We all have to eat, and what we eat has been established by numerous cultural forces. When we begin to view food as fuel for our brain, we may have to confront our dietary eating patterns in order to enhance brain health and mental strength. The consumption of hyperpalatable foods, often ultra-processed with excess sugar and fat, can lead to self-medication with food and to compromised brain health. The motivation and reward system in our brain that facilitates our habits includes the overconsumption of unhealthy food. This chapter covers the critical neurodestructive conditions that are impacted by our diet (dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, inflammation, oxidation, elevated blood sugar, malfunctioning gut microbiome); argues that ultra-processed foods and comfort foods with high concentrations of sugar and fat are bad for the brain, highly addictive, and targets for self-medication; and concludes with foods to avoid and foods to consume to optimize brain health and mental strength.

The intense socialization of law school is where students are introduced to the pressures that dehumanize the lawyering culture. The law school environment, featuring extreme competition, isolation, and alienation, undermines well-being and can transform students into dispirited zombies. Rather than inspiring positive emotions and the formation of new and robust relationships, the intense workload and stressful learning environment promote negative emotions and deterioration of relationships, when students are forced to compete with each other for the few high grades at the top of the grade curve. Engagement and meaning are thwarted by the mandatory grade curve and the frustration and learned helplessness it generates. The culture of legal practice is not an improvement, with overwork and chronic stress as its key features. Much like the grade curve that drives the competitive learning environment at law schools, the billable hour drives the tradition of overwork in legal practice. Stress intensifies, meaning and purpose are lost, social support deteriorates, and negative emotions take over. International Bar Association research indicates there is a global crisis in lawyer well-being.

Stress causes brain damage. Unrelenting stress is an essential feature of legal education and legal practice, and chronic stress hurts the brain. Lawyers suffer from higher rates of anxiety and depression than the rest of the population and they rank fourth in professions with the highest number of suicides. Lawyers’ anxiety, depression, and suicide rates are likely linked to overwork and exposure to toxic chronic stress. Anxiety and depression can cause changes in the brain that are related to an overactive fight-or-flight stress response system. Lawyer languishing, a state of incomplete mental health, may be a precursor to lawyer’s anxiety or depression. The rat-fumbling researcher Hans Seyle noticed that the discomfort his lab rats suffered made them sick. He used the term stress to describe the general unpleasantness his rats experienced when he routinely dropped, chased, and recaptured them during his experiments. The culture of his lab was making his rats sick. When law school or legal practice cultures subject students or lawyers to a broad array of incessant stressors; the general unpleasantness is prone to make them physically and emotionally sick; and it damages their brain.

Lawyers are the leaders who defend society’s light. Like artists, lawyers must “dream the culture forward.” The responsibility to understand and improve lawyers’ brain health and mental strength extends to our communities because of the privilege, power, and prestige we enjoy. The neuro-intelligent lawyer and legal organization can enlighten government, business, media, education, and philanthropic entities. Like Seth Godin’s insight in The Song of Significance that work is not working for many employees, society isn’t working for many people. Social structures that feature fear, scarcity, exclusion, steep hierarchy, and extreme competition are dehumanizing. And humans are suffering. Maverick lawyer leaders must first dream, and then act, to move the culture forward. They must make neuro-intelligence available to all people, so they can experience the full range of their identities and capabilities. We cannot afford to exclude and lose humans and the light they could bring to the world. These lawyer leaders must educate us about the toxicity of extreme competition and cultures built on fear, scarcity, and chronic stress. These Mavericks can lead the social moonshot movement to further heal and humanize society.

Substance use among lawyers is a common way to self-medicate stress, anxiety, and depression and to fuel overwork. To facilitate an understanding of how substances of abuse work in the brain, it is helpful to grasp the basics of neurotransmission. Information travels through the brain via chains of neurons. This information is an electrical impulse while in the brain cell, but to travel across the gap between neurons, the information uses chemicals called neurotransmitters. The site of action for self-medicating substances is at that gap, which is called a synapse. Different substances cause various changes in the brain by influencing the synapses of those lawyers who use them. These drugs are divided by substances that stimulate and can fuel overwork (caffeine, nicotine, amphetamine, cocaine) and sedatives that can calm stress and anxiety (alcohol, cannabis, opioids). Some lawyers use prescribed antidepressant medications. All of them impact the brain at the gap between brain cells, the synapse, where communication involves neurotransmitters and their receptors.

The legal profession worldwide is suffering from a failure of individual lawyers to thrive. The lawyer well-being crisis is impairing our performance. We must examine our culture, and we can learn from neuroscience and psychology research to improve this problem. Neuro-intelligence is a critical competency in the legal profession because lawyering is a cognitive profession and leading is a cognitive skill. Neuro-intelligence development is centered on an understanding of neuroplasticity, the brain’s superpower to constantly rewire with every action, experience, and thought; and neurogenesis, our brain’s ability to grow new brain cells. Our brain is shaped by our daily habits, and it is influenced by our efforts, successes, stressors, failures, and traumas. Lawyers must process information quickly and accurately, solve complex problems, and demonstrate resilience. A high-functioning brain is essential. This book translates scientific research into actionable information. It is designed to help law students, lawyers, and leaders of legal organizations understand how to avoid or heal cognitive damage, optimize cognitive performance, and build, maintain, and protect the most valuable tool in their briefcase, the lawyer’s brain.

The brain has an automated system designed to keep humans alive by promoting the search for, and remembering the location of, food. It is the motivation and reward system. The main neurotransmitter that drives our motivation and reward system is dopamine, which is the transmitter of repeat behavior. Our habits are formed by this system, and modern society offers numerous substances and activities to indulge in what can become habitual. Beneficial habits include exercise and eating lots of vegetables. Unhealthy habits include drinking too much alcohol, eating too much comfort food, and spending too much time on social media. Our habits often take hold because we use them to soothe our stress, anxiety, and depression. Habits are hard to break because they are established in our brains in networks of our brain cells.

Lawyer leaders can transform cultures that feature chronic stress, overwork, and lawyer impairment into neuro-intelligent cultures that make cognitive well-being a priority, reaping benefit at both the individual and institutional levels. Neuro-intelligent cultures promote brain health and mental strength, and they develop environments rich with cognitive power. Neuroscience and psychology research reveals what a culture of concern and respect can mean to individual lawyers. It also supports moving away from grind culture and toward a healthier and more productive neuro-intelligent culture. The American and International Bar Associations have called for action that improves the well-being of individual lawyers. They have also challenged legal organizations to make the legal profession more sustainable. Transformation of the lawyering culture will involve detoxing from overwork, minimizing burnout, leveraging the energy of both introvert and extrovert lawyers, cultivating neurosignature diversity, facilitating psychological safety, reducing hierarchy, limiting competition, and embracing the Maverick lawyer leader professional identity.

Neuro-intelligent cultures provide brain-boosting benefits, acknowledge the humanity and dignity in each individual, and promote environments rich with cognitive power. Leaders in neuro-intelligent cultures make cognitive well-being a priority, reaping benefit at both the individual and institutional levels. Embracing the neuroscience of cognitive wellness is critical to protecting brain function and enhancing cognitive performance. You can make cognitive fitness a priority by engaging in exercise, sufficient sleep, and adequate time away from work. This will require subordinating other activities in favor of time spent recharging from the demands of work or school. Substituting beneficial brain habits for less healthy activities, such as cocktail hour or watching television, could provide the time needed to optimize cognitive performance. Neuroplasticity, the most promising of human features, allows every brain to become what is demanded of it.

The brain has two superpowers: continuous development, which is the capacity to rewire itself with everything you think, learn, and do, called neuroplasticity; and neurogenesis, which is the birth of new brain cells in our memory-processing hippocampus. The brain has three functional areas: the primitive brain, the emotional brain, and the thinking brain. The emotional and thinking brains work together to help us learn and think and to develop our habits. Information flows throughout the brain, and from the brain to the body, via brain cells called neurons. Each lawyer’s brain has a unique network of brain cells because each of us leads different lives. Information is transmitted as an electrical impulse within the neuron, which shifts to a chemical messenger, called a neurotransmitter, to jump from neuron to neuron. The architecture of the thinking brain’s neural networks is called the connectome, and each brain is a work in progress for the entire lifespan. We can make choices that empower our brain, or decisions that harm our brain. With the right information, a lawyer can self-hack the brain to change its structure and function, improving its capabilities.

Compared to other graduate students, law students are less fulfilled, and they handle the culture of intense competition by binge-drinking and using more marijuana, than other graduate students. The culture of law practice is not an improvement, due to the steep billable hour requirements and responsibility for client outcomes. Lawyers suffer from anxiety and depression at higher rates than the general population, and they are at the greatest risk of suicide among professionals behind only those in the medical field. Alcohol misuse is a significant problem, with one study finding that 20 percent of lawyers are problem drinkers and another revealing that 46 percent of male and 60 percent of female attorneys abuse alcohol. Lawyers in the first 10 years of their career have the most problematic drinking habits. The lawyering culture, featuring extreme stress, intense competition, and overwork, can drive lawyers to succumb to mental and physical health problems. International Bar Association research indicates there is a global crisis in lawyer well-being. Young, minority-identifying, and female-identifying lawyers, and lawyers with disabilities, all fall below the WHO Mental Wellbeing Index threshold requiring a mental health assessment, and suggesting a connection between well-being and issues with diversity, equity, and inclusion.

When a lawyer discovers the habits that protect brain health and empower mental strength, she will embark on a series of changes. She will be moved to invest in her well-being. It takes only a few months of work to reap the brain health benefits. A recent clinical trial demonstrated that an eight-week diet and lifestyle program can reverse biological aging in otherwise healthy adult males, aged 50-72.  The intervention included prescriptions for exercise, sleep, stress management, and diet. Commitment to lifestyle changes can be difficult for some people. Research reveals two helpful strategies: action planning, developing concrete steps for achieving a goal, and coping planning, to identify and overcome the barriers to your goals. This chapter presents tools for creating an action plan for the areas of concern for each individual lawyer, including stress management, self-medication, nutrition, brain health, and mental strength. There are tips for moving from the action plan to durable change, including fresh start strategy, habit stacking, and tracking new practices.

Research indicates that a segment of the lawyer population is impaired by mental illness, such as anxiety, depression, substance misuse, or suicide risk. A much higher number of lawyers likely fall on the languishing end of the mental health spectrum. If you are languishing, you may be at a higher risk of sliding into impairment. Mental health is assessed on a continuum, ranging from languishing to flourishing. Languishing has been described as feeling uninspired, joyless, and lacking the power to function at full capacity. And languishing may increase your risk of mental illness, such as major depressive episode, generalized anxiety, panic attacks, or substance use disorder. Lawyers may suffer from several obstacles to mental strength, including lack of self-awareness, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, social comparisons, trained pessimism, inability to regulate emotions, and inauthenticity from a failure to understand or leverage their temperament and personality strengths. Features of the lawyering culture may augment these obstacles and lead to lawyer languishing.