Learn the DISC Personality Style system to understand your strengths and challenges in actualizing professional and personal wellness. Your personality style will keep you stuck in unhealthy patterns that negatively impact your performance as an attorney. Thanks to Dr. Marsten’s simple 4-part personality assessment, you can accurately identify and transform painful areas of challenge in yourself and others. You will learn how to assess others and the WIR-LA conflict management tool.
This course is designed to improve your wellness as an attorney in the areas of Leadership, Management, Finances, Physical Health or Mental Health. In this 1 hour program, Actualis will teach you the DISC personality style system used by leaders, organizations and managers across all industries. Your personality style drives your thoughts and behaviors in predictable patterns. Even though you cannot change your personality, you can learn how to interrupt these patterns that cause you pain and sabotage your career aspirations as an attorney. You can learn how to step outside of your personality and communicate to others in ways that are congruent with their personality. You can learn how to stop avoiding responsibilities and tasks you dislike, and how to get support from others who excel in those areas. Knowledge of your personality style gives you the power to achieve your professional goals as an attorney. In addition, you will be making a positive impact on your community, your workplace, and the lives of the clients you serve.
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. In order to thrive in this environment, you must master the fundamentals of Leadership, Management, Finances, Physical Health and Mental Health.
Attorneys’ mandatory duties include:
- Competence (Model Rules 1.1)
a. A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client.
b. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation. - Diligence (Model Rules 1.3)
a. A lawyer shall act with reasonable diligence and promptness in representing a client. - Communication (Model Rules 1.4)
a. A lawyer shall obtain informed consent
b. A lawyer shall keep client reasonably informed.
c. A lawyer shall comply with reasonable requests for information. - Conflict of Interest (Model Rules 1.7)
a. Representation must not be limited by a personal interest of the attorney - Safekeeping Property (Model Rules 1.15)
a. Duty of trustee for client monies - Declining or Terminating Representation (Model Rules 1.16)
a. 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. A lawyer shall make reasonable efforts to expedite litigation
consistent with the interests of the client - Misconduct (Model Rules 8.4)
a. 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
Your challenge is 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.
All attorneys start out wanting to be successful. However, each attorney is unique. For this reason, to have a long and truly successful career in the law, you have to first understand yourself. You carry both valuable skills and lifelong challenges to manage. Without this critical data, you cannot master the fundamentals areas that are mandatory to become a truly healthy, wealthy and wise attorney.
All attorneys have blind spots, so it is normal to feel frustrated and struggle in mastering these fundamental areas of your legal career. It is painful, humiliating and inevitable to make mistakes as a lawyer. What is worse is to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Lawyers must work with other people. When we experience high levels of conflict with our clients, other attorneys, judges, staff, vendors, our family, we end up living in an inescapable world of chronic stress. Our personalities create conflict day in and day out with other people and can cause us to isolate for protection and sanity. This defensive isolation and loneliness can be the cause of substance abuse, ethical lapses, overworking and burn out.
Do you struggle to maintain financial, mental and physical health? Are you avoiding doing the work to become a good leader and manager in your firm? The legal world is full of burned-out attorneys who are afraid to change negative behaviors because they don’t want to risk worsening their bad situation. Law School and CLE programs won’t teach you this quick and comprehensive way to diagnose why you are performing poorly and fail to improve year after year.
Research in the areas of neuroscience, psychology, organizational development and economics prove that engaging with this theory of personality styles necessarily create powerful results for you. Actualizing wellness starts with understanding your true nature, which is quick and easy thanks to personality style assessments. Your next step is to simply identify your current needs and goals. Then you identify patterns of your thoughts, feelings and actions arising from your personality that keep you from achieving your goals. Next, you can focus your valuable time and attention to mastering new patterns of engagement in the fundamentals areas that incorporate the right set of strategies and tactics that will work for your personality. The last step is to assess the risk of making the change, and making a realistic, informed decision to transform your life using the proposed strategy. We call this the LAICE method.
This 1-hour training will walk you through the DISC personality style assessment and transform a problem area in your professional life:
STEP 1: LEARN about your personality, your core needs, and your opposite personality style.
STEP 2: ARTICULATE what you really want to happen in your life as an attorney. We will focus on Leadership, Management, Finances, Personal Health or Mental Health.
STEP 3: IDENTIFY your personality traits and the core issues, patterns, and your reactions that are causing you the biggest challenges and keeping you from getting what you want.
STEP 4: CREATE a brainstorm of ideas, strategies, tactics and support to create new patterns and achieve what you want.
STEP 5: EVALUATE the risks and dangers in getting what you want and incorporate appropriate safeguards in your plan.
After your training, schedule your 15-minute Discovery Session with me to clarify your goals, identify your challenges in achieving your goals, and brainstorm strategies to overcome your challenges.
REQUIRED PRE-WORK (15 minutes)
We require you to 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/ BUT we recommend you purchase the WILEY DISC ASSESSMENT on this website.
We require you take the free Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment https://positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/
RECOMMENED READING (Audiobooks are available on Spotify):
- The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
- The 1 Minute Manager by Blanchard and Johnson
- Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine
SCHEDULE:
| TIME | SUBJECT | PARTICIPANT TASKS |
| 0:00 – 5:00 | Overview of Program Outline – | Slides |
| 3:00 – 10:00 | Introduction and personal story of how created, led and managed law offices with DISC | Slides |
| 10:00 – 15:00 | Model Rules – Your Wellness, Your Competency and Your Ethics | DOC 1: Model Rules ASSESSMENT QUIZ #1: Determine your area of focus |
| 15:00 – 35:00 | The use of DISC personality style assessment and Positive Intelligence to Actualize your Attorney Wellness | Slides ASSESSMENT QUIZ #2: Basic DISC DOC 2: Sample free DISC assessment results – 123 Test DOC 3: Sample paid DISC assessment results – Wiley DOC 4: Free Saboteur assessment – Positive Intelligence |
| 35:00 – 55:00 | How to talk to other personality styles | Slides DOC 5: How to talk worksheets |
| 55:00 – 60:00 | Conflict Management, Accountability and Support | Slides DOC 6: WIR-LA Worksheet |
| 60:00 – 65:00 | CONCLUSION | ASSESSMENT QUIZ #3 PROGRAM FEEDBACK DELIVERY OF CERTIFICATE |
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.
Course Content
Course Includes
- 1 Lesson