Successful Attorneys know how to treat clients and other attorneys with the highest levels of loyalty and advocacy. Understanding implicit bias will create more productive and honest relationships in your life and career. Learn how to set healthy boundaries and take feedback around issues that can cause stress and damage working relationships. Becoming an ally with others will also create a positive impact in your community and improve your client satisfaction.
This 1 Hour CLE will provide you with an opportunity to understand the advantages of eliminating bias in your practice of law as an attorney. You will learn about mainstream programs that provide transformational results to attorneys and firms and experience the processes that are utilized. Most importantly, you will look into your personality style and resistance to change that sabotages well intentioned efforts to re-balance workplace power dynamics. Whether you are an Attorney Leader, Manager, team member or solo practitioner, the skills learned in this training will greatly increase your value as a lawyer.
Elimination of Bias is a complex, transformational process that requires your total commitment. Attorneys must first see their bias before eliminating it, and that is hard to do. Most programs start by targeting the low-hanging fruit of “explicit bias” and start you on multi-prong approach best represented by the term “DEI” – diversity, equity and inclusion. You learn new ways to communicate and organize as a group of lawyers and staff that repair past injustice and harm. This usually requires a culture change initiative in your workplace, with an emphasis on relationship building and creating safe spaces for giving and receiving feedback. Because most law firms are structured in a strict hierarchical power and command structure, this re-balancing of the dominant culture is often seen as threatening. More difficult is the targeting of your “implicit bias” for transformational change, because this requires attorneys to engage in personal introspection. You must discover and transform your unconscious thoughts, prejudicial beliefs, and automatic judgements that have lived in the shadows of your limbic system your whole life. To succeed in this endeavor means you will create powerful, viable and trusted working relationships and teams that can achieve extraordinary levels of engagement and productivity. Elimination of bias is a catalyst for long term success where you become the obvious choice for others to work with you and for clients to hire you.
This course is designed to improve your awareness of implicit and explicit bias and understand your internal and external blocks to transformation.
We will also show you the return on investment that can result from successful DEI work to eliminate bias.
Research shows that Attorneys with deep seated and entrenched internal and external biases can transform their behavior. However, the work required to manage DEI in ourselves and in our work places is massive, and requires total dedication. The Attorney who seeks to succeed needs support from professionals, family, friends and the workplace. So if you intend to eliminate bias, you will need to communicate quickly, establish guidelines and accountability, and determine other lawyers’ level of commitment to transformation.
Unlike other professions, attorneys have critical ethical duties and burdensome competency requirements that demand high levels of personal performance, year in and year out. Attorneys must provide equal access to justice for all persons without regard to race, gender, age, or class. 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 who hold bias, prejudice and hate are not likely to be able to perform these complex duties to all people equally. Some might need a small course correction, while others might have to undergo a thorough transformation. Attorneys with supervisory responsibilities must comply with Model Rule 5.1 or face discipline themselves, if they suspect attorneys have implicit and explicit biases that create a hostile work environment. Supervising attorneys must make reasonable efforts to bring those attorneys into compliance with the mandatory duties, that are some of the most demanding of any profession, and include:
- 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
- A lawyer shall make reasonable efforts to expedite litigation
- 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
- Lawyers cannot Commit a criminal act that reflects adversely on the honesty,
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. The likelihood of these lawyers succeeding in DEI efforts is minimal.
All attorneys start out wanting to be successful. However, each attorney is unique. For this reason, to eliminate your bias and have a long and truly successful career in the law, you have to first understand yourself and your relationship to implicit and explicit bias and prejudice. All attorneys have blind spots, so it is critical to learn how to think and communicate compassionately regarding changes in thinking, feeling and behavior. Explicit and implicit bias and prejudice is socially acceptable in government, corporate and private practice among lawyers and in law firms. It is difficult to talk about DEI when it has been demonized by those who benefit from the power imbalances that inure from these ways of being. It is normal to feel frustrated and struggle in mastering these fundamental areas of communication and accountability conversations. It is painful and humiliating to have transformational culture change makes things worse in the workplace, so using tools that improve your leadership, communication and decision making gives you a big competitive advantage.
The improved outcomes of learning how to communicate based on personality styles is proven by research in the areas of neuroscience, psychology, and organizational development. Engaging with these concepts and practices necessarily create powerful results for you in these crucial conversations. Leading and Managing attorneys dealing with DEI transformation efforts benefit from the diversity conversation “ice breaker” delivered by DISC personality, TKI indicator and Daniel Goleman emotional intelligence assessments.
REQUIRED PRE-WORK (15 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/
RECOMMENDED READING
The Culture Engine
Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman
Beyond Bias ABA
Uprooting Bias in the Academy – Lessons from the Field
Driving Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Kristina Kohl
SCHEDULE:
| TIME | SUBJECT | PARTICIPANT TASKS |
| 0:00 – 5:00 | Overview of Program Outline – | Slides |
| 3:00 – 10:00 | Introduction and personal story of how to deal with attorneys with implicit and explicit bias in law firms. | Slides |
| 10:00 – 15:00 | Model Rules –Competency and Ethics | DOC 1: Model Rules ASSESSMENT QUIZ #1: Determine your area of focus DOC 2: Operations Manual on Elimination of Bias. |
| 15:00 – 35:00 | The use of DISC personality style assessment to communicate with other styles. Know your level of Emotional Intelligence to prepare for success. Know your TKI Conflict styles | Slides DOC 2: Sample free DISC assessment results – 123 Test DOC 3: Sample paid DISC assessment results – Wiley ASSESSMENT QUIZ #2: EQ Test ASSESSMENT QUIZ #3 TKI Assessment |
| 35:00 – 55:00 | DEI initiatives and activities | Slides DOC 4: DEI practice sheets |
| 55:00 – 60:00 | Change Management, Accountability and Support | Slides |
| 60:00 – 65:00 | CONCLUSION | ASSESSMENT QUIZ #3 PROGRAM FEEDBACK DELIVERY OF CERTIFICATE |
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.
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