BPP Law School is going to teach students to meditate to prepare them for their working life, and has brought in a Clifford Chance partner to help.

From the end of November, the law school will give students "specially commissioned audio meditations" to play on they smart phones. The whales/gurus/Nigella Lawson will sing/chant/whisper about balancing work and life, self-care and getting a good night's sleep.

As part of its wellbeing drive, BPP is also going to produce online modules about 'controlling anxiety' and 'mindfulness on the go'.

Podcasts on how to outsmart capacity emails, manage the expectations of workaholic partners and dodge 2am finishes are yet to be announced.

Indicating just how ubiquitous anxiety and stress are in the legal profession, 93% of the young lawyers surveyed by the Junior Lawyers Division of the Law Society said they had felt stressed at work (the other 7% must be on meds already), and almost a quarter reported feeling severely or extremely stressed.


bpp med

"Feel the torts draining out of your toes, and a warm liquid completion filling you up."


It might seem premature to address the problem at a student level, where timetables demand seven hours' work a week, but Jeremy Connick, a partner at Clifford Chance, said issues around anxiety should be nipped in the bud. 

"Helping students recognise and deal with stress and pressure will help them to thrive as trainees and junior lawyers in the future", said Connick, an advocate for better mental awareness across the legal sector. "Too many still see admitting to stress as a sign of weakness". Connick will launch a speaker programme to help students appreciate the importance of staying aware of their own mental health when they arrive in the workplace.

In the meantime, BPP is also going to try converting some of its classrooms into pop-up meditation studios, which at the very least will assist with hangovers.

If you're far too stressed already, consider contacting LawCare.

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Comments

Anonymous 15 November 19 10:55

Hopefully it will help raise future leaders who see addressing stress in substantive ways as perfectly standard.  

Anon 15 November 19 11:45

If you need meditation to get through law school, I am going to say a career at a city law firm may not be the best choice...

Anonymous 15 November 19 14:01

The mindfulness trend really is the apogee of corporate bullshit.  If increasing numbers of people are unable to cope with their jobs the answer is not to find ways to get them to accept their lot as a buttmonkey - it's to change the effing job.

Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training. Although derived from Buddhism, it’s been stripped of the teachings on ethics that accompanied it, as well as the liberating aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings.

What remains is a tool of self-discipline, disguised as self-help. Instead of setting practitioners free, it helps them adjust to the very conditions that caused their problems.

Billy Bumfluff 17 November 19 10:07

The changes in law over the last 20 years have been immense.

Emailing documents, computerised comparisons, searches from public sources (Companies House, Land Registry etc) done from your office via internet have all increased workload.

It's happened slowly enough that people take it for granted but someone starting law in 2019 is in a very different world from someone staring in 1999.

No more 2 hour lunches in El Vinos.  

Billy Buttmonkey 17 November 19 12:29

Computerisation, email, internet searches instead of microfiche - all this crap means people do much more work than they used to and get away from their desks much less.

No wonder more people get burnt out or go crazy or sometimes (hello [redacted]) collapse and die.

There have been huge changes in the way lawyers work from 1999 to 2019 but firms haven't taken any of it into account.

Bobby Bottomhead 17 November 19 15:57

It's probably all down to gluten.

I'm gluten free now.  It's changed my life.

I don't ever get tired or bad tempered, I can bench 140 cold and my skin is like a baby's backside.

Brian Backside 18 November 19 12:05

Gluten can be pretty dangerous stuff.  It's all explained in this 60 second public information film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5SByM75Thg

3-ducks 18 November 19 17:32

I think there's a lot to be said for mindfulness actually.

There's also a lot to be said for 2-hour lunches in El Vino's.

The management classes will try to discourage both, which is why we need to be strong! Don't resign, that's what they want you to do.

Braxton Buttockbrain 19 November 19 07:35

Anyone remember when there was one hard copy of a document that would circulate around the various firms by courier, amended in a different colour by each lawyer and maintained/updated by one firm?

You could send a document off and not see it again for a week or more.

Oh those happy days in Shagri-La.

Anonymous 19 November 19 09:04

The management classes will try to discourage both, which is why we need to be strong! Don't resign.

If only this sentence actually offered change or even simply meant something.  Just like mindfulness training, at best all it offers is a way to carry on in the very conditions that cause your problems.

Anonymous 19 November 19 12:21

Sometimes victims of oppression are so marginalised that they identify with their oppressors.  I think this might be the case with 3-ducks.

Anonymous 20 November 19 15:27

You could send a document off and not see it again for a week or more.

A week or more?  You must have been busy.  Sometimes you wouldn't see it again for 3 weeks.

Bliss.

Anonymous 21 November 19 21:33

Forget the meditation room.

I want you to go to your window, open it up, stick your head out and shout "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore".

https://youtu.be/ZwMVMbmQBug

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