Katie Cowan sums up her top tips for graduates Continue reading
Category Archives: Careers, Study and Well-being
On therapy: the dumb myths that surround it, and the reasons to try it out
By Katie Cowan Believe it or not, I was a reluctant therapy attendee. You wouldn’t know it now, what with my “Therapy for every adult!” soapbox, but it’s true. So as a convert from sceptic to evangelist I thought I would illuminate therapy a little, for any readers who are curious but not convinced. Going … Continue reading
Become an expert quitter
Readers, I want to give you permission to quit things. Not reading this column (oh how we laugh), but all that obligation detritus that builds up over a lifetime of doing one’s best. If you’re anything like me, you grew up with strong parental and pop culture messaging to the effect that quitting was perhaps … Continue reading
Unpacking Trust
by Barbara Vrettos, The Legal Forecast How we transact, interact and behave is underpinned by how we trust. Blockchain technologies, however, provide an alternative that can industrialise the reliability and predictability that fosters trust. Thus, blockchain technologies can scale trust at lower costs than traditional human avenues. This calls into question established legal assumptions about … Continue reading
Paper beats rock, habits beat goals
Last post I answered Ryan’s question about habits that can support a great career in law, which left me dying to write about habits themselves. In a world of SMART goals, habits can get lost. Yet they are a much better route to a life you want than goals are (and, I would argue, easier … Continue reading
Engage with the Difficulty
Most hard things are off-putting to most people. We experience things as difficult because parts of our brains and bodies say, “No, no, not this; try anything else”. Feelings like unease and anxiety come up, and often self-criticism. But complex things take time and repeated engagement to learn. Continue reading
Millennials and Generation Z: We have to use the phone
Readers, I have been on a journey. I invite you to join me for a recap. I recently gave a talk to senior lawyers about being a human and a manager of lawyers. One of the topics I was anxious to cover was how millennials[1] are people and not some weirdo self-obsessed alien “other” that … Continue reading
Dear Katie column – The virtue of taking a break during your law degree
And so, you feel you should probably just keep going. Just get through it and then see what happens after that. After all, what if you took a break and never came back? What if you fell behind everyone else? What if future lawyers saw a big gap from June 2019 to July 2020 and refused even to let you in their doors? It’s all too much. Better to just keep grinding on as best you can, right? Continue reading
Summer reading from the library of joy
Hello, fellow nerds. It is the time of Christmas and summer, when most of you will, with any luck, have time for some leisure. As nerds, I expect some of your leisure might take the form of reading, and I am here to help. (For the moment I am going to ignore what I know … Continue reading
Dear Katie column – On macro joy
Around 90% of the guests on the podcast chose to study law because they were good at English. Rare is the guest who studied law because they wanted the skills to do particular justice-related work, or the guest who thought being a lawyer looked like fun. (I say that with the caveat that for many … Continue reading