The Flourishing Lawyer: A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Performance and Well-Being, by Heidi K. Brown (ABA, 2022) Lawyers are readers by necessity – and also by choice. President Harry Truman once said, “Not all readers become leaders, but all leaders must be readers.” This column will feature all sorts of books that lawyers may find interesting, both professionally and personally. Subjects will include nonfiction, fiction, biographies, popular culture, professional development, and more. Ideally, topics of books will mesh with the themes contained in the subjects addressed that month in the magazine. For this introductory column, we’ll take a small step backward to address an important topic covered in the October 2023 issue: the wellness and well-being of lawyers.

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Another refreshing component to this book is Brown’s well-rounded approach to incorporate other disciplines into lawyer well-being, including art and sports, to find one’s personal “flow.” She’s an avid boxer, which explains the heart-shaped boxing gloves on the book’s cover. The training exercises encompass all types of fitness – mental, physical, and emotional – and call for the elimination of a one-size-fits-all approach to legal education and training, and how success is defined in the practice of law. She also discusses professionalism and civility at length, calling on all lawyers to change the general tone of our profession, stating:

Of course, our jobs are demanding and we’re all going to encounter intense moments in which everyone is stressed. Naturally we’re all going to have bad days when our emotions get the best of us and we say things less artfully than we should. But when that behavior becomes a pattern, the norm rather than the exception, we must stand up for ourselves and others.

In the not-too-distant past, lawyer well-being was not widely discussed. This book is an important addition to a new area of legal discourse that will, hopefully, continue to flourish.■

<P><STRONG>Table of Contents:</STRONG></P>

<OL>

<LI>The Field of Positive Psychology: A Booster Shot for Human Flourishing</LI>

<LI>Let’s Get to Work Cultivating Our Multiple Dimensions</LI>

<LI>Awareness Amplifier #1: Crafting Character through Flexing Strengths, Like Muscles</LI>

<LI>Awareness Amplifier #2: Finding Flow and Getting Gritty</LI>

<LI>Our Physical Dimension</LI>

<LI>Our Emotional Dimension</LI>

<LI>Our Artistic/Creative Dimension</LI>

<LI>Our Social Dimension</LI>

<LI>The Dimension of Culture</LI>

<LI>Our Spiritual Dimension</LI>

<LI>Our Occupational Dimension</LI>

<LI>Our Intellectual Dimension</LI>

<LI>Our Moral/Ethical Dimension</LI>

<LI>Our “Caring” or Caregiving Dimension</LI>

<P>Appendix A: PERMA Well-Being Components Tracker</P>

<P>Appendix B: VIA Character Strengths and Virtues Tracker</P>

<P>Appendix C: Proposed “Flourishing Lawyer Project” Curriculum</P>

<P>Appendix D: Sample “Personalized Well-Being Framework”</P></OL>