Message from the Director

Welcome to the first annual state-wide edition of Sidebar, the Lawyer Assistance Program’s e-newsletter. We hope Sidebar provides a small dose of inspiration to you in your day-to-day law practice, and reminds you that you are not alone with whatever frustrations you encounter in your law practice and in your life. You are not alone; in fact, you are in quite good company.  Read More

The path through law school seems to change us. We enter the profession with the lawyer mask firmly in place, often to our peril. Read More

Often, great success ushers in the dominating ego. The ego wants to muscle in, take all the credit, and bask in the limelight. But when the ego-self “feels invincible” like “nothing can touch me,” those of us in recovery from drug or alcohol problems are at a high risk for relapse.  Read More

This lawyer has finally found joy in the practice of law by letting go of perfectionism and its attendant burdens. Read More

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The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

From New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA

Copyright 1992 by Mary Oliver.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission.