MENTAL HEALTH TRAINING FOR ATTORNEYS

This comprehensive mental health training is designed to support attorneys in becoming self-actualized, resilient and inspiring team members, managers and leaders of law offices. Many attorneys do not know how to develop their mental health and suffer from anxiety, depression, addiction and loneliness. Attorneys will learn their core personality style and attendant strengths and weaknesses in maintaining their mental health. Attorneys learn how to create effective strategies to improve their attention and focus, self-esteem, personal integrity and spiritual core to become happy, healthy and wealthy lawyers. The course covers how to manage negative self talk, dealing with addictions and compulsions in yourself and others, understanding and healing trauma, creating viable work-life balance and using spirituality to sustain your commitments and integrity. 

COURSE INCLUDES:

1. 2 Hour Video Instruction
2. 30-minute coaching session
3. Documents and Worksheets

SCHEDULE:

TIME	SUBJECT	PARTICIPANT TASKS
0:00 – 5:00	Overview of Program Outline – use this for webpage	Slides
3:00 – 10:00	Introduction of Attorney Mental Health and personal story of how coaching and therapy improved me as an attorney.
10:00 – 15:00	Overview of course logistics and topics – quizzes, short answer, certification, email support, chat support for tech issues? Take what works and leave the rest	Participant Lists Goals for Training
15:00 – 35:00	Big Picture Overview of Attorney mental health crisis. Recursive Nature of Organization and Role of Executive and Management functions of Beers Model, Positive Intelligence research, Maslow, Wheel Teaching, The 8th Habit	Slides
30:00 – 40:00	Primary Aim and Personal / Professional Values and Personal Story	DOC 1: Primary Aim ExerciseDOC 2: Personal StoryDOC 3: Time Target and scheduling
40:00 – 50:00	The use of DISC personality style assessment in maintaining your mental health and personal growth, professional alignment, review of assessment, take assessment – regular and work of leaders. Know Thyself	Assessment Quiz #1 : Basic DISCDOC 3: Sample Free DISC assessment results – 123 TestDOC 4: Sample Paid DISC assessment results – WILEY
50:00 – 60:00	Review of participant’s DISC personality style assessment and opposite personality style	Assessment Quiz #2: Participant describes 3 insights
60:00 – 65:00	5 MINUTE BREAK
65:00 – 85:00	Review of Positive Intelligence Program and components of mental fitness. Voice Dialogue and Experiential Repatterning – ancestral and transpersonal resources	DOC: 3 Positive Intelligence assessment resultsDOC 4: Data on PIDOC 5: Intro to ERDOC 6:Assessment Quiz #3 – list of areas and competencies and challenges – satisfaction?
85:00 – 95:00	Therapy, Coaching and Group Work – Trauma assessment AMES – trans personal resources	DOC 7: Vegas CurveDOC 8: Neroscience of Trauma and HealingAssessment Quiz #8 Participant describes value and challenge of getting support to create ongoing mental health and fitness.
95:00 – 115:00	Addiction to alcohol, legal and illegal drugs – Jung and Spiritual breakthrough, vision fast	DOC 9: Substance Abuse and Mental Health in Operations ManuelDOC 10: Substance Abuse self assessment
115:00 – 120:00	ADD, ADHD, Anxiety and Depression – Scattered Mind	DOC 11: Questionnaires and Assessments:DOC 12: fact sheets
120:00 – 125:00	Conclusion	Assessment Quiz #9 Course EvaluationDOC TO EMAIL TO PARTICIPANT AND EMAIL TO STATE BAR: Issue Certificate of Attendance

Unlike other professions, attorneys have critical ethical duties and burdensome competency requirements that demand high levels of personal performance, year in and year out. Failure to properly perform any of these broad mandates can lead to complaints, public reprimands, suspension and debarment. Mental health is a spectrum of wellness, from living through normal cycles of growth, challenge, failure and learning with intense experiences of anger, shame, fear and grief…all the way to psychological illnesses and conditions that require medical intervention.

State bar associations across the country are advocating for law firms to begin changing their company cultures in order to support lawyers in maintaining their wellness. As an Attorney, your challenge is to create a workplace for yourself and others to stay in the flow of excellence every day. It is obvious that most attorneys cannot meet these challenges. When compared to the general population, attorneys suffer from twice as many incidents of substance use disorders and mental health issues. Furthermore, increasing numbers of attorneys are being disciplined, sued and incarcerated for wrongdoing in their roles as lawyers. 

Law firms’ reputations suffer when their attorneys burn out. Clients lose valuable rights and are forever precluded from legal process when their attorney commits malpractice. Every Attorney must first self-assess their mental health, and then get support for their condition.  Leaders need to learn how to have difficult, emotional conversations with other attorneys that they suspect of having mental health challenges. 

It is no surprise that Attorneys report high levels of mental health challenges, given the daunting task of performing well in a wide range of difficult mandatory duties, that include the following: 

• Competence (Model Rules 1.1)
  • A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client.
  • Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.
• Diligence (Model Rules 1.3)
  • A lawyer shall act with reasonable diligence and promptness in representing a client.
• Communication (Model Rules 1.4)
  • A lawyer shall obtain informed consent
  • A lawyer shall keep client reasonably informed.
  • A lawyer shall comply with reasonable requests for information.
• Conflict of Interest (Model Rules 1.7)
  • Representation must not be limited by a personal interest of the attorney
• Safekeeping Property (Model Rules 1.15)
  • Duty of trustee for client monies
• Declining or Terminating Representation (Model Rules 1.16)
  • When a lawyer’s health (mental or physical) interferes with their ability to practice effectively, they have an ethical duty to step down.
• Expediting Litigation (Model Rules 3.2)
  • A lawyer shall make reasonable efforts to expedite litigation
    consistent with the interests of the client
• Misconduct (Model Rules 8.4)
  • Lawyers cannot Commit a criminal act that reflects adversely on the honesty,
    trustworthiness, or fitness as a lawyer. This includes DUI and Illegal drug use or possession

Many Attorneys avoid assessing and taking action to protect their mental health and wellness because of the extra demands and emotional drainage of processing unexpressed grief, rage, panic and trauma. However, there is a systematic way to learn about expanding your mental health wellness that, when mastered, make it easier to handle the responsibility. In order to have a long and truly successful career as an Attorney in the law, you have to first understand personality and your wounds. You have to know your strengths and weaknesses and where these come from. Without this critical data, you cannot master the fundamentals areas of emotional intelligence, leadership, management and self-care that are mandatory to becoming a successful Attorney. 

All attorneys have blind spots, so it is normal to feel frustrated and struggle in mastering mental health practices. It is painful, humiliating and inevitable to make mistakes that impair your mental health. What is worse is to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, as your mental health diminishes.

Research in the areas of neuroscience, psychology, organizational development and economics prove that learning DISC is an excellent way to start your journey of self-assessment and discovering appropriate mental health support as a busy Attorney.  Positive Intelligence is another tool that is extremely popular with busy professionals that want to achieve meaningful transformation of their work life balance, and self esteem. 

After your training, schedule your 30-minute Coaching Session to clarify your mental health wellness goals, identify your challenges in achieving your goals, and brainstorm strategies to overcome your challenges.

REQUIRED PRE-WORK (10 minutes)

We require you take a DISC personality style assessment before this training. You can take a basic free test DISC assessment at 123 Test https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/ or contact us for the Wiley DiSC assessment (+- $100)

Take Free Positive Intelligence assessment

RECOMMENED READING (Audiobooks are available on Spotify):

Positive Intelligence

Taming the Tiger

Scattered Mind

EMyth

Die With Zero

Cashflow Game

The Street Lawyer

The Power of Myth

8^th Habit

ABOUT ACTUALIS ATTORNEY WELLNESS AND MARK C. DALY:

Even before becoming an attorney in 1999, I learned how to develop my personal and professional skills by attending workshops, educating myself, getting peer support, and hiring professional coaches and therapists. I learned how to bring out the best in myself, my companies and the teams I supervised in my legal career. Over the past 20 years I have become a certified professional coach and a certified Shadow Work ® coach and facilitator. I am a Registered, Non-Licensed Therapist in the State of Colorado with strict duties of confidentiality, which is very necessary when working with attorneys! I have taken courses in Voice Dialogue, Gottman Marriage Counseling and Emotionally Focused Therapy. I have used these skills to coach executives, managing and associate attorneys, as well as support staff, to become more satisfied and successful practicing law. Since 2004 I have been a registered CLE provider. I have coached and mentored dozens of attorneys in law office start up, practice management, and immigration law fundamentals.

I have been an immigration attorney for 26 years. In the beginning, I struggled financially, emotionally, physically and spiritually. I have been married, divorced, and finally remarried in 2010. As a single dad dealing with a traumatic divorce, I know what it is like to mismanage a law office, break rules of competence and act unethically. Through it all, I have managed to learn from my mistakes and gain mastery in the 5 fundamental areas of attorney wellness – Leadership, Management, Finances, Mental Health and Physical Health. I twice started, built up, managed, and sold successful law practices in Nashville and Denver, and now I am financially free. I maintain excellent and loving relationships with my wife and grown children, and I have a great relationship with my extended family and even my ex-wife! In 2025, my wife and I went on a one-year sabbatical around the world to learn, grow, relax and enjoy life. I gained a better understanding of myself, and decided to become an inactive attorney and launch Actualis Attorney Wellness. My primary aim is to help attorneys feel good, enjoy life, and do the right thing.