In the high-stress world of law, anger is inevitable, but unmanaged emotions can undermine professionalism and well-being. Mindfulness practices offer powerful strategies to help legal professionals recognize, manage, and transform anger—clarifying values, enforcing boundaries, and navigating high-pressure situations with calm, clarity, and ethical integrity. The following excerpt is shared from the blog, Brilliant Legal Mind, by Claire E. Parsons of Bricker Graydon.
I was asked to talk to a law school class this week about anger management in the legal profession. I’m not stranger to anger. As a litigator, it is something that comes up in my law practice frequently. As a wife and mother, I’d be lying if I pretended anger didn’t arise at home too.
Mindfulness practices and training have shifted my perspective on anger. They have improved it for the better. These practices have given me essential tools for managing anger at home and work. Here are some thoughts on anger for lawyers and some simple steps you can take to manage it better.
Anger is not all bad.
Anger is a volatile emotion and all of us know that it can lead to damaging, if not disastrous, conduct. But does that mean it is bad in itself?
From a mindfulness perspective, the answer is no. To the contrary, when viewed through that lens, emotions don’t have moral value. Instead, mindfulness calls on us to observe things, including our emotions, without judgment.
1. There can be good sides to anger.
One thing we may observe if we can look at anger nonjudgmentally is that it serves a useful purpose in our lives. Anger can help us clarify what matters, motivate us to act when needed, and enforce boundaries.
One reason we are right to distrust anger is that it is an exceptionally hard emotion to control. That is in part because of the energy it inspires. This energy, though, is exactly why anger is useful. It can force us to pay attention to things we had been ignoring or overlooking. It can highlight our values and standards even when we may find it more convenient to sweep them under the rug.
Anger can also offer a protective force for some of our more vulnerable emotions. When you watch anger long enough, you may find sadness, fear, or overwhelm lurking below the surface. Some of us may be primed to reject or judge these soft emotions, so anger has the potential to lead us to more wisdom about all of our emotions.
2. Most of us have judgments about anger.
Despite these potentially good aspects, most lawyers and people may have judgments about anger. In many cases, these judgments have been informed by our culture, families, religions, and professions. Some of us may have been validated for our anger, while some may have received messages implying that anger is off limits. Most of us are bound to have experienced a mix of these messages, which can add to the confusion surrounding the emotion.
In this way, an important step in understanding anger is to explore our own judgments about it. A complete analysis of this will also consider the cultural and developmental messages we received about anger. This might include whether we feel entitled to experience anger, how and whether anger should be expressed, and whether anger has any proper purposes.
What is anger? Seriously. What is it?
Because there are so many judgments about anger, it is important to ask what it really is. Even if it sounds like one, this is not a trick question or a philosophical one. With this point, I am prompting you to consider as directly as possible what anger is. When anger arises, what exactly do you experience?
Understanding anger clearly and directly is a fundamental mindfulness practice. When you know what anger is, you can learn how to manage it better.
In general, you are likely to experience some combination of (a) thoughts; and (b) feelings or sensations in the body. If you watch angry thoughts that arise, you are likely to notice a pattern. They may include some form of judgment or reaction and they often relate to some kind of boundary or rules violation or an unmet need.
The physical sensations of anger may vary for each of us, but what often arises is a surge of energy. Heat, power, and intensity are some of the most common markers of anger, as illustrated by artists and poets over the course of human history. In general, this energy motivates action but as we know the action is often not measured or thoughtful.
CLICK HERE to read the full article on Claire E. Parsons’ blog, Brilliant Legal Mind.
If you’d like to hear more from Claire E. Parsons, join ALI CLE for our upcoming program, Managing Anger: Mindfulness Practices for Lawyers, via live webcast, on September 25, 2025! To learn more about this program and to register for the live webcast, click here.
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