#068: Doron J. Gold - Lawyer Turned Therapist to Lawyers (Mental Health Month Collaboration with Personal Jurisdiction Podcast)

How I Lawyer Podcast with Jonah Perlin

This month, May 2022, How I Lawyer is teaming up with the Personal Jurisdiction Podcast (https://www.personaljxpod.com/) to feature five interviews on the important topic of mental health in the legal profession. This is the final episode in this series. Thanks to the Personal Jurisdiction team for joining me in this important work.

In this week's episode I speak with Doron Gold who is a psychotherapist and former practicing lawyer (primarily in the area of family law) from Toronto, Canada. Doron works primarily with lawyers, law students, and judges as well as other professionals. His personal experience working in the legal profession, coupled with his many years of experiences working with lawyers in distress at the Ontario Lawyers' Assistance Program (OLAP) give him a unique and valuable perspective on the challenges faced by these individuals. In addition to treating lawyers, Doron presents regularly on issues related to mental health for lawyers. He is a graduate of York University and York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Windsor from which he holds a Masters of Social Work. You can learn more about him and his work on Twitter @DoronJGold.

In the episode we discuss his personal path from lawyer to therapist, the mental health challenges that lawyers often face, ways that lawyers can and should find help, why perfectionism is so common in legal professionals (and the challenges resulting from this perfectionism), the importance of thinking about "how you feel as opposed to how should you feel," learning about yourself and the real (as opposed to perceived) expectations of those around you, the power of therapy when you find the right person to talk to, techniques for finding the right person to talk to, the difference between feedback and criticism, the benefit of "finding your people" and building community, the value of showing kindness when you see a meaningful change in a friend or colleague, and more.

This episode is sponsored, edited, and engineered by LawPods, a professional podcast production company for busy attorneys.