Untangling Fear in Lawyering: A Four-Step Journey Toward Powerful Advocacy

For many law students and lawyers, studying and practicing law can be scary. We rarely talk about fear in law school or legal training. Instead, well-meaning mentors advise, “Just do it…fake it till you make it…if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.” Yet, scientists confirm that fear blocks learning and performance. It can stoke anxiety and depression in a profession already saturated with mental health challenges. If we can turn down the dial of stress and anxiety even one notch for even one struggling individual in our profession by sparking a dialogue about the reality of fear in lawyering, let’s do it. Untangling Fear in Lawyering, discusses the reality, causes, manifestations, and consequences of fear in legal education and practice, from the standpoint of law students, junior attorneys, and clients. It analyzes fear from a cognitive, physical, and emotional perspective. The book draws guidance from how other industries address fear (and mistake-making) in education and training. The book concludes with a four-step process for law students and lawyers to reframe fear into fortitude: (1) identifying scenarios in our personal and professional lives that should induce fear but do not, and those that arguably should not, but do; (2) reframing and rebooting our mental approach to fear in lawyering—using vulnerability, authenticity, and humility to tap into personal power; (3) cultivating an athlete’s mindset toward the physicality of fear; and (4) fostering a culture of fortitude in tackling individual legal challenges and in helping others within our profession untangle fears. Read more