During the media session on the Monday following his third Super Bowl Championship win in February 2024, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was asked by a reporter to compare his “innovative” and “unpredictable” playing style to a non-football activity and explain why. After a few moments of thought, Mahomes, much to my delight, responded:
“A top-tier lawyer. Someone who has to think on his feet, execute at the right time, and deal with high-pressure situations.”
As a lawyer or member of the legal industry, you may not immediately see yourself as a three-time Super Bowl champion. But as a high-performance and burnout coach for lawyers, I encourage my clients to think of themselves as exactly that—elite athletes. Like Patrick Mahomes, I see strong parallels between professional sports and the legal profession.
The Striking Similarities Between Athletes and Lawyers
Both are highly selective and intensely competitive. In the U.S., fewer than 2% of NCAA student-athletes go on to play professionally. Similarly, only about 0.36% of the U.S. population are lawyers. These are rare and demanding paths that require excellence.
Another key similarity is that both fields are performance-driven. Athletes must consistently perform at their peak to stay on the team or compete at elite levels. Likewise, lawyers must sustain high performance throughout the long marathon of their careers—whether to remain at top firms, run a successful practice, or thrive in other legal roles.
Just as high levels of trust and cohesion are essential for a sports team to win, they are equally critical for law firms and legal teams to succeed.
Athletes and lawyers need to stay committed, disciplined, and motivated to put in the daily efforts and training/work that may not be the “fun” aspects of the job but are necessary to get the desired results. Both face intense pressure to perform in high-stakes environments when tension can run high. The nature of the performance environment is adversarial with a battle mentality in both sports and law. The ultimate goal in both arenas is to win – thrilling victories are celebrated, and the emotional roller coaster can swing the opposite direction, feeling the agony of defeat.
Lawyers and athletes can face intense periods of work/training/competition requiring time away from family, friends, and support systems, which can place a strain on relationships.
The Dark Side: Mental Health Challenges in Both Fields
There’s a dark side to both industries as well. We love to put athletes on a pedestal and see them as superhumans. But the excessive physical demands on their bodies and pressure of the sport can lead to mental health issues, an invisible burden they carry. According to a 2019 consensus statement from the International Olympic Committee, about 35% of elite athletes suffer from mental health challenges, which may manifest as stress, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, and other addictions, PTSD, and burnout. Athletes can practice and perform in environments with coaches who are verbally abusive and sometimes worse. This only exacerbates fear, insecurity, anxiety, and depression.
Lawyers may not be Olympic athletes, but they perform mental gymnastics all day long. There are tremendous mental demands and practicing law requires high levels of physical energy, too.
Add in the pressure to bill hours, develop new business, juggle a high caseload with competing deadlines, and navigate an ever-changing legal and economic landscape, the daily experience can be filled with stress and overwhelm. Some lawyers also experience vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue with their work. Unhealthy work environments negatively impact lawyer performance and well-being, too. Research regarding lawyer well-being and mental health consistently shows that lawyers experience high rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and burnout. Like athletes, this can be an invisible burden for many lawyers. There is fear to admit or disclose they are struggling behind the superhuman uniform they wear while performing as a lawyer. They carry the pressure to be perfect from the office to the courtroom to home.
Learning from Elite Athletes
Here’s where lawyers and law firms can take a page from the playbook of elite athletes and teams. The sports industry understands the mind and body are connected. For an athlete to be at their best, both mind and body must be healthy. They also understand that the superstar athlete performing in their uniform is still a human who deals with human challenges and emotions – on and off the field. For an athlete to bolster against experiencing significant mental health issues and burning out, their mental and emotional fitness must be trained and strengthened just like their physical skills. Elite athletes and sports teams have employed sports psychologists and mental performance coaches as part of their staff for years, if not decades. They view mental performance coaching as an enhancer to optimizing performance, bolstering resilience, and increasing the odds of winning. Performance coaching also helps to reduce mental health issues that impair athletes on and off the field.
What other skills can lawyers borrow from an athlete’s mental performance mastery playbook to optimize well-being and performance? While there are many, and articles can be written on each one of them separately, here are a few highlights:
Mental Performance Strategies for Lawyers
Rest and Recovery
All elite athletes focus on rest and recovery more than training. One Olympic athlete I worked with during her transition out of track and field said during a coaching session, “I trained hard, but I rested harder.” An athlete’s body needs proper recovery to fuel muscle growth, increase capacity for the stress of performance, and restore energy levels. While athletes need to physically rest to prevent injury and restore energy levels, lawyers need to incorporate movement and exercise as part of their daily routines and habits of excellence to boost energy levels, maximize cognitive performance, and strengthen resiliency (to highlight only a few of many benefits of exercise). Rest needs to be viewed as productive and a critical component to success.
Mindset
Athletes do not leave their mindset to chance. Mindset is a vast topic, but to sum it up: they train their brain to work for them instead of against them. Yes, even elite athletes battle self-doubt, have ebbs in confidence, and days they don’t “feel like” practicing. But they don’t let their mind run wild and go with however they feel that day. They decide how they need to think in any given environment to get the best results. They engage in mental rehearsal to ingrain thought patterns so when the pressure and tension are high, their mindset is automatic and dialed in for success. Athletes view stress and adversity as challenges that fuel growth. They routinely review film, training logs, and mistakes as learning opportunities to improve performance moving forward. Lawyers can adopt these same mindset strategies to create a mental environment that unlocks their potential.
Emotional Fitness
The human part of the athlete experiences a wide range of emotions in practice and during performance. They train skills to strengthen their emotional fitness so when the pressure is high, the emotions are under control. Anxiety and nervousness – and therefore physiological arousal – can be high at the beginning and during performance. They have skills to either turn down the arousal or harness the power of the energy to perform well. A moment of frustration and anger when a play didn’t go as expected needs to be quickly released and reset to get back to focused and calm for the next play. Strong emotional fitness allows an athlete to stay in control and choose how they respond to what is happening, rather than react. Emotional fitness is a key skill behind understanding their own – and others’ – emotions and how they impact performance. It’s a crucial skillset for coaches and leadership to form high-performing teams. And emotionally fit athletes and teams fuse FUN into their experiences.
While lawyers are often trained not to have emotions or be emotional, they are still human and therefore, experience emotions. The coping tendency can be to try and compartmentalize, avoid emotions, have self-judgment around the emotions, or temporarily numb them with alcohol, mindless scrolling, shopping, gambling, and other unhealthy behavioral outlets. This is a key driver for mental health issues and burnout. Thinking logically on their feet in high pressure situations requires the analytical brain (prefrontal cortex) to be in charge, Managing stress and fear levels (emotional fitness) is imperative, otherwise the amygdala (fear center of the brain) takes over, which can induce mental paralysis and panic. To lawyer like Patrick Mahomes, emotional fitness is a non-negotiable skill to learn.
Control the Controllables
There are many variables that are outside an athlete’s control. Depending on the sport, common variables are: the weather, the opponent (and their skill level), the calls the referees make, whether their coach gives them playing time or not, weather delays, injuries of teammates during games, play calls, their teammates’ performances, the noise level from the crowd, and more. Focusing on elements outside of their control generally leads to decreased focus and fear/worry about the outcome of the game. Variables in their control: the time and effort spent training, mastery of the physical skills, nutrition and hydration, sleep, their thoughts and attitude, where their focus is at any given moment, discipline and commitment, and choice in how they respond to what is happening. In short: mastery over themselves and mastery of their sport skills. Focusing on what they can control drastically reduces anxiety and unproductive worry, sharpens focus, and boosts confidence. They focus on the process rather than the outcome. Lawyers face many variables that are out of their control on cases and in daily work life. They can benefit from controlling the controllables as a mental strategy to lower anxiety, feel empowered and in control, hit performance targets, and enhance team cohesion.
Performer Self vs. Real Self
Performance of sport is one part of an athlete’s identity. When they are in performance mode, they are executing a certain set of skills and capabilities for success. This may require them to behave in ways that are out of alignment with their values. For example, if a tennis player values fairness in everyday life, then on the tennis court, she may self-sabotage and let an opponent come back. Athletes don’t always want to bring their “authentic self” to the field of play because it will hold them back. They need to step into the role and mindset that is required to win. On the contrary, sometimes requirements for performance mode (e.g., aggression) may be conducive to on the field success, but a barrier to relationships off the field. They learn to flip in and out of performance mode.
Equally as important, there is a need to recognize that when they are in performer mode, it is not about them as a person. They are executing a role (much like an actor becomes a character). However, they still have the same basic human needs we all have that need to be met for optimal well-being. Having outlets where they are free to be their “real selves,” and tap into other parts of their identity is a booster to mental fitness and performance on the field. Similarly, when lawyers are in lawyer mode, it is not about them as humans. It is about the clients, the work, and the legal arguments. Lawyers spend all day focusing their time, energy, and efforts on others. They are executing a certain skill set and role that is necessary for success on that field of play. Like athletes, they also need to take off the lawyer uniform and have outlets in their life where they can be their “real self” and have their human needs met, too. Stepping into other roles (parent, friend, spouse), engaging in hobbies and activities that are part of their identity, and forging strong social connections are not only boosters to mental health and well-being but will make them even more successful in the office and courtroom.
The Mental Game Makes the Difference
Elite athletes are all extremely physically capable. There is very little that separates the top-tier athletes when it comes to physical skills. Same with lawyers – they are all intellectual powerhouses who have “made the league” so to speak. What separates the absolute best athletes from the rest is the mental performance training component. There are many mental skills athletes practice and strengthen as part of their toolbox for maintaining optimal levels of physical, emotional, and mental well-being. But perhaps the most important shift athletes and teams make is giving equal value to a mental performance coach as a strength training coach. Performance coaching is an integral part of their playbook for success.
If you’re ready to take action and learn to lawyer like an athlete, I invite you to Book a call here.
P.S. Not a lawyer? Great – I work with many types of professionals! These same exact mental skills apply across many industries and roles where people are performing under pressure.
