Episode 10 - Yoga for Peak Performance and Wellness featuring Bob Levant
Or listen & subscribe in your favorite app: Apple Podcasts AUDIBLE SPOTIFY PlayerFM YouTube
Please enjoy this excerpt featuring Bob Levant on the yoga for peak performance and wellness.
Watch the full video episode with captions here.
Enjoy all of the episodes in the series on YouTube.
IN THIS EPISODE:
In this episode Bob and I discuss yoga for peak performance and wellness for lawyers.
In May 2018, Bob secured the largest malicious prosecution civil rights verdict in Pennsylvania history when a jury awarded his client, Khanefah Boozer, $10 million. Khanefah Booker had been wrongfully accused of a crime he not only did not commit but that never even happened.
How did you find yoga?
What does it mean to you?
Tell us about the impact yoga has made in your work as a trial lawyer?
What was your path to yoga?
How does yoga philosophy influence your work as a lawyer?
LINKS & ABOUT
Find Bob Levant online at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertlevant/
https://www.thewellnessesquire.com/blog/a-conversation-with-bob-levant-part-i-of-iv
Bob embodies the term “Philadelphia Lawyer.” Honored by his peers numerous times as a Super Lawyer, Bob has tried over 50 criminal and civil jury trials in his 25 year career. His cases of note include successfully representing clients in capital murder cases and other high-profile criminal and civil matters. In May 2018, Bob secured the largest malicious prosecution civil rights verdict in Pennsylvania history when a jury awarded his client, Khanefah Boozer, $10 million.
Bob has litigated thousands of cases, cross examined thousands of witnesses, and appeared in countless cases in the bare-knuckles courts of Philadelphia and throughout Pennsylvania. Having navigated his clients through some of the most politically charged and legally complex cases and crises any lawyer will ever face, makes him a sought-after counselor, lawyer and problem-solver. Bob has developed a unique set of skills as well as the insight and resilience to help clients and other advocates in any situation they face.
As a battle-tested litigator, Bob has the scars and hard-won wisdom to show for it. Bob’s willingness, over the course of his career, to finally acknowledge and confront the struggle, self-doubt and deep vulnerability that accompany trial work differentiate him from many fellow warriors. He is dedicated to mastering the inner game of advocacy.
Bob has devoted himself to a journey of self-awareness in an effort to dialogue with advocates about what holds us back and how to unleash our greatest potential. His commitment is illustrated by the fact that he will soon complete his master’s degree in mental health counseling. He understands the psychological challenges faced by lawyers cannot be overcome without a daily physical routine. Bob embodies this discipline through a daily yoga practice as well as being a certified yoga instructor.
In 2013 and 2014, Bob fulfilled a dream as he traveled through Africa with his family. They chronicled their daily experiences on a travel blog. Upon returning, Bob established The Shining Light of Ethiopia which is a 501 (c)(3) charity focused on raising money to educate the children of Dongora Morocho, Ethiopia which is the birthplace of his son, Mabret.
TRANSCRIPT
Note: Please excuse any errors in the transcription.
Monica Phillips (00:46):
Welcome to Yoga Philosophy for Everyday Living. I'm here today with Bob Levant, who is an extraordinary lawyer, straight from Philadelphia. He is the Philadelphia lawyer. He has been honored in so many ways. He's tried over 50 criminal and civil jury trials in his 25 year career. And we're going to hear a little bit about something really significant, which is that in May, 2018 Bob secured the largest malicious prosecution, civil rights verdict in Pennsylvania history when a jury awarded his client, Khanefah Boozer, $10 million. Bob is the founder of Iron Advocate. He's a coach and mental health expert and just an incredible person. I've just loved getting to know you. Welcome to the podcast.
Bob Levant (02:09):
Thanks, Monica. You're kicking my imposter syndrome in there when I hear some people talk about me. So thanks for that nice introduction and thanks for having me.
Monica Phillips (02:17):
Yeah. Let's kick that imposter syndrome to the side, for sure. So this podcast is really about helping people find ways to bring yoga philosophy into everyday living. And I know your story a little bit. Tell us how you got to yoga.
Bob Levant (02:32):
I got to yoga like through the back door of yoga. I got to yoga when I was training for a marathon and I had run a few before and for the first time was feeling really sore in the hips and the knees and found my way into yoga like a lot of people do thinking, Oh, this will be for flexibility. You know, I'll go to this hot yoga class. It was around the time that I was really starting to give thought to figuring out how to litigate from a deeper place as well. So the timing was ironically real good, but you know, I found my way into the yoga room that way. And there's no wrong way into the yoga studio. I mean, it's all the right way as far as I'm concerned.
Monica Phillips (03:09):
That's right. And we were talking about access earlier. And what you just said is so important. There is no wrong way. And in fact, any way that allows someone to access it will give them an opportunity to learn more about it.
Bob Levant (03:21):
And more about themselves. I mean, I have that conversation all the time with lawyers. When I suggest yoga, I talk about yoga, they're on the way to the gym or doing whatever their form of exercise is. And yoga is so many things. Listen, a yoga class could be as hard as any workout you've ever done. And I've done classes in a hot yoga studio where I'm like, I might rather have the last six miles of a marathon than this. If there's days that that's what you're looking for and if there's days that you're really looking to kind of flow steadily and pace yourself differently, that's available, too. And of course your mind is always in it. Physical exercise is really supposed to be about the mind. That's why we do it. It's for the body as well. And you know, you're getting that with yoga anytime you walk onto your mat.
Monica Phillips (04:02):
Completely. So you went in for stretching. What did you come out with?
Bob Levant (04:07):
I came out with that for sure. Right. I came out with what I was looking for, which is important. I came out with the very beginnings of what I said at the beginning is, you know, my oversimplification of yoga, which is learning to be comfortable in uncomfortable positions. And pretty quickly I realized that there was a limitless amount of growth that you could do when you really, really connect the body, the mind, and the breathing on a yoga mat. That was what I knew was going to be part of really my daily life as it is. I mean, yoga is part of my daily routine.
Monica Phillips (04:42):
How long did it take you to realize that?
Bob Levant (04:44):
It happened pretty quickly. I mean, I didn't realize the power of it I don't think for a while. And that was part of my own journey, but the deep calling, that came pretty quickly. I would say a handful of classes and I was all in on it.
Monica Phillips (04:57):
Tell us about this landmark case. This is really extraordinary. This case of Khanefah Boozer who was wrongly accused of a crime that not only he did not commit, but that actually never happened. And you have shared this story with me. And I asked you to share it on this podcast because I think it is such an extraordinary example of yoga philosophy in everyday living. Especially when we think of litigators, it's kind of hard. I don't think of most litigators as - I'm going to get my inspiration from a yoga studio, from a yoga practice, from drawing in. I want you to share this with others who are listening.
Bob Levant (05:29):
So, you know, the other connection is right, yoga, the Khanefah Boozer case and what yoga does for me in the practice and has done over the years, but it also slows you down to speed up. The law really slows you down. So the Khanefah Boozer cases is like 2018 -- it's 10 years into my pretty hardcore yoga practice at that point. And so I was trying to embody on a daily basis, the core part of really living from a mindful place on and off the mat. There's no place to challenge you more than the courtroom in terms of staying mindful. I mean, it is a petri dish of anxiety and vulnerability and fear. There are no instant replays. Things are moving a mile a minute. Although for me, one of the things that the yoga mindset does is it would slow the courtroom down and over that 10 year period, part of that journey was wow.
Bob Levant (06:15):
I'm a much better lawyer when things slow down. I can embody the anxiety and the fear and the vulnerability move into it, breathe into it. So I started becoming a better lawyer and there are cases I can draw the line to. And Khanefah Boozer is one of those. So as you said, he was accused of firing shots at a police officer in Philadelphia. Mr. Boozer was a sweet kid, no record. He was working at Home Depot at the time. And what had actually happened is a drunk friend of his had fired a gun up in the air. The police officer was actually not present. And Mr. Boozer, who doesn't drink was like, you guys gotta go in the house. I'm going home. They were outside this fellow's house. So an officer close by had heard the shots came over to the block. Mr. Boozer was in his car, driving away.
Bob Levant (06:55):
He gets stopped. The next thing he knows, he's being accused of shooting at a police officer and to make a long story short, he goes down, he explains to the detective on the case, what happened. He actually gives him his best friend's name and says, listen, you know, he was drunk and he has a license to carry a gun. And he shouldn't have done that. At that point in time, this other officer had already said, well, no, no, he fired at me. You know, no gun recovered, no ballistics, no bullets. And he got charged with attempted murder for shooting at this police officer. And at that point, his friend was like, well, you know, what am I going to do? Like if I say I did it, they'll charge me. And, he sat in jail for almost four years.
Bob Levant (07:30):
When this happened he was about 23. So I tried the case suing the city and the police officers in Philadelphia. One of the big problems with the case was how do I help the jury understand the value of, you know, spending three years and nine months in jail under the law, you can't give the jury a number. You could tell them how much money somebody lost as a result of it. So I could tell them his lost wages from home Depot and over the course of, you know, three years and nine months, that's not anywhere near the starting number I wanted the jury to have. So if they found for him to compensate him for three years and nine months in jail, during which time his mother died, his sister died. He contemplated, seriously contemplated, suicide, put himself in solitary so that he wouldn't be injured and hurt.
Bob Levant (08:14):
And when the case came to a close and you know, the evidence had closed and I was going to deliver my argument to the jury the next morning, I still had not kind of figured out how to quantify that for the jury. How can I - then there are cultural and racial issues. The jury was majority white and how they relate to and identify with a young black man who's asking for money and compensation is always an area of concern if you're trying your case, honestly. So you want to find ways to try to cut through those inherent biases. So that day I left the courtroom, I was going to close the next morning. And you know, I started to walk back to the office like I always had. I better get out my legal pad. I better start writing my closing and, you know, listen, I've been doing this a long time and I've been living with that case for years, sitting with a legal pad and writing my closing 10 times over was not going to get me any closer to coming up with the right metaphor, the right vehicle for that.
Bob Levant (09:11):
So, you know, I stopped myself like halfway to the office and I said, you know, Levant, which is how I refer to myself when I'm talking in my own head, I said, this, isn't going to do it. Go find yourself a yoga studio, get on the yoga mat. And maybe the answers will appear. And so I did just that. I went to like my home base, you know, which is the yoga mat. And I found a hot yoga studio cause I really wanted to get lost. And I did. And when I came out of there at some point, you know, shortly thereafter, I just realized that, Levie, I said to myself, I don't know where it came from. It came on the yoga mat. Right. And, uh, I had a colleague who was a great lawyer by the name of Ray Driscoll, who was kind of talking me through it.
Bob Levant (09:46):
And I said, let's see how many minutes he was in jail. And so I took my phone out and I started punching the numbers and the math was almost $2 million. So he was in jail 2 million minutes. He was in jail for, you know, it was like 1,980,000 minutes. So I was like, okay, that's it. You know, thank you yoga mat. Right. I get out of my head, get into my heart. And so when I started my closing argument, I just stood silently in front of the jury without speaking. And I looked up at the clock in an old ornate Philadelphia courtroom and I invited the jurors to close their eyes if they wanted, I didn't tell them why. And I just stood silently for a minute. And at the end of the minute I stopped. And I told the jurors that was one minute, you know, and that Khanefah Boozer spent 1 million, 980 some thousand minutes thinking about nothing, but spend the rest of his life in jail for something that never happened. I can trace that to my yoga practice.
Monica Phillips (10:41):
I mean, that just gave me chills. I knew your story. To hear it, it's so powerful because especially how in the U.S. we process time, right? When someone's two minutes late for something, people are like, tap tap tap, wasting my time. Right? And so to create it in that context of what is important for the people here, they're going to go home and see their families tonight. He didn't get to do that for three years, nine months, like how many, thousands of minutes, millions, that is so powerful. I was thinking, you know, you're saying the courtroom is going so fast and you get to come into this calm, clear-headed focus and something I know about communications and why that is super important is that in a courtroom, even though it doesn't stop, everything is recorded, right? And most of us say things we don't mean constantly. Ethan Cross talks about this in his book, Chatter. We can process as many negative words, all the self-talk up here in 90 seconds as what is spoken in a 6,000 word, one-hour State of the Union address and our mouths can't keep up with our brains. So when we start to try to say those words, we say things we don't mean all the time and in a courtroom, it's much harder to go back and revise what we just said when it's all written down.
Bob Levant (12:01):
Totally. And another part of it that comes from yoga is we've lost, you know, in the society we live in the importance and the impact of silence and being on your yoga mat is a place where you don't think about it a lot, but you're silent there. The power of silence, it's impossible to overstate and stillness and the impact upon yourself, you know, in centering yourself and slowing yourself down. So doing that at the beginning of the closing argument was impactful, obviously because of the facts of the case, but it's also a really powerful way to center yourself. And those that are listening to you speak. That comes from the yoga mat, right? You spend whatever time you're on the mat generally as a time of silence. It's a moving meditation. And I definitely appreciate that about the practice.
Monica Phillips (12:47):
I have become a much better listener through yoga. And I think I connect that to the silence. And I've noticed that I'm much more aware of sound now and how I process information. And even where maybe 15 years ago, I would've been glad to be a multi-tasker. I can't stand multitasking. And it's really hard for me when I'm working on something and my son comes in and he wants to share something with me, not because I don't want to pay attention to him, but I want to give all my attention to him. And at that point, it becomes hard to have these two paths at once, because I don't want to listen to something partially. And so I'll ask him like, hold on like 30 seconds, so I can give you my full attention. And then I can stop what I'm doing and shift because it's hard to balance all that in my head. And I think that maybe those who can do this have some superpower I'm not aware of, or they're just trying to figure it out. And they don't actually hear all of it, or they fool themselves into thinking they're hearing something and they're not actually present for that moment. What do you think?
Bob Levant (13:48):
So I draw the line this way for the lawyers that are listening. So the courtroom, again, it's a place that moves as fast as any place you'll ever be if you're doing intellectual warfare, so to speak. So if lawyers asked me, 'What are the most important things to being a great trial lawyer?" I always say it's being the most prepared lawyer in the room and being a great listener. And all you're doing is listening for mistakes. And that's what great lawyers do. They're listening for the other side to make mistakes, maybe a little of an oversimplification, but not really. If you're litigating, you're just listening for mistakes. And listening comes from a place of depth and a place of great thought and kind of from your soul. So yes, to all the things you said, whatever your greatest, you know, your own greatest realistic kind of listener is, or, or embodiment of yourself in the present moment, you're only going to get closer to it by embracing yoga on some level. I Practice seven days a week. You don't have to practice seven days a week. Just get on the mat and give it a shot, get a mat, find a studio, or go on YouTube and see what it does for you.
Monica Phillips (14:53):
Yeah. Judith Lasater is a well-regarded yogi and wrote a book (Living Your Yoga). She shares in it, this reference to a friend who says, Oh yeah, I'm, I'm going to start meditating five minutes a day. And Judith kind of goes like, (sigh) with judgment, like what's five minutes going to get you cause like from the framework of yoga. And then she realizes how beautiful it is that actually, when we can create a habit as attainable, it's easier than trying to set our goal on something that we could never reach. Right. And we are not the Buddha. We don't sit under a tree for hours because we don't have that luxury in this fast-paced life where we have to create certain benchmarks, make more money, create certain successes and all that is still there. And so what if we could just do it for five minutes a day? And we talked about this access, how do you see creating this accessibility for lawyers?
Bob Levant (15:44):
I mean, all of these practices, whether it's yoga, whether it's meditation or just a moving meditation of committing to moving your body each day, because that's really at the end of the day, what we're talking about. Yes to everything you said. To make it sustainable, it has to come from a place that's non-judgmental and that fits within your lifestyle and that is enjoyable and sustainable. And that's what you're really talking about. I mean, it's accessibility and it's also practicing for success. We're talking about yoga on this podcast, set yourself up with a realistic goal, which is, you know, I'm going to unroll my mat and I'm going to find a class that fits in with whatever window of time. Sure, I've gotten to a point where I make the time by getting up early enough to make sure that I get the yoga in before my day starts. That may or may not be for someone listening or watching this podcast right now. That wasn't how I started.
Monica Phillips (16:35):
And yoga is also practice, right? You show up and you practice and it calms your mind and it creates better results.
Bob Levant (16:42):
I mean, the whole essence of it is you shouldn't be judging yourself, right? So you don't have to be saying, Oh, I have to do 45-minutes today or got to do this or that.
Monica Phillips (16:49):
I have no idea how glad I am that you said that word, because that is my next question is in the legal industry, it is built on judgment. You even said, you're in there listening for mistakes. And we come in, we're judging ourselves. That's the imposter syndrome. We're judging others, what they did or didn't do. We're judging the circumstances, why we're here, how we got here, what's actually happening. What are the details? And we, the two of us have talked about how can we create this culture of coaching in law firms to allow more than what's possible through discernment. Right? And so how do we get an industry built on judgment even like in the word of a judge is judging, right? And so then how do we shift that to discernment, as seeing one's truth.
Bob Levant (17:35):
It starts with conversation. I don't want to oversimplify it, but it really does. So the things you identified about the law, they are reactionary behaviors of lawyers that come from places of fear and anxiety, vulnerability dread. And so we feed upon besting the other person and focusing much more on results than process, which is something you and I have talked about. Yoga itself is a lifelong practice, right? You never perfect it. It's a life-long practice, right? And there's a reason that, that we refer to it as that. So in the legal profession, it's really a mindset shift and a culture shift that instead of moving away from the anxiety and the fear and the dread and some of those things, I mean, it's a business built on conflict, right? Everywhere you turn there's things you might say, well, I don't feel like dealing with this.
Bob Levant (18:27):
I gotta open this email. The lawyer is telling me how dumb I am or whatever the case might be. And so then you just play it out, whether it's emails or interactions or phone calls or courtroom hearings, there's a lot of conflict. And a lot of things that we are generally emotionally averse to. And so we move away from those. And when we focus on the other person and we focus on how to make ourselves feel good by putting somebody else down or beating somebody or measuring ourselves from something that's in our head, not in our heart, that changes just with conversation, because the reality is when we go back to the Khanefah Boozer case. Right? All I did was embrace my fear and anxiety, but what was my fear and anxiety. That I'm never going to be able to figure out how to tell the jury to give this guy enough money that both it's somehow begins to compensate him and sends a loud and clear message to the Philadelphia police department that this is unacceptable.
Bob Levant (19:15):
And so my fear and anxiety is I'm going to fail. Well, I have to close either way. So I might as well figure out how to try to get to my best self. And that is by walking into the anxiety and fear. Okay. I am deathly scared that I am going to screw this up. And I'm just going to give a closing that doesn't possibly quantify this man's suffering. For many years I muscled my way through that and I got through one hard work and, you know, and some raw skill, but I was never my best advocate because I was advocating from my head, not from my heart. That is how we make change in the legal profession. It's we just have these dialogues. I get it as well as anybody. The law is filled with that. And I think that yoga was a part of unlocking that for me, right? It gave me time to really slow down.
Monica Phillips (19:59):
This is why I started this podcast is in my coaching - I coach a lot on mental fitness, not exclusively, but this process of allowing ourselves to recognize how we self-sabotage and how we can bring in more Sage perspective. And this comes from Positive Intelligence by Stanford lecturer Shirzad Chamine, and it's an incredible framework. And every time I'm creating something from this principle of mental fitness, it's back to yoga and the ancient wisdom from 4,000 years ago, where we have to show up and listen with our heart. I love neuroscience. And so this science, that in utero, our brains and our guts are developed together. They share neurons and our guts have more neurons than our spinal cords. And then we have this vagus nerve that connects our brain to our heart, our intestines, our gut. When we talk about gut instinct, this is not woowoo. This is hard core science happening in our gut, in our center that radiates out. And it is everything that we connect to this fear, right? We do feel it in our heart. Yeah. There's a reason. And so if we turn that off, we're not fully present to what's possible.
Bob Levant (21:15):
Yes. It's all that. The human experience is fear first. That's part of the human experience and you know, we have contorted it into some sort of weakness that you're weak and particularly palpable in the law. Well we're supposed to have the answers, you know, who wants to go see a lawyer that says, "Oh I'm not sure, I don't know, I'll try. I'm kind of scared about that." The perception is not that that's what you want your lawyer to be thinking. Right? Of course the reality is that when you do start to think about oh, this is tough, I'm worried about that. You're going to get whatever the best answer is. There may not be a perfect one. There rarely is. And we've just started to embody as lawyers, this idea that we can never show fear, or they want to hire us with some kind of a, you know, this gladiator feel and law. And so we just embod that everywhere we go with one another, with our colleagues, with the clients, with the court. That's what the culture has become, and it holds lawyers back. And of course it also makes it really miserable to practice law.
Monica Phillips (22:09):
Or really miserable to be around someone like that. I've noticed this and that we show up and I have all these clients who are living a last-minute life and what they pull off at work, doesn't work at home. And then we end up at the end of our career with no really great relationships because we've burned through them. And people don't want to be around that toxic energy.
Bob Levant (22:25):
I'll post on LinkedIn, you know, here and there. And it's really a journal. Like I just journal for lawyers and other people that want to read it. And I put up a journal LinkedIn post about just that, which is lawyers have woefully unhealthy relationships. Why do the vast majority of partnerships in small firms, you know, end in disaster? Why is there so much dysfunction in the partnership set up at the big firms, all of those poor relationships, you then take home and it corrodes the most important relationships around your life. And the reason is because you're constantly suppressing and turning away from what is completely understandable and natural, which is that it is a really scary anxiety inducing business, right? You're constantly putting yourself out there, whether it's a filing of a brief or you're litigating in a courtroom or you're, you know, in a conference room doing big deals, you're putting yourself out there and you're constantly getting judged, as you said, and just about every legal issue as somebody on the other side, telling you you're wrong. Listen, if you want to have a fulfilling life in the law and maintain some semblance of healthy relationships outside of it, that you have to face that.
Bob Levant (23:31):
And so the law gave me all kinds of incredible experiences, right? That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. That's why I took the time to go back and get the master's degree in mental health and do the things I'm doing. Because I do think there's a path to fulfillment. I mean, our whole, you know, democracy is really built on the law, right? So it's an incredibly honorable profession where real good can get done, particularly with a lot of the dialogue that's going on, you know, around issues of social justice and diversity and inclusion. Now the law's of vehicle for that. And so we need people to inhabit the law who have healthy habits and understand the complications of the work that they've chosen. That dialogue has to start early on like Day 1 of law school.
Monica Phillips (24:12):
Yes. So I shared this story with you. I left law firms. I've been leading business development and marketing in Big Law firms for 15 years. And I left in 2013 to start coaching full-time. And I was coaching a group of lawyers, including the managing partner of the office. It was a group of women lawyers. And at the end of this visualization exercise, I was like, hold it lightly, this may or may not do anything for you. Just try it. And, at the end this lawyer looked across the room at me and she said, Monica, for the first time in my life, you've given me permission to think with my heart. And it was honestly, Bob, in that moment, I knew I had to do this work more. I had to bring my full on cheesy woo woo hippie self into the room because they don't get permission to feel. And in fact it makes me sad. I want people to have permission to be whole -whole self. We're not just cerebral brains walking around. We have body, soul, mind, all of that. And so it was just incredibly rewarding to know that I could help change that. And you mentioned it a little bit, but I want to know what that path has been for you in leading in the courtroom, these incredible, incredible cases to mental health and what you want to bring into the room with that experience.
Bob Levant (25:28):
I mean, it's all a journey, right? It's never about the destination. It's always the journey. So initially a lot of it had to do with becoming a better advocate, lawyer and more fulfilled in the practice and realizing that, you know, I had to really start to do things that I'm talking about here, which is move toward the unpleasantness as opposed to away from it. It's a truth that you could try a thousand cases. You'll still have anxiety and fear and vulnerability, right? So it's about acknowledging that. And then for me, at some point I really made a commitment that I wanted to do what I could, if I take the experience in the law and I just keep it there. And I spend the next part of my life just chasing the next case. Then a lot of this stays kind of narrowly with me.
Bob Levant (26:10):
And I really felt that I wanted to have a dialogue that brought this broader to the profession and that I would really do my part at trying to bring about culture change, which does come from just conversation. And so that was the genesis of my commitment. That's what I wanted to do. And I felt that both from a growth standpoint and to be fully committed, that I needed to do something other than just talk about my experience. And that was, you know, when I decided to get enrolled in the master's program and do that. And then of course also, quite frankly, I want to make it hard for lawyers and firms to not have the dialogue. Right. So if I have tried the cases, I've tried and done the things I've done, and I take the time to get that degree, that'll open some doors that otherwise wouldn't open, even if it doesn't necessarily change my knowledge base, it makes it harder for lawyers or firms to say, Oh, I don't, I don't need to hear from him. He doesn't have anything to offer me. And so now I feel like the experience in the law and the other things that I've done have positioned me to be able to say, hopefully all lawyers and firms want to hear what I have to say. I've walked the walk. And that puts me in a better position to talk the talk both on the law side and the mental health side. That's why you and I have spent time talking about collaborating and working together to bring this dialogue to wherever we can bring it to.
Monica Phillips (27:24):
And I believe this, like this abundance mindset allows to first create a wellness and greater belonging. What have you noticed in this process of mental health and belonging in the workspace? I'm talking about like diversity, equity, inclusion, all of that.
Bob Levant (27:37):
We're woefully behind as much as we're supposed to lead and change. Less than 5 percent of the lawyers in America are Black or of color, 35 to 36 percent are women. And so specifically the path of marginalized lawyers, you know, lawyers of color and women in the law, all of the things we're talking about are that much more magnified, right? Cause they feel more isolated and it's harder to find folks that share your journey, which is part of doing this work, all roads lead to Rome, right? That dialogue is critically important to really have a diversity/inclusion discussion in the law. And we have to recognize that we need to recruit lawyers differently. We need to get lawyers who are representative of our society into positions of power and leadership positions so that we can change that culture across the board. And so the idea of abundance, number one, it's just the right way.
Bob Levant (28:25):
Share with everybody you can, let's all work together. And as I said to you earlier, I love doing this and talking to people about it. So why wouldn't I talk to anybody who wants to engage? And I have things to learn and they can learn from me and specifically again, to the diversity/inclusion point that has to be, in my view, be under the umbrella of the mental health, the wellness, the things you and I are talking about because it's those issues times 10, you know, on Iron Advocate, on our podcast, we talk about that a lot. We had Carl Racine on who was the first black managing partner of an AMLaw 100 firm. And he talked about how lonely he was as the leader of the firm, right. He was running the firm and felt very isolated because of the nature of the law. So it all comes together. We just have to keep dialogue about it. And we have to get to a point where the firms feel like it's okay to have this dialogue at the water cooler, you know, in each other's offices, on firm retreats, everywhere. It's okay to discuss all the things we've talked about on this podcast and discuss them openly.
Monica Phillips (29:26):
Exactly. And it goes back to allowing those conversations to happen. And it goes back to judgment and how we see people on the stories we tell and all of that. And ultimately all of that comes from a scarcity mindset that jealousy, Yoga Sutras, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, Sutra 2:33, The Four Locks and how we see people who are thriving, right? Some people see people who are thriving with jealousy, the Sutra states celebrate those people. Right. Be excited for them.
Bob Levant (29:56):
Yes, yes, yes.
Monica Phillips (29:56):
That's hard to do. It's one thing to say, it's hard for people to do that. So what would you say to lawyers listening, who haven't tried yoga or who maybe have, but haven't experienced it the way you have, what is something that you can share in the sense of everyday living that will help people get on the mat? And I say it in air quotes because it doesn't have to be on the mat like we've discussed, right. It could be yoga, but the posture is just one part of yoga. There's so much more to it.
Bob Levant (30:27):
First of all, there are so many people practicing at different levels around now that it's easy to find somebody in your circle to talk to about it and who you can roll a mat out with or go to a studio with you. I think that's part of it too, is the aversion of the first class or the way we get started. If you're not a studio person and we're in the middle of a pandemic, the internet is loaded with all kinds of beginner tools. I mean, just super accessible, just having an open mind to it. The reaction that, Oh, I'm not flexible. That's the most common one you hear? Oh, that's not for me. I'm super tight. I'm not flexible. Yoga is not for me. I think that's the number one, you know, quote unquote kind of auto reply from people that have an aversion to it.
Monica Phillips (31:09):
Oh, you know what else I've heard Bob?
Bob Levant (31:11):
What's that.
Monica Phillips (31:11):
Is people will say, especially my high-achiever lawyer friends, they'll say, it's too slow. Like I can't handle all that stuff. I need a really tough workout, right? Like - grrr - I want to get out my anger and my frustration. And I want to, go kick-boxing. There's so much space for you in yoga. You just have no idea what that experience could be, right.
Bob Levant (31:30):
Full-stop short. It can be as difficult, challenging, fast paced as you want it to be. And again, it's all accessible out there and you know, to your point, 12,000 years of people can't be all wrong. Right?
Monica Phillips (31:41):
My mentor yoga teacher, Tiffany Russo says, make the simple complex. As I'm hearing you, it's so well-connected to law. When you can get on the mat and make one movement complex and notice it, you can bring that into the practice of law.
Bob Levant (32:02):
The foundation, I think if you were to ask yogis across the world, what's the foundation of yoga, it's always going to come back to your breath. That's also where folks get lost. Like, Oh, this is about breathing or meditation. This isn't about exercise. So whether I'm pushing myself physically or for those folks that are, you know, looking for a workout. It's the breath work. And the key to being, you know, your own realistic, greatest advocate is being able to breathe. And it's being able to slow yourself down and, you know, stop the racing thoughts and the yoga does that. And it's the greatest workout you're ever going to have. There's just no question about it. At least of the ones that I've done, which include yoga is really unique in terms of the total, the total kind of body and mind experience.
Monica Phillips (32:43):
I love your company name, Iron Advocate. What else would you like us to know about you before we wrap up here?
Bob Levant (32:48):
Folks can find us at IronAdvocate.com. The website kind of tells the story. It's my best friend / brother Jeff Riebel who's a family law lawyer out in Northern California in the Bay area. He and I started as public defenders together in 1985 in Philadelphia and kind of just have had a running dialogue since then, just about every day. And so we turned it into Iron Advocate, which you know, is a podcast, but now also much bigger venture about bringing this dialogue to lawyers and, uh, folks can find us there and reach out. I love talking about this stuff. I love coaching lawyers, working with firms. Our tagline kind of says it all. So Iron Advocate is helping lawyers to kill it in the practice of law without it killing them.
Monica Phillips (33:27):
I love that. I love that you have decided to take this learning and share it so widely through dialogue with lawyers. It's awesome. And I'm glad to know you and have you be part of this with me. Thank you for joining me here.
Bob Levant (33:40):
Really glad to be with you. This was a blast. Thanks.
Monica Phillips (33:40):
Thanks so much, Bob.