Meet Jonathan Beitner
A note from Beitner Coaching & Consulting Founder
I started Beitner Coaching & Consulting to reduce mental distress in the legal profession by helping lawyers, law students, and legal professionals cultivate confidence, find balance, and take control of their careers. Since then, we have collaborated with law firms, Fortune 500 companies, top law schools, and other legal organizations to build cultures that bolster the well-being and professional development of their attorneys, students, and staff.
I am passionate about this work because promoting well-being in the legal profession is (to steal from The Office’s Michael Scott) a win-win-win-win-win-win-win scenario. When individual attorneys thrive, everyone wins. The attorney wins. The lawyers and staff they work with win. Their clients win. Their firm wins. Their family wins. The profession wins. And I win—because I get to do what I love.
Let’s cross off the difficult To-Dos, manage challenging situations, and build a legal profession where lawyers flourish in sustainable careers that they find rewarding and meaningful.
Best,
Everyday is a fresh opportunity to start anew and get back on track.
We appreciate that well-being and professional development are a continuous process. There are two ways of looking at that fact.
It can be daunting or even a bit discouraging, knowing that the "work" is never done and we must always be conscientious about maintaining our well-being and working towards our professional goals.
But it can also be liberating. If for some reason you find yourself struggling in one or more aspect of your personal or professional life, every day is a fresh opportunity to start again and get back on track. We want to be aware of, and learn from, our past but we do not want to be unnecessarily bound by it.
Well-being is multi-dimensional.
We also appreciate the importance of taking a holistic and multi-dimensional approach to your well-being and development. When considering how best to support your teams or what effective self-care looks like for you personally, it is important to recognize each dimension of wellness, including emotional, social, physical, intellectual, spiritual, and occupational well-being.
Well-being is professional development.
Law firms are increasingly recognizing the important ways well-being and professional development are inextricably linked.
Issues such as time management, effective leadership, stress management, and preventing burnout have a huge impact on an attorney’s health and their career trajectory. And skills like developing a growth mindset, engaging in cognitive reframing, fostering psychological safety, building resilience, and cultivating self-compassion are as important to advancing careers as they are to bolstering well-being.
We help attorneys go from working 12 hours to bill 8, to working 10 hours to bill 9 and maximize that extra time to recharge their batteries, pursue their passions, and continue advancing their careers.
Well-being is for everyone.
Promoting well-being is crucial to all attorneys and staff regardless of position, level of seniority, practice area, or department. Anyone whose job requires them to think critically, stay engaged, or deal with adversity will benefit from the skills and strategies we cover.
In addition to its universal benefit, investing in well-being has become a strategic imperative for law firms and legal departments because it is essential to driving professional development, cultivating high-performing teams, and optimizing performance.
Our Areas of Expertise
MENTORING
We help law firms and other organizations build effective mentoring programs or reexamine and refine their existing ones. Whether you are looking to increase participation, facilitate more meaningful interactions, or starting from scratch, we can help you think through the pros and cons of various approaches for structuring and implementing effective mentoring programs.
TRANSITION TO PRACTICE
It's not a secret that transitioning from being a student to life as a first-year associate can be challenging. We help bridge the gap as seamlessly as possible and arm new professionals with the necessary skills, knowledge, and mindset to thrive in their legal careers. Topics include: managing workload and stress, self-care, cultivating confidence, effective communication skills, soliciting and implementing feedback, seeking out mentors and sponsors, and building a professional identity.
WORKING PARENTS
As the father of two daughters, whose wife is a partner at a large law firm, Jonathan appreciates the unique pressures working parents face. He is passionate about supporting parents and other caretakers, and works with D/E/I/B departments, HR professionals, and affinity groups to provide programming designed for working parents and individual coaching for those preparing to take and/or returning from parental leave.
Founding Story
For over six years, Jonathan was a litigator at an Am Law 100 firm, where he developed his passion for bolstering well-being and professional development in the legal industry. While at the firm, he became enmeshed in the then-budding attorney well-being movement, was certified as a professional coach, and took an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course. As a result, Jonathan was able to see first-hand the impact coaching and prioritizing well-being can have on one's performance at work.
Over the years, Jonathan continued to be a leading advocate for attorney well-being and supported law students, lawyers, and legal professionals to develop and thrive at the city, state, and national level.
He was a co-creator of the ABA's Well-Being Pledge and volunteers on the committee that administers the Pledge. He also helped draft Illinois's Mental Health and Substance Use CLE requirement. He is the Featured Well-Being Coach for the Chicago Bar Association and previously served as chair of the CBA's Well-Being and Mindfulness Committee. Read more about Jonathan’s Pioneering Advocacy.
Through that work, Jonathan has come to appreciate the important ways in which well-being and professional development are inextricably linked. You cannot perform your best when 30% of your headspace is taken up by stress and anxiety, and burning the midnight oil for weeks on end is unsustainable. We focus on evidence-based strategies, skills, and techniques to empower attorneys to propel their careers to new heights while finding balance and fulfillment.
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
-- Charles R. Swindoll