SCOTT ROGERS: CO-PRESIDENT
MINDFUL LEADERS IN THE LAW: An interview with Scott Rogers
by Christopher Lhulier, Esq.
We are pleased to introduce the Mindful Leaders in the Law interview series. Each month we will feature an interview with a leader from within the MILS community to provide members with the opportunity to learn more about the amazing individuals that make-up MILS, their connection to mindfulness, what inspires them and their thoughts about mindful leadership and the future of mindfulness and the law.
We are thrilled and honored that our inaugural interview is with Scott Rogers, a founding member of MILS, a nationally recognized leader in the area of mindfulness and law, and teacher, author, lecturer and trainer. Scott is also the founder and director of the Institute for Mindfulness Studies and of the University of Miami School of Law's Mindfulness in Law Program and he co-founded and co-directs the University of Miami's Mindfulness Research & Practice Initiative.
I had a chance to talk with Scott about how he began practicing mindfulness, the challenges of integrating mindfulness into our legal careers and the role he sees mindfulness and well-being programs playing in the legal profession in the future. Scott also provided some sage advice for lawyers and law students who want to achieve career success while maintaining their well-being.
Q: How did you begin practicing mindfulness?
A: I met my wife, Pam, while a student at the University of Florida College of Law. One day, after we started dating, she told me that she signed us up to learn TM from a wonderful member of the faculty, Marty Peters. I quickly became enamored with the formal sitting practice and started to read up on meditation. The journey through books available back then fairly quickly led me to mindfulness practice.
Q: What personal benefits have you experienced through your mindfulness practice?
A: Among many, perhaps the most notable is an appreciation that the modifier “personal” can become problematic if taken too seriously. This freedom from personally identifying (as much as I otherwise might) with what people say and don’t say, with outcomes and events, and even with my own internal process is both fascinating to observe and consequential in palpable ways.
Q: Was there ever a time in which you experienced a gap between your personal mindfulness practice and the way in which you were approaching your career?
A: They have pretty much been in alignment. The practice helps to steady attention, establish a more relaxed state, and see things more clearly. In those (not infrequent) moments where I wished things were different and wanted things to change, seeing things more clearly—even if just a wee bit—revealed a level of resistance which renders what might have become a widening gap, into an opportunity for growth and, more often than not, greater compassion. I recall a time when I experienced a great deal of anger, betrayal and fear toward opposing counsel in a matter that had begun with us being on the same side. At some point they became the “difficult” person in a daily lovingkindness practice and one day—about three months later--the unpleasant feelings turned to compassion accompanied by insight into a larger perspective regarding the encounter itself.
Q: What does being a mindful/conscious leader mean to you?
A: Recognizing the essential starting point of self-leadership/self-awareness followed by a deepening appreciation that that journey informs everything else (and everything else informs that journey).
Q: As a leader in the area of law and mindfulness, what future role do you see mindfulness and well-being programs playing in the legal profession?
A: It is an interesting question and I anticipate a broadening of well-being offerings as stigma around mental health falls away and the connection between our well-being and that of our client’s and society becomes more fully realized (remembered). Various concentration and compassion practices will meaningfully fit into these offerings. As mindfulness more broadly construed can be misunderstood, I imagine there will be an important and meaningful clarification owing, in part, to the broadening of well-being offerings, such that mindfulness will be looked to less as purely a means to feel greater calm, and more to have greater clarity over experience.
Q: Can you provide one practical way that takes 5 minutes or less for busy legal professionals and law students to build mindfulness into their daily routine?
A: Form the intention to attend to what someone is saying amid a conversation with the intention to not interrupt. As the mind wanders, return attention to what is being said. Be attentive to the changing landscape of body sensations. At other times when sitting by yourself in a formal practice, do the same thing.
Q: If you could provide one piece of advice to young lawyers and law students who have the goal to be successful in their careers yet also maintain their physical, emotional and psychological well-being, what would it be?
A: You’ve chosen a profession that by design seeks to bring a measure of clarity out of chaos. Many of us also seek this in our personal lives. The two may not be as different as one might think and it can be helpful to notice when they bleed into one another. Reflect on whether the practice of law itself might be a form of mindfulness practice. And to support this, be as attentive to sleep, exercise, nutrition, and supportive friendships, as you are the breath.