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Lawyers are human too. You are expected to perform as if nothing touches you and to appear confident and competent at all times. But the reality is different. Practising law takes you through a full range of thoughts and emotions both positive and negative. How are you feeling today?

Someone has done or said something that really annoys or upsets you. Again! You need help to make your relationships at work better.
I'm talking your talk already! You are interested in people and how we think and feel. You understand that as a lawyer our brains and emotions are an important part of what you do. You'd like to learn more about psychology and neuroscience and how it can help you in the law.
Your dream job is now a gilded cage. Part of you feels squashed. You need to find a better way to live and work.
It's not all about you. You have staff and colleagues you care about and you want to make sure that the workplace you create is a psychologically safe and happy place for them. You are looking for good quality, relevant training and one to one support for your staff.
It's just all too much. You desperately want a break from work but you fear it will be even worse when you return. You are looking for help to realign life and work so that you get time to recuperate and enjoy the good things in life.
You know where you want to get to in life. You just need someone to stretch and support you so you can attain your own definition of success and create your own sense of fulfilment and wellbeing.
You are bombarded by constant demands and just want to hide away in the bathroom. You need practical ways to reduce the stressors and become more resilient to those you can't avoid.
You love your job and you want to be as good at it as you can be. You'd love someone to mentor you, challenge you and help you grow as a person and as a lawyer.
You have big decisions to make and it's hard to figure out what to do. You need someone to act as a sounding board and to help you align your decisions to your core values.
You feel the urge to bring something into existence, whether that's a business project or a new creative endeavour like a book or an art project. You need a coach with a creative flair to help you make it happen.
You've suffered a loss. Maybe it's a divorce or a bankruptcy, a partnership bust up, bereavement or a diagnosis of an illness. Whatever it is it's rocked your world and knocked you off kilter. You are not looking for therapy but you do need someone to help you build your new future.
You are stepping up into leadership or starting a new job. Or maybe it's time to retire or take a longed for sabbatical. You need to evaluate what you want from this new life and who you need to grow into as a person to make the most of your opportunity.
You love helping people but you are sick of spending all day every day listening to people fight, to stories of abuse and trauma, poverty and neglect. It feels like you want to clean yourself out. You need a regular place to offload and process the content of your work.
You keep making resolutions and promises to yourself even when it's not New Year. But somehow you always let them slip by. You want someone to help you get accountable to yourself and to help you change the mindsets that trip you up.
There are a hundred and one other ways you could be feeling today. I can't list them all but I can work with them all. Positive or negative, there are reasons behind them all, and actions you can take to make life the way you want it.

Traditionally the profession has not been good at acknowledging these feelings and meeting the needs they create. There is much talk about 'wellbeing' but few people empowering you to actually make your life better. Instead, lawyers struggle on alone in silence.
It is my purpose to change that.

About Helen L. Conway

I experienced all of these emotions in my work as a former solicitor and barrister specialising in family law and as a full-time District Judge in the Family Court, County Court and Court of Protection for over 10 years.

I learned that wellbeing is not just the absence of the stress-induced illness that plagues the profession. It is the positive state of having enough of all that you need, physically, intellectually and emotionally. It includes feeling supported, resilient, fulfilled, and happy at work. It is about having a sense of meaning, purpose, and balance. It is also about having sufficient personal time to enjoy life with family and friends, to engage in sustaining activities and to recuperate.

Having experienced what it is like to be depleted of all these positives and having suffered the consequences, I spent several years learning how wellbeing is really achieved and sustained. Having now achieved it in my own life, my purpose is to share what I learned with you so that you can create your own sense of wellbeing.

As a qualified coach, trained mindfulness teacher and associate at JSA Psychology, I combine my legal experience and my psychology knowledge to empower others to create and sustain a genuine sense of wellbeing at work and in their personal lives

You can read more about on my About page..

Learn More about me
family law supervisor, relationship counseling, wellbeing coaching, Mindfulness teacher

I focus on four common needs:

Space to think

A pause to reflect on work and its demands. A place to offload and process the toxic relationships and stories of abuse and trauma you hear . Someone who can support you to grow and develop as a lawyer and individual.

Workplace wellbeing

Practical ways to manage stress, prevent burnout and create a sense of meaning, purpose and yes, even joy at work and in your personal life.

Relevant bespoke CPD provision

Soft skills training and one to one self-development work that meets your precise, individual needs, relevant to the exact situations you face at work.

Support through transition

Stepping into leadership, career change, starting a business, returning to work after a break, retirement or making a passion project happen on the side. All these are easier with someone alongside you.

I do this by offering three types of service:

One to one
Family Law Supervision

An ongoing relationship providing professional support and one to one continual professional development to family lawyers

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One to one coaching

Support for you if you need to make changes in your life, have a goal to achieve or find yourself at a transition point such as stepping up into leadership, job change or return to work. I also work with clients wishing to work on passion projects to bring balance and pleasure into their lives.

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Learn More

Group Training

Bespoke in house courses, online teaching and keynote speaking for conference providers

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Learn More

Ready to talk to me about your needs?

I'd love to talk with you about what exactly I can do for you. Feel free to book an initial no-obligation call to start the conversation.
BOOK A CALL

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Checkout my blog for articles about personal development, wellbeing and coaching
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How to square the circle of ‘wellbeing fatigue’.

Last week Lucy Reed wrote a , eloquent and thought-provoking blog entitled Wellbeing Fatigue. The rant (her word) should be read in full here , but the nub of it was that she was sick of wellbeing tips. She stated ‘the problems that were frying our resilience and longevity are structural not internal to us as individuals – take away the ‘look how busy I am b***s**t’ and there is still a major problem. We’re all talk and no action because ultimately, we as individuals are almost powerless.’ Then: ‘this is a circle that can’t be squared. There aren’t enough judges or slots in the

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I have a pair of full length caramel leather boots that are mocking me. They are flopped over in my porch next to the shoe cabinet they don’t fit in. Of course, I don’t see them often because the front door is only used now for Tesco and DPD deliveries. Because my husband’s study is a flight of stairs nearer the door than my office he tends to beat me to the paltry excitement of taking in boxes. But still, I know they are there because they call to me.  Remember when you bought me? Remember when you first wore

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Stress Management

Is compartmentalising stress the best strategy for lawyers?

This week I heard a retired Judge speak to a non-legal audience about the challenges of doing High Court cases. * The audience was treated to just fifty minutes of well-told stories about children forced to deal in drugs for the County Lines gangs, children trafficked from the Philippines, vulnerable women from India enticed into surrogacy arrangements they later regretted.  When questions were invited, the very first one was, “Are Judges given therapy to deal with all of this?” That’s a question I am asked often, but the speaker’s answer was different to my stock reply of “No, but they should

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How to stop your inadequacy button being pressed.

This morning I was happily listening to a podcast when the writer being interviewed said something that pushed right on my Inadequacy Button. He was being asked about his writing process.  He was a night writer, he explained, because, although he got up at 5 am and had a little time to read contemplative material and mediate over breakfast, the youngest of his five children got up at 6am, so there was no extra time to write then. He worked a full-time job from 8 to 4.30 which he described as ‘full on and with no possibility of half-assing it’.

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As a CEO I regularly need to navigate challenging situations both at work and personally. Taking time to stop and sharpen the saw had become necessary. Over the years I have been fortunate to have met quite a few coaches who have helped me to focus on specific questions that reveal a direction to head off into. Helen Conway is heads above the others and I would not hesitate to recommend her to any senior executive in a corporate or third sector who is required to deal with complex issues in an evolving environment. Don’t expect an easy ride, those questions will drill in and penetrate areas where the special light she carries will shine with a positive and witty intelligence; I like that because it works for me!
David Skews
Helen coached me over a number of sessions around using my time more effectively to have a balanced life. I brought a number of issues to the sessions; dealing with overwhelm, bedtime routines, developing time for fun and creative activities, procrastination, planning and completing things. My work life balance has improved immensely through her coaching and I am definitely enjoying life more, achieving more in a timely way and am much more open to new possibilities and opportunities. She has a very creative and thought provoking style of coaching. Her innovative questions expanded my thinking, I came up with options and actions that I would never have thought of by myself. She usesd fun and colourful techniques to get me to think differently and explored my metaphors of situations go deep in to an issue and to find my motivation. I looked forward to my coaching sessions with Helen, she has a very positive, fun and upbeat persona. I always came out of her sessions excited to do the things I had committed to.
Ruth Arnott
Helen really did a fantastic job in supporting my thinking. Helen has natural ear for coaching - I think all her years in law has fine tuned her skills. She has great listening ability and asks clear concise questions and I felt in very skilled hands. I felt both supported and challenged in the conversation- which was just the right balance for what I needed. She helped me see a familiar pattern of mine with greater depth of clarity and it helped me to engage with it in a new way. This means I now have a broader range of options in his area and I can move past these old blockages - and for this I owe her a genuine thank you.
Simon Crowe
I benefitted from Helen's coaching in a wide variety of ways and all of these have been very positive and have had an impact not only on the goals I set myself but have had a ripple effect into other areas of my life. Helen is a very positive and encouraging coach and that has supported me in being kinder and more appreciative of what I have achieved and can achieve. I have been given the opportunity to explore how I get in my own way and how what I believed about myself was stopping me making progress. What I gained from the coaching sessions was priceless.
Collette Mercer
Thursday, August 31, 2017
I had a wonderful series of coaching sessions with Helen when my confidence was at a bit of a low. I was reality impressed by her relaxed style which she gently challenged my thinking. I'm excited about the future of my business and am much more confident than I was a few months ago. Thanks Helen so much for your continued support.
Susie Flynn
Helen is excellent at a client centred approach and at getting to the heart of the matter for what is wanted, identifying blocks to achieving the task and finding a way forward. Coaching with Helen takes success to a whole new level. Helen’s questioning is outstanding, as she clarifies what is said, delves what the goal would mean and makes it possible to achieve the goal. Helen works to professional standards, which include reliability and integrity. She presents as someone in control of herself and facilitates others to take control. Helen is clearly a dynamic woman who is destined to achieve great things as a life coach and I feel privileged to have shared her journey and have gained so much from my time with her.
Lynn Jones