In a recent episode of the ABA’s Dispute Resolution podcast Resolutions, AAA Vice President Aaron Gothelf interviews lawyer, mediator, and author Ronda Muir about the newly released Second Edition of her groundbreaking book, Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence.

Together, they explore how emotional intelligence (EQ) offers a competitive advantage for legal professionals, from improving negotiation outcomes to strengthening law firm culture and client relationships. Muir shares practical tips on hiring for EQ, boosting your own emotional intelligence, and how these skills can enhance your mediation or arbitration practice. They also discuss the role law schools play in preparing emotionally intelligent attorneys for today’s evolving legal landscape.

Listen to the episode. 

Get your copy of Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence, Second Edition.

Take an additional 20% off when you use discount code BSL2D20 at checkout (discount available until 8/31/2025).

One of the tougher challenges of emotional intelligence is called “emotional regulation.” Of the four primary abilities constituting emotional intelligence, it essentially refers to a person’s ability to manage and ultimately change the emotions we are feeling. Not always an easy or even pleasant task.

Shift: How to manage your emotions so they don’t manage you, by Ethan Kross, is a recent book focusing on the importance of emotional regulation.

An experimental psychologist and director of the Emotion and Self Control Lab at the University of Michigan, Kross reviews a number of studies that highlights the importance emotional regulation plays throughout our lives, which are summarized here and taken from a recent article at New Scientist.

Over 1000 babies born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972 and 1973 were followed from birth and assessed on their emotional regulation, such as the frequency of their tantrums and how well they managed their impulses.

Children who struggled to keep their emotions in check tended to do worse at school. Those with the lowest emotional regulation tended to struggle financially, were about four times more likely to be convicted of a crime and were also at greater risk of substance abuse. Even a faster speed of physical decline was linked to their lower emotional regulation. Impaired emotional regulation is also a common risk factor for many mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety and disordered eating.

It turns out that beliefs matter. Those participants in various studies who believe their emotions are unchangeable tend to have lower well-being and poorer social relationships than those who believed they have conscious control over their feelings. And they are considerably more likely to report feeling anxious, angry, lonely or depressed, for example, and less likely to report feeling happy, proud, loved or stimulated. 

As one researcher said, “If you can change how you think about a situation, you can change how you feel.” You can remind yourself that the worst-case scenario is only one of many possible results and you can amplify welcome emotions. A clear connection was found between adolescents’ use of this cognitive reappraisal and their psychological well-being, which included a reduced risk of mental illness and an increase in overall life satisfaction.

You can use music, baking, petting a dog or soaking in a hot bath to quiet sadness, anxiety or anger or you can change your environment, spending time in a natural space rather than walking the streets. Even watching short clips of wildlife documentaries for a week helps participants reduce negative repetitive thinking.

Kross also recognizes that a little discomfort can sometimes be helpful. Jealousy can show us that success is possible, which might spur on your own ambition. Anger might push you to fight for a fairer resolution to a disagreement. People tend to be more satisfied with outcomes when they use their “bad” feelings to their advantage in this way.

Kross also argues that, contrary to some advice, occasionally avoiding emotions can provide short-term relief. Bereaved partners who turned their thoughts away from their grief reported less negative emotion in the long term.

The good news is that those participants in the New Zealand study who improved their emotional regulation as they got older did better in nearly all respects in adulthood.

Kross does not mention an important skill needed for effective emotional regulation. An important pre-condition is being able to identify the emotion we are feeling. If we misidentify those feelings, we may not be as able to improve our emotional state. If we think we are feeling anger, but are really feeling shame or fear, steps to right a perceived unfair treatment may not help, for example. It’s a garbage in/garbage out problem.

This is relevant to lawyers because several studies show emotional perception or identification to be our weakest trait of the four emotional intelligence abilities.

So what would happen if human CEOs were replaced with automated versions? The Hustle looked into that, noting that CEOs often do work that AI is strong at–budgeting, tracking a company’s performance, and making executive decisions based on data, that eliminating their very high pay could be a substantial corporate cost savings, and that even 49% of CEOs think most or all of their duties could be replaced by AI.

So they tested that proposition by producing an automated CEO for three companies aiming for revival: Nike, Southwest Airlines, and Starbucks.

This is what they found. While each company’s AI CEO showed individual strengths and weaknesses given each company’s circumstances, “Overall, the AI CEOs’ ideas weren’t much different than those of their human counterparts…” However, “the AI CEOs didn’t mirror their human counterparts on everything. When it came to topics like layoffs and customer relationships, the AI CEOs seemed to have a greater desire to do well by their employees and customers… but they lack the personal skills needed to inspire employees and get along with investors… {Also}, the tendency of AI to be too wishy-washy and easily influenced by whomever delivers a prompt is a common criticism. It’s also certainly not a good characteristic for CEOs, who must be decisive.”

So what’s the takeaway from this experiment? It’s interesting that the comparisons between human and AI CEOs focus on what are attributes of emotional intelligence–empathy for employees and customers, inspiring employees and getting along with investors, abilities that demonstrate emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has also been shown to elevate decisive decision making.

For lawyers and law firm managers, making some aspects of practice more efficient through the use of AI can be useful as long as the core advantages to a legal practice of emotional intelligence, like expressing empathy, inspiring the troops, successfully interfacing with stakeholders of all types, and making sound decisions, is kept top of mind–advantages that so far AI cannot reliably deliver.

The ABA’s Dispute Resolution Section will be holding a “Chat with the Chair” March 27 at 11am EDT to discuss with author Ronda Muir the newly-released second edition of her Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence.

Open to all, you can register here.

Even better, enjoy a 20% discount off the book and ebook using the code BSL2D20.

Muir’s second edition of her user-friendly best-selling Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence updates the research that shows how lawyers in all walks of the profession can use the burgeoning science of emotional intelligence to address the pressing issues individual lawyers and practices are currently being confronted with, This book is a great guide for legal professionals wanting to improve their productivity, communication, client service and leadership skills and create a high performance, high functioning and more profitable workplace in the 21st century.

Bring your questions!

Amazon recently unveiled a smarter, more human-like Alexa Plus that purports to be able to hold natural conversations and remember details like your favorite foods and sports teams. The voice assistant also integrates with services like Uber, OpenTable, and Amazon Fresh, so you can book a ride, reserve a table, or order groceries through the app.

Importantly for our purposes, the new improved Alexa can detect your mood too, just as was anticipated in Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence. The march of technology outlined in the second edition previews AI that will soon be able to offer artificial emotional intelligence, which this small advance is a step towards.

Why does that matter? Human lawyers have emotional intelligence as their bulwark against a takeover of legal advice by rising technology–humans still want a reassuring, mutually respectful and considerate relationship with whoever is giving them often life- or fortune-saving advice.

However, if human lawyers aren’t able to offer that along with their legal expertise, clients will undoubtedly see what the AI version of that type of legal relationship can offer. We’ve seen clients of AI therapists say they prefer their advice over that of a human because, they say, the AI therapist is less judgmental. The therapy industry is pushing back hard against those who might have that preference, pointing out that AI therapists have a different level of “expertise” and may not provide the best advice, a charge that has likely been leveled against many human therapists as well.

Detecting a client’s mood is a primary but essential step in understanding their issues, their receptivity to advice, their hopes for success or reconciliation. If their lawyers can’t provide that service, there’s an Alexa coming who can.

It’s not a misnomer that lawyers are often called “counselors.” Tangling with the law–as a plaintiff, a defendant, or a participant in business and personal transactions of all kinds–could well bring us to call out for counsel. There’s all those statutes and implications we don’t understand, the question whether the lawyers involved understand our personal issues and context, and then those overwhelming feelings that are rarely acknowledged or discussed. A counselor, please!

Enter a recent study on whether a human trained therapist or an AI-generated chatbot does a better job of counseling.

A team drawn from several universities referred a relationship issue posed by 830 participants–half men and half women in their 40s–to those two resources randomly and examined their written therapeutic approaches.

For starters, the participants could rarely tell whether the advice was being given by a human therapist or a chatbox. The responses written by a chatbox were rated generally higher in key psychotherapy principles by the researchers. And perhaps most importantly, in most cases the participants preferred the chatbox’s approach.

Why?

Five factors were identified: whether the proposed approach “understood the speaker, showed empathy, was appropriate for the therapy setting, was relevant for various cultural backgrounds, and was something a good therapist would say. ChatGPT came out ahead of human therapists particularly around understanding the speaker, showing empathy, and showing cultural competence.” 

We have seen evidence of this sort of AI-generated understanding and empathy in a number of different realms over the last half century–the first therapeutic chatbox, ELIZA, was generated in 1966–and increasingly so during the last decade, particularly relating to giving advice for medical care, mental health and personal therapy.

Also in law, “robot lawyers” have been proved to be effective in advising on various legal matters, in predicting legal outcomes in court, and in providing federal judges with bases for decisions.

Of course, lawyers are rarely trained counselors and their reputations clearly suffer from how obvious that is to many clients. In fact, as has been demonstrated in several studies, empathy may well be where human lawyers can make a last stand against artificially intelligent lawyers who are capable of doing so much, and increasingly much more, of human lawyers’ work.

BUT, if AI can also generate the kind of personal understanding and empathy that human lawyers don’t generate… all bets are off.

It seems appropriate on Super Bowl Sunday to look to Vince Lombardi, considered the greatest football coach of the 20th century, for leadership advice. After Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs, 35–10, in Super Bowl I in 1967, they received the World Professional Football Championship Trophy. Lombardi had been the Packers’ head coach for nine years and built a losing team into one of the greatest dynasties in sports history. In 1971, a few years after his death, the trophy was renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy in his honor.

Perhaps one of the most interesting comments Lombardi made about his leadership style is his conviction that, despite his hard-nosed opinions about the importance of winning–“it’s the only thing”– nevertheless, a leader “must be sensitive to the emotional needs and expectations of others.”

For the hard-nosed leaders in all of us, it’s an important mantra to remember!

Law People Management, LLC, is pleased to announce the publication of the second edition of Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence.

This second edition of Ronda Muir’s best-selling ABA guide to emotional intelligence (EI) in law practice reports on the latest developments in the science of EI and how to use EI to address, among other concerns, remote work, personal and workplace Covid “hangovers,” and improving productivity in an increasingly stressed profession.

Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence, Second Edition updates the research that shows how lawyers in all walks of the profession can use the burgeoning science of EI to address the pressing issues individual lawyers and practices are currently being confronted with, such as how to:

  • Become smarter, better practitioners – as negotiators, civil and criminal litigators, and judges;
  • Be personally more productive and profitable;
  • Become physically and mentally healthier in an era of high post-Covid stress;
  • Be more effective leaders in an increasingly challenging profession;
  • Develop practices that can thrive in a competitive and technologically complex marketplace, so as to be able to outperform even the rise of artificial intelligence;
  • Build practices that profit from higher emotional intelligence through increased performance, enhanced teamwork, and greater client satisfaction, as well as lower attrition, healthcare, and professional liability costs;
  • Address the workplace issues arising from remote work, high-stress and disengagement that are bedeviling legal practices; and
  • Take the steps available to individuals, law schools, and workplaces to raise personal and profession-wide emotional intelligence.

For legal professionals wanting to improve their productivity, communication, client service and leadership skills and create a high performance, high functioning and more profitable workplace in the 21st century, there is no better guide than the second edition of Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence.

To order a copy of the second edition, go to Beyond Smart: Lawyering with Emotional Intelligence.

Engaged employees are involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. Actively disengaged employees are disgruntled and disloyal because most of their workplace needs are unmet. It’s also been called “quiet quitting,” a phenomenon Gallup says may currently describe over half of the American workforce.

This year a New York law firm sued one of its lawyers, alleging both “quiet quitting” that was revealed in inflated time sheets and breach of contract by holding down a second job (her own firm). Such side hustles have also been cited as evidence of how disengaged from their primary position many employees are, and lawyers are among those hustling.

According to a recent Gallup poll, after trending up in recent years, employee engagement in the U.S. is seeing its first year-on-year annual declines in a decade — dropping from 36% engaged employees in 2020 to 34% in 2021 and then 32% in 2022. In the same year, 18% of employees said they were “actively disengaged” (an even more alienated status than quiet quitting), which is the highest that number has been since 2013.

 The engagement elements that declined the most from the pre-pandemic record-high engagement ratio in 2019 were: 

  • clarity of expectations
  • connection to the mission or purpose of the company
  • opportunities to learn and grow
  • opportunities to do what employees do best
  • feeling cared about at work  

Gallup also found a six-point decline in the percentage of employees who are extremely satisfied with their organization as a place to work. These are all indications that employees are feeling more disconnected from their employers. 

  • More employees reported that they don’t know what’s expected of them, don’t feel cared about, don’t see opportunities to learn and grow, and don’t feel connected to their employer’s “mission.”

Young employees report feeling the most disconnected. Engagement for those under 35 decreased by four percentage points; while active disengagement went up by the same amount.

 In comparison to older workers, younger workers experienced more decline in:

  • feeling cared about
  • having someone who encourages their development
  • opportunities to learn and grow
  • their opinions counting
  • having a best friend at work

Women experienced more of a decline in engagement than men, falling four points, while active disengagement increased by three points. Engagement among men declined by only one point and active disengagement increased by the same amount. In comparison to men, women saw larger declines in:

  • feeling cared about at work
  • having someone who encourages their development
  • having progress discussions

Workers who were in jobs that could be done remotely, but were forced to work on-site saw an increase of 7 points in active disengagement.

The most concerning decline for employees across all demographic groups has been in the lack of clear expectations, the most foundational of all engagement elements. Employees cannot perform at a high level when they are confused as to what they are supposed to do. Confused employees are more likely to look for other work and eventually leave the organization.

What could be causing this consistent lack of clarity?

  • Leadership not clearly communicating the organization’s intended cultural values and strategy in the new world of work.
  • Young workers who are in remote or hybrid settings are the most vulnerable — the increased physical separation may contribute to this.  
  • Managers not being in touch with the ongoing work-life challenges.  

What to do? A crucial move that managers can make to improve engagement is to have one-on-one conversations for 15-30 minutes each week with each direct report about goals, customers, wellbeing and recognition. One recent study found that that single activity more than any other develops high performance relationships, leading to a 54% increase in engagement.