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Mindful Lawyering: a Pilot Study on Mindfulness Training for Law Students

OBJECTIVES: Many US law schools are now offering elective courses in mindfulness training to alleviate disproportionately high levels of anxiety, depression, stress, and disordered alcohol use among law students. To date, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these courses has been lacking. The...

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Autores principales: Rosky, Clifford J., Roberts, R. Lynae, Hanley, Adam W., Garland, Eric L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9388961/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36000093
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-01965-w
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author Rosky, Clifford J.
Roberts, R. Lynae
Hanley, Adam W.
Garland, Eric L.
author_facet Rosky, Clifford J.
Roberts, R. Lynae
Hanley, Adam W.
Garland, Eric L.
author_sort Rosky, Clifford J.
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVES: Many US law schools are now offering elective courses in mindfulness training to alleviate disproportionately high levels of anxiety, depression, stress, and disordered alcohol use among law students. To date, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these courses has been lacking. The aim of this pilot study was to explore the feasibility and impact of a 13‐week mindfulness course, “Mindful Lawyering,” specifically tailored to law students. The primary hypothesis was that mindfulness training would be significantly correlated with improvements in well-being and mindfulness. METHODS: The design was a non-randomized, quasi-experimental study involving 64 law students. The mindfulness group was 31 students taking Mindful Lawyering; the comparison group was 33 students taking other law school courses. Outcome measures were the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale; the Positive and Negative Affect Scale; the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test; and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire. RESULTS: Results provide promising evidence to support the hypothesis. The mindfulness group showed significantly greater improvement on measures of stress (p < .001, d = 1.15), anxiety (p < .001, d = . 90), depression (p = .012, d = .66), negative affect (p = .002, d = .81), disordered alcohol use (p = .011, d = .67), and mindfulness (p < .001, d = 1.32) from pre to post relative to the comparison group. The course was well accepted and feasible for law students. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from the current study suggest that mindfulness training may occasion improvements in the well-being of law students. More research is needed to replicate these findings in larger, randomized samples of law students. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12671-022-01965-w.
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spelling pubmed-93889612022-08-19 Mindful Lawyering: a Pilot Study on Mindfulness Training for Law Students Rosky, Clifford J. Roberts, R. Lynae Hanley, Adam W. Garland, Eric L. Mindfulness (N Y) Original Paper OBJECTIVES: Many US law schools are now offering elective courses in mindfulness training to alleviate disproportionately high levels of anxiety, depression, stress, and disordered alcohol use among law students. To date, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these courses has been lacking. The aim of this pilot study was to explore the feasibility and impact of a 13‐week mindfulness course, “Mindful Lawyering,” specifically tailored to law students. The primary hypothesis was that mindfulness training would be significantly correlated with improvements in well-being and mindfulness. METHODS: The design was a non-randomized, quasi-experimental study involving 64 law students. The mindfulness group was 31 students taking Mindful Lawyering; the comparison group was 33 students taking other law school courses. Outcome measures were the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale; the Positive and Negative Affect Scale; the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test; and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire. RESULTS: Results provide promising evidence to support the hypothesis. The mindfulness group showed significantly greater improvement on measures of stress (p < .001, d = 1.15), anxiety (p < .001, d = . 90), depression (p = .012, d = .66), negative affect (p = .002, d = .81), disordered alcohol use (p = .011, d = .67), and mindfulness (p < .001, d = 1.32) from pre to post relative to the comparison group. The course was well accepted and feasible for law students. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from the current study suggest that mindfulness training may occasion improvements in the well-being of law students. More research is needed to replicate these findings in larger, randomized samples of law students. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12671-022-01965-w. Springer US 2022-08-19 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9388961/ /pubmed/36000093 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-01965-w Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Paper
Rosky, Clifford J.
Roberts, R. Lynae
Hanley, Adam W.
Garland, Eric L.
Mindful Lawyering: a Pilot Study on Mindfulness Training for Law Students
title Mindful Lawyering: a Pilot Study on Mindfulness Training for Law Students
title_full Mindful Lawyering: a Pilot Study on Mindfulness Training for Law Students
title_fullStr Mindful Lawyering: a Pilot Study on Mindfulness Training for Law Students
title_full_unstemmed Mindful Lawyering: a Pilot Study on Mindfulness Training for Law Students
title_short Mindful Lawyering: a Pilot Study on Mindfulness Training for Law Students
title_sort mindful lawyering: a pilot study on mindfulness training for law students
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9388961/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36000093
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-01965-w
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