes, right.

ERICH:

So why not start reminding people, maybe in December that, hey this is coming up. Or maybe in early January, hey, just keep an eye on these things. We know that the tax attacks are higher this year. Or during the holidays we see that kind of thing going on, so remind people going into that with relevant training to what's happening there, you know? And then it's also important to do spot stuff, right? So any time there's a natural disaster, any time there's something major news breaking, you know the bad guys are going to turn around and turn this into an attack because they rely on emotions. They really do rely on emotions to make these successful, so if there's something that has you emotionally wound up they're going to use it to get you to click on things. They're going to use it to get you to donate to fake charities. They're going to do all of that kind of stuff, so if you see something like that put something out about it.

MARK:

Yeah. And what I like about that, and thanks for that comment, that's great. We at times think about these emotional responses as fear. A judge is going to send somebody out because you missed your jury duty or you're late on the IRS or behind. But there's this other side, too, playing on our generosity. "Oh, these poor kids in Haiti." And I think even political kinds of things. "I am so upset with the Democrats or the Republicans or whatever," so I just want to underscore. Don't fall victim to scams. It's not just about fear. There are all kinds of emotions people can play on and we just need to keep that in mind. This has been great, Eric. I really love what you're telling us. I would like to give you a little time, if you have a closing thought or two. But I'd also like you to share, because I so believe in the value of what KnowBe4 is doing. I mean, I really, really feel that this is an essential kind of an investment that businesses of all size should be making. So I would love if you'd like to take just a little bit of time and share with our listeners, if they have any interest how they can additional information? What kinds of services can you provide the solo small firm kind of market? And so I'll just turn it over to you.

ERICH:

Yeah, so you and I do share in that definitely. I'm a security guy. I'm where I'm at right now because I'm super passionate about this part and I've seen, for so many years technologists have really, or IT people have really focused on technology not on the human side.

MARK:

Right.

ERICH:

And I totally get that because honestly, most of us technical people, we don't want to have to train people. We don't want to, that's not why we got into technology, right?

MARK:

Right, right.

ERICH:

And so it's not easy for us to do that. And frankly we're not always effective at it. If you've ever been trained by a technical person and you're not necessarily [crosstalk 00:20:26]

MARK:

Maybe from one or two.

ERICH:

Yeah it can be painful, right?

MARK:

Yes.

ERICH:

So that's really where we kind of bridge that gap. We come in there and we provide the training. We make it easy to do, that's what I really love about it. The platform for the people on the backend, really really easy to do. It doesn't take a lot of time and it's just very, very effective, right? When it comes to the smaller markets, one or two-person shops, we generally don't start out that low. We usually start, I think it's around 25 seats. However, what we do have is we have a great channel program or MSP, manage service providers, right?

MARK:

Yes.

ERICH:

Some of the people that are already doing your IT work, a lot of them resell us or offer us an option, and that is where you can really turn to when it comes to the one or two-person shops is go to those folks and they can definitely get it out there for you as well.

MARK:

Okay. Good to know.

ERICH:

Yeah. It's a great thing to look at and ask the folks that already providing your IT services. "Hey, what do you know about this?" Because they can buy those blocks and then turn around and take care of it all for you, it makes it nice and easy.

MARK:

Yeah.

ERICH:

But again, regardless of your size, you really do need to be doing some sort of training with your folks. We put on a lot of webinars, and you go to KnowBe4.com and then there's a resource, oh no there's an events are there I think that does the webinars. We also have a resources place where you can learn a lot of this stuff if you want. If you feel like you want to learn and you want to put one or two people through it, that's all free. And it's good information.

MARK:

Yeah.

ERICH:

I talk about the scams. We have, Roger Grimes here talks about things, so we try to give a lot of information like that that we can, even if you're in a position that you can't necessarily or aren't in a position to afford it or have somebody to get it to you, we really do try to give you some stuff.

MARK:

Perfect. And for folks listening, I want to underscore, KnowBe4.com is K-N-O-W-B-E-and then the number four. The number four, so KnowBe4. And we'll put a link up on our site. Eric, thank you so much. It has indeed been a pleasure. I really appreciate your taking the time to visit with me a little bit today. To those of you in the listening ... I'm getting tongue tied, it's Monday. To those of you in the listening audience, I hope you found something of value today. I strongly encourage you to reach out and take a look at this website. This company, I have been very, very impressed and I've personally taken some of their training and it is good stuff. But in addition, if you have any thoughts or ideas about other topics or guests that you'd like us to visit with, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You may reach me at mbass@alpsnet.com. Thanks, folks. I hope you found something of value. Have a good one, bye-bye.

ALPS In Brief – Episode 37: Don't Mind Your Own Business

How can we make real changes within the practice of law to lessen the impact of stress on individuals in this profession? In this episode of the ALPS In Brief Podcast, Chris Newbold checks in with Dallas attorney and advocate for wellbeing, Brian Cuban, to discuss the state of lawyer wellbeing now, the lifesaving impact one lawyer can have upon another, and our ethical responsibility to step up for one another. 

CHRIS NEWBOLD:            

Good afternoon. This is Chris Newbold, guest hosting today for the ALPS In Brief Podcast. And I'm here in our offices in Missoula, Montana with attorney and advocate for wellbeing, Brian Cuban, who's in here from the Dallas area. I just spoke at our ALPS bar leaders retreat, and we thought this would be a great opportunity for us to have ... We have a similar passion in terms of seeing our profession improve on the wellbeing side, and so I thought this would be a great opportunity for us to just kind of have a conversation about where the profession's at. Where do we need to go?

And Brian, you're obviously out on the speakers' network, kind of talking about this particular issue, your personal experience, and so forth. I think I'd like to start with just you kind of putting into your own frame of reference. What is the state of the profession right now when it comes to attorney wellbeing?

BRIAN CUBAN:                 

It's a state that is a lot better than it was a few years ago. We have much more awareness. We have many more engaged professionals from the bottom up, the lawyers, the bar professionals, the local bar professionals, the state bar professionals. And we have awareness in big law. We have awareness within the boutique and the solo practitioner. There are areas that we can certainly do better, and we can certainly be more impactful, but we are definitely light years ahead of we were just three years ago.

CHRIS:                                  

And what do you think has driven that improvement in such a short period of time?

BRIAN:                                 

I think you have to give a lot of the credit to the ABA and the Betty Ford Hazelden Report, and that would also be Patrick Krill, who authored that report, in bringing the issue to the forefront with the staggering statistics, because I think that was a catalyst in really changing the conversation. Whatever people think of the ABA, you have different opinions, but you can't deny that that report was a seminal moment.

CHRIS:                                  

And why do you think that the issue right now is capturing a lot of attention in the legal community in legal circles?

BRIAN:                                 

Well, because of that report and because of the cumulative awareness, now we are looking around us and actually noticing what's going on. We may have been aware of what's going on, we may have seen what's going on. When someone dies by suicide, we are aware of it and we grieve it. But we are now much better in taking a look at that, and deciding where things could've been done differently. And three years ago, four years ago, it was more about just grieving and handing out, in the issue of suicide, handing out the 1-800 hotlines. Now we are moving beyond that, and really look at how we can make systemic changes to at least lessen the odds of those things occurring.

CHRIS:                                  

You talk a lot about kind of the impact that one lawyer can have on another lawyer. Right? And the responsibility that we have to not be kind of casual observers in this. Talk about that a little bit more as it relates to how we looked at, engineer a culture shift in the profession, and how every lawyer can make a difference one by one.

BRIAN:                                 

Sure. I talk a lot about not minding your own business. We have to create a culture where we are comfortable, or even if we're not comfortable. Let me step back from that because that's not comfortable. It's okay to be uncomfortable not minding your own business. That's a human emotion. But we have to get comfortable understanding that for what it is and taking that step anyways. When we see someone struggling, when we think we might be able to, or we are wondering, you just don't know. Is there a drinking problem? Is there a mental health struggle? Maybe the person's just having a bad day. To be able to not mind our own business for one moment, step outside of our struggles, step outside of our busy day, our billing, the things we have going on, and say, "How are you doing? Are you doing okay? Do you know that if you're not, you can come to me, and we can talk?" That doesn't require anything but empathy. And every lawyer, every person has that ability.

CHRIS:                                  

Is that a tough conversation for an associate to have with a partner?

BRIAN:                                 

Absolutely. And we have to follow protocols. Law firms need to establish protocols for when people are struggling. That is not realistic to expect an associate to confront a partner. But big law all have EAPs, so there's that. We all have lawyers assistance programs. Do you know as an associate, you can call lawyers assistance program, and you can let someone know what's going on? And they're not going to out you. I know that is a tough pill to swallow, and I know you don't believe that. But you can make that call. You do not have to identify yourself in any lawyers assistance program in this country, and you can say, "I'm in this firm, and I think this guy is struggling." And they will take it from there, so you can do that.

BRIAN:                                 

Within big law, we can talk about big law and then move on to something. Go down, go down. Within big law, it's important to establish protocols that are nonjudgmental, where everyone has a path. Everyone in the firm has a nonjudgmental path, a path that they feel safe voicing their concern if they see someone they think is struggling. So I can't tell them what that path is, but there should be multiple paths based on where someone is in the chain, right down to the clerk.

CHRIS:                                  

Talk about your opinions on ... There's an increasing body of work out there that says that the economics of wellbeing are conducive to a stronger bottom line. Right? And as we think about talent acquisition, talent retention, I know you work a lot in kind of big law firms. Right?

BRIAN:                                 

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

CHRIS:                                  

I think there's a really interesting play on the horizon for those who lead our profession from a big law perspective to be thinking about a commitment to this issue that could translate economically for the firm. Talk about that.

BRIAN:                                 

Absolutely. And I think, I doubt there are any managing partners, senior partners, firm CEOs are the real big ones that are not aware of that issue. It is the messaging is consistent just in general in society about the impact of addiction and mental health issues on the workplace and the economic cost. So the challenge becomes: How do we translate that into risk management? And I think they are starting to do that. That is not what I do. I'm a storyteller, I'm not a risk manager. But I think we are starting to see an industry, and people who do that, to go to a firm and say, "This is how we translate this into risk management to increase value to you," save you money. That saves the client money because on the most basic level, and we talked about the Peter Principle of Recovery. Right? How your level of competence keeps decreasing, and you keep trying to adjust your mindset to stay within that, you tell yourself you're at a high level when you're struggling.

BRIAN:                                 

That can be, in a general sense, stealing money from a client because you were not effectively representing the client. That is affecting the firm's bottom line, and that is the most basic level. When a lawyer is struggling, and not functioning at the non-struggling level, he may not even, or she may not even understand what that level is because they've been in the middle of it, lacking self-awareness for so long. That is affecting the firm's bottom line. That can affect client retention because there are lawyers out there who are not struggling. Everyone's trying to get the business. Right? So you have to maximize the ... You have to minimize the risk by putting lawyers in a position to succeed and to hit the top level of competence and move beyond that if possible. Keep raising that level. And it's hard to do that when someone's struggling with addiction, problem drinking, depression.

BRIAN:                                 

And I see lawyers all the time that talk about, well, I'm struggling with depression, but I was killing it, doing this. And I can't judge that. I don't know their situation. But I can say anecdotally, and what I see in the data, that I don't see how a person can look at the big picture, step back, and say, "I was going through all that and giving a dollar for a dollar." So I think all firms are aware of that, and I think that is achieved through a risk management model.

CHRIS:                                  

Again, it's going to be interesting too as big law tries to recruit talent out of the law schools, how much top talented students are actually looking for a wellness play in terms of the life, work balance that I think, generationally, I think is becoming more common.

BRIAN:                                 

That's a good question. I forget what the study was. Was it Am Law? Did the Am Law survey just come out?

CHRIS:                                  

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

BRIAN:                                 

And I couldn't find it. I think it may have been subsumed in one of the questions. But I reached out to Patrick Krill, who does a lot of the risk management stuff, and who authored the ABA Betty Ford Study, and asked him if he knew if we are surveying firms on wellbeing, if that is part of the survey. And I don't know that he had. I'll have to look and see if he responded, or he had an answer. But I think that may be not so much as a conscious play, but as a lifestyle play. It's just part of an overall lifestyle. Looking at the overall lifestyle, can we say that someone's going to say, "What's their drinking culture? I'm not going there"? There's no way to know that. But in the overall lifestyle play, I think lifestyle and wellness will become major factors, as Millennials and Generation Z, who have different priorities on what they want their life to look at as lawyers and as human beings.

CHRIS:                                  

Yeah. Talk more about, it's an interesting time in our profession given the fact that we have four separate generations all operating at the same time. Right?

BRIAN:                                 

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

CHRIS:                                  

But there are also studies out there, particularly those that have been done within the law schools, that say some of these behaviors and substance abuse and so forth are starting earlier, and are becoming more prevalent for those who have been in practice, particularly in private practice, for less than 10 years. As you think about that dynamic, and Millennials and so forth, that's soon going to be the largest chunk of lawyers in the profession. And as you think about the generational aspects of wellbeing, what's your take on that?

BRIAN:                                 

I think Millennials definitely have a different vision of what wellness looks like than ... I'm a baby boomer. The baby boomers, I come from, my lawyers' culture was a drinking culture. And I think when we look at things like the Sober Curious Movement, and what the Sober Curious Movement is, is not looking at drinking in terms of whether someone is a problem drinker, is an alcoholic, but what it looks like as a lifestyle, and as part of a healthy lifestyle, and whether you want it to be part of the healthy lifestyle without being judged on whether you're abstinent or not abstinent, and what that means to you, whether you're an alcoholic or you're not an alcoholic. I think Millennials and Generation Z are going to look at this differently in terms of just, I want to do the things that make me feel good, and that may not involve drinking. And I don't want to be judged for that. I don't want to have to explain myself.

BRIAN:                                 

And I think that is going to be a much easier transition and a much easier conversation than it is for my generation because it's beginning. It is beginning. The Sober Curious Movement is out there. We have bars within New York. There aren't any in Dallas and Austin. And you see a lot of the progressive towns, where you have bars, they just serve mocktails. And they revolve the fun around other things besides getting drunk. You go out and you're drinking fake pina coladas without alcohol. And they revolve everything around those, around the mocktails. The mocktail generation, they may be that.

CHRIS:                                  

That's an interesting one. If you had to assess right now, wellbeing in the legal profession, one being it's at an all-time low, 10 being, I think lawyers are both healthy, happy, engaged, where you put that on the spectrum?

BRIAN:                                 

I would put we're at a three or four, three or four. And that's great, and that's great.

CHRIS:                                  

A lot of room for improvement.

BRIAN:                                 

A lot of room for improvement. Four is opportunity. Right?

CHRIS:                                  

Yep.

BRIAN:                                 

Four is opportunity. Yes. And one of the biggest challenges I think we have, and if you look at big law, we with the ABA, and this isn't a criticism of the ABA at all. I think with the Wellness Task Force and everything, they have laid out the groundwork for all levels to participate, all stakeholders, solo, medium, boutique, the bar associations, all the way up to big law, corporate. I think they are laying out that groundwork. But I think when we get further down into the stakeholders, the solo practitioner, the small firm, we have a lot more work to do. And I think in that chunk is where we have the most improvement to do in our messaging, and the most opportunity because we have other challenges when we get down there.

BRIAN:                                 

If you work at big law, you have health insurance. And I knew big law lawyers who have health insurance, and still can't find a reasonable psychiatrist or therapist. They've complained to me about it. We have this health insurance crisis on so many different levels. And big law within the spectrum, you have privilege. You have health insurance privilege because you're going to have it. And you're going to have the EAP, and you're going to have this, and you're going to have that.

BRIAN:                                 

I don't know what the stats are, but I know anecdotally that a lot of the solos cannot afford health insurance. So when you can't afford health insurance, what are your options? You're going to 12 step. You are going to county. A lawyer don't want to go to county and get free treatment, that's very shameful. Right? If you even have that option as a reasonable option in your city. A lot of cities have terrible county free health services. And so we have that stigma of a solo practitioner and the medium, I don't have health insurance. I'm a lawyer, I'm not taking advantage of free. I can't. So they don't tell anyone. It's shameful. So how do we solve that?

CHRIS:                                  

Obviously, in our book of business with ALPS, we specialize in small firms and solo practitioners. And 65% of the policies that we issue are to solos. And they're generally a higher malpractice risk because they don't have a support network around them.

BRIAN:                                 

Absolutely.

CHRIS:                                  

You can't stop into Brian's office and say, "Hey. Let's have a conversation about this particular case." You have to build networks. You have to build connections in very different ways, which makes it I think, much more challenging.

BRIAN:                                 

And it does. And it's a challenge where you're struggling. It's going to be dependent on the particular situation. But you're making what would be decent money, you have a family. You can barely, after everything, then you care barely support your family. And you're more able to speak to this. You have a deductible that you can't meet anyways, even though you have health insurance. That's as almost as being uninsured. So we have all of those issues, and I don't know what the solution is to that. But that is one of the things that is a huge barrier to wellness within the profession, health insurance and the ability to pay for getting well, the ability to find people to get us well. We are becoming a cash only society in terms of wellness.

BRIAN:                                 

I consider myself very lucky because I have a psychiatrist, I've been seeing for 15 years, and he treats. I have one of the few treating psychiatrists out there with his therapy. But we also have the ghost networks that you may be familiar with. And I'm getting off on tangents, where you can't, even if you have health insurance, you can't find a treatment provider because they don't take insurance.

CHRIS:                                  

Where do we go? A lot of good activity now happening. You've got Pledge. You've got some state task forces going. Got a lot of discussion. Societally, we're seeing more vulnerability to talk about these issues, whether it's Hollywood stars, or sports stars, there's just more discussion, which I think is healthy. If we're a three or four right now, how do we get to a six or seven? How do we start to move the needle? Culture shifts in any society-

BRIAN:                                 

It's one person at a time. It's one person at a time. If you're talking, there's no magic pill to culture shift. We talked about this. It is one person at a time. There's one bar association at a time. There's one law firm at a time. And you hope, you hope, that the Malcolm Gladwell theories kick in, and you hit a tipping point. But it is much more, again, it is much more on different levels societal. If I can't afford treatment, what's the difference what the path is if I can't get there? Why should I tell anyone if I can't afford to get there? In Texas, we have a fund where if you go to them, a lawyer can get treatment. I believe it's an endowed fund privately. And maybe someone will correct me on this when they listen to it. But we have to find different ways to ... It's more than just laying the path. People have to be able to walk on it.

BRIAN:                                 

And if you can't afford to get the help, other than 12 step, and 12 step is great, Smart Recovery's great, Refuge Recovery is great, but they're all mutual aid. Mutual aid is not treatment. Mutual aid is maintaining connection, which is important. If you can't afford the treatment, and you have no way through that path, that's a huge problem that goes beyond the legal profession. When we talk about the legal profession, what we can do, I think we have to have a more societal view of that. How do we correct that?

CHRIS:                                  

Yeah. There's an interconnectedness to a lot of different-

BRIAN:                                 

You can't sever this. You can't sever out health insurance accessibility from all the other issues within the profession because most of the profession is solo and small.

CHRIS:                                  

And even on a tangent, one of the reasons I got involved in the wellbeing movement was I feel like there is a gap in expectations for what people think practicing law will be like, and ultimately what they find that it's going to be like, whether that happens in law school, or whether that happens because of law school debt. That again, to be a good lawyer, one has to be a healthy lawyer. And more and more, people are finding themselves boxed into a spot where they're actually doing something that they're not finding professional satisfaction in, which is then causing ... It can cause other things to kind of spin off from there.

BRIAN:                                 

I agree. I agree. Every lawyer is a story. Every lawyer is more than just the person under stress. Every lawyer brings their entire history of trauma, of however they grew up, family.

CHRIS:                                  

Family.

BRIAN:                                 

They bring it all through the door of that firm. They bring it all to the courthouse. So whatever that stress is may not just be the product of what's going on at that moment, the case, fulfilled expectations, unfulfilled expectations. It may be the product of a life story that has shaped someone that made them more susceptible to those issues. Does that make sense?

CHRIS:                                  

It does.

BRIAN:                                 

So we have to address the story and not just the moment that the lawyer is in.

CHRIS:                                  

Yeah. Anything else that you want to kind of relay as we talk to our policy holders and other interested listeners about just kind of the current state of attorney wellbeing?

BRIAN:                                 

If we want to change the paradigm of attorney wellbeing, for me personally, I think the most powerful tool is continue to encourage people to tell their stories. Keep telling the stories. Everyone identifies with aspects of other people's lives. There's going to be something to identify with. The connections, stories bring connection. Keep bringing people in to tell stories. Just encourage that. And I think through the power of storytelling, we will start to see more and more people tell their stories, and then they'll tell their stories. And I think that is how.

CHRIS:                                  

That reduces stigma. That reduces vulnerability.

BRIAN:                                 

That's right. I think as we reduce stigma, we will better empower lawyers to seek recovery.

CHRIS:                                  

Yeah. Brian, thank you.

BRIAN:                                 

Thank you.

CHRIS:                                  

We appreciate your time, and we appreciate your perspectives. And obviously, you're doing wonderful work in the storytelling side of the ledger because it's important that through the experiences of you and telling your personal story that it makes a difference.

BRIAN:                                 

I think law firms need to realize, and I think big firms are starting to do this, is creating a wellness program has different levels. There's storytelling. There is risk management. There is-

CHRIS:                                  

Scientific studies.

BRIAN:                                 

Yes. And there is the pure wellness aspect. How do we reduce stress? How do we become happier? What can we do to allow our lawyers, within the framework of our representation of clients, to feel better about themselves and what they do? Law firms are in a business. This is a business, and they are not yogis. We have to be realistic. Law firms are there to represent clients at the highest level possible. What holes do we need to fill to make that happen? Because that is what we do. We represent clients. And so we have to fill all these different gaps, the storytelling gap, the risk management gap, the wellness gap.

CHRIS:                                  

Got it. Again, thank you so much. And I hope you enjoyed listening to this podcast. As you know, ALPS is committed to being a leader in the wellbeing issues of the day affecting the legal profession. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you have any other ideas for topics on the wellbeing, please let us know. Thank you.

 

Brian Cuban, the younger brother of Dallas Mavericks owner and entrepreneur Mark Cuban, is a Dallas based attorney, author and addiction recovery advocate. He is graduate of Penn State University and The University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Brian has been in long term recovery from alcohol, cocaine and bulimia since April of 2007.

His first book, Shattered Image: My Triumph Over Body Dysmorphic Disorder,” chronicles his first-hand experiences living with, and recovering from, twenty-seven years of eating disorders, and Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD).

Brian’s most recent, best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer, Tales of The Bar, Booze, Blow, & Redemption is an un-flinching look back at how addiction and other mental health issues destroyed his career as a once successful lawyer and how he and others in the profession redefined their lives in recovery and found redemption.

Brian has spoken at colleges, universities, conferences, non-profit and legal events across the United States and in Canada. Brian has appeared on prestigious talks shows such as the Katie Couric Show as well as numerous media outlets around the country. He also writes extensively on these subjects. His columns have appeared and he has been quoted on these topics on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, The Huffington Post, Above The Law, The New York Times, and in online and print newspapers around the world. Learn more at www.briancuban.com.

ALPS In Brief – Episode 36: What Lawyers Can Learn from Living on Mars

Featured in the hit Gimlet Media podcast, ‘The Habitat,’ Dr. Tristan Bassingthwaighte, architectural designer, space researcher, and resident of NASA’s yearlong Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) mission, sits down with his father, ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte, to discuss the stress factors associated with isolated, confined, and extreme environments and how to create support systems and wellness systems strong enough to survive a year in space.  

Transcript:

 

MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE:

Good afternoon podcast world. This is Mark Bassingthwaighte. I'm the risk manager with ALPS. Welcome to the latest episode of ALPS in Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I've got a treat for you today and honestly it is very much an honor and a privilege to introduce our guest today, because there's a family relationship here. This is our oldest son, Tristan Bassingthwaighte, and Tristan has an interesting story to share. We're going to talk about and just have a little fun. At the end, trust me, there is a message here that that relates to the practice of law. But before we jump into our conversation and share why we're interviewing Tristan, Tristan, could you just take a little time and share whatever you'd like to share about yourself for our listeners?

TRISTAN BASSINGTHWIAGHTE:

Yeah. I am originally from Montana as well. I've spent the last 10 years or so living in Hawaii and around the world, have three architectural degrees with a focus in space architecture and extreme environmental design, design t-shirts on the side just for fun, and as part of my research for the doctoral studies, got to live in a simulated Mars base for a year for NASA.

MARK:                 

Very cool and that's what we're going to talk about and when Tristan talks about his experiences, I have caught up with him and and Singapore where he was doing an internship, I caught up with him and Bangkok, which what were you doing?

TRISTAN:            

A spring study abroad.

MARK:                 

A study abroad spring study abroad. That's right. He's been in Copenhagen, did a year in Shanghai. But we're here to talk about this Mars simulation. Tristan, can you give us a little background. Who runs this simulation? What are we talking about in terms of the name of the project and a little background?

TRISTAN:            

The simulation itself is called HI-SEAS. It's for the a Hawaiian Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. It's run by UH with a partnership of 10 to 15 other universities around the world. NASA actually gave the program about $17 million to do a series of simulations studying social and psychological aspects of long duration isolation, confinement, essentially trying to find a way to pick a crew for an actual Mars mission that will not self-destruct, remain happy, sort of soft topics, people research.

MARK:                 

Yes, yes. As a dad, I remember finally over the years and I can recall when you were even a wee young when running around the house, you would say things like, "Dad, I'm going to be an astronaut someday," and "Dad, I'm going to go to Mars." I guess technically with all of the things going on with SpaceX, who knows what's going to happen here. But in your own way, you've already done it and it's just an interesting path. Can you tell us a little bit more about how did she end up here? What got you into the program? How did this all play?

TRISTAN:            

Honestly, it was a giant almost mistake. I was doing research while living in Shanghai for my masters on extreme environmental design and I came across the blog of a Jocelyn Dunn who was the science officer for HI-SEAS 3. While you can't do any direct communication, because at the time she was in her situation, you can leave comments on blog posts and they can respond. I asked her a bunch of questions since it was related to my research. She got back with her actual mission email. I got a bunch of fun stuff, good data, and she suggested that I was interested enough, maybe I should give a the next mission a shot.

TRISTAN:            

I said, "What mission?" I had no idea that was going to be a another one. It turned out that it was out of my home university back in Hawaii, so I just kind of applied on a lark. Did all the sociology tests online, did the Skype interviews, talked to the psychologists, and got it all narrowed down. Then was quite surprised when they invited me to the wilderness survival in Wyoming. Went out there, we did a week in the bush, and they picked the final six and I made the cut. I found out later a lot of the people who were also selected for crew specifically told them they wouldn't go without me. I went from not knowing that HI-SEAS existed to be locked in the dome at about three and a half months.

MARK:                 

That's crazy. Yeah. For those of you listening, this turned out to be, and I think still holds true to this day, the longest simulated mission run. Am I correct?

TRISTAN:            

It's the longest NASA Mars simulation mission run. They've got one or two longer out of Russia in China, but they were extended isolation experiments, not so much mission simulations.

MARK:                 

Yes. This project again, listeners, we went 366 days.

TRISTAN:            

Yeah, we got it on a leap year.

MARK:                 

Yeah. Really. I want to underscore one point. You shared a comment here about the delay talking to the person that initially got you interested in this. As a parent, when Tristan was on Mars, quote unquote, there is a delay. You cannot have real-time Skype or real-time email or anything. You can send an email and it takes 40 minutes because that would be the amount of time a signal would normally take to go to Mars.

TRISTAN:            

Yeah, round trip.

MARK:                 

Everything about simulation, they really did everything they could to to make it feel very, very real. It's just an interesting process. What was your role?

TRISTAN:            

I came in as the crew architect, essentially, so more of a research role than anything because the Hab was designed, but while in there I was conducting research on how people were reacting to the environment, how we might be able to change it for another series of experiments. I also managed all of the EVAs, paperwork, and was one of the de facto head chefs.

MARK:                 

Oh, yes. Which I gotta say can as a Dad, growing up Tristan wasn't known in the house or within the family as a, as a culinary wizard. He has a younger sister who actually went to the Culinary Institute of America in New York and is an extremely talented person in the kitchen. But it's been nice that Tristan has since really developed some skills, so I'm proud of that as well.

TRISTAN:            

Unfortunately, mostly with dehydrated foods.

MARK:                 

Well that's true. Actually, you should share a little bit about that. What was it like in terms of can you give us just a quick overview of what day to day life is like in this dome? I mean, in the amount of space? Can you take a shower? Do you have personal space? Can you just give us a sense briefly of the environment?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. The downstairs, the entire area might be 1000 to 1100 square feet, so a very small home with another maybe 400 square feet up top. Each crew member essentially got their very own closet to sleep in. It's about the size of the bed and that's it. You can have a shower, but you get two minutes of shower water per person per week, make it quick.

MARK:                 

Yeah. Can you explain why there's only two minutes worth of water?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah, you were just not allowed to use it. essentially There's only so much water on the planet you would be able to use. It would have to go through $1 million water recycling machine. It's just part of the keeping supplies as efficient as possible.

MARK:                 

Yeah. That's playing out out. Was their recycling going on? Yes.

TRISTAN:            

Oh, yeah.

MARK:                 

Certainly there were water deliveries, but it is very much limited. There were some interesting stories where systems didn't necessarily always work. So food?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah, food. We have a shipping container full of high quality survival rations. The stuff you'd see online where it's like an old coffee can with say chunk salmon, but it's like $85 for that can because once you put hot water in, it's pretty freaking good. Like, the whole time I was in school, Grad school, everything, like call it that nine year period, in the dome with the dehydrated survival food was the best I ate. By a long shot. I made double layer chocolate cakes, mole sauce, enchiladas. I invented the pizza cupcake.

MARK:                 

Yeah. Pizza cupcake. Oh, man. Okay. Now you're talking. Of my kind of grub. It'd be fun. How did the sort of day to day tasks as opposed to the research? I guess I'm still trying to get a sense of what it was like to be in the dome socially, because that's really what this whole experiment was about. Was there a lot of camaraderie, a lot of stress, a lot of just, and what did you guys do as a group? Because there's just the six of you for 366 days. No real time. You have no connect. You have no Internet access in terms of being able to browse and say is Earth's still with us?

TRISTAN:            

No phones.

MARK:                 

Yeah, no phones. How did that play?

TRISTAN:            

You do a lot of stuff together because you have to. We had maybe 15 official experiments and then maybe 10 of our own that we're just doing for our own personal research. A lot of those were extra vehicular activities where you would be doing well-coordinated group, trying to do stuff in caves or out with cones, just traffic cones we had taken out, and navigating the lava inside. Inside, there's a team building exercise where your trying to maximize your personal score and the team's score, and it's sort of testing how an individual will favor themselves versus the group with various scenarios. It's all pretty subtle.

TRISTAN:            

Outside of that, there's definitely, I wouldn't call it a schism so much, but there's always the person, say, at work where you get along with them the best. They get your humor, whatever else, and they'll be your go to lunch person for example. There was definitely that in the dome as well.

MARK:                 

Just on a smaller scale?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah, on a smaller scale. Yeah, exactly. You know, you're talking about the social aspects of life there. The first thing you have to do is remove all of the social interactions you might have a family because they're not there anymore. You don't have the ability to be an uncle, or a brother, or an aunt, or anything of that sort. You don't have lovers or dating relationships. It's just you have your coworkers, so your society has become massively simplified and now you're trying to fill the social gaps that have been created with the people that you're with.

MARK:                 

Yeah. I want to come back to that, but we're sitting here talking and I want to explore the EVAs a little bit as well. But you know, my apologies listeners, I do think I've made an assumption. We haven't let people know where you are. Where is the dome and let's just describe that a little bit, because that plays into the importance of what happened, and where all this is, and why this study took place where it did. Can you fill us in? Where is this?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah, it's a geodesic dome, so just a half sphere, like a half a buckyball, covered in tarp and it is up on a quarry that's about 80 to 100 foot elevation from sea level, halfway up Mount Loa on the big island of Hawaii. Just barren old lava flows as far as you can see. Some of them are the really smooth a lava flow that looks like frozen syrup and you can run around and on it, others look like peanut brittle from hell. Incredibly difficult to get across. I went through like four pairs of hiking boots.

MARK:                 

Yeah. I recall I had to help buy a pair. Because they do these resupply missions and so if we learned that that one of the astronauts and most of us are taking care of our own family members, if you will, although you can send things for anybody if you really wanted to. But it takes some time, so we would buy a pair of boots, and it gets sent, and then when the resupply mission approaches Mars and drop some stuff off, so that's how they got through some of this.

MARK:                 

I can assure you, I was out with my wife when they returned to Earth. We were at the Hab when they came back and got to explore this area. When Tristan shares that this is some rugged remote crazy places, I'm telling you, it is. We've talked about caves. These are lava tubes they are exploring.

MARK:                 

I assume why, I don't assume because I know, but again to share with our listeners here. You talk about being restricted to the dome and then we had these EVAs. This is not put on a tee shirt and a pair of shoes and go explore. Can you describe this a little bit?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. If you want to get outside and it's not for a normal mission thing, because I mean we've got all of our regular EVAs. Let's say I just want to go for a walk, essentially. I would need to create a sort of EVA plan, so like a map and a list of activities where I'd like to go, what I'm doing, and a time for it. I have to submit that to mission support and they will approve or deny it. They usually approve it.

MARK:                 

There really is, again, there is their mission support. These are people on the ground. There's these delays. It's just like dealing with mission control if you're on the moon, except much further out.

TRISTAN:            

Much farther.

MARK:                 

So there are all these time delays.

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. If I'd like to go outside, I won't even get the basic yes or no for maybe 25, 30 minutes if they're watching their email in that moment. It will normally take several hours.

MARK:                 

So it's approved.

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. Yeah. Let's say it's approved. Then the next day, because it's definitely not going to happen the same day, I need to get at least four people together, including myself, so that I've got a buddy to go out with me, I need a Hab comm person to man the radio and monitor where we're at, and then a scribe who will work with Hab comm to write down what we're doing, when we did it, important bits of the conversation to send all this data back since, since it's part of the experiments and if you are actually on Mars, you would of course need to do this as well. Then you need to put on a simulated space suit or the Hazmat suits, wrap your shoes and duct tape and other protection, because it is a very rough.

MARK:                 

It is like glass.

TRISTAN:            

You need to set yourself up with a camel bag, a headset that goes around your neck or your ears and hooks into your walkie talkie, and get your fans all set up to keep you cool. That takes about an hour to 90 minutes. Then you've got to go into our little airlock, which is between the habitat and our storage container, which is where all our old supplies are and just count down from five minutes, wait for the pressure to simulate getting pumped out.

MARK:                 

Right. Decompression. Right. Right.

TRISTAN:            

Then you can go inside. Then you of course have to follow your mission plan, and take pictures, and do all the rest, so it's still work. If you want to go for a walk, it will take you 24 hours and a lot of camaraderie.

MARK:                 

Yeah. What I'm hearing, if you even just have, you know some times, I think just day to day regular work, every once in a while something stressful happens, or again you just need five minutes, or you need to see to go out and calm down, or relax, or just take a break and things. This is a day's work.

TRISTAN:            

Yeah.

MARK:                 

Okay? How did that impact you and your colleague?

TRISTAN:            

You have got to do other things. Like say exercise, we probably did an average of two to five hours a day just to resist cabin fever more than anything. Get out the stresses. You can shout into a pillow. You can talk calmly with a person driving you crazy, because if you get into an actual argument going to be awkward for quite awhile. It's hard to repair a relationship when you can't escape each other and calm down. While you could, say, go to your room, you can still hear everybody in the habitat or you could go hang out in the shipping container, but then you're just standing next to a bunch of crates of food in the dark. There's not really like, "I'm going to go to the cafe and relax for a bit." You can put it on the VR headset and look at a beach, but you've got to set up the computer. It's not easy.

MARK:                 

Let me share a story. I can share. Now, Tristan is certainly someone who's in great shape. Prior to his time in the dome, I never knew him to be much of a runner. I mean, he certainly would work out and do things, but this guy was not what I would call a hardcore runner in any way, shape, or form. You ran a complete marathon in the stone on a treadmill. This was not the world's most sophisticated, high tech, brand new kind of piece of equipment.

TRISTAN:            

Soviet Russia, for sure.

MARK:                 

I just share that because, again, I think it's important to understand what we're really talking about here. I mean, to work out on this crazy treadmill with, am I remembering correctly, just one window, which is a small little window to look outside?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. The size of a medium pizza give or take.

MARK:                 

Yeah. Okay. The size of medium pizza. You can run on the treadmill and look out that window. I just think, to me, that struck a chord with me in the sense of, wow just to try to make things work, this is how far you go, and you run a marathon. You know, there was a lot of joy, and pride, and probably working to this. I mean, I think it became something of a goal for everybody to have these kinds of accomplishments. Before I get to some final questions, I want to give you a moment or two. Are there any just sort of interesting stories, anything you'd like to share? Something kind of fun or unique about the whole experience?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah, I think some of the most interesting parts of it, I mean, were of course like what you found you could get through or how you might react to stress. I have very little doubt that given the right crew I could definitely do it for real. I mean, you're going to suffer a lot but I mean it can be worth it. Marathons are never comfortable but they're always worth it at the end. But I was quite astounded by the geography out there that you don't see typically.

TRISTAN:            

If you're just standing at the dome and you were looking around, it looks like a bunch of lava flows and rocks. It's barren country.

MARK:                 

It is very barren. That's right.

TRISTAN:            

In my time there I discovered completely on my own, or with Carmel or Cyprian, just out looking.

MARK:                 

Fellow astronauts.

TRISTAN:            

Perhaps 50 lava tubes, some of them with caves inside bigger than a house. Skylights with beams coming down, two stories, and a little patch of plants growing out. Weird undulating, just smooth caverns moving through the countryside. One of them, we hiked underground for maybe a kilometer and then popped out the other side. We got to map these things and just see the most ridiculous geography you can imagine under there with stalactites of frozen lava, and crystals, and all these things. Surreal.

MARK:                 

Yeah. That actually in some ways, would it be correct to say that these experiences of really exploring in so many ways, it really is just a foreign landscape, you know? Very few people live in this kind of landscape. There's obviously people in Hawaii that are quite familiar with it. Would that become something of a sanctuary just to go out, and see, and explore some terrain that's just very, very new and very, very different.

TRISTAN:            

Oh, yeah. I mean, we actually ended up doing a great deal of lava tube exploration mapping sort of additionally that we weren't required to do right, but we just enjoyed being underground so much. Once you get in there, you're out of the sun, your suit cools down. The geography's amazing. Cyprian and I actually repelled down a skylight and found a little cave and crawl to the back, and there was a sort of a hole in there about the size of a lounge chair or whatever. With our flashlights and everything else, we could not find the bottom sides or top. It was a black hole and do an endless abyss. We both said, "Let's not come back here."

MARK:                 

Yeah. Oops. Wrong footing. Yeah.

TRISTAN:            

Definitely. It'd be cool to go back with like real climbing gear and a team and see what's up because-

MARK:                 

Or maybe fly some little-

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. Put a drone down there.

MARK:                 

A drone down, yeah.

TRISTAN:            

But I feel like if I had fallen into that I'd still be falling. Yeah, I don't know what it was.

MARK:                 

Wow. That's very cool. I'd be curious, would you do it again?

TRISTAN:            

I would absolutely do an experiment of that nature again. At the time of my life it was perfect for finishing dissertation.

MARK:                 

It just worked, right.

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. Right now, working freelance, paying off student loans, it wouldn't be a quite so in keeping with my direction, but if I got hired as a space architect for is SpaceX for example and they needed the crew to do a six month to practice this stuff, yeah, of course.

MARK:                 

I see where you're going, but let me take that even further. Okay. You've had this simulated experience and let's SpaceX or one of these other companies really does get it together. The equipment's there and they're going to send a crew up. I don't know if it's 10, it's 20, I don't know what these early crews will look like. I think you would agree with me that these early flights, the first manned flights, even if they have stuff already on Mars in terms of robotics and a little fuel or water already there waiting and that kind of thing. I think it's pretty much a given that this would be a one way trip. Would you disagree with that?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. It's actually probably safer to do it and than it would be to a sale to America way back in like the 1600s.

MARK:                 

Oh, that's an interesting. Okay.

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. Like, you're going to go and the ship design will either have it so that when you land there's already a robotic craft that has been waiting for you or you will stay a full year and make some more fuel and then come back, so it'll either be like a three year round trip or like a five year round trip. But as long as you don't have a crazy equipment malfunction or a solar flare that kills everything on the way out.

MARK:                 

Yeah. See, that's the radiation piece of this and the low G environment for extended period of time, I still think there's a lot of medical things we don't know.

TRISTAN:            

Oh, there definitely is. Yeah.

MARK:                 

That's getting on a tangent here for a moment. But I guess what I'd say, so you've had this simulated experience and Elon calls up and says, "Hey. I saw the podcast." There's a podcast it, it's called The Habitat if you want some fun. Six episodes. I encourage you to take a look. That's a lot of fun too.

MARK:                 

It's just, "Tristan, we've heard about you we, we'd like to get an architect up there and just have some experience to help with future design. We want to see what it's like to experience the transportation space as well as a livable space out there, so you're the guy." Would you go?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah, yeah. I would not hesitate at all. That'd be the life's dream, essentially.

MARK:                 

I take that at face fat cause to be honest, if they offered and said your dad has a slot too, if he wants to go. It's like, "Honey, I'm going. Would you like to come?"

TRISTAN:            

Yeah.

MARK:                 

Because you and I are just those kinds of folks. I've a great unknown and the call to go and see and experience that. I get that. Thinking about that, however, in light of the simulation you did go through, are there learnings or takeaways that you have? I know NASA and these university had been processing data and and I don't think as of yet there's been any formal reports released. There's just so much data here to process. Where do you come out with this experience in terms of will the crew using the inline space like example, make it in terms of the social dynamics? What are the challenges? What do you take away from the experience?

TRISTAN:            

You are going to have a two major obstacles to get over and the main one is the fact that you're in this small space with people, so it's going to be who are you taking with you? If you're going to actually go on the real mission, you would go through a great deal more selection than I went through. More tests. You would probably do three months completely isolated on a mountain with your crew to try and find out where friction might exist, and there would be shakeups and changes for probably five years leading up to the mission. The crew who and end up sending is probably going to be rock solid.

MARK:                 

The best of the best that just, yeah. Yeah.

TRISTAN:           

They can read each other's minds and they all admire and respect each other. They know when to shut up. They know when to speak right. It'll be a flawless crew. After that, you have to realize that if you put any person in a barren and white room for long enough, they'll go insane and start talking to themselves. You need environmental stimulation, you need social stimulation. If you can build a small craft to get there or a large base once you're there using robotics or whatever else that's able to, as much as possible, simulate the social and environmental complexity of your life on Earth, you will be happier. That's it. If you can just not sell your soul for mission success, and remember who you are, and what makes you able to last. This isn't a marathon. This is running around the world over a year. If you don't stop and take care of yourself, you're going to break.

MARK:                 

Yeah. That's kind of where I want to go here in a little bit and wrap all this up. I've had the great pleasure and opportunity to speak with some of the people that designed the mission and some of the researchers. Tristan hasn't shared this yet, but I can share what became a very important, I think, not only for Tristan, but truly for the entire crew, one of Tristan's contributions was just to bring a sense of humor. Any comments on how humor played into ... Would you agree that that that was an important component to kind of keep yourself and everybody?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah, absolutely. Ultimately at the end of the day, stuff's going to happen with people who are being in transient, or an environment that wants to kill you, or a shift that's not working quite as well, or all of the pancake batter runs out and now we've got to eat healthier stuff for two months until the resupply comes. You can't control any of those things, but you can control how you react to them.

MARK:                 

Exactly.

TRISTAN:            

If you have to choose between levity or getting really down about it, one of those is going to lead to a better income. If you watched The Martian, Mark Watney's stuck up there for a long time so he starts making light of himself, and talking to potatoes, and asking goofy questions. That will save you, you know?

MARK:                 

Yeah. What I liked about it, because we had some conversation via email and there's some other ways that we were communicating that we can't get into right now, but in turns to just that there were different technologies being tested throughout this simulation. But one of the things that I started to see just as somebody monitoring and watching a little bit, you guys quickly had to get to the point of where we can't control this and life's too fricking short, and so instead of getting upset, you had to try to find other outlets to include. You know, if it takes a day to get outside to walk you do that, or you has some fun, practical jokes a little bit that are harmless, and those kinds of things.

MARK:                 

Let me, as we start to wrap this up and I want to sort of tie it back to some earlier comments you made, would it be fair to say to that an important takeaway would be really beginning to understand the importance of support systems? I recall hearing from all of you in different ways that it was surprising who stayed the course throughout the entire 365 days of trying to remain in contact and who said they would at the beginning and then just drop the Earth, or off the map, or radar, whatever you want to talk about here. Could you share just a comment or two on the value of support systems?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. I mean, there's sort of a especially an American cultural thing where, for men especially, we're on an island and Russ supposed to like need or desire anything for anybody. Those are typically the types that end up in the woods by themselves in a cavity.

MARK:                 

It's the classic right stuff. When you think about the early astronauts, you know?

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. If you think of not Neal, called Buzz Aldrin. Like he's got a hell of an attitude, he absolutely knows his stuff, extremely cock shore and independent type of person.

MARK:                 

He's Frank Borman too, same kind of guy.

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. Same kind of guy. When it comes to we need to put you in this tin can full of dynamite and throw you to the moon, can you handle this, those are the types that are going to be able to do it right. Admire the hell out them. That's amazing.

MARK:                 

Yeah, it is. Absolutely.

TRISTAN:            

You do not want to go on a nine month camping trip with that guy because he's going to make the best fire, and he's gonna cook all the best food, and his bow line is going to be better than everybody's, and eventually that sort of confidence, whether it's a deserved or not, becomes incredibly abrasive. When you start getting into a mission length for anything from living at sea to going to Mars, you need people who are emotionally empathetic, who can listen as much as they can take care of you. Maybe they are hot shit, can do whatever, but they don't need to toot their own horn. They're self confident about it and don't need praise. They will see problems before they're developing and take care of it when it's just a gentle issue versus requiring a massive fix.

MARK:                 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well in kind of closing from my own perspective, I'd like to share. I was earthbound dad. My wife and I, we took the time to resupply and we took some time to interact with the astronauts in a simulated environment that was being studied and tested. There were all kinds of things we did. It became very apparent to me that support systems, both internal to the environment that the simulated astronauts, simulated Martian astronauts were experiencing became very, very important, but so did support systems on the ground. Then there was this other component, which we've kind of been talking about just a little bit from the importance of even if it takes 24 hours to get approval, but you need your time to go out and experienced something, to get away, to have a break. You talk about learning to cook, and eating some healthy food, and investing in exercise.

MARK:                 

My takeaway is just, I walked away from that saying, "Boy, here we are taking people and putting them in an extreme environment, in an extreme stressful situation, and seeing what happens." Thankfully we can do it here on the ground because if this thing goes ballistic in space and somebody just decides I've had enough and opens the door in space, everybody's dead. On a Martian volcano, or I'm sorry on a Hawaiian volcano, that's not the true outcome.

MARK:                 

I think as I look at practices, legal practices, and the life that's so many attorneys lead, I just think there are a lot of takeaways from that experience that are relevant to all of us. I encourage you, if you're listening and find yourself in a stressful situation at work to look to your support systems, to try to emphasize, if we already aren't, behaviors that lead to wellness and behaviors that work for you. I'm not trying to suggest you go out and learn to run, and get a treadmill, and do a marathon treadmill. We can ride bike, go fishing, you can learn to cook, whatever floats your boat.

MARK:                 

But I do think my observation from everything these six folks went through was just to say wellness and support systems are far more important than I ever really honestly realized. That has impacted me ever since. I'm very, very proud of all the folks that went through this and was able to be there when they returned to Earth. It's something I will never forget and I just lived it vicariously through my son, you know?

MARK:                 

Tristan, before we close out, is there any final comments you'd like to share? Anything else? I do really appreciate your taking a little time here with that.

TRISTAN:            

Yeah. No. I mean, I worked in a firm for nearly two years before going freelance with design and architecture and know what it's like to be in a very stressful environment where your boss doesn't super appreciates you, and you're working 75, 80 hours a week, but being paid for 40 and everybody kind of does it because, you know, we're professionals and it's a pretty unsupportive, toxic culture. I would say that a quote I enjoyed, and it applies, call it the riches of your self-life or your intrinsic value, that sort of thing, is try not to be the richest guy in the graveyard. You don't need to be the most successful guy at work. You don't need to be the CEO. You don't need to have everybody like you. If you just get by, take care of yourself, take care of the people that matter to you, and have a good life, you won already. You don't need to be in a Mr. Work guy and everybody's go-to person, especially when they're not taking care of you either.

MARK:                 

Right. Right. The way I've said that over the years, it really isn't. Whoever has the most toys doesn't win. At the end, it's not about toys. It's about the experience. Well Tristan, I really, really appreciate your willingness to take the time and sit down and have a chat with dad, but to also allow all these other folks that are listening to be part of our conversation, so thank you very much.

MARK:                 

To all of you listening out there, I hope you enjoyed today's podcast and found something of interest or value to it. Please, as always, if any you have any topics of interest or other folks that you'd like to see if we can interview at some point, please don't hesitate to reach out. My email address is mbass@ALPSnet.com. Thanks folks. It's been a pleasure. Bye bye.

 

ALPS In Brief – Episode 35: How to Assess Risk to Your Firm? Assess yourself!

ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte sits down with Matt Sims, co-founder of Standpoint Decision Support Inc. to discuss risk assessment and some new technology that is helping lawyers maximize billable hours, save time, and reduce risks to their practice.

Transcript:

 

MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE:

Good morning. It is a beautiful day here in Big Sky Country. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager with ALPS and welcome to the latest episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. Today I am very pleased to have as my guest Matt Sims, and Matt is a co-founder with a company called Stand Point Decisions.

MARK:               

And Matt and I met not too long ago up in Vancouver, at an ABA conference. And we just got to talking about risk management. And Matt has a really gone in a very, very interesting direction. So today we're going to be talking about risk management, Stand Point and a few other things. Before we jump into this, Matt, can I have you take a few minutes and just fill our listeners in, in terms of your background?

MATT SIMS:         

Yeah, certainly. Well, thanks. Thanks very much for having me on the podcast today, Mark. Really appreciate it. And yeah, so Stand Point and where did we come from? We've been ... there's two of us, Steve Wilson, Dr. Steve Wilson and myself, and we've been working together for just over 10 years. And Stand Point is sort of a coming together of two worlds.

MATT:

One is Steve's world of quantitative data analysis, and he's got a Ph.D. in quantitative data analysis, and approached me one day about 10 years ago and said, "Hey, I'm seeing some other applications for the work that I do." And he wanted to get together with somebody who had some of the business side and the marketing and communication side of things.

MATT:

And so we teamed up and our very first customer was the Law Society of BC here in British Columbia where we're based. And we knew nothing about the area of law or regulation, but this was our first contract. And lo and behold, 10 years later, it seems that we found ourselves a bit of a niche. Because we've only ever worked with those in the legal profession, and primarily legal regulators up to this point. So, kind of an accident that we fell into this space. But that's how we are. And 10 years later we're still at it.

MARK: 

Fascinating, fascinating. And what are the backgrounds ... You've shared a little bit about Steve, what's your background here?

MATT:

Yeah, my background has primarily been in technology. So I've worked for a number of large technology firms, everything from network services to hardware. And then over the last 10 years, I got into the software development space, and my focus has primarily been on management operations, and then definitely in the sales and marketing aspects of it as well.

MARK: 

Okay. All right. And can we talk a little bit about, what are the problems that Stand Point really is trying to solve? I think both historically and where we're at 10 years down the road now.

MATT:

Yeah. Yeah. So 10 years ago, the problems we got into starting to solve, were really not much different than the problems many of these same organizations have today. Which is, we've got a bunch of data on hand. We have some strategic decisions or policy decisions to make, and we need to somehow inform these decisions with the data that we have. And sometimes that's a bit of a daunting task, especially in today's world when there's just so much data.

MATT:

You know, you've got spreadsheets, you've got experts in the room who have inputs on things. And so, basically, we were trying to pull together all of these various sources of data and people and help them solve problems. And some of the earlier problems were trying to understand complaint data. That was the big one. So regulators are usually the receiver of complaints from the public.

MATT:

And if there's an issue with a lawyer, and they wanted to try and understand, what are the root causes of these complaints, and is there a way to, using analytics, to get ahead of them a little bit? And proactively get out there and try and deliver resources that can help to bring those complaints down.

MATT:

So yeah, the early days we're looking at complaint data. We've looked at program data to see if certain courses or programs are being effective in what they hope they might do. And then of late, we've been getting into self-assessments. And so, trying to understand how lawyers are self-assessing themselves against a model of professionalism.

MARK: 

Yeah. And that's where you and I really got into some interesting conversations. And so, how does the platform ... How have you moved past Stand Point and gotten into this consulting piece, the lawyer self-evaluation? Can you describe where we're going with that?

MATT:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the first five or six years, we were just primarily doing one-off consulting projects, doing data analysis on those. And then at one point we thought, "You know, we've got a lot of experience here. We really now understand that the typical types of datasets that regulators and legal organizations are using. And we understand a lot of the problems they're trying to solve with that data.

MATT:

So what happens if we put that onto a platform and try to automate some of the analysis and the reporting so that we could deliver solutions faster to our customers, and also solutions that were more scalable?" Because when you're a consultant, you're only as good as you can run, as fast as you can run. But when you embed some of that knowledge into a platform, now you can scale it up.

MATT:

And so that's how we transitioned from just pure consulting and professional services into more of a platform. And then our very first customer on that platform was the Colorado Supreme Court, which was rolling out a voluntary self-assessment program to the lawyers of the state of Colorado. And so that's where we got our start about three years ago now with the platform itself.

MARK: 

And if this is Avvy Pro that we're talking about, or that's the next step?

MATT:

That's right. No, Avvy Pro is the name of the platform, yeah.

MARK: 

Okay. And you know, when I think about ... Matt, for many years as you're aware, I've done a lot of personal consulting if you will, going in and visiting law firms all over the country. And doing what we would call risk visits, and have been in literally well over 1200 firms now over the years.

MARK: 

But we got to a point ... You see, this is a very expensive service. It really is. To do it one firm at a time sending somebody out in terms of the travel, it just, it doesn't scale up very well. And what I like about what you're doing is, you're taking this much, much further, and can take the risk management processes that I've been doing over the years, and bring it to the masses.

MARK: 

That said, there are all kinds of products in the marketplace. In terms of even just Cloud-based case management systems, in and of them of themselves, they can be from an insurance perspective, a very effective risk management tool. What is the value of Avvy Pro, how do you see this defining yourself? What's the niche here that you're going after?

MATT:

Yeah, no, that's a good question. And you know, I think it's squarely in the same camp that you've been working on for all these years, Mark, which is risk reduction.

MARK: 

Okay.

MATT:

And we've looked at multiple the types of value that the program provides. So one of the things the platform can provide for a lawyer is a fast way to determine what CPD, at first, they want to look at for the year. So doing a self-assessment results in a report that actually gives you your areas of priority, and it can even start to serve up some of the CLE resources that you might want to get into.

MATT:

So we see it as a time saver for lawyers. And we know that lawyers are very focused on saving time because they need to maximize the billable hours. And so the time savings is one thing, but at the end of it all, it always seems to come back to risk. Right? And how can we reduce risk to a practice, whether that's for a firm or for an individual attorney?

MATT:

And so at the end of the day, that's what we're delivering to lawyers and firms out there is a reduction in risk. And it's quantifiable, in the sense that there was the study out of New South Wales from the University of Melbourne, where they looked at a group of lawyers who took a professional self-assessment. And they studied this group of lawyers over a period of time, and they found that those lawyers had a 60% less chance of receiving a complaint than the lawyers in the group who hadn't taken the self-assessment. And so this has become the genesis of a lot of these PMBR activities from some of the regulators across the country and has really shown the light on the fact that you can reduce risks to your practice and into your firm immediately just by doing a self-assessment.

MATT:

And the interesting thing, Mark, is that it's not necessarily got to do with the scores you give yourself. In other words, whether you score high or low on your self-assessment, it doesn't really matter. It's just the process of going through that, which increases self-awareness and changes behavior. And the numbers show that you have a much less likely a chance of having a complaint if you've done one of these self-assessments. So, that's really the core value of what we're trying to do.

MARK: 

Well, that's really interesting. What I'm thinking about as you share this, is sort of how cybersecurity education is evolving. And as you're well aware, I'm sure, the weak link in cybersecurity is the users in any law firm, any business, just due to social engineering. And there are some similar studies there that if you educate, appropriate behaviors or more responsible behaviors occur early on in the process. But it drops off over time.

MARK: 

So I guess, sort of thinking about that, if I become a user of Avvy Pro, do I have the ability to, I don't know, keep this fresh in front of me? Is this kind of like a one-off, once and done thing, or is it something I can come back to over time, share with others in my firm? See where I'm going in terms of ... What's the model? I'm just trying to understand the model.

MATT:

Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And so yeah, even though there is a one-off benefit to taking a self-assessment, you're absolutely right that there is a tail off of that benefit over time. And so the idea is that you revisit this, right? And the whole idea of self-assessing too is so that you can establish a benchmark for yourself. And ultimately, what you want to be able to do is move that mark forward, right? You want to have a continuous improvement cycle happening year over year as a professional.

MATT:

Because the self-assessment I took five years ago shouldn't be where I am today as a professional. I mean, we always want to continue to improve. And so the idea would be to revisit your self-assessment every six months, every year.

MATT:

What the right interval is, we're not exactly sure. But we do know that coming back to it and reassessing is definitely a way of refreshing on this. And then, what happens is you reset some of your benchmarks and your scores, and then the CLE resources that the platform provides change up based on what your priorities are this year. Because they might be different from last year, right?

MATT:

So yeah, continuous improvement is something that definitely needs to be looked at. And we actually did a study with a regulator on one of their programs. They had a small firm course that they put out, and they just didn't know if it was helping. And so we analyze some of the data on the lawyers who had taken that course, and it was similar to the self-assessment.

MATT:

Whereas they had seen an immediate value, but we had a five year study period and the tail off was very evident in the numbers. That the benefit of that program had reduced over those five years. So the whole message is, yeah, you've got to keep at it. You can't just stop. It's not like exercising, right? You don't go to the gym once or twice and then you're done. You've got to keep going back.

MARK: 

Again, just to be clear for our listeners, you've talked about going in, doing a self-assessment, getting a score, and awareness can make a real difference. I assume that there's more to this than just sort of scoring yourself. That if I do get a low score, perhaps in, I don't know, client intake or calendaring or something like this, and I assume these are the types of procedures that you're looking at. Are there resources?

MARK: 

I mean, what's the ultimate benefit to me if I become a client and get in, and go through this evaluation? What do I get for the effort?

MATT:

Right. And so yeah, you've nailed something there, interesting. Because one of the things we observed over the years is that there is no shortage of information available to lawyers out there. I mean there's websites and PDFs and courses, and there are so many resources available. What we saw was, typically the problem is that people don't know where to start. So they think they might need help in communications, for example, or calendaring or client intake like you said. But trying to go through and weed through and find the right resources is sometimes a bit of and challenge, and a time-consuming effort.

MARK: 

Yes, I can relate to this.

MATT:

Yeah, so what we are trying to do is make that jump between that gap between my self-assessment and the resources that are available to me out there. And so what we've done is, again, we take that self-assessment and let's say you score yourself low on calendaring. The platform takes that low score on calendaring and then matches that, algorithmically, to the available resources in the platform library.

MATT:

And so the resources in the library are tagged according to their content. And so, your self-assessment will pull up a bunch of calendaring resources. Maybe it's a YouTube video, maybe it's a course, maybe it's a quick blog post from somebody on calendaring. But it will serve you the resources that are most applicable to the needs you've identified, which we think really starts to, again, save time for lawyers so that they're not out there Google searching their way around, trying to find things.

MARK: 

Right. And in my mind, this is what really differentiates you from a lot of other types of platforms and systems, procedures, products available for lawyers to help in their practice. This goes in a completely different direction. I really like the idea. Again, this is risk management for the masses in terms of really scaling it up, so that any lawyer can ... Or I assume from an administrator or whoever wants access to this within a law firm can sign up. Very, very good.

MARK: 

What's the future? Where do you see this going, short term and long term?

MATT:

Well, short term we're just trying to get the platform exposed to as many jurisdictions as possible. So we've got some good conversations happening out there right now with a bunch of areas. Typically, we have delivered the platform through a legal organization as opposed to direct to lawyers. And so it's been delivered by a regulator or a bar association. Or potentially an insurer like yourself.

MATT:

And then yeah, future, we've got lots of other ideas around the platform and how we can improve efficiency. And again, basically, reduce risk and save time for lawyers. One of the things we've been looking at, which we're really kind of curious about, is whether we can improve the CLE accreditation process, and collecting credits and submitting them to your regulator. Because as you know, lawyers need to need to have their number of credits every year. And it's different for every jurisdiction.

MATT:

And there's this ... If you look at the way the credits go, the regulator has the bag of credits, and they assign or permit certain service providers or education providers to give those credits out to lawyers who have come in and taken their courses. Right?

MARK: 

Right.

MATT:

And then the lawyers take those credits and then what do they do? They give them right back to the regulator at some point and say, "I got my 10 credits for the year, I got my 20 credits for the year."

MATT:

Well, I was looking at that and I thought, "This is like a currency system, right?" It's basically a currency that comes from the regulator to the CLE provider, and then to the lawyer and then back to the regulator, and the regulator being the central bank. And so I've got some background in the blockchain space, and I looked at this and I thought, this is a solution, or the blockchain is a solution to taking that manual process of affidavits and sending PDFs, and yes, I was in that course on this date. And digitizing it with a token, a digital token. And so, one of the things we want to be able to do is say, okay, if you come into Avvy Pro, you do your self-assessment, you consume some resources which are CLE accredited. Let's make that real easy for you to get that credit from your regulator. And so that's their future vision, is to try and take this thing and then add on functionality.

MARK: 

Yeah, I am loving this. Because over the years, trying to keep the manual sending stuff in and the states, if they're different, it's just a headache. But that's solving a good problem. I like that. Matt, it's really ... I so enjoy visiting with you and learning about all that's going on here. If any of our folks in the listening audience would like any additional information about Stand Point or Avvy Pro, is there a way they might be able to contact you?

MATT:

Yeah, certainly. So, individual lawyers who are curious about the platform and would like to try and take the self-assessment themselves can go to avvy.pro. And so that's A-V-V-Y dot pro, and they can jump in there and try it out, and have a look at what it delivers. And standpointdecisions.com is the professional service's website. And that would be for organizations, firms, bars, and regulators who'd be interested in finding out more about the work that we've done in the past.

MARK: 

Yes. Yeah. And I assume you are interested, if a state wanted to look at doing something like this, similar to the colorized supreme court model that you share, I assume that that's something you guys are still looking at as well. This isn't all about moving into just the individual lawyer space. Am I correct about that?

MATT:

Absolutely. Yeah. No, absolutely. It all usually starts with the jurisdiction itself. And then they deliver access to the platform to their lawyers.

MARK: 

Got It. Very good. Well, thank you. I appreciate your taking the time to visit. It's always a pleasure. And to all of you listening, I hope you found something of value today and if you have any thoughts about folks you'd like to hear from in the future or a topic you'd like to hear discussed, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You can reach me at mbass@alpsnet.com again, mbass@alpsnet.com. Thanks for listening folks. Have a good one. Bye-bye.

 

 

 

ALPS In Brief – Episode 34: An ABA President’s Hope for the Future

What is the American Bar Association (ABA) doing to ensure there is a national voice for, not just the legal profession, but for vulnerable people and communities that we serve, to make sure that the Constitution is protected? As his term comes to an end, current ABA President Bob Carlson sits down with ALPS Executive Vice President Chris Newbold to discuss the ABA’s work to move the needle on tough topics like lawyer wellbeing, natural disaster relief, immigration, diversity and inclusion, and the vision of global stewardship.

Transcript:

 

CHRIS NEWBOLD:             

Good afternoon. This is Chris Newbold, executive vice president of ALPS. Welcome to ALPS in Brief podcast. I'm actually here today in Missoula, Montana. It's July 19, 2019, and I have a very special guest here in our offices. Current ABA president in America, attorney Bob Carlson. Bob Carlson is a former past president of the state bar of Montana and is the second Montanan to ever hold the post of ABA President. Bob, thank you for joining us today.

BOB CARLSON:                      

Well Chris, thanks for having me. And just to tell your viewers, we just completed another successful ALPS leadership retreat here in Missoula, and had bar leaders and executive directors from around the country. It was inspirational as always, so thank you.

CHRIS:                

Yeah, obviously ALPS, in our malpractice insurance, one of the strong partnerships that we enjoy is our relationship with state bars and, and Bob was actually, back in his state bar is, was a major force in the creation of ALPS. And so we obviously appreciate his longtime support of ALPS. Bob, let's talk, I want to talk a little bit about ... Let's talk one year ago today, right? So you were on the cusp of going into the annual meeting in which you were going to be sworn in as president of the ABA, right? Talk to our listeners about just kind of what you were thinking about before you went into the post. Obviously, you went through a pretty long cycle of leadership positions in the ABA, but there's, there's probably nothing like kind of getting ready for the actual year itself. And so talk to us about your mindset, about what you were thinking about going into the year as ABA president.

BOB:                         

Well, a few things. First of all, my predecessor, Hilarie Bass had started some programs that we wanted the association to continue. Going back a couple of years before that with Linda Klein and Paula Brown, they had started some programs that as an association, we wanted to continue. What we didn't want to do is just start something new, start a fresh initiative that was Bob Carlson's initiative. And I think that Hilarie had a similar mindset and we had worked well together and an issue that was very, very important to both of us was attorney wellness and wellbeing. We were bound and determined to continue to spread the message about the work that the association and state local bars were doing in that area. The second thing was to try to continue to spread the message about what the ABA and its young lawyers division does in the area of disaster relief and disaster resiliency.

In the last two years, we've had disasters, significant devastating disasters, whether it's hurricanes or tornadoes or wildfires or earthquakes from the US Virgin Islands to American Samoa. So literally one end of this country to the other, and we wanted to continue to focus on that. Immigration was a critical issue. The ABA has significant policy in this area to try to assist in making sure that, number one, the children that were removed from their families were reunited. We're still working on that. Number two, that unaccompanied minors got a fair hearing and got as much representation, whether direct representation or pro bono representation, that we could provide or at a minimum that they had been provided with some information about what their rights were and also to assist people seeking asylum. We continue to work on that even though the landscape seems to change on a regular basis.

And finally we were rolling out a new website and a new membership model. I come from a very small firm in a rural state and I wanted to make sure that we had Hilarie and Judy and some other, Judy Perry Martinez, my successor, and others speaking for the larger firms. Hillary's firm was 2000 lawyers. At the start of my year, we had five or six. We're now three due to a couple of moves out of state of a couple of associates. But wanted to really show to lawyers in small firms around the country that the ABA was relevant to them. And that was a great value in terms of making them a better practitioner, providing them the right tools they needed to assist their clients, and to make it more affordable and accessible. On the eve last, almost what is a 49 weeks ago today? That was the thought. Had a lot of momentum going into the year from things that my predecessors had done, and I think we've kept the momentum up and, and moved the ball forward on a lot of areas.

CHRIS:              

That's a really interesting thing to kind of note because I think in the governance model of the ABA, there has been a little bit, what's the president's initiative? Best practices in nonprofit governance would tell you that, you know, there's a strategic plan, right? And there's a vision of a board and the president is just the steward of the vision, right? As opposed to, and it seems like there's been a lot of progress with the last couple of leaders of the ABA in terms of executing a coherent, sustainable vision for the organization.

BOB:                       

And that's been the goal. I grew up in the bar world in the state bar, Montana. When I first became a member of the board, we were just starting, this was back in the 80s, we were just starting our strategic planning process and when I became president we were five, six years into that process and the presidents were moving things forward. A strategic plan keeps getting evolved every year. You look at it every year. You've done retreats, the [inaudible 00:06:43] retreats for the state bar and others, that you know, what have you accomplished but needs more work? What new issues have arisen on the landscape? The legal profession is constantly evolving. Issues constantly evolve, so you have to figure out a way to meet that. Most of the state bars though don't have the turnover, complete turnover in leadership that the ABA does.

So you have a board at the ABA that rolls over completely, is a new board every three years We have a strategic plan now for the board that Hilarie pushed through. We have done some reorganization internally, but the mindset has to be at the top. The leaders at the top have to say, listen, we support the association moving forward. This is not about the individuals that are the presidents. This is about the association. This is about the profession. This is about the independence of the judiciary, and diversity and inclusion. What are we going to do to move those things forward? And the way you do it is you sort of have a relay. It's not a sprint. It's not, I'm going to do as much as I can in one year. It is confident in the knowledge that you keep moving the baton forward.

That I took it from Hilarie and I'm giving it to Judy and she's giving it to Patricia Refo from Arizona, and we're going to continue to move the association forward in a strategic way, and in an organized way. This gives you the flex. This allows you to meet the ongoing programs, to continue to expand and work on programs, but also meet the new things that happen in every presidency. Whether you're a state bar president or the president of the largest voluntary legal association in the world, every year there's going to be something that happens that you're going to have to react to on behalf of your members and on behalf of the profession.

CHRIS:                

So you have those expectations, right? There's continuity in the goals one year later. How do feel like things at one?

BOB:                   

I actually feel really good. We have moved. We have made progress in a number of areas, and I think the association as a whole has strengthened. We did a lot of things last year to strengthen and we did a number of more to strengthen it, and we are positioned to really have a very strong national association for the future. I think for the listener that's critically important to the independence of the judiciary. It's critically important to due process and the rule of law that you have a national voice for, it's not just for the legal profession, it's for vulnerable people and communities that we serve to make sure that the message gets delivered, to make sure that the Constitution is protected. I feel like we really as an association have made a lot of progress, and one area that we've made significant progress in is the area of lawyer wellness and wellbeing.

Thanks a lot in no small part to your work and assistance as the co-chair of the ABA working group on lawyer wellbeing in the profession. I'm sure I've totally messed up the title but we have really created a movement. Primarily my job is taking in as many groups as possible about the issues concerning lawyer wellbeing and lawyer wellness, whether it's a state bar, or a local bar, or law schools, or meetings of managing partners, or to regional bar associations. Not only what the ABA is doing, but how we can partner with all the other stakeholders, including companies like ALPS, who write legal malpractice insurance and have been big supporters of the organized bar since ALPS inception. So I feel really good. We created a pledge we have for legal employers to talk about and think about lawyer wellness and wellbeing for their employees.

We've got 120 legal employers that have signed up both law schools, in-house counsel, some of the largest law firms in the country, and then a small firm like myself. So it's not just for big firms, and it's not a one size fits all. It's what can you do to make sure that the consciousness of the law firms and the employers are raised so that they are more aware of the issues that their employees are going through. So if somebody needs help, they know the resources they can get to, the toolkit on lawyer wellbeing with the 80 tips, a [inaudible 00:11:53] that you can download on your phone. I mean that's tremendous progress in an area where we needed something to say, listen, this is okay to talk about. It is okay to get help. It is imperative that you get help. And we're trying to make sure that publicly, every day, everywhere I've gone this year to every audience, those words come out of my mouth. If you need help, we have the resources to get you help. Because to be a good lawyer, you need to be a healthy lawyer.

CHRIS:               

Yeah. And how would you characterize the state of attorney wellbeing right now if you had to kind of step back and reflect a little bit? Because obviously, we have a long way to go. The numbers are not favorable, right? But education and discussion and as you say, the creation of a movement dedicated to the betterment of the profession is a noble direction for us to take.

BOB:                       

It is, and we've made progress. I do think we've made progress. The conversations over the past year, I sort of lost track of the count, but I think I spoke in 17, 18, 19 law schools primarily on the topic of lawyer and law student wellbeing, urging law schools to think about it. And there's a number of law schools that are doing great things. There's number of law schools that within an hour after leaving the lunch with the students, they created a working group to discuss how they could do things in their law school, which included faculty, interested faculty members and deans. So I think we've kept this as sort of a fear thing for so long. People were afraid that if they identified as having a problem, whether it's a mental disease problem, anxiety, depression, bipolar, whatever, or if it's a substance issue, they felt that if they sought help that they'd have to report themselves and that they would be stigmatized, and they would be penalized for that either in their admission to the law school or their admission to the bar.

So we increased the bandwidth of the stakeholders where we have regular discussions with the conference of chief justices. So the 50 chief justices from every state who can basically oversee the practice of law and the admission to law and to practice in their states. We've had discussions in law schools. We've had discussions with managing partners of big firms, medium firms, and small firms. There was a national summit where educators, lawyers, legal malpractice insurance companies got together to talk about how to move this message forward. I'd say the most important thing we've done is we talked about it every day, and I think that's made a big difference. There's a lot of things, there's a lot of positive things that the legal profession is doing today. A lot of, whether it's volunteering a for pro-Bono in disaster relief areas, whether it's volunteering to assist people seeking asylum at the border or in their communities, whether it's volunteering to help people with their veterans benefits, or the elderly. Whether it's lobbying for legal services, adequate funding and the Legal Services Corporation or the public service loan forgiveness program.

All things that the profession is doing, the great things. Those things provide you satisfaction as lawyers. Helping somebody pro bono, for free, provides satisfaction. So we're trying to provide as many opportunities to younger lawyers to do that, as well as more seasoned lawyers like myself. At the same time, it's sort of an individual decision about how you want your life as a legal practitioner to unfold. Do you want to be a professor? Do you want to work in government? Do you want to be in a big firm or small firm? When I taught in law school, since I come from a small firm, and Hilarie comes from a very large firm before me, and Judy comes from a medium-sized firm, I make that analysis. Here's the world's largest legal association. Here's three totally separate, 2000 lawyer firm from Miami, three to five lawyer firm at the time I started from Butte Montana, a few hundred lawyers from New Orleans, Louisiana.

That's pretty diverse in terms of practice areas, in terms of scope. You lay that out to people saying these are things that you can do. You can choose to practice where you want, and you need to make part of that decision to make yourself feel like you're giving back.

CHRIS:              

In many respects, you know, the attorney wellbeing is a one attorney at a time progression. Right? And the more that we're raising the visibility of the issue, willing to have meaningful conversations, be vulnerable at times. Right? And be able to look out for one another. It's amazing how much impact you can have, one lawyer can have, on the people around them.

BOB:                      

Yeah. And I think for a long time, people were either embarrassed or didn't want to interfere. But if you look at it in terms of if you saw somebody that was stepping out in front of a bus, you know, you'd reach out and grab the person.

And people that are suffering from either addiction or anxiety, depression, other mental diseases, that's that equipment. And do you have to at least say something, be willing to raise the issue, not to embarrass them, not to demean them, to treat it as a part of society. These things are in society. Unfortunately, the legal profession has way higher averages of people suffering from these issues than the average population and way more than the other professions. And so we need to be able to speak up. And I think part of it historically was, oh, that was a sign of honor to, I could party hard and then still get up and go to work and be a great a lawyer or I, you know, I feel bad so I'm not going to go help because that would make me seem weak. So I'm going to, you know, ignore it for self-medicate, which compounds the problem. And the more you can normalize this, or de-stigmatize it, the more you can say, this is part of life. We're here to help you. You need to get help and we are not going to judge you when you do it.

CHRIS:             

Yeah. And one of the things that also I think is interesting is that you know, there seems to be more willingness as a society for us to talk about these issues, right? I mean, you, you hear top 40 songs talking about suicide hotlineS, and you see a lot more stars coming out and being more vulnerable about things that are affecting them. And then you have generational change. Right? And so talk about what you see in terms of just, you know, you spent a lot of time in law schools. I mean, I think the generational shift in terms of the millennials are soon going to be, you know, the majority of lawyers out there. Right? And what that means in terms of the awareness of worK-life balance, professional satisfaction and willingness to talk about these issues more openly and honestly.

BOB:                         

Yeah, I think the trend is, I think we're seeing some positive results in the more experienced, the baby boomer generation, getting help and being willing to talk about it. But I really do see a great hope for the profession with our younger lawyers and with the law students coming out because they are more willing to seek help. They're more willing to seek fulfillment in both their day jobs, whatever they are, but also volunteering on issues of importance to them. And as an association, we're trying to provide as many opportunities for them as possible so they can volunteer their time and talents to the communities where they live. And I think that is going to pay dividends in terms of their self-fulfillment, their enjoyment of their job. I've practiced law now for, I graduated 40 years ago, and there's been some tough times. The practice of law is difficult, but I've always enjoyed doing this.

I've always enjoyed being a lawyer, helping clients. But I think part of what's given me the fulfillment in this is this. I mean I've been active in the state and national bar, you know, since the early eighties, so not too long after I got a law school. And that sense of giving back to the profession, that sense of being around talented lawyers from all over the country, and having that experience has really been fulfilling in not only my life but my family's life. My wife and I have great friends all over the country, that but for doing this volunteer work, we would've never met these people. And I think that part of the thing is to, and I come from a small firm, we've always been a small firm and we've always been committed to giving back to both the bar and the community.

But that sense of fulfillment is something that if we can convince more lawyers starting in law school and more young lawyers to participate in that, to take that time and provide more opportunities. You don't have to do this. I mean being the president of this association has been great, but you know, not everybody's going to do this. I do know that in every classroom, every group of young lawyers that I talk to, I say the same thing. There is somebody in this room that in the next 20 years is going to be standing up giving this set of remarks to the next generation of lawyers. Because I do believe that. I believe that you have to be open to the possibilities that one thing you do, one day, one volunteer effort somewhere, you have to be open to the possibility that that is not only going to change the person's life that you're helping, that it's going to change your life. And I think our generation has done a pretty good job. But this next generation I think is ready, willing and able to step up to the plate. And I have great confidence. Is it perfect yet? No, but are we making progress? Did we move the needle this year in a number of areas as an association of profession? Absolutely yes.

CHRIS:            

That's great. That's great. Tell me how has your small firm perspective been important in your leadership perspective? Not that it's unusual that a small firm lawyer becomes president of the ABA. But when you look at the numbers, right? 49% of, you know, the ABA statistics, 49% of lawyers in private practice are solo practitioners. Right? And then the next, you know, 24, 26% are in firms of two to five. Right? So it's fairly unusual to find somebody who has the capacity, the commitment to step forward and bring that perspective from a leadership perspective. And so I'm wondering how you reflect now about how that perspective has been part of your leadership journey.

BOB:                   

Well, I certainly think it's helped. It's helped keep me grounded. I've never taken myself too seriously, although I tried to learn something every day and lay awake at night thinking could I have done this better or differently. But I think that being from a smaller firm, when you're out talking to groups of lawyers, most of them are going to be in that category. And I know what they're going through. I mean, I know the day to day ups and downs, and joys and sort of a downside of being in a small firm and being part of the fabric of a community. And being from a rural state, that sort of amplifies that. Because lawyers volunteer everywhere, but if you're in a big city that shouldn't, but it sort of gets lost in the whole, there's a lot of people doing a lot of things.

If you're in a small town or from a rural state, you see lawyers on every board. You see lawyers coaching soccer and baseball and refereeing and they're part of the fabric, the literal fabrics of their communities. And to be from that background, I think gives you a better voice when you're talking to those folks. I think the association as a whole and the leaders have always done a great job trying to assist solo and small firm lawyers be better lawyers. We've got great tools for that. We've worked hard over the last several years to expand that. And maybe it was in part because of comments or suggestions that I brought to the table being from that perspective. And so I think that it allows you to walk up and say, listen, I get it.

Now the larger firm lawyers who have been president, they're empathetic. They do get it. They want to help everybody there. Their job, you're leading this association, you want to help all the members and you want to increase membership. You want to gain more people so you can help more people help more clients. And so they get it. But it's like when I walk into the room with 50 managing partners of these major law firms, I get it because I've been in those discussions, some of them I've known for a long time, but I don't know what it is they're going through managing 59 offices in 30 countries or whatever it is. I mean I empathize but they're like looking at me like what do you know? And I think that now there's a face because there's been this misperception that the ABA is only for big law firms and coastal law firms. And that's just not true. A vast number of our members are from solo and small firms and, but now they know that you can lead this. Now they know that number one, leadership is for everybody. It's very diverse across all categories. And they know that there's somebody here that they could pick up the phone and say, I'm having this issue, what programs are the ABA running or do you have to help me? And they know that I know what I'm talking about when I'm talking to them.

It's just a matter of expanding the bandwidth and pushing the envelope that we have all sorts of people who've risen to the top and leadership of this association. This association is a big tent and it is for everybody, no matter where you come from, no matter what your practice, no matter what your firm size, no matter what your gender, race, social or sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, whatever. This association is for them. We have done I think a better job over the last several years of moving that message, in part because of who we've selected to be the president of this association.

CHRIS:                

Well, you sit now in the home stretch of your tenure as president, just a few short weeks you'll be handing off the baton. Have you had any time to reflect on the year? You've, you've been go, go, go, go, go. I'm just curious about the personal side of this type of service, commitment to the profession. I'm sure you'll have a decompression time at some point here in the near future. But you've been in enough airplanes where you probably get some time to think as well.

BOB:                        

Yeah. I've been trying to take it one hour at a time, literally. Get to the next commitment, be in the moment for the people that I'm speaking to or having conversations with at the time, and then keep moving. I've done some reflection on the plains, but a lot of it is how can I do a better job and the time that's remaining in this term to deliver the message better. Trying to learn from every set of remarks, how could I make more of an impact on the audience?

How can I make this work? How can we make a broader impact on other issues facing the profession and the judiciary in the United States and frankly the world? So what can you do to move that forward? And I've been very fortunate. My very small law firm has supported me. I have still practiced law this year, not as much as maybe I would have liked to help my partner out and help the law firm out in our clients, but I've done some, which is a little unusual for an ABA president. And I think I've had great support from my wife Cindy. Because we have two dogs who miss us and we miss them. We haven't traveled a lot together and plus this job is sort of like being on a rock band tour without the band.

You're sometimes in multiple cities in a handful of days and she prefers to go to a location to sort of be there for a few days, three or four days at a time. And there's times when you're in a city for two hours. So it's been a little difficult at times. But she's been great. But we've been in this for the whole run. We're going to be 34 years of marriage, but we dated before that. So she's my entire career or bar service, my entire career at my law firm, which I started in 1981, she's been in the picture. And she's got a lot of friends in the state bars, and in the national bar, and people that she's met around the world. This has been a fabulous experience.

I'll sit back and reflect later, but we still have three weeks give or take to go and there's still more stuff to do. We're still trying to every day look at things and say, how can we do good today and continue to move the association forward?

CHRIS:              

Well thank you Bob, obviously for your service. I think anybody who ultimately serves in a service capacity, in a leadership role, I think our ultimate goals that leave the organization better than we found it. Right? And I think that if that's the benchmark versus success, I think you should certainly be proud of what you've been able to achieve in your year as ABA President. And again, there's a lot of people around you. There's an incredible ABA staff, right? This is an organization that's committed to betterment. And you know, while you're the steward of the vision at this point, I know it's got to be fulfilling for you to begin to think about the fact that you've ideally move the needle forward and you're going to leave at a stronger organization than you found it.

BOB:                         

Yeah, you sort of stole my last set of comments. But yeah, we do have a great, not only a great staff, they're tremendous and they provide a great deal of support. But we have a tremendous number of volunteer members, volunteer lawyer leaders around the country that participate like yourself, on working groups, committees, task force commissions, the sections that provide the substantive practice. We have such a great wealth of talent in this association. We are definitely moving the needle in a number of areas. Do we have more work to do? Yes, but we will continue to do that. We'll continue to speak out where it's necessary in defense of, not only the profession, not only the judiciary, but in defense of due process and rule of law, both in this country and around the world.

That's what the association has been doing. I am fortunate enough to be the 142nd president. We've been doing this for 142 years, three years, and we're going to keep doing it. So thanks for your time. I appreciate all that you've done and all that ALPS has done as a company to support the organized bar.

CHRIS:                

Bob, it's been fun. I appreciate you taking a couple of minutes on a late Friday afternoon at the conclusion of our ALPS bar leaders retreat. Again, Bob's been a great friend of mine and our organization. We thank him for his service and leadership of this great profession. So thank you Bob.

BOB:                       

Thank you. Appreciate it.

CHRIS:                

That will conclude our ALPS in Brief a podcast. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please let us know for future topics, and that's it. Have a great weekend. Thanks.

 

ALPS In Brief - Episode 33: Responding to Violent Threats in the Workplace

Active shootings can happen anywhere, even in law firms. What can attorneys and their staff do to prepare and protect each other in these kinds of scenarios? Mark sits down with active-shooter response expert, retired U.S. army sniper, and Montana-licensed attorney Alain Burrese to discuss law firm safety tactics and active shooter protocol.

Transcript:

 

MARK B:                 

Good morning podcast listeners. What a beautiful day here in Montana, and welcome to the latest episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the Risk Manager here with ALPS, and today I am most excited to have as a guest Alain Burrese. Alain is quite a guy; we've had — I should say, I have had — the privilege and pleasure to work with him a number of years ago. In fact, Alain, if you recall, we had an experience in Las Vegas (for work), but we had a lot of fun doing some consulting down there. The topic that Alain and I are going to discuss today is really, in my mind, a very, very important topic. Also one that I wish we didn't have to talk about, but in this day and age we do, and it's looking at active shooting situations.

Before we get into this, let me tell you a little bit about Alain. Alain is a former U.S. Army sniper and sniper instructor at the 2nd Infantry Division scout sniper school at Camp Casey, South Korea, a former U.S. Army paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, fifth degree black belt, [inaudible 00:01:29] instructor, author and producer of numerous books and DVDs on self defense, to include, Survive a Shooting: Lifesaving Tactics and Strategies to Survive Active Shooters and Other Terrorist Attacks. And I could just go on and on. He's a certified active shooter instructor, has trained more than 4,000 people, and on top of all that, if that's not enough, he's a licensed attorney here in the state of Montana. So Alain, it is such a pleasure to have you join us.

ALAIN:                 

It's a pleasure to be here with you, Mark, and I have fond memories of our trip to Vegas too and we're down there helping a bunch of law firms be safe in a different kind of environment when we are down there.

MARK:                 

Yes, that's absolutely true. Risk management and best practice, those kinds of things, a little less emotionally tense.

Alain, I really wanted to talk with you because as you and I, and I'm sure everybody in our listening audience is well aware of, there have been in recent times quite a number of mass shooting situations that have made the news, not only nationwide but some of these certainly worldwide. What people don't hear as much is the shootings that are smaller scale, perhaps. It's not commonplace, thankfully, but in this day and age there are occasionally shootings that occur in even small law firms. Disgruntled ... client or an adverse party, you know, can come in at times. You'll see these occasionally in a divorce situation, and it can be anything. So I do think it's, it's worth talking about active shooting scenarios.

These small situations, again, they don't make the national news, but we certainly, we've had an occasional situation like this pop up in our own book. You read some of these in the journals, in terms of, [inaudible 00:03:32] Journal and some of our industry publications. But Alain, where I wanna start, are there really things that attorneys can do, or staff, to survive these kinds of shootings? If I'm sitting in reception or an associate of law firm or something, can I realistically do anything?

ALAIN:                 

Mark, there are a lot of things we can do. It's interesting that you talk about law firms and the active shooters. We have the big active shooter events, and most definitions of active shooter is somebody that's just trying to kill random innocent people with no other crime. But we have a lot more shooting incidents where that could be a gang affiliated, where people shooting each other for gang related drug related issues. But we also do have a lot of shootings and attacks, sometimes it could be with a knife or something else, that are more directed, and law firms could be a very good target for that. Like you said you have disgruntled clients, something went south, and especially domestic issues, and something didn't go the way they wanted it to and the attorney is to blame. So they're going to come in specifically to attack that person or maybe that person's staff or maybe the entire office cause they blame everybody there. [crosstalk 00:05:02] There are things we can do to increase the law firm safety and to decrease the amount of damage a potential person like that could inflict on people.

MARK:                 

Well Alain, let's start perhaps with prevention, are there steps that we can take in anticipation that something like this might happen?

ALAIN:                 

One is recognizing signs. Awareness, and I teach awareness in all of my programs, is number one. And being aware of that potential former client, current client employee, that maybe is something wrong with that employee. Maybe just a former employee because they were fired, recognizing some signs that something's not going on right with that person. And those signs could be a depression, the significant event the life, which a lot of things involved in law offices are very significant to people's lives. It could be a fascination with weapons or explosives.

So if you're seeing something that's just not normal with a person ... we're here in Montana, a guy goes and buys a new hunting rifle, big deal. Everybody has firearms up here in Montana. But if there's this weird fascination that's just not normal, and we sort of know what baseline normal is for our environments, maybe that person needs to be watched a little close. Ideally, we can get people help before something bad happens. Remember the national news a couple of years ago with his father that found the daughter's diary and then ended up turning her in and thankfully they were able to get that young lady some help before she did what she was writing about in the diary, which was going to kill a lot of people.

MARK:                 

Yeah, that's a great point. I mean I'm here, I love it, Alain. And since I'm already learning all kinds of stuff. I never even stopped to think about- awareness obviously, very, very important, but you're identifying potential shooters, people that are going to- can go make some very, very wrong decisions, that I wasn't even thinking about in this context. That is really good stuff. So awareness becomes, it sounds like, a key thing to keep in mind from a preventative standpoint. Are there any other kinds of things or is that pretty much the-

ALAIN:                 

How you have your facility laid out. One way in, having controlled access to places helps prevent these things. So if there's only one way in, and it's monitored somehow, that's a little bit better than people can come and go in a lot of different places. Having a communication system set up. Somebody comes in the front door that's bad, is wrong, can that be communicated to people throughout the office? Having ways to lock down, so people can lock down their offices and stay safe in rooms. Being prepared with- some people are gonna keep firearms in their office, that that is an option. If you do that, I hope that you have the proper training in both safety and use of the weapon that you have.

                               

I teach fire extinguishers as improvised weapons, because they're in almost every building, any public building we're going to find fire extinguishers. Reflex Protect is a great nonlethal option that people are starting to use. And then knowing where your exits are for you to be able to escape. Cause your basic things that you can do is you can escape, you can barricade and lock that person from getting to you, or you can defend yourself by physically attacking back and stopping that shooter. Those are your three options if a situation actually happens. So being prepared to do any of those and all of those is what you want in your plan.

MARK:                 

Yeah. It's been interesting, with the consulting work over the years, I have gone into law firms that sometimes have key card access or a doorbell, and they have to, you know, see on camera before they push a little button that lets you in. So there are firms that have taken these kinds of steps already. Let's talk about these three options that you've identified. Whether it's, somebody that has pulled out a knife, somebody that has come in with a gun and is threatening. If you will, when the bullets are flying, can we take a little further this discussion about what, what do we do as individuals to try to survive this? You talk for instance about escape versus attacking and trying to defend. I would assume that, I guess I'd say, how do you evaluate in these kinds of settings what your best option is?

ALAIN:                 

Sure. In the programs I teach, I put those in a triangle, with each, "Escape, deny, and defend," the points of the triangle, versus the linear "Run, hide, fight," which is the national program. Because it's not all linear. You can't say, well first I will escape. If I can't escape, I will deny. If I can't deny, then I will defend myself. You don't always have those options.

Say we're in a big meeting room. If I'm in the very back of the room beside a door and someone comes in the opposite end of the room through that door, I could probably escape out this back door. If I'm the person sitting closest to that front door where the person comes in, I don't have that option anymore. So you're going to immediately go to defending yourself and try to take that guy out. So that's why it's sort of a triangle. You have to do one of the three, but which one you do will be determined by where you're at in location to the threat, what the threat has, your environment. All of those factors are going to come into play of which is going to be the best.

MARK:                 

Okay, sometimes-

ALAIN:                 

Of course-                         

Go ahead.

MARK:                 

Well I see. Can we talk about each of these individually? You talk about, okay, so my first and best choice if using the conference room situation, I can try to escape because that's the easiest, fastest thing to do, and safest, at least for me as I'm hearing. Does escape always mean find the closest exit, for lack of a better word, and just run, just go for it? Is that-

ALAIN:                 

Often, that is. Getting out of the kill zone. Now it could be running away. It could be going out a window and running. It could be dropping down and crawling behind something until you get a place to run. But getting out of the kill zone, and as far away as possible. If you can do that, great. But sometimes that's not an option. You might be a caretaker of somebody or be with somebody that can't escape with you. So again, it is a great option if available.

MARK:                 

This whole conference room example, and thank you for bringing it up, it just brings so many kinds of ethical dilemmas in my mind, which is, what we're all about here. I'm always writing and trying to talk in a lecture on ethics. Is there, what are your thoughts ALAIN, about, I am the guy getting closest to the door, but I'm a senior partner, and I have staff and colleagues and things that are more in between. Is always the best answer for me to try to escape, or is there, do I try to help as many others escape, too? You see what I'm trying to get at and-

ALAIN:                 

That that is going to vary from individual to individual. I know that if I was on a job working security, my reaction would probably be different than if I was at the mall and a situation happened and I was with my wife and daughter, and would be different if I was alone. There are some people that are natural, to use David Grossman's term, sheep dogs, the protectors. They're going to try to help other people and stop threats. Not everyone has that inside them, so I'm not going to fault anybody because they escaped and didn't help others. It's inside certain people.

I think some of us, though, are going to help more and that's just the nature of us. I would like everyone to help everyone else, but we know that that's not always going to be the case. If you're the closest person to the threat, whether it's a knife, a shooter, whatever, probably the option is, you're going to be the one that has to fight. If not, you're probably going to die. Sad as it is, I can't give you strategies to keep everyone alive. In these situations, people will get hurt and people will die, but we can reduce the number of people that are killed.

MARK:                 

Let's talk about that then. I think I'm pretty confident in saying it's the other two angles, or corners of your triangle here. Escape may or may not be an option, one or two get out. This other corner is "deny". So even if I, I think school shootings are a great example, perhaps where a teacher could deny access in some fashion, which is where I think we're going here, to try to protect the 30 students in her room or his room. Can we explore, what does "deny" mean, and how, particularly in the context of a small business like a law office, what are your thoughts about, how do we do that?

ALAIN:                 

It can be as simple as locking a door and keeping that person out through a good solid locked door. It can be barricading. It can be getting behind some type of cover, cover being something that will stop bullets where concealment might hide you, but it doesn't stop bullets. Something that will deny that person ability to hurt you. Now, with a knife wielding subject, picking up a chair and holding that chair between you and that person so he can't get close enough to cut you, is a way to deny him access from hurting you. So different weapons, different threats, there are different ways to deny that threat from hurting you.

MARK:                 

Great. Again, I'm always learning something from you, ALAIN. I never even would have thought, hey, let's just pick up a chair. What a great example. Okay, I like that.

When I think about bad actors, I always have in my mind that these people are experienced and understand how to use a weapon, and that that may or may not be true. But I look at somebody like myself and I'll say, honestly, I've had one opportunity in my life where I've gone to a shooting range and had somebody give me a little experience in how to fire a hand gun. So I've done that for probably 45 minutes in my whole life. Trust me, I am not trained, obviously, to handle weapons. So it seems to me that I would be, for lack of a better description, out of my league. I don't know how to respond. Does that mean that I really should never try to attack? Does it mean I'm completely screwed for lack of- what can I do? I'm untrained and I'm against somebody that may or may not have real skillsets with the weapons they have brought to the table here. So is there something an average person like myself could do, if I'm forced into no other option?

ALAIN:                 

There a couple things. One of the things, empty handed- I don't teach anybody to go straight on against a shooter or a knife welder and take the gun or take the knife away from the person. That's not realistic. However, from the sides or behind, you can, and lot of times what I teach is if you have a group, the first guy grabs the arm and the weapon and just forces it to the ground while the couple people behind tackle the guy, and you just sort of swarm and jump on top of him and pound on him until you have the gun or the knife or whatever away from him.

That has been successful. People have done that and stopped people. But we also, one of the reasons that's why I joined Reflex Protect, is that gives a nonlethal response, because you can spray the guy in the face from ten, fifteen, twenty feet away, and that stuff gets in the eyes, it starts burning, it's going to stop the threat. If you can spray a Windex bottle, you know, or whatever wasp spray kind of thing, you can spray Reflex Protect. It's so easy and it gives you a nonlethal option as well for untrained people.

MARK:                 

Okay. I also liked your earlier comment of just the, the fire extinguisher. Never would have thought of that either.

ALAIN:                 

Fire extinguishers are good. And all of these, I like to teach, where you're going to ambush the bad guy at a doorway or at a corner, coming from the side, coming from the rear, rather than a head on, straight on to a person that's armed.

MARK:                 

Okay. This situation plays out in whatever way it plays out, and I'm going to assume that we have somebody if not more, that's wounded and or has been killed. What happens next? The attack is over, the attacker has run, the attacker has been mobbed and is on the ground. We've got the guy. What's next?

ALAIN:                 

Couple things. One, it's important that everyone has some basic first aid training, and there's new programs called Stop the Bleed. It's a national program. We have instructors here in Missoula. Actually, I'm going to be a certified instructor here pretty soon with Stop the Bleed, just increase my knowledge, and then having some supplies on hand,. Having a medical kit that also has tourniquets, pressure bandages, that could stop severe bleeding. That's a good thing to have in your car and have individually, too. Not just for shooters or people with knives, car accidents, anything that's massive hemorrhaging, you can save a life if you can stop that bleeding. Having tourniquets, pressure bandages, things available, and people that know how to use them, can save lives.

MARK:                 

Is that the most important thing that you can do then, to save somebody who's been shot or injured? Is that what you're getting to?

ALAIN:                 

Usually, yes. If it's a chest, you're gonna need a chest seal. If it punctured a lung, that sucking chest wound. So that would be good to have in your kit as well. But from bullets, if it's in the limbs, it's probably, you're going to die of hemorrhaging if you don't stop the bleeding. In the chest, if it's a sucking chest wound, you're going to need that. Elsewhere in the torso, stuffing the wound, wrapping it, controlling the bleeding until the professionals get there. Because if they're not dead already, if they're alive, it's the loss of blood that's most likely to kill them. So stopping bleeding, treating for shock until the professionals take over, gives you the best options of saving lives.

MARK:                 

Obviously the professionals are going to show up, in terms of emergency personnel and the police. Is there anything that we need to know in terms of, what do we do or not do with- I'm particularly thinking about police, in terms of interacting with them. Any thoughts about that?

ALAIN:                 

Make sure- it's going to be chaotic for you. It's going to be chaotic for them. So make sure you are not mistaken for a threat. If you do have a firearm, it should be put away or put down and not in your hands. Whether that's your own, or one you took away from the bad guy. You want to be able to show open hands when the law enforcement shows up, so they don't mistake you.

I'll say this about Reflex Protect, too, because it looks, and it fires, it has a head on it that's like a firearm, sort of a trigger mechanism, I want to put that down, too, because law officers, they don't know what's in your hands unless they're empty, and that's what they want to see. Listen to them, do what you're told. They may treat everyone as a bad guy until they know for sure ... don't get offended, that's part of their job. Just listen to them. Do what you're told until the situation's over.

MARK:                 

Okay. I should have brought this up a little bit earlier, talking about Reflex Protect here, and just for our listeners, out of Montana anyway. We're in bear country here and do a lot of hiking and you may be aware of what we call bear spray, and people over the years carry these cans of bear spray out in the wilderness, and it's sort of a wide field pepper spray and it can be very, very effective. But what you're talking about Alain, if I understand it correctly, is we've kind of taken this technology or this approach up a step and this is a stream that you can target specific areas. The center of the face, as an example, and it's a gel like product, but what we're talking about is a nonlethal chemical device here that just tries to stop a person from attacking you. Am I describing it accurately?

ALAIN:                 

Exactly. It shoots out in the stream like wasp spray, and the benefit, it's not pepper spray, which contaminates the entire room and every- if you've ever been in a room where they shoot pepper spray or even outside with bear spray, everybody in the area is gagging and coughing. This uses a CS based gel. It's the Presidia Gel, with the active ingredient of CS. It only affects the bad guy, and nobody else in the room will be affected or contaminated, which makes it safe to be used inside of a hospital, inside of a school, inside of a church, inside of a law office, anywhere inside. It's not going to have that affect that pepper spray has.

MARK:                 

Right. And just as an aside, a number of years ago when our kids were lot smaller, one of my boys found a can of pepper spray, and we had friends over for dinner and their kids and they're all playing around, and he just later on looked like "Daddy. It just, the voice in my head said push the trigger and see what happens." And he emptied a can of pepper spray in our family room. So I have firsthand experience with that, and it does impact everybody. And cleaning that up, ooh, what a mess.

Well, listen, Alain, it really has been a pleasure. Just, some great stuff that you've shared and I hope that we have some listeners here that really take it to heart. It seems to me there are things we can do, and I love just even being aware of what's going on, and having the courage to try to find appropriate help if necessary. But before we go, I do want to give you a chance to share any closing thoughts. The floor is yours.

ALAIN:                 

Certainly. The most important thing is I want people to be aware and be safe. I wrote in my book that it's the most important book I wish you didn't need to read. And I wish I didn't have to talk about this, but we saw just a little over a week ago, twelve people killed. Again, another shooting where 12 innocent people killed. So it is important to not be paranoid, but to have a plan to practice safe habits so you can enjoy life safely. Both at work, at home, and wherever else you are.

If you want more information, my book has been called one of the best on the topic, it's over 350 pages of solid information to help you, and that's at surviveashooting.com or amazon.com. And if you want a nonlethal way to defend yourself in your office or your home, reflexprotect.com, and you can learn a lot more about that product.

MARK:                 

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Well folks, for those of you listening, I hope you found something of value today. Boy, I sure did. Just great stuff. Again, I appreciate your listening, and if you have any thoughts, ideas, interests, in terms of topics or other folks you'd like to hear from, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You may email me at mbass@alpsnet.com.

So that's it. Alain, thank you again. Folks, have a good day. Bye Bye.

ALPS In Brief – Episode 32: Making Your Mark

Trying to establish an advocate or mentor relationship as a woman in law? Andrea Canfield, president of the Anchorage Association of Women Lawyers and fifth-year Corporate Associate at Stoel Rives, offers advice and insights on how to successfully navigate a male-dominated practice group.

Transcript: 

MARK B:

Hello. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the Risk Manager with ALPS. Welcome to the latest episode of ALPS In Brief, a podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm excited to be able to introduce today our guest, Andrea Canfield, who works with Stoel Rives, the Anchorage location. And Andrea, before we jump into our topic, and the topic, by the way, this is one of a series where we're really looking at the broad issue of women in the legal profession. And so Andrea, before we jump into this topic, can you just take a little time and fill our listeners in on who you are? What don't we know?

ANDREA CANFIELD:

Yes, no problem. Thanks, Mark, for having me. Yes, so my name is Andrea Canfield. I am a fifth year corporate associate at Stoel Rives. And by corporate, I do general corporate, but I specialize in mergers and acquisitions. I am in the Anchorage office, and I'm actually from Alaska. I'm from Eagle River. I went to college at Delaware State University for undergrad, and then for grad school got my master's in business administration. And then went off to University of Virginia for law school. And then decided to come back to Alaska, so that's just a little bit about me and how I ended up here.

MARK:

Very good. Thank you. All right, now I'm struck, you talk about being in the corporate M&A world, boy, that's one that I think ... My first response to that, this is heavily male-dominated. That would be my guess. Has that been a challenge for you? How is this working?

ANDREA:

Yeah, so I think you're right. Most of the legal industry as you know is male-dominated, but especially in certain practice groups, and mine in particular. A lot of the CEOs that you'll come across are men, a lot of the general counsel are men, and those are kind of my bread and butter for clients. And I think it works out in just ... It's a benefit and also kind of a burden. The benefit being that you stand out a little bit more, which means your work product stands out a little bit more, and you make a little more splash when you enter a room, and that's just because you may be the only woman in the room. So I found that to be a benefit and something that really has helped me progress my career and also just the [inaudible 00:02:50] time in front of clients.

ANDREA:

The burden I think is the fact there's sometimes a disconnect between what it really means to be in the legal profession and be a female, especially if you have children or especially if you have other interests outside that coincide with just the regular ideal of going to get a beer after work. So that's been a bit challenging, but I think navigating it has been fun as well.

MARK:

And how does this impact the partnership track? Is being a woman in this setting, does that create its own challenges?

ANDREA:

Yes. And I think this is just general, across the board in all practice groups, but if you're on the partnership track, which is what I'm on, you want to have advocators or those that are willing to speak on your behalf and really make sure that you enter the partnership, you hit the ground running. And I think it's hard to find female advocates because there just aren't very many of them. So you're kind of left with being in a male-dominated industry or practice group, which I am in, and then also kind of being in a male-dominated pool of mentors. So you get on both ends just being surrounded by men.

MARK:

Got it.

ANDREA:

And I think that impacts. if you're not comfortable in that sphere, it impacts the amount of contacts you can have with your mentors and those who are going to advocate for you when you go up for partnership. But I think as women we need to take a step forward and start embracing and kind of leaning into the fact that we do have male counterparts who are willing to speak up for us and take advantage of that.

MARK:

So if I were a woman and stepping into my first firm as an associate, what advice would you have in terms of trying to establish this advocate/mentor relationship? Do you have any thoughts about that?

ANDREA:

Yeah, I do. My primary mentor is a man. It's a male partner, and he is great. And I would say that what I did for starting out was really take that relationship and make sure to really just focus on it and put a lot of time and effort into flourishing it. I think you should try as best you can if you're a junior associate to really come in and talk with your partner, one, about the fact that your partner and mentor, one, about the fact that you are on the partnership track or whatever your end goal is at the time, and talk with them continuously and take them out to lunch, take them to coffee, ask to go get a drink or if you don't drink to go get coffee or to go on a walk.

ANDREA:

I think that us women should take those relationships and not only take it as a, okay, this male mentor is going to look at my career and put me on that path, but they also need to know you. So take the time to know your mentor on a personal level, and don't be afraid that because they are a male that it may be taboo. I think that right now in this social climate that we're in, that's [inaudible 00:06:28], but you have that because it really ... if you can build a personal relationship with your mentor, your male mentor, you will be grateful for it in the long run.

MARK:

I think that is fantastic advice. As soon as you say it, it makes perfect sense, but I'm not sure I necessarily would have immediately thought of that. I tend to just think, "Oh," and maybe this is because I'm male and I suffer from that syndrome perhaps. You sort of think, I often kid around with my wife about the difference between Mars being the male world and Venus. And Martians tend to be very competitive, and Venetians tend to focus more. And I think it's a very positive thing. I really am trying to support what you're saying here. But more about relationships. So when I think about that, looking at this male-dominated world that you're in, in terms of colleagues and you're sharing that many of the clients are also men and this competitive world, and it's stereotypical a bit, but does that create problems or challenges in sense? Do you find a need perhaps to work harder than your male counterparts in terms of other associates on the partnership track? Does that come into play?

ANDREA:

I'm not sure it's that. That's a good question. I'm not sure if because I'm a female that I've had to work harder. I think that because I'm a female, I've had to work harder to let my accomplishments be known. I think females, and this is just a generalization, but I know I am guilty of it, we take our accomplishments and think that they will speak for themselves, when in fact, we should be advocates for ourselves and we should speak up and say that we've done this great thing or we've been a part of this great project or this great team. A lot of times we are not the first to speak for ourselves and we really need to take ownership of our successes and really let it be known to the world.

ANDREA:

So when we do come up for partnership or for a promotion or at the end of the year for bonuses or reviews, we shouldn't be shy about saying, "These are the things that I've been doing over the year, and I'm doing great. I'm kicking butt." And I've had to really own that as I've gotten more senior in my practice. And I think men just inherently do it a little bit easier, and I'm not really sure. I think that it has benefited them. And I think now as women we need to start doing the same.

MARK:

I like that, yeah, yeah. Can you talk to me a little bit about the challenges of building a practice as a woman in this male-dominated world? What's your future longterm goal with your practice? And how are you trying to get there? What steps are you taking?

ANDREA:

Yeah, so I, like you said, I'm on the partnership track. My goal is to be a corporate partner specializing in M&A. And that means that I will have a lot of general counsel, a lot of CEOs, and executives as my clients. And I think right now I'm starting to do business development and really focus on that. And I've found that a lot of the things I did early on my practice have really helped. First being really responsive and being responsive from the beginning as far as how I want to create my practice. So if I'm okay with working weekends or having soft vacations, that's what I call it, soft vacations, where I'm available for clients. But I need to make that known because that's an added value to clients that may separate me from others.

ANDREA:

So I think that if you're building your practice and looking to make your mark in a male-dominated industry or practice group, I think circling your practice around your strengths and really horn in on those from the beginning. I like to be available to my clients at all times, and I do carve out time to myself. And we can speak on that later, but that's how I'm able to build a value brand, a value add to my clients. I will be the person that you can call on a Friday evening and I'll be responsive and get something to you within reasonable time. So that's one aspect of it.

MARK:

Again, thinking about someone just starting out, at the beginning of where you've come from, are there any mistakes, lessons, things that you might share, would you have changed anything?

ANDREA:

Oh my goodness, there are so many things. The number of mistakes, yes, yeah. There's so much. Yes, so I would say if you're starting out, the one thing that I wish I would have done differently is I think as lawyers we're all kind of detail-oriented, but take that to the next level and be detail oriented and then ask questions that go beyond the details. That will increase your knowledge and that will also help you look at the big picture.

ANDREA:

So if a partner or a client gives you a document to review, that's standard first-year stuff. Yeah, review that document, but ask questions if something doesn't seem right, if things really aren't adding up, or if there's inconsistencies that you see. I think that I started to that a little bit later in my first and second year, but if I would have done that from the beginning, I just think there would have been a lot of mistakes I could have avoided. So yeah.

MARK:

Okay, all right. You've talked here a bit about being available quite a bit. And this is not a light practice that you have. There's a lot of hours being devoted to this. You recently shared with me that you recently had a baby. Congratulations, by the way.

ANDREA:

Yeah, thank you.

MARK:

It's exciting. I'm at the other end. We have five kids, but empty nesters now and really enjoying life in a different way. But love, love the time with the kids. But I start to think about, okay, you have a new baby, how are you managing to make this personal life work?

ANDREA:

Yeah. Good question. Two things, I outsource as much as I can, and I'm also finding I work at odd times. So for women who are just starting out and maybe thinking about having a baby, I would suggest finding a firm or partners or colleagues that really value you getting your work done by any means necessary, you don't have to necessarily just be in the chair. You can work from home if you need to or you can work a little bit later in the night. So I take the early hours, so I work very early in the morning and then fairly late at night after the baby goes to sleep to kind of get in extra hours and get other things done.

ANDREA:

And as far as outsourcing, I tend to believe that if I have certain hours in the day, over the weekends, and some of them have to be spent to work, and then others are just spending with my husband and I, then I would rather spend the rest [inaudible 00:14:20] with my baby than cleaning dishes or doing laundry. So I try to outsource as much as I can. And I realize that that's very privileged, you're privileged and able to do that, and those who can't, I would say then do as minimal as you can. Let the dishes pile up and focus on your baby for those time and you'll get them done when you can. But that's kind of how I make it work.

MARK:

I like that, okay. A final question that I have for you, and I think to some degree it relates to here what we're still talking about in terms of how do you make this thing work? But wellness is a huge issue in our profession in terms of just I'm moving away from trying to talk about balance, finding balance between your professional life and your personal life. And I have found that that isn't real helpful. And I like how the profession is moving toward really focusing on wellness as a preventative way. If we aren't well in our life in general, living a healthy personal life, healthy professional life, that can create some problems. Thinking about wellness, what other thoughts do you have in terms of making this work? I'd just be curious.

ANDREA:

Yeah, no, great question. I'm glad you brought that up because I think we don't put enough emphasis on it. So yeah, I go to the gym or do some physical activity every day at lunch unless I have a closing or something that's just pressing. So I go the gym and I go for a run or I'll lift weights or I'll go for a walk and it's another way, side point, that you could bring in business development by calling your clients and saying, "Hey, you wanna go for a walk? I'm at lunch." Or calling another legal friend and you can continue your business development while also getting a little bit of fresh air and getting some exercise in.

ANDREA:

So I tend to believe that if I have to work 12 hours in a day, I can still find an hour to go to the gym because it just gives you that release and that breath and you feel like you're not just working all the time, that you're also enjoying life and getting yourself active. I find that it really will change your perspective. So I am a very big proponent of that, of exercise. I also am a really big proponent of taking the time to separate yourself and do some happy things even if it's not just with your family. I try to spend a lot of time with my family, but if it makes me very, very happy to knit, I've joined a knitting group.

MARK:

I love it.

ANDREA:

And that is also a little bit of wellness, so I really love to read, so I can join a book club. And it could only be once a month or twice a month, but that time you'll definitely ... If you commit to it, you will find that you are so much more centered. And as far as work/life balance, I would call it a kind of blend, a work/life blend. Sometimes you're really just trying to blend everything together and make it really, really smooth. And it's not always smooth, but it will work. So that's my idea on that.

MARK:

Well, Andrea, it's been wonderful having some time to get to know you and chat here a little bit. I want to thank you for honoring me and giving us a little bit of time here. Before I let you go, do you have any final thoughts that you would like to share with our listeners?

ANDREA:

Yeah, so my one hopefully inspiration for all those women who are either entering into the legal profession or kind of in it and trying to find their way, I would say be very, very open and honest with your community, your tribe, your village around you, and let them help you. Bounce off ideas as far as the development or your mentor relationship, let them know what your goals are and others will help you. And I tend to gain the most success in my career by letting others in and really helping them to help me. So that's my one tip for all those women out there.

MARK:

Well said. I appreciate that. All right, well, for those of you listening, I hope you found something of interest, and appreciate your taking the time to listen in with us. As always, if you have other topics of interest or other folks you'd like to hear from, please let me know, and we'll certainly do what we can to make it happen. You may reach me at mbass@alpsnet.com. Again folks, thanks for listening. Bye-bye.

ALPS In Brief – Episode 31: We Have a Problem to Solve – Why Wellness at Work is a Win Win

We see malpractice claims result from failure to file a document or a missed deadline, but often the heart of those issues is that attorneys are stressed out, burned out, overworked, or suffering from an illness or addiction. Lauren Baptiste, founder of Acheloa Wellness, joins us today to discuss how these issues manifest in our work lives and how to conquer them to find our passions again. 

Transcript:

MARK B:                              

Hello. This is Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager with ALPS. Welcome to the latest episode of ALPS in Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm really excited about our guest today, Lauren Baptiste from New York. Lauren is very much involved in wellness, and as many of you know in our listening audience, wellness is a very, very significant issue in bars across the United States and certainly up [inaudible 00:00:47] by the ABA. Before we get into our conversation on wellness, Lauren, I'd love to take a little time and share some information about yourself.

LAUREN BAPTISTE:         

Sure. Thank you for having me. My name is Lauren Baptiste, and I am the creative founder and CEO of Acheloa Wellness. This kind of came for me because I had been in public accounting for four years. Before we even talk about what it is, it's really important that I share where I came from, because being in a Big Four, working crazy hours, is very relatable to a lot of the lawyers and the accountants and the other professionals that I work with. Being there for 10 years really empowered me to serve others in this way, knowing that we're hard-working, professional, amazing people, but sometimes the one thing that we let go of is our wellness. That's where my boutique firm came to life.

MARK:                                 

Very good, very good. You're working in this corporate setting and alongside attorneys. What are some of your big takeaways from that experience?

LAUREN:                            

It's really interesting. Over 10 years you get to see a lot, so being there was such a wonderful experience of being able to understand really what makes us tick. At the forefront of it is stress. We all are trying to do our jobs and have quality work and feel good and do it all, right? Have the families, have the friends, have the social life, have the job, have the health, but really the health is the one that goes on the back burner. That's what I saw so frequently, is that, we would let go of that, which is our essence. If we don't have our health, we really don't have anything. That's really where I felt like, "Okay, there's a problem to solve here."

MARK:                                 

Yes, yes. Oh, I couldn't agree more. You're the creative founder of a firm, [Ack-lea 00:02:47]? My apologies.

LAUREN:                             

Acheloa.

MARK:                                 

Acheloa. There we go, thank you. I'm just struggling with this one this morning. It's a very interesting word, Acheloa Wellness. What's the history? What does this word mean?

LAUREN:                             

Achelois is a minor Greek goddess, and she focused on stress and burnout and pain. When I was finding a name for my company, I felt so called to that name, because I work with men, but I really specifically have an expertise in women's hormonal health, so a lot of what I do nails into that area. As I was finding what name really served, Achelois was the muse behind my business, and so Acheloa just sounds a little bit nicer than Achelois [Well-neese 00:03:44], so that's where I changed it slightly.

MARK:                                 

I love that. That is great. Very cool, very cool. You talk about, you work with men and women, as I understand it here, but you're also saying you primarily focus on women. Why is that?

LAUREN:                             

What I've seen in my experience is that, women internalize stress. Men can internalize it, but a lot more often they'll keep it on the surface and it's easier to move through them, but if we take it like a pill, this stress, what happens is it starts to eat us from the inside out. Something that will happen is, we don't even notice it, but there's subtle shifts in our mental state, and then in our physical bodies, that can be so subtle, so simple, as much as constipation or belching or something so simple, but it actually is the first stage of a longer term disease. If over time, we have continued gas in the body, or dry skin or maybe psoriasis, rosacea, or something like that, it can become a greater, more impactful disease on our body, which nobody wants. That's why I'm here for preventative maintenance.

MARK:                                 

Okay. In my experience, I've been a risk manager here with ALPS for over 20 years now, and have spent a lot of time presenting and working in terms of consulting with law firms and lawyers all over the country. One of the things that I lecture about is what I would call the true cause of malpractice. Attorney impairment is really behind quite a bit of this, and I broadly define that term in terms of stress, burnout, overwork, obvious things like depression, mental illness, addictions of a variety of types. I guess what I'm getting to with this is, it impacts an employee's, or an attorney's, or staff person, whoever's impaired, it really does have an impact in the workplace setting. I guess with that in mind, and I think this is where you're going but, why should law firms, in terms of the business, care about these issues? Am I on to something?

LAUREN:                             

Yeah, you are on to something, and I love that you brought it there. I think what happens is that, we see things on our bodies so easily. Like, "Oh, I have a mole," or, "I have acne," right? We all point to the things that we can touch and feel, but mental health is not that. We can't just put your hand on depression or feel into anxiety, but what's happening is that it's there.

The more and more I speak with individuals in this arena, the more I hear these secrets of, like, "Yeah, I had depression for years and I didn't tell anybody," or, "Yeah, I've been on anxiety medication, that's just my thing." That's where I'm like, "Wow." There needs to be a conversation and I'm so happy that the ABA came out with their wellbeing campaign, which we can talk about in a little bit, but it really focuses on mental health being so important that we get in front of this. That's where I feel so passionate about conquering stress, to start to overcome the issues of mental health that arise because of it.

MARK:                                 

I've talked about, in terms of my world and working for a malpractice insurer, I see one of the costs of not addressing this, not being proactive, as exposure to malpractice claims. Why do you think dates get missed, as an example, on calendars, and documents don't get filed? Depression is just one reason people can't always just muster the energy to do it, sadly, but I suspect there are other costs. Do you have some thoughts? What is your experience, in terms of failing to address these kinds of issues?

LAUREN:                             

I think there's a lot of ways you can look at it. I think the easiest way is to start with the self and say, "Okay, what is this costing me?" It's important that we also understand what it's costing us, because if we can't get past ourselves, it's hard to help others. If we start with ourselves, it can create a crack in the framework of our foundation of everything. If we're really not in a stable place with our mental health, it of course will have an impact on your relationships with your spouse, with your family, with your coworkers. It will have an impact on your work, it will take longer for things to get done. You'll likely be sick more, take more days out of the office. Your vacations won't be as fulfilling or happy. There's even a financial burden, just because we're not sound in our mental health. It's not just anxiety on its own. It's like, your life will surround how your emotive state really is, and that's just the individuals. We can go into the corporate and how that has a bigger impact.

MARK:                                 

Well, but I like the initial focus on the costs to the individual. I think at times, we don't take the time to even stop and think about that.

LAUREN:                             

True.

MARK:                                 

That's very important. Why is it important that we support females in this?

LAUREN:                             

It's very important that we're really taking care of everybody. I hate to say that, I'm not just focused on females. Men have stressors and midlife crises too, and there's amazing resources out there that support men, but in focusing women, I think it's important that we recognize a few things. One, that there still aren't as many female leaders in the environment at partner level than men. There's this gap in that middle-to-upper range where women will decide, "Well, it's my health or my career," or, "A family or a career," whereas that doesn't seem to be the same conversation for men. It's been one thing to really get behind that, to help women to understand, you can have it all. Maybe not at the same time, but you need to make sure that you can work and get towards those goals and do it safely for your health.

MARK:                                 

Do you see this wellness movement as something of a trend that may go away? Or is there more to it?

LAUREN:                             

I don't see it as a trend. I hope it's the beginning of something much bigger. You know, I think when we thought of salads coming to McDonald's, we're like, "Is that a trend?"

MARK:                                 

Yes, right.

LAUREN:                             

Now what's trending is, McDonald's isn't as popular, something like that. It's important that we see, wellness is coming in ... It does look good for companies to offer wellness, but really, it's a risk management issue. The quality of your people is better when they're healthier. Things will get done, like you said, on time, and the quality is so much better. It's really important that we're thinking of it not just as, "It's nice to do yoga at the office," but there is a subtle impact on the mental health by incorporating wellness into their everyday life.

MARK:                                 

You brought up the ABA's wellbeing campaign. Why don't you share a little bit more with our listeners about the [inaudible 00:11:35] campaign?

LAUREN:                             

Sure. Last year, in the fall, so it was about October 2018 I believe, there was a campaign that came out by the ABA, the American Bar Association, I think for all the lawyers, I'm sure you know. Right. It came out, and it really started to talk about the impact of mental health and substance abuse on firms.                                    

What they're seeing is, it's very quick for a team to say, "Hey, let's go out and get a drink," but that one drink night over night over night can become an addiction. It can become alcoholism. It can become something that shouldn't have to be. I love that the industry is taking a stance on, let's think of more creative ways to celebrate our team. Let's think of ways to engage that conversation with that person who's been on anxiety medication for years and is hiding behind it. Let them be more authentic and up-front. I think what this is doing is, it's starting to breed compassion in the workplace, and it's breeding a better working environment, where you want to work at a place that really cares about your wellbeing as a whole. It feels like a win-win to me.

MARK:                                 

I agree with you. My own perspective on this is, and I agree in terms of saying, I don't see this as a trend that's going to fade away, coming at it from the risk side, I really see a shift in terms of firms learning how to identify problems once they're there. Some deal with them very well and some don't, but it's a reactive model. We are now changing, shifting gears and being proactive, creating awareness and trying to create environments up front. I see this shift as significant, and I hope that it has long-term legs. I really do. What does the term "wellness" really mean to you?

LAUREN:                             

That's a good question. To me, wellness is a balance of physical and emotional stability. I think by mixing the emotional, the mental and the physical, we can really feel at peace. Then once we feel that peace, we can really start to enter in the other areas of our lives with this mood of balance, because if you think of, say, a palm tree in the middle of the Caribbean, it's steady. The storms will come and go, but it's steady. It knows to weave with the storm, bounce back and forth, but its foundation is so strong. That's wellness to me. Can you keep your foundation strong regardless of the storm? Be prepared for the sunny weather too, but really appreciate that balance of what's coming and how to handle it.

MARK:                                 

I like that. When I talk about, again, the malpractice kinds of issues, like stress and burnout, I really do think that lawyers struggle with this, in terms of losing their foundation. They start to shift at times from ... We work to have a life, but it's start to transition into this, they live to work. That's where the foundation goes and gets out of balance. That's just my own view of it. I'd be curious, what are your thoughts, in terms of, why do lawyers, that's primarily our audience, why do you think they suffer from stress and burnout and develop these dependencies and have things like depression arise?

LAUREN:                             

I think to your point, you're definitely on the right path. It gets to a point where we start to lose it. If we can't be solid in ourselves through how we even eat, just think of something so simple as eating. Back in the day, we would cook our meals, or we had someone cook them for us, or something like that. Now it's just, grab what you can eat and move on.

MARK:                                 

Oh, I know.

LAUREN:                             

Think about the quality of your life in a fast-food joint. This isn't a podcast hating on fast food. I feel like that's where it's turning into.

MARK:                                 

No, no.

LAUREN:                             

It's really about what we're putting into our bodies and really caring for our bodies. That is what gives us the longevity. If we're just going from meal to meal, moment to moment, meeting to meeting, it starts to become really stressful. That's where stress really has that impact on the body. One stressful event can last up to 22 hours in the body. Just imagine that times 20,000 emails that we get in a week. Imagine that by all the meetings and the deadlines. It's inevitable that our hormonal chemistry will start to go out of balance if we're not taking care of what's most important.

MARK:                                 

Yes. Now, we have talked a little bit about the ABA wellbeing campaign, and as part of that process, the ABA has asked law firms to take a pledge to change, and pledge to work toward wellness and create healthy work environments. Do you have any thoughts about that? Do you think this is going to make a difference? Will it impact law firms? Do you think it may impact other industries? I'm just curious as to your thoughts about the whole pledge part of the campaign.

LAUREN:                             

I think it's amazing. Honestly, I think it's a stepping stone. When Google does something, we listen. Right? When these big firms are doing something, it tells the mid-tier firms, "Step up." Even a sole proprietor, and I know there's a lot of your insured that are one or two or three small lawyers working together, it's so important that, you don't have to be at the top, main firm, the biggest and most lucrative one, to still incorporate wellness. Wellness can be 15 minutes of a group setting every week that just breathes for 15 minutes, and they can call it a meditation class. It's not about having all the money, but I think we start with the initiative at the top, which is the industry, which I think is wonderful. If they're asking all of these firms to make the pledge, it's setting the standard that we hold our people not only accountable to qualifications, but quality of life. I think that will really change the industry, where people will say, "Would I rather be an accountant or a lawyer? Maybe a lawyer." That's where you can balance it. It starts now, and I think it's great.

MARK:                                 

Well, as we start to close out here, can you tell us a little bit, how do you work with organizations? What is it you do?

LAUREN:                             

Yeah, thank you for asking. That's a great question. I work with organizations in different ways. My consulting background has really helped me understand how each company is very different and their needs are different. It can be something like day-long workshops or long-term group programming, and other ways to really engage the team. I think what's really important is that there's this framework of accountability where individuals can feel inspired and supported, and organizations are helping their people be where they want to be. Without that two-sided relationship of the employer and the employee, it struggles, but having a middleman like my firm can really come in there and bridge the gap and make everyone feel that they can level up together.

MARK:                                 

Yes. Wonderful. How could our listeners, if they wanted to learn more, how can they contact you? How can they learn more about what you do?

LAUREN:                             

Sure. They can look me up online at AcheloaWellness.com. Then, yeah, they can reach out online to my email or even Instagram or LinkedIn, Acheloa Wellness. You can reach out there and find me. I'm in the inter-world, I should say.

MARK:                                 

Yes, yes. Well, for all of you listening, I also do want to mention that Lauren will be doing a live [inaudible 00:20:00] webinar with us in May. I believe it's May 15th. Am I right on that, Lauren? I think so.

LAUREN:                             

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

MARK:                                 

Yes, yes. For those of you listening, look forward, we will be sending some emails out and letting everybody know when they can sign up. That should be a lot of fun. Lauren, it indeed has been a pleasure. I really appreciate your taking the time to share a little bit about yourself and your company. This is tremendously valuable in terms of wellness. I just think [inaudible 00:20:35] the issue is so significant. I really do appreciate your sitting down with us for a little bit here.

For those of you in the listening audience, I hope you found something of value and interest out of today's podcast. Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime. If you have other topics of interest that you'd like to hear discussed, or if there's anybody you'd like to hear from, we'll certainly do what we can. You may reach me at mbass@alpsnet.com. Again, thank you for listening, folks. Bye bye.