In our podcast interviews, we usually talk about new ideas and innovations in law. But today, we’re talking about a very old idea. And by old . . . I mean thousands of years old.
But our guests today believe it holds the key to transforming the modern legal practice.
Kentucky attorneys Renee Heinrich and Helen Bukelmez are here to talk to us today about the role of mindfulness and meditation in the modern legal practice.
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Full Transcript
Katie Wolf:
Welcome to The Filevine Fireside. I'm Katie Wolf. Each month on this podcast, we talk about new ideas and innovations in law. But today, we're talking about a very old idea; and by old, I mean, thousands of years old. But our guests today believe it holds the key to transforming the modern legal practice. Kentucky attorneys, Rene Heinrich and Helen Bukulmez, are here to talk with us today about the role of mindfulness and meditation in a modern legal practice. Rene and Helen, I'm so grateful you're both able to join us today.
Rene Heinrich:
Thanks. It's great to be here.
Helen Bukulmez:
Thanks so much.
Katie Wolf:
First, could you each let us know a little bit about yourselves and your legal practice?
Rene Heinrich:
Helen, why don't you go?
Helen Bukulmez:
Thanks Rene. My name is again, Helen. I am an Immigration and Personal Injury Attorney in Kentucky. I teach Attorney Marketing and Project Management at the Law School, and I also have a company that helps law firms with their profitability, wellness, and health goals for each law firm, so that they can have a more prosperous, more profitable law firm, that is also happy as a team.
Katie Wolf:
Ooh. Thank you so much, Helen. Rene, how about you? What's your story?
Rene Heinrich:
My name's Rene Heinrich, and my office is in Newport, Kentucky. I practice primarily in child protection and family law and adoption work, although I do some personal injury work, as well. I also serve on City Council in Highland Heights, Kentucky, which is the location of Northern Kentucky University, in our good state, in Commonwealth, Kentucky. Helen and I have been working together for about the last year, in trying to develop some practice management techniques to make meditation and mindfulness and kind of Eastern thought practices a lot more available to everyday lawyers that are sitting at their desks, behind computers.
Katie Wolf:
So you're both extremely busy people, with successful practices, and all lot of civic engagement. How did you get into mindfulness?
Rene Heinrich:
I think we each kind of came from them from separate places. Both Helen and I share kind of some interesting cultural backgrounds. My family is German. I was born overseas. Her family is Turkish, was born overseas. And both of us come from kind of European thought, and being reared, I think, in a kind of more European culture, which tends to be a little less demanding, and a little more joyful than our Western culture here in the United States.
Rene Heinrich:
And Helen and I met over a really wonderful Turkish dinner and some great coffee, and started talking about what our passions were. And we realized that we both have kind of this passion for recognizing that here in the middle of our careers, we're very successful on paper, but we're also getting very overwhelmed and very burnout. And that's what we're seeing from our colleagues that we're working with, too.
Rene Heinrich:
And so, we started talking about different things that we do individually. Helen is a wonderful resource, because she started Hiking Lawyers, which is a very busy Facebook group that now has... I'm sure Helen could tell us more how many people it has, but it's got people all over the country now. And hiking has been something that has really worked for Helen, as far as being able to do some balance and life balance.
Rene Heinrich:
I kind of came to the yoga practice career, and that was something that really helped me find a very quiet, inner calm that I didn't have, prior to picking that up.
Katie Wolf:
Helen, do you want to add to that at all? And tell us more about your hiking practice?
Helen Bukulmez:
Absolutely. I'm happy to share. That was a really good recap, Rene. As Rene said, we both share passion for life. I think that's the beginning point. If you have that passion for life, you protect it with your life. You don't allow clients, you don't allow struggles, you don't allow issues, or your profession, or opposing counsel, or the judge to take that away from you. And it's not as easy as I said it, right? Every day is a challenge; but you always keep it in mind, "What is the value?"
Helen Bukulmez:
I am an attorney. I'm very proud to be an American attorney, but I'm very passionate about my life. I'm not going to hand over my happiness, my health, and my balance, simply because someone was late in hiring an attorney. But also, I don't want to be disrespectful, I don't want to be spiteful. I want my clients to come to me, and feel like I'm this balanced person, who is not going to get lost in their issues and panic; instead, is going to guide them through the challenges they're facing, as someone who's a coach, or someone like an elder.
Helen Bukulmez:
And it doesn't have anything to do with age. So I think all of this comes down to value; and that value begins with ourselves. If you don't value your time, you don't plan it well, somebody else is going to claim it. And even without realizing, you're going to be upset about it, and you won't even know what you're upset about.
Helen Bukulmez:
So it goes back to mindfulness. And when you say mindfulness, it typically sounds like we're talking about sitting down, meditating, or doing yoga, or whatever it may be. And it includes those things, but it begins with being intentional. "If I go to work today, what is my goal for today? For the next hour, what is my goal? If I am meeting a client who is really looking at me as someone who is knowledgeable, experienced, and able to solve their problems, what is my plan in getting them to the solution?" So if I'm mindful as an attorney, then I'm going to be able to guide my clients in a better way. And that's a very long answer to your short question.
Katie Wolf:
It's such a good answer, though. And I'm just thinking about how, if you engage with that in a distracted or non-mindful way, then you just go through the routine of what you assume a client wants, and then, without stopping, pausing, interrogating the moment.
Helen Bukulmez:
Absolutely.
Rene Heinrich:
Well, I think it's important to recognize that being mindful is a constant practice. How many of us have gotten in the car and driven home, and don't remember the ride?That's something that happens all the time. So, to really force yourself; and this is something that I think attorneys can do very easily on a day-to-day practice, force yourself to kind of step back, and recognize, "What's something that I do a lot during the day, that I don't pay any attention to?" And it can be as simple as washing your hands after going to the bathroom; really focus on feeling the water, focus on smelling the soap, focus on being in that moment.
Rene Heinrich:
My daughter and I had been in a therapy session, and the therapist had mentioned in this group kind of session for us to try that for a week. When we came back, we were all very amazed at kind of how life-changing, taking those 30 seconds or two minutes or whatever time it takes, out of your day to really focus on that.
Rene Heinrich:
And so you start with these small things, like when you're walking up the steps to the courtroom you go to every single time; be in the moment of walking up those steps. Take a look at the floor, smell the smells that are around you, hear what's going on around you. Use all five of your senses, and be engaged. And once you start doing that in a couple of really simple ways, you start noticing that you're doing it more and more as your day progresses. And then, hopefully, you get to the place where it becomes second nature, which is kind of what Helen's talking about, when you're sitting into a meaningful conversation with a client, and really trying to figure out where to get that client to go eventually.
Katie Wolf:
That's so interesting, Rene. So, if you are talking to an attorney who wants to be begin practicing mindfulness, would you recommend any different practices, or would you just say, "Just do exactly what you're already doing, and bring mindfulness to some of those things."
Rene Heinrich:
For me, I went on a retreat to this wonderful place called Miraval out in Arizona, which is kind of a high-end spa/retreat location that does a lot of mindfulness classes and yoga classes, and all kinds of other classes that are just fascinating, and outside of my normal bailiwick at the time. And they had a free class on mindfulness that I sat down in, and passed out a little handout. And it was the first time that I ever realized that there had been some language used to describe the state of really being in the moment, and being aware of exactly what is going on, and being aware of your senses as you're living through life.
Rene Heinrich:
As a mom of three kids, I can tell you that a lot of it is autopilot; and autopilot eventually is going to burn you out, and is eventually going to cause you a whole lot of anxiety and stress, and even depression and alcoholism, and all the other things that you see statistics show that lawyers struggle with. And just being mindful in the moment. And I realize too, after I've done it for a while, I'm using a different part of my brain than I do in day-to-day practice. And it's almost like a muscle that gets built up in the same way if you're learning a foreign language; that might be a different part of your brain than in your normal day-to-day practice.
Katie Wolf:
Do you have anything to add to that, Helen, to those experiences?
Helen Bukulmez:
Absolutely. Such great examples. I think one thing that I would say to attorneys out there looking for solutions, is that most of the time; I'm going to just make up a number, probably about 90% of the time, mindfulness, or the need for mindfulness doesn't really present itself as in, "Oh, you really need to go stretch and do yoga." Or, "You really need to go think about it and be mindful." Or, "You really need to go and take a five-mile hike." It doesn't happen that way. What happens is, you get a call from your assistant, and the assistant says, "Hey, we just got an online review, and they just gave us one star." And this is the client that you thought was happy.
Helen Bukulmez:
You may think this is a marketing problem. Typically, it ends up being a mindfulness problem. Number one, you weren't prepared. Number two, you didn't have a plan. Number three, you didn't have it in your contract that you would like the client to leave a review. And if there are any issues prior to that, to bring it to your attention. Number four, you didn't sit down with that client after the case was closed, and ask how everything went. "Was there anything else that we could have done better?"
Helen Bukulmez:
So, most of the time, these problems are going to arise. And another example would be in your personal relationships. You leave in the morning, and you had a disagreement, or some type of a fight with your significant other. And you keep thinking about that event: "Who's to blame? What did I do wrong? What did he do wrong? What did she do wrong?" Instead of saying, "I think I'm not in my best mood today. I need to sit down and re-evaluate my mind space." And it may be that it is something the other person said, but was it the best response that you gave?
Helen Bukulmez:
So it's interesting, that what Rene and I try to do in the legal industry, is that most of the time the problems are going to arise, and they're going to look like they are financial. They're going to look like they are marketing problems. They're going to look like they are relationship problems. When you look deep enough, you're going to realize that it's a mindfulness problem that requires your attention to yourself.
Katie Wolf:
And this fascinates me, because in my brain, mindfulness and marketing are just, they're two different worlds. You might be in the brain space of one, or in the brain space of other; but I just don't see that Venn Diagram overlapping very much. But in your work, both of you have found that a deeper mindfulness can take care of some of these case management or marketing crises that come to lawyers.
Rene Heinrich:
And I think that's the fascinating aspect that Helen brings to the table. She's managed to really piece together these kind of holistic, almost Eastern thought mechanisms, and make them very approachable into our Western world of nine-to-five business, and sometimes many more hours than that. And making you very aware of what you set up for yourself, especially the two of us as small business owners; what we set up for ourselves on a day-to-day basis. We've only got ourselves to blame if it goes wrong, right? And so there's nothing wrong with asking somebody like Helen to come in and say, "I'm starting to get really stressed out. This isn't working for me." And sometimes, just having a voice from somebody who's not emotionally invested in the same way that we are that voice for our clients, to give some feedback on tweaks that you can make pretty easy, to make your life a little bit better.
Katie Wolf:
I've read some studies about how mindfulness improves resilience. And how I was just thinking about how lawyers can be so beat up by opposing counsel, or the demands of their job, or maybe sometimes their clients; and what increased resilience could mean for them. Have either of you noticed that in either your own practice or others who are engaging with mindfulness?
Helen Bukulmez:
I think when it comes to resilience, or overcoming the challenges of our profession, we all have to keep in mind. I think all the sources of stress, or sources of alcoholism, any other dependency; when you really study those, you find that there is either something that is to be feared, or that something is not really being understood. Think about a client. We may think that a client is being very unreasonable, and it may be about a fee dispute. They signed a contract to pay you $2,000 for this project. And now, they're giving you this story about not being happy, and not wanting to pay.
Helen Bukulmez:
And you really dig deep. If you act with mindfulness and with strategy, you'll find out that they didn't understand something. Of course, initially, you have to deal with that problem in the best way that you feel you can. But also, go back and look at your processes. "How could I have done this better? What type of processes could have prevented this?"
Helen Bukulmez:
So every single event, every single incident, however stressful it may be, is really a teacher for the next one. But if you're not sitting down, taking your time, and applying that lesson to your future cases, you're only going to repeat yourself. So it's really important to keep in mind that the challenges are there to grow us every single day.
Katie Wolf:
That's beautiful. So, we've talked a little bit about small spaces where a person can individually introduce mindfulness into their practice. Are there things that a firm can do to prioritize mindfulness firm-wide? Are there policies or services that they can put into place?
Helen Bukulmez:
They can definitely hire us, but I'm going to turn it over to Rene to repeat that.
Rene Heinrich:
No, those are some of the tools of the trade, and the tricks that we kind of work on, firm-wide. I think that all of these tenets and aspects of mindfulness, meditation, and centering, and knowing yourself, and all of those things, come from the top down, right? So if you, as the business owner, is coming in, and you are closing your door to take just five minutes or 10 minutes of meditation before a trial, because you realize that your blood pressure's spiking, and you really need to gain some control back. I think you're teaching by example in the office, that it's okay to take 10 minutes if you need 10 minutes.
Rene Heinrich:
In my firm, and in my practice, I don't count hours as much as I count productivity, right? I want the work to be done. And other than maybe being there to answer the phones to make sure from eight to five, the phones are being answered, it doesn't bother me at all if somebody needs to step outside to take a phone call, or step outside to take a walk for 10 minutes, because they just had a really demanding client that just called, and they need to breathe for a few minutes, and think through the situation, and calm down. I would much rather have an employee do that than to have instant reaction. And we've all had those instant reactions, where we send that email, hit send; and 24 hours later, look at what we sent and go, "Oh my goodness. I really wish that I had not hit the send button. That was really, really jumping the gun. And that was horrible. And I never would have said that, had I not been so angry."
Rene Heinrich:
So, I think that there are certainly lots of little things that can be done, just as far as expectation, and asking and expecting your staff to take a moment, and let's say, review a document before they hand it to you; that's mindfulness, is proofreading. And I don't know how many times we've been in practices, where we've been with people who feel like they're in such a hurry to get the work out, they don't even really look at it, and there's not a quality of work there. So, like Helen said, we love to come into practices, and make small changes to really not only make the people a little bit healthy, but also make the work a whole lot healthier. And that's the productivity piece in it, that I think is really interesting. I think a lot of people don't realize how profitable it can be to run a practice in a more mindful way.
Helen Bukulmez:
And those are really good points. The major issue with the law firms trying to do this themselves is that it's almost like a relationship. Yes, you know what's right. You may know what's wrong. But you're emotionally invested in your problems; you're emotionally invested in how much you've been paying that legal secretary that just did something that didn't sit well with you. You're emotionally connected to the outcome of the case.
Helen Bukulmez:
And the benefit of bringing a team like Rene and I, is that we're not emotionally connected. And we will tell you what systems need to be put in place, so that things can run smoothly. "What type of plan can we put together? What type of local information do we need to take into account? What type of emotions can we expect from the client?" And because we don't have emotional stake in it, we can... It's reason, and with a lot of compassion, help that law firm.
Helen Bukulmez:
And it's another thing, if your legal secretary says, "Okay, close your eyes now, and do a couple of breathing exercises." You're probably going to laugh at that, right? But if you're sitting in a large conference room, and Rene tells you to sit on your chair, and do chair yoga, you're going to follow her.
Helen Bukulmez:
And we've seen that happen at the AAJ Conference. It was just very eyeopening, and absolutely fantastic, too. So I think bringing in a team from outside the firm brings that objectivity that you really need for all kinds of productivity and profitability. It's not just some hippie culture, but it's a way to make your law firm happier, which in turn makes you more confident.
Katie Wolf:
That makes all the difference. Oh, I'm so sad we're running out of time, because I have so many... I feel like I could talk with you two about this for hours. But just as a final question, what are, apart from hiring on you two as Mindfulness Consultants, what are some practices that attorneys who are listening in, can immediately begin today?
Rene Heinrich:
I think really easy, is the exercise I talked about with washing your hands. That is mindfulness at it's core. It's kind of doing it before you learn it, so it's not like you need to have a class. But it really is exercising a part of your brain that if you've never done it before, needs to be exercised a little bit. And so, that's a very simple kind of way to recognize how checked out you are in a lot of your day-to-day activities.
Rene Heinrich:
The other thing that I've suggested to friends and colleagues here in Northern Kentucky, I sponsor free yoga for stressed out lawyers, two Fridays a week. And we have kind of a core group of people that come on a regular basis. And they've started asking a little bit more about the meditation and that sort of thing.
Rene Heinrich:
There are all kinds of really awesome meditation apps that can walk you through meditation if you've never done it before. Headspace is a great one. I have one called Be Calm that I use right now. And there are, Breathe is another one that's really good. So those are apps that you might spend $2.99 cents on, but the scientific research that shows the brain, kind of on meditation, versus off of meditation. And during our speech when we were down in Miami, I showed an MRI of the brain. You can see, from a scientifically valid standpoint, how the synapses of the brain work better in people who have ongoing meditation practices.
Rene Heinrich:
And I have so many colleagues that say, "Oh, there's no way I could sit still for that long." Well, those are the people that need it. That's a big red flag; ding, ding, ding, you need to sign up for this. And it only has to be two or three minutes. Start slow; don't all of a sudden decide that you're going to meditate for an hour, and become some yogi on the Ganges. All you have to do is download an app for a couple bucks, and some of them are even free, and do a guided meditation that just kind of talks you through maybe being aware of your body, aware of your surroundings for two minutes.
Katie Wolf:
Ah, that's such good answer. Helen, do you have things to add about what you would recommend to anyone who is listening?
Helen Bukulmez:
Oh, we are lawyers; of course, I have things to add. And Rene has really touched on something very important. I think I would like to not generalize, but if you look at the attorney population, we are typically Type A, competitive, quickly panicked individuals, that unless we are warned by ourselves or by others, we keep the same pattern going for a long time. So if you say, "Hey, this is an excellent idea. You should do yoga." Most lawyers want to be a yoga teacher in a week, right? Because we want to be the leaders of any profession.
Helen Bukulmez:
So, in terms of what can be done, aside from hiring Joy DD, which is our company with Rene and I, some really important factors. Number one, be aware. And it can be as simple as watching, listening, and observing yourself. Not long ago, I had a consultation with a law firm, where I went in to do a profitability review. This attorney and his three assistants were in the room. And it was so interesting, how the attorney talked about their clients. He used a lot of different names. He showed a lot of dissatisfaction with the way that clients were communicating with them.
Helen Bukulmez:
And the energy in the room, you cannot help but wonder, "How is it affecting my team? If I am setting the example, complaining about the people who bring me cases, who bring me income, who bring me food to put on the table, then how can I expect my team to act differently?" They're going to see the same problems. They're going to start complaining. And then, in turn, you're going to complain about your team complaining.
Helen Bukulmez:
So be aware, be mindful about what you do and what you say. And I cannot recommend this book highly enough, The Four Agreements. It's a very tiny little book, but reading it, and truly paying attention helps.
Helen Bukulmez:
And then number two, have a plan for each day; and you may not even follow the plan, but you learn from it. At least you'll have a plan to start with. And then you can see what you can do better the next day.
Katie Wolf:
That is excellent. I am so grateful that both of you have taken the time to talk with us today. I'm really looking forward to your book, and to putting into practice some of these ideas that you've given us. Thank you so much.
Rene Heinrich:
Thanks for having us.
Katie Wolf:
This has been the Filevine Fireside, and I'm Katie Wolf.