Welcome to the Mind Over Law Podcast, where we break the traditional rules of practicing law. Our focus is helping you first to become a better, happier person, which in turn will make you a better, happier lawyer both in and out of the courtroom.
We will combine mindset and energy practices grounded in ancient wisdom, along with cutting-edge neuroscience, to give you those skills. Plus, I'll have deep conversations with some of the most thoughtful, thoughtful leaders that will share their life stories, their leadership journeys, and their legal practice wisdom.
I'm Lexlee Overton, and my promise is that each episode will offer practical insights and strategies to empower your law practice, your leadership skills, and most of all, your personal well-being. Join me and I promise you'll become a better you, lawyer, and leader.
Welcome to another episode of the Mind Over Law podcasts. Hey, I have such an amazing special guest, Lauren Checki.
She's a passionate, unrelenting trial lawyer here in New Orleans, LA, and she has an inspiring journey, not only because of her commitment to fighting for homeowners and business owners against insurance companies, but also because of her unique approach to law, where she's blended her theater background with her legal practice. She's really learned to hone her skills and empathy and emotional connection, which have really completely transformed her law practice.
Today, she's going to share these tools with us, some of them, and how they're shaping the way she connects with clients, the way she approaches her trials and navigates the intricacies of the legal system, and being a lawyer and this modern world. So let's dive into Lauren's journey and explore the powerful lessons that she's learned along the way.
Love having you here today, Lauren. Thank you so much for being here and joining us.
I love this. I'm really excited to be here.
Yeah, me too. This is going to be a fun conversation.
So here we are, too. Louisiana lawyers.
I get to talk about some really cool things that really has to do with you. Say you have such an I want to start first with your background because you have an intriguing background.
So I know that you have years and years of training and voice, but also that you were a theater major. And I know that both of those things have shaped how you show up as a lawyer.
Can you tell us a little bit about how that shaped your approach to practicing law?
Yeah, absolutely. So it's actually funny because when I was in law school, I feel like everybody was a poli sci major or a government major or pre-law law and I was not.
I came straight from working on and off Broadway in New York. And before that, I was a theater major, and I've been doing voice and opera and all sorts of things.
And I felt a little intimidated because when you're first in law school, what's your major? What's your GPAI mean, it's all these questions that people I was like, oh, I have a 3.5 in theater and they're like, you know, but I find that there are certain skills that you don't get in law school and that most lawyers don't get throughout their career.
That theater positioned me really well to have. So a lot of what I do is improv.
So, thinking on your feet, I've been caught in hearings where something just comes at me out of left field. And it wasn't something I couldn't anticipate.
It wasn't an argument I knew they were going to make. It wasn't something that they had forewarned before the hearing or whatnot.
And when we've all had that horrible situation right where we put our client on the stand, and all of a sudden, what they're testifying to is different than when we talked to them about it a week before. It just, it happens.
And so I feel like a lot of my theatrical background translates really well to being able to think on my feet and just not get flustered by the unexpected. But the biggest thing actually is that when you're training as an actor, they teach you that everything you do, you're not just reciting words on a page.
You don't just sit down and memorize things, and you recite words. You are playing a series of tactics.
You are listening to the way somebody says something to you, and then you are responding in a way that is appropriate based on the way they said it. I could say the same sentence 10 different ways, right?
And they could mean 10 different things. But if you're not actively listening, then you're not getting it.
And so I think I'm really good at reading a room. I'm really good at reading a judge, reading a jury, and knowing, based on the reactions that I'm getting from people in the room, whether I need to change tactics or say something a different way, what they're being receptive to, and what they're not.
And so I think that really serves my clients and my practice pretty well.
I have so much to say and to ask you about South. Both of those, right?
The improv of being able to respond in the moment, but also the idea of reading the room and reading the energy of what's happening. For both of those to happen, you have to learn to be really present.
And you can't be in your anxiety because if you're in your fear, you miss reading the energy in the room because your fear overtakes. And when you're in your fear, you can't think in the moment because literally your brain has been hijacked by the fight or flight response.
Yep.
It's so crazy because I've done improv exercises, and I have a ton of anxiety when I do it, and I think it's because I'm such an over-preparer when I want to. I have to over-prepare for things because I don't want to fail, and improv makes you get out of your head and just be like be here and just be right.
Now say something about that.
Yeah. So it's funny because it's a combination.
It's not that there's no preparation, right? A lot of it is just trusting yourself.
And I think that's for me, and I don't know if it probably does come from my theater days, but I am incredibly nervous before trial. I think anybody who says they don't get nervous before they walk in a courtroom for a big trial, like they're just not invested in it.
They're either not telling the truth or they don't care.
Or they don't care, and this is probably too much information, but I'm like, when I get nervous, I'm like, Oh my God, I have to pee. I'm like I have to go and I can have gone 5 minutes before and like the second they're like curtain up or please rise, I'm like oh there I go.
But it's like the, I have this ability and the second it starts, the second the action starts, it's like everything else falls away and the only thing there is what's in the room, and everything from I'm not somebody who's annoyed by ambient noise. I just take it all in.
But like I can, the way I'm like, I don't even have to look at my client because I'm tuned into their breathing. Like I can hear whether my client is getting anxious without turning to look at them when they're on the stand.
I can see if my client starts, like gasping a little. And then it's your honor, before we go on, do you need some water?
There's all sorts of signals in the room. And I think that a lot of that, I think the way you described it was great because it's all just, it's stuff that I picked up from my theater training.
Like you have to be able to know what's on the periphery at all times. And you also have to be completely present and completely in the moment.
I'm not thinking a step ahead. I'm not thinking about the next thing I am going to say or going to do.
I'm not thinking about the next question that I'm going to fire off. I'm asking the question.
I'm listening and responding. It doesn't mean that I haven't prepared.
I know my cases the same way. Like, even if you're doing improv right, I know that there's going to be a series of things.
I know who's going to be in the room. I don't know who's going to say what or when or what's going to happen, but I just trust and know that I have enough inside of me that I'm going to be able to respond.
And I think it really all comes back to you. As you were talking, I was thinking, it is true that the preparation is part of what allows you to be present because you know that you know it.
So like I just, let's take questions to a witness. Yes, I have written every single one out.
I would have an outline, but I very rarely looked at it unless that was at the end to make sure I didn't miss something, because you'd be so in the moment with whoever you're talking with so that you can pick up on those things that you were talking about. It's so amazing the awareness that you have, like the change in the breath, of the change in the tone.
Well, that's very it's a super skill. It is reading energy of what's happening on a whole other level.
And it's not just the things that you're picking up with the five senses. The more that you can learn to be present, then the more intuitive you are.
And that's a super skill, right? And then you start to pick up things in a different under thing.
Understand the energy of what's happening in the room in a totally different way. So I love that we're talking about that.
But think about for people who are listening who haven't done theater training, can you give us something that you pull out that helps you to even practice, to wire your system to be that way, like a daily practice? I have some ideas of things because I'm constantly trying to teach people to be in the present moment.
But do you have any that you use?
Yeah, I have a lot of daily practices. I'm not sure how many are going to be helpful for this, but I'm a talker.
I talk a lot. I get very excited when I talk.
I had since I was a kid. And so what is a learned skill for me, and a very important one, is learning not to really take, listen to somebody, and take it in, and not be thinking about the next thing you're going to say.
Active listening. We call it active listening.
But for me, the way that sort of works is when somebody is speaking, I am very much trying to just stay focused on exactly what they're saying and how they're saying it. And taking it in, and then I'll almost take a second to process what I heard.
I don't just, I try to not blurt the first thing that wants to come out of my mouth. I'm not always great at it.
But I think one of the biggest things that has served me well with my clients, with my personal relationships, is being an active listener. I was doing just some team building and some work with some colleagues.
And afterwards we were giving feedback and talking about things. And the thing that they said to me was because I was working with one of our other attorneys, what they said to me is they said she's told me I felt so safe because the entire time we were working together, you seemed singularly focused on me and my needs.
And I knew you weren't going to let me do something stupid. But I just, I believe if you can find a way to make the person, the people that you are with, even if you're with 100 people, feel like they are the only person in the room and they have your whole attention, that really helps.
Yeah. And I think that when you talk about active listening, you and I have done some very similar training, and having training and psychodrama, and we've both been through Trial Lawyers College, that uses that as a foundation.
Obviously, that has a lot to do with active listening for what people to understand that it is a lot about being. When you're talking about being very present with people, it's not about parroting back what they say.
It's about saying it in a way that you understood it and also acknowledging what wasn't said, which is often the emotion that is present. Yeah, yeah.
And that really helps with that. Again, all of that requires that you have the power to get out of your own head and your own anxiety to be really present in the moment.
And I loved when you said I'm a talker. I'm a talker too.
I use a lot of words to say something. But I love when you said, I try to pause because often time we're afraid of the pause.
But also we're so fast-paced these days, we don't know how to cultivate a pause in our life. So I think there's a simple, A meditative practice that I love that is doing nothing but learning to follow your breath and focus on the pause between the inhale and the exhale.
I just noticed that. And if people are listening right now, you could just notice that right now, when you inhale, there's just a little bitty pause before the exhale.
Just doing that is a practice and mindfulness, right? It's a present moment practice with your breath doesn't have to be complicated, but doing things like that every day helps you to start to wire your brain to show up to be like that in the moment.
It's not something you're just going to decide you're going to walk in the courtroom to be able to do. There has to be some practices or training that you do for your system that help you to be that way.
And you're lucky because you just had so much vast when the theater training and all that. As I was looking for the things I know you do lots of things daily.
Is there anything that you do daily that feeds into something that helps you to stay mindful like that in the present moment?
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
I've always been being on gratitude and gratitude practices. I've gotten much more consistent with it since you and I started hanging Outback in January.
But every morning I like to sit on my porch with my dog and my cup of coffee and I write out five things that I am grateful for. And if I wake up in a snit and I am not having it, I write out five things that I'm going to choose to be grateful for that.
And I like that for a couple reasons. First of all, I'm one of those people that gets up and makes their bed in the morning because I like to feel like I started my day off accomplishing something.
Even if everything else goes sideways that day, I have still finished something. I think that is just another layer of feeling a sense of accomplishment because I have started my day and I've met one of my goals and started my day in a positive way.
But more than that, I think we all spend so much time. A lot of us at least spend a lot of time fussing over just little things or whatnot.
And I think doing the gratitude practices, especially given what I do for a living, really helps me A, put things in perspective and B, it even when I have a client who's struggling emotionally and maybe is not in their kindest mindset, I'll put it that way. It helps to remind me that I have so much that I'm grateful for and they have so much they are struggling with right now.
And so it is part of my job to give them the grace that they can't find in themselves.
They're beautiful and I love gratitude practice. I think it changes everything about the lens that we place into the world, and doing it on a daily basis really helps to do that.
And there's science behind it. It's really just as confirmation bias for our brains.
If we start out with this positive mindset in the morning, we'll continue to look for it. But that's a perfect tie in that you just made for us about how that helps you with what the work that you do.
And I want to tap into that because so much that we do as lawyers is about helping people. I think that we should look at what we can do as lawyers.
There's healing that we can help people with. And everything about the law is about relationships between one another.
And the work that you do with your clients are often dealing with very traumatic events that happen in their life. And we have to be able to be present with that.
It's important, but also not to take that on. So it becomes a secondary trauma, which is a really big deal for lawyers and more so in some areas of law and others, depending on what kind of trauma your clients are dealing with.
So can you talk a little bit about how you manage the emotional side of your cases, stay a strong advocate, but also not become overwhelmed or burned out by that?
Yeah, trial and error. Obviously I, I represent homeowners now, but when I first started, I actually my third year in law school, I was one of the I was sworn in as a student to be a student practicing attorney and my start was in domestic violence law.
I tell all our new attorneys this, my first client ever, she had to take 4 buses to get to my office. It took her 2 1/2 hours to get to the clinic each way and I sat down, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
And she told us her story and it took her about 3 hours to get the whole thing out. And after she shared with us and left, I burst into tears.
I cried until I made myself sick. I was crying so hard that I could not walk home from the law school and I only lived three blocks away.
And afterwards I was like, this isn't for me. I can't do this.
I feel too much. And I don't want to say that I got desensitized to it because that's not the right word and certainly not the right thing.
If I lose empathy for my clients, then I'm not doing them justice. I.
Can tell the story if you don't have the empathy, you can't tell the people's stories if you don't have that ability. So that's a superpower, right?
It's great, yeah. But it off it's a real thing though about what is taking on.
So what did you do then to shift and what do you do now to help you with that?
Yeah. So I'm not sure I can actually speak to what I did back then because my natural reaction was to just like not care as deeply, not remember as much of the details, not get to it, not ask the hard questions.
And because that was my natural inclination. I was in my 20s and not a lawyer and.
Is this the emotion that's very painful?
Yeah, look, I think part of it is like I have to set some boundaries for myself. I have to set some rules for myself.
Before the pandemic, I did not work at home at all. I would stay at the office till midnight if I needed to.
I would pull an all nighter, but I would not bring work home with me. And that was a rule I used to have.
That all shifted with the pandemic because I was out of my office for eight months. But now work only happens in one room in my house and it only happens during certain hours and unless I'm expecting something or I've told somebody I will be available to them.
I generally don't spend a lot of time compulsively checking my e-mail at night or doing this things because it can be overwhelming. I tell myself there's always something that has to be done.
There's always something that is waiting to be done. There's no day in my life where I will have finished everything and be like I'm done for the day.
I have to set some boundaries so that I know what what a day looks like in terms of clients. I wish I could tell you the magic to not embodying all of their emotions, but it's always there.
But I like to remind myself that when they share their pain with me or when they share whatever they're going through, that I don't have to take it on myself to ease their burden. I just have to listen to them.
And in listening to them and letting them feel heard and often times saying, yeah, that sucks. I get what you're going through.
I when I don't even have to have been there. But I understand your frustration and putting a name on it, whatever it is, putting an emotion to it and letting them name the emotion.
And then just reminding myself, Lauren, this is their frustration. You can be indignant on their behalf.
You can want justice for them, but you need to not take in their frustration in the same. The way I explain it to people is, and this actually came from an acting teacher I had once, it was actually in a directing class and somebody said to me, who's driving the bus here?
Somebody has to be driving the bus. And the fact of the matter is, people come to me because they need my skills.
And if I get so entwined in their emotions, I can't do my job. I need to be driving the bus.
And I can't be driving the bus at 70 miles an hour down the highway if I'm also sobbing and hysterical. There are times when I have to pull myself back and I just say, Lauren, you got to be driving the bus.
Right now, yeah. And sometimes it is just as simple as changing the story in your head.
I think that's a powerful technique and reminding yourself. I think that your examples of setting boundaries on your time and when you're going to be on and when you're not on, all of that is very important.
I see lawyers all the time who think that it has to be 24/7 and that's the reason why they're burned out. And if we actually learned to take the time to reset, refocus, that they're more powerful because I've taken the time off.
But I think too sometimes because I am very empathic, like what you're talking about, I recognize that when they're really strong energy that comes across some emotions from people. Sometimes I have to do something that helps me to move that in a way, even if I'm really good about keeping the boundaries, staying in control in the moment.
So one thing that helps me is physical movement, like moving my body when I've been with someone who's really anxious or someone who's really down, but even using my breath or my steps to imagine of releasing that. The other thing that helps me is journaling, sometimes just writing it all out to get it out of my head.
And.
Then practice like that. So I think that yours of just keeping a check like I have to be in control here.
I have to drive the bus is very important to you and that's it's really it's practices is staying grounded even when the pressure is high. And so that's even when people are very emotional or when there's just a lot of stress that's coming at us or adversarial energy from opposing counsel could be the same kind of yes, strong emotion that comes from other people.
I practice with my dad for many years. He and I were very different.
He's a typical very aggressive male trial lawyer. And I had to learn that that's not my style.
But I can remember one time coming out of a deposition where the opposing counsel was just really crazy. It was that.
And I just stayed calm. And my dad asked me.
He said, how in the world do you do that? If I was him, I just would have been even more.
I said, yeah, he's out of control. I'm not.
I'm the most grounded one in the room. So it's a powerful thing to be able to not take on other people's emotion, and yet you become that.
Yeah, you really turned me on to doing chakra work, and I was doing that in the morning, but I've actually switched that to the evenings and I love it because it's almost like when I'm doing the work, it's almost like I'm pushing the day out of my body.
You're clearing the energy. It's just another practice of clearing energy.
And I know what you're, you're probably the one that you're talking about is like using your voice, using sound to move it out of your body. It's there's so many crazy good techniques out there.
Just finding what works for you. I love that you love that because I think it's really powerful.
I think that was the first time I really connected with doing chakra work and it was just, it comes natural because of my background in singing and so making sound to relax and release energy is something that has always been a part of my life, so that's great.
I mean, you know, so it's sound is one thing. And then I think about when I say I move the right in some way, I think about, Oh my God, 10 year old.
He doesn't like my own homework now. But when he was five and six, it was like, it was the worst thing in the world.
I said the head would be hanging and it would be like, oh.
I don't want to have to do it. It's so hard, I can't do it.
And so we would have dance parties in the kitchen and all we're doing is shifting the energy of what his whole state was to get him to in a different state to be able to handle it. So there's lots of things like that you can do to change energy.
Music is amazing, right? Tapping into songs that empower you or make you feel good from maybe it's a song from high school that was your favorite.
Those are really cool ways to just decide to change your energy so that you're more powerful. That's very cool.
I love that. Let me ask you something.
We're talking a lot about emotions and energy and all the things. A lot of lawyers shy away from emotion in their cases.
And I know if the work that you've done that you've really embraced that, how do you use that to help you connect more with juries and even with your clients?
So the idea of bringing emotion into your client relationships, into the courtroom, is something that even a few years ago, it's certainly not taught in law school, if anything. But I'm sure you've heard this too, because we're women.
But don't get too emotional. Don't raise your voice.
The judge is going to think you're hysterical. Don't you know?
It's been a very interesting journey. But what I've found is that the more authentic you are with everyone, with your clients, with juries, with judges, the more you gain.
And it doesn't hurt anything. People can smell even if they don't know it.
On some level, people understand when somebody is being less than authentic with them. They understand when somebody is holding something back.
And I might be holding something back, some emotion back that has nothing to do with the trial. But what's going to happen is it's going to make me read as inauthentic and they're going to think I'm a liar.
They're going to be less likely and they're going to be less likely to connect me. People become more open the more open you are with them.
So I try to find ways to connect with jurors. I try to find shared experiences we can talk about.
It's not necessarily even having an identical experience, but I had this experience and it made me feel this way. And you had that experience, but it made you feel the same way.
That's how I know we're connected, you know, and I deal with my clients too. I work with a lot of people.
The people I work with are in crisis. They've just lost their home or their business or suffered catastrophic damage to it from a storm or not even a storm, a fire, a flood.
And I haven't had a, I've obviously had the hurricane problem. I can identify with that on a lot of levels.
But I also don't want to be like, oh, I know exactly what you're going through. I went through that too.
Because then I also don't want to diminish what they're feeling because the way in which they're going through, it's different. It's different for every person.
The feelings can be universal and we may have had two completely different experiences, but I would guarantee that I have at some point in my life felt lost. I have felt insecurity and I have felt scared that I can't protect my family and all those things.
It may not be the same experiences that get us there, but it's very important for people, I think generally to connect on that human level. And you can't do that unless you bring some emotion into the courtroom.
You can. And it doesn't mean I'm raising my voice, doesn't mean I'm hysterical, it doesn't mean I'm sobbing.
I have cried in front of a mediator and it worked very well. And what the mediator said to me was she said I'm supposed to be neutral and I couldn't stay neutral.
I literally went into the other room and fought for you because I saw how moved you were by your client's story and it made me want to fight for you.
That's, I love it. Vulnerability, that's the connection power, right?
If I can be vulnerable and then we share that. It's like you said, it could be a different way, but it opens the door for them to connect with you.
The other thing that you said is really I think is important is that when you use the word they could smell if you're not authentic. I just say everybody has that gut check and I don't care how good of a performer you are, how good of a speaker you are, but you don't really believe what you're saying.
Everybody knows it. And so you got to find and tap into a story that you find is your truth.
To you is if you.
Don't. Everybody knows it.
You can't fake it. That's energy.
That's the invisible. We don't even all understand how we do it, but we all do it and we all know it.
So it is the more authentic that you can be and learn to be the, I think the more powerful you are. And that's what you're saying.
That's where the connection comes in. Yes, beautiful.
I have loved talking with you. I'm going to close out with the three questions that we always ask our guests.
The first one is, what's one thing that you're excited about right now in your life?
Oh jeez, I only can pick one. No.
So I have actually gone back to school a little bit. I am taking some psych classes in the evening and I was a little bit nervous about doing it because I haven't done like classroom book learning since I left law school almost 20 years ago.
I'm loving it. I am loving being back in that sort of didactic setting and learning new concepts and having other nerds to talk about these things with every week, and it's been really great, so I'm excited about taking some classes.
I think that's amazing. I think it's so important to always be learning, but also you're just pushing yourself outside your comfort zone.
That helps you to be a better person but also a better lawyer.
Yeah, and it's been really fun.
Too. Yeah, that's great.
We are always talking about how we can practice law in a way that makes us better. So we are always asked the question, what's one rule you think that lawyers should break?
It's a traditional rule of how we practice or how we might have been taught to show up. And I think you you might have already talked about this.
Yeah, look, I think it means be authentic. Don't put on the artifice.
Don't walk into a courtroom and act the way you think a lawyer is supposed to act. Obviously observe the quorum.
Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Don't be afraid to be authentic.
I think it will actually serve you in the long run.
Yeah, beautiful. And you've given US1 practice that you do daily, which is the gratitude practice, which is so powerful.
Could you give us another practice that you do on a regular basis that helps you to be a healthier, happier person, which in turn helps you to be a healthier, happier lawyer?
Yep, I absolutely can. So as I was saying earlier, I'm one of those people that I need to feel like I have finished my day doing what I do.
There's always something else. One of the last thing that I do before I go to bed at night is I write down 5 things I'm going to do the next day on a post it.
I have a post it every day and as I do them the next day I cross them off and if I get to 50 things that's great. But if I only finish those five things, I have done everything I set out to do that day and every night I wrote him, I post it and I stick it with my laptop and it goes back to the office with me in the morning.
And I start with those five things and I make sure I get them all done. And I think that keeps me happier and healthier and makes me feel like I really accomplished something.
I love that and how that's so intentional too, because I imagine the five things are the things that you think are the most important use of your time the next day. So it just keeps you very intentional in doing that.
That's a very powerful practice. Am I am might start doing that?
That's really great.
I love lists, and so I love like the act of crossing things off, and then it's it becomes the best feeling in the world when I get.
To Golomine, hit when I get.
Crumble that posted, Oh, I get such a dopamine.
Hit off of there. We'll only accomplish goals, even if it's little things on our To Do List.
That's that's a dopamine hit. That's a good thing.
Yeah. Awesome.
Thank you so much, Lauren. This has been so much fun.
I really just what a joy to have you here and to share your wisdom with us.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks for listening to today's episode of Mind Over Law. We hope that you're walking away inspired and ready to embrace your life and law practice in a more holistic, healthier, happier way.
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