The Introverted Lawyer ─ A Seven Step Journey Toward Authentically Empowered Advocacy

A stereotype bias exists in law school and legal practice favoring the garrulous extrovert. While loquacious law students, professors, lawyers, and judges thrive in a world dominated by the Socratic Method and rapid-fire oral discourse, quiet thinkers and writers can become sidelined. Introverted, shy, or socially anxious law students and lawyers often question their place in the legal arena, though research reveals they offer much-needed gifts to the profession, including active listening, empathy, contemplative analysis, and impactful writing. As legal education and law practice adjust to economic shifts and changing client mindsets, this is a prime opportunity for the legal community to make room for subtler voices. The Introverted Lawyer invites that dialogue into the legal profession.

This book explains the differences among introversion, shyness, and social anxiety and how each manifests in the legal context; describes how the extrovert bias in law school and practice detrimentally can impact quiet individuals, fueling enhanced anxiety in a vocation already fraught with mental health issues; explores how quiet law students and lawyers offer greatly needed proficiencies to the legal profession; and finally, presents a seven-step process to help introverted, shy, and socially anxious individuals amplify their authentic lawyer voices, capitalize on their natural strengths, and diminish unwarranted stress.

The Introverted Lawyer provides practical, tangible steps for individual growth, as well as a sound platform to enable caring professors, law office mentors, and bar association representatives to educate themselves, their students, and developing lawyers about this important and often overlooked issue.

Heidi K. Brown is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Legal Writing Program at Brooklyn Law School. For nearly two decades as a litigator in the rough-and-tumble construction industry, Heidi battled social anxiety and extreme public speaking anxiety in performance-oriented scenarios such as depositions, negotiations, and court appearances. Transitioning to law teaching and recognizing similar angst and trepidation in many of her hard-working legal writing students, Heidi began tackling this issue head-on, studying introversion, shyness, and social anxiety in the legal context. Embracing and championing introversion and other forms of quietude as formidable assets in teaching, learning about, and practicing law, Heidi's passion lies in emboldening quiet law students and lawyers toward authentically empowered advocacy. Heidi is a recipient of the 2014 Global Legal Skills Award presented at the Ninth Annual Global Legal Skills Conference in Verona, Italy, and a member of the Fulbright Specialist Roster. Heidi graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with high distinction from The University of Virginia, and earned her Juris Doctor from The University of Virginia School of Law.