Professor Heidi K. Brown on Fear and Lawyering in the ABA Journal

01/03/2018

Professor Heidi K. Brown kicked off the new year with an article in the ABA Journal about acknowledging—and conquering—fear of lawyering.

In the article Brown shared her own experience of dealing with anxiety and fear during nearly two decades of legal practice in which she often felt pressured to ignore these feelings and “just do it.”

“After years of trying to push through my intense fear of public speaking, faking it till I made it in depositions, negotiations, and courtroom appearances (and constantly feeling ill), it was not until I started teaching law that I finally sat down and got to know my fear,” she wrote.

Brown soon realized that many lawyers struggle with the same challenges and there was a lack of resources to deal with these issues in law school and in practice. She noticed some of her quietest students were the strongest writers, and they had a lot of talent and skill to offer the legal profession. This led her to research the ways that traits like quietude and fear can be turned into positive forces for what she calls “authentic advocacy.” In 2017, she published The Introverted Lawyer: A Seven-Step Journey Toward Authentically Empowered Advocacy in an effort to share her story and the strategies that have worked for her.

“By first acknowledging our fear in lawyering and then understanding its roots and drivers, we can develop and adopt practical strategies to distill fear and transform it into powerful advocacy for others,” she writes.