Mastering Panic: 3 Steps to Stay Calm Under Pressure as a Woman Lawyer

Cecilia Poullain shares practical strategies for managing panic and stress in high-pressure legal environments, emphasising emotional regulation, problem-solving, and leadership skills for women lawyers aiming for partnership.

You can download the free guide on How to Make Partner in a Law Firm on  www.ceciliapoullain.com/free-guide

Key Topics:

• Panic management in law firms
• Emotional regulation techniques
• Building confidence and leadership for women lawyers

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My name is Cecilia Poulain. Welcome to the Pathway to Partnership Podcast, where we talk about what it really takes to succeed as a woman lawyer in a law firm. Although we think we're afraid of being sued, in fact what we're really terrified of is being found out. Now, why is that? It's because when we're found out, we feel shame. And when we feel shame, we feel like disappearing through the floor. We feel like dying of shame. And it's true. When we feel shame, we really do feel like dying. That's what we're afraid of. Welcome to the Pathway to Partnership Podcast. On this podcast, we talk about what it takes to succeed as a woman lawyer in a law firm. My name is Cecilia Poulain, and I'm a former finance lawyer. Today I help women lawyers make it to partnership and thrive when they get there. In this podcast, we talk about all things partnership. We talk about confidence, we talk about client development, we talk about difficult conversations. We talk about how to position yourself in relation to your current or future partners or with younger lawyers. We talk about how to manage your career so that you're still going strong after 20, 30, or even 40 years. Let's get you feeling confident in the decisions you make, give you a marketing strategy that works, and give you the skills to have those difficult conversations that build trust. Okay, let's jump in. When I was working in the Paris office of a US law firm, I was staffed on the sale of three factories in France and Germany. The timeline was really tight. We had three weeks to get all the financing documents and the security package negotiated and executed. We were working all hours of the day and night, and we weren't sure we were going to meet the deadline. We were exhausted and stressed. And I was the most exhausted and stressed of all because it was all so new to me, and I was putting so much pressure on myself to get it right. A few days before the closing, I had a moment of complete panic. It was late at night. I was looking for a printer document on which the partner had handwritten his comments, and I couldn't find it anywhere. There were piles of manila folders all over my office, and I spent a precious half an hour going through every single one of those folders several times. And I just couldn't find a document. So finally, in desperation, I walked out of my office to where my assistant was sitting and I asked him to help me. He got up, strolled into my office, opened a folder on the floor, which just happened to be the very first file I had looked in, and the most logical place for the document to be. And there it was, sitting right on the very top. I'd opened that file at least three times, but because I was panicking, I was literally unable to see it. That's what panic does to us. It stops us being able to see what is right in front of us. It stops us from thinking rationally. When we're panicking, we're no good to anyone. In high stress environments like law firms, moments of panic happen all the time. They're just part and parcel of the job. And we've all experienced those moments when the client calls and says that that clause you drafted says the exact opposite of what you intended and the contract has already been signed. Or when you realize that you've missed something absolutely vital in the advice you spent so many hours writing. Or when someone tells you that an important document hasn't been filed in court. As lawyers, the fear of liability is hanging over our heads all the time. In those moments, we have a massive visceral reaction. We think, I'm going to lose my job, I'm going to be sued. The client is going to lose millions of pounds or dollars or euros, and we go straight into catastrophe. Although we think we're afraid of being sued, in fact, what we're really terrified of is being found out. Now, why is that? It's because when we're found out, we feel shame. And when we feel shame, we feel like disappearing through the floor. We feel like dying of shame. And it's true. When we feel shame, we really do feel like dying. That's what we're afraid of. In those situations, we become completely useless as I did. We can't think straight anymore. Our brain goes into flight, fight, or freeze. We compound our mistakes by making even worse decisions and lose all credibility. So it's for moments like those that you need a panic process. Now you're probably thinking, what's a panic process? Now, a panic process is a process that you can work through, that you can use every single time. So that instead of rushing in to see the partner or immediately ringing the client and dropping the problem on their desk, or worse, pretending it didn't happen, you look cool, calm, and collected. Clients love you, and people start thinking, hmm, she really is partner material. I'd like to share a few ideas now for creating your own panic process. When you panic, you are having a massive emotional and physiological reaction. So before you do anything else, you have to deal with that reaction. You can't control it, and it's a very big mistake to ignore it. Your brain is being flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. And in order to be able to think clearly, you need to get it unflooded. Here are three quick and easy ways to unflood your brain. Firstly, acknowledge to yourself that you're panicking and accept that emotion. You can even say to yourself, I'm panicking. By the simple act of naming the emotion, you're activating your rational mind. Because naming things is a function of the rational mind, which then helps you to move out of the emotional part of your brain into your prefrontal cortex. Second, step away from your desk for a moment. Get a cup of tea, wash your face, go for a quick walk around the block, rotten down the fire stairs a few times. Just by doing that, you'll get some perspective. And then thirdly, take a few long, slow, deep breaths and extend the out breath so that it is longer than the in-breath. Extending the outbreath is a great way of moving out of your sympathetic autonomic nervous system, which is part of your flight-fright-freeze reaction, back into your parasympathetic autonomic nervous system, which is the system that calms you down. Interestingly, you can only be in one of those autonomic nervous systems at a time, because when one switches on, the other switches off. So those are three techniques to help you move through that strong emotional and physiological reaction. Acknowledge and name the emotion. Step away from your desk to get some perspective and take some long, slow, deep breaths while extending the outbreath. Once that emotional reaction starts to subside and you feel as though you can function rationally again, then tell yourself that mistakes are normal. So many of my clients believe that everything must be perfect, and they're absolutely terrified of making mistakes. But the truth is there will always be mistakes, especially when people are working in high-pressure, time-sensitive environments like law firms. The important thing is how you deal with your mistakes and what you learn from them. So the second step is tell yourself that mistakes are normal. Then the third step is to grab a blank piece of paper and just throw down some possible solutions. At this stage it's not a matter of judging whether those solutions are good or bad. Any solution will do. And then think through what might be the next step for each of those solutions. You'll also need to identify who to talk to and in what order you need to talk to them. Whether it's the partner, the client, other team members, opposing counsel, maybe the regulators, maybe your insurer. And once you can't think of any more solutions, look through them, choose two or three of the least bad, and then and only then is it time to start talking to people. Because if you turn up in the partner's office or pick up the phone with the client, share the problem with them, and calmly share your proposals, this has a number of advantages. Firstly, they don't have to go through that solution finding process themselves, which, if you're thinking about a partner, means that it's cheaper for the client. Second, you present as someone who is cool, calm, and collected. In other words, you look like partner material. And thirdly, you've already moved the discussion away from whose fault is this, which is absolutely what you want to do if it is actually your fault. So you're moving the discussion to whose fault is it to what's the best way forward. So that's it. That's the panic process in three simple steps. Manage the emotional reaction, get some perspective, and generate some possible solutions. We've looked at how you react if you're the lawyer who's the first recipient of that bad news. But what if you're the partner or the team leader and one of the younger lawyers comes to you in panic mode? I worked in a law firm in Sydney for a couple of years, and while I was there, there was a partner in the corporate department who got so angry with a younger lawyer that he threw a radio at their head. And luckily he missed, but apart from anything else, he should probably have been arrested for assault. So that's what you do not want to do. You do not want to throw a radio at somebody's head. And could I suggest that the most efficient reaction when someone comes to you in panic mode is simply to work through the panic process with them. Get them to calm themselves down. Get them to take some perspective, and then start to ask them questions so that they themselves come up with possible solutions. Dealing with it this way has enormous advantages. Firstly, you don't have to do the work, you don't have to come up with all the solutions yourself. You may come up with some solutions, but you're really putting the focus on the other person so that they're coming up with the solutions. Secondly, it will hugely increase their confidence. And thirdly, the more you can reassure them that we all make mistakes, the more relieved they will be, and the more grateful they will be that you haven't thrown an actual or a metaphorical radio at their head. And vitally, the more they will trust you and be loyal to you. Of course, that's not to say that all mistakes are acceptable. If someone is frequently making mistakes, then obviously that needs to be addressed, but that's a subject for a different episode. We all know people who are naturally calm under pressure, or at least they look that way. But the thing is, if you're not one of those people, it's not the end of the world. Learning what to do when you panic is a skill, and a skill that anyone can learn. So that's it. The panic process. You'll probably need to try it out, keep what works for you, drop what doesn't, add other ideas, and practice and practice and practice until it becomes second nature, so that when things do go belly up, as they inevitably will, you already know exactly what to do. Now, imagine what that would do for your confidence. Okay, that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me on the Pathway to Partnership podcast. I really appreciate it. I hope this episode has given you something concrete you can do when things go wrong. If you found this episode useful, please subscribe, please share it with a colleague, please leave a review so that together we can help more women make it to partnership and thrive when they get there. And if you'd like to stay in touch, head over to www.ceciliapoulan.com and you'll find a free guide called How to Make Partner with a list of the six biggest mistakes I see women lawyers making when they're going for partnership. And until next time, remember, you don't have to do this alone. And you get to define success as a woman lawyer on your own terms. Thank you so much for listening.