Today’s guest article is by attorney Tim Culbert, a lawyer and partner at the law firm of Purvis & Culbert located in Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada. He is a passionate mental health advocate in the legal profession, and is the creator of the podcast, “The Wellness Docket” available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. 

WHY BASEBALL?             

I have sat in front of my computer several times, trying to craft the perfect, impactful guest blog post, but I come up empty each time. This is the second or third iteration of this post. My logical brain tells me there’s no such thing as a perfect post; just be honest and write from the heart. The anxiety and depression chirp at me in the back of my mind: “You’re not good enough to write this,” “What if you expose too much?” and so on. Then I trust my instincts—they have never let me down before. I have usually been more successful than my brain sometimes convinces me I can be. I suspect that many lawyers have experienced similar struggles.

In 2025, I started the Wellness Docket podcast, which deals with all things mental health in the legal profession. The podcast is owned by a Not-for-Profit company called “Lawyers With Depression Canada Inc.,” which is a nod to Dan Lukasik’s work with the Lawyers With Depression website in the US.  Since the podcast’s launch in September 2025, I have learned many important lessons from the featured guests. On May 22, 2026, I gave a presentation to the Law Society of New Brunswick entitled “On Lawyering and Baseball – Real Tools and Tips from the Wellness Docket.” This post is based on chosen highlights from that presentation.

I used to watch baseball with my father when I was growing up. To this day, watching baseball (sometimes with my teenage son, when he tolerates it) is one of my favourite things to do to relax. There’s a predictability behind the sport. You can easily get lost in the analytics and statistics and forget whatever else happened during the day. Like lawyering, failure is built into baseball. Even the best hitters fail 6 or 7 times out of 10. Like lawyering, there’s a mental game behind baseball. It’s easy to get in your own head after failing on a particular file. Legal careers usually extend a long time. A baseball season is 162 games. There are ups and downs built into the lifecycle of each.

I wanted to prepare a fun and unique presentation for the Law Society symposium on mental health, so I created 10 baseball-themed tips and related them to lessons learned from guests on the Wellness Docket. I may write an article on my own mental health journey in the future, but this is what I am feeling now, in this moment, so I will go with that and trust my instincts.

One important disclaimer: I am not a trained psychologist or counselor, so these are tips that resonate with me but may not work for you. You should always seek the help of trained professionals in dealing with specific issues. So, without further ado, here are a select 5 of my 10 tips from the Wellness Docket Podcast through a baseball lens.

REAL TOOLS AND TIPS FROM THE WELLNESS DOCKET

1. Be Like a Relief Pitcher – Have a Short Memory

Relief pitchers have likely one of the most stressful jobs in baseball. They come in near the end of the game to lock things down for their team. This usually happens in a close game. When relief pitchers fail, it’s easy for fans to blame them for losing the game.  A relief pitcher cannot let one blown save carry over into the future. In other words, they must have short memories. Similarly, lawyers will experience losses. Even the best lawyers lose sometimes. It’s an inevitable part of practice, but no one ever wants to lose. It’s important not to let one loss or a case that didn’t go your way carry over into another file. Take the lessons learned, lick your wounds, but don’t carry your losses on into the next game, except for the learning that comes from these experiences.

In Episode 6 of the Wellness Docket, lawyer Matt Hiltz talked about how he has worked to overcome childhood trauma and past experiences as a lawyer. (Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple).  In Episode 10, lawyer turned psychotherapist, Moira Cook, talked about one of the biggest sources of trauma for lawyers being their memories of setbacks and losses, and how they can worry about what others are thinking (Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple). Having short memories is an important part of living in the present and moving on from the past. These two podcast guests have done a particularly good job of moving on from past traumas.

2. Community is Everything – Build Your Team

Something happened after the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawyers (and people in general) became more isolated (see, for example, “Towards a Healthy and Sustainable Practice of Law in Canada”). The loss of community is a recurring theme throughout the Wellness Docket episodes. In Episode 7, Dylan Gibbs talks about the community he created with Inn Laws, which is a vetted community for lawyers (listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple). Also see the Inns Law website. In Episode 1, Maneesha Gupta discussed the community she created through Mindful Lawyer Canada. (Listen to on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple). Episode 5 guests, David Skinner and Karen Dunn Skinner, have created a helpful community for lawyers through their company, Gimbal Canada Inc. (Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple). In Episode 11, Dan Lukasik talked about multiple communities he has started, including a local support group in the Buffalo, New York area. Find your community, whether that’s in person, virtual, related to the law, or otherwise. That is your team that will help carry you through the tough times in practice (Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple).

3. Be Authentic – Find Your Niche and Own It

 It is often difficult to be authentic as a practicing lawyer. There are many rules that can require a person to conceal their true self. But lawyers in the profession seem to be moving toward roles that allow them to be more of their authentic selves. I started the Wellness Docket because this podcast allows me to be authentic. I had (and still have) some fears, but these fears have dissipated with each episode and the incredible feedback I have been receiving. This reminds me of a quote about integrity that I have referred to several times over my podcast journey:

“This way of life requires living with integrity: ensuring that my inner and outer selves are integrated. Integrity means having only oneself. Dividing into two selves—the shown self and the hidden self—that is brokenness. So, I do whatever it takes to stay whole. I do not adjust myself to please the world. I am myself wherever I am, and the world will adjust. I will never promise to be this way or that way; I will only promise to show up as I am, wherever I am. That’s it, and that’s all. People will like me or not, but being liked is not my One Thing: Integrity is. So, I must live and tell my truth. Folks will come around or quit coming around. Either way, Lovely. Anything or anyone I could lose by telling the truth was never mine anyway. I’m willing to lose anything that requires me to hide any part of myself (see Glennon Doyle, Untamed (The Dial Press 2020)).”

In lawyering as in baseball, you must be authentic. You shouldn’t be trying to steal bases if you are not a fast runner; you likely won’t be trying to swing for the fences if you are not a home run hitter. In law, we often get pulled in many directions, whether it’s toward specific firms or areas of the law. In Episode 6, Matt Hiltz and I discussed authenticity many times, and particularly when referencing the book, The Four Agreements. If you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend it. It’s a reasonably short and simple read. For a summary, here are the four agreements: 1. Be impeccable with your word; 2. Don’t take anything personally; 3. Don’t make assumptions, and 4. Always do your best.  In Episode 7, Dylan Gibbs and I discussed the book, The Courage to Be Disliked, and how some things are just “not your task”. In essence, one of the key premises of this book is that people are responsible for living authentically by doing the tasks that belong to them. They are not responsible for how other people react to their choices. Find ways in your practice to be your authentic self. That is what I have done with the Wellness Docket podcast. It allows me to express ideas that are authentic to me, which is an important part of my overall mental health.

4. Go Up to the Plate with a Plan – But Read What the Pitcher is Throwing

This might be the most difficult tip to follow. In baseball and lawyering, you should always “go up to the plate with a plan”. One pitcher might be a flamethrower, and you have planned to pick a particular spot where you think a pitch is coming. This is better than just going up there, hacking, and hoping for the best. But you must adjust if that pitcher does something different. If you’re prepared for speed and the pitcher throws a curveball, you will take an awkward swing. As a lawyer, you must always go into court or a client meeting with a plan, but learn to pivot when it becomes obvious that this plan will not work. To me, this is one of the reasons why it’s called a “practice”. There are rules, such as “always ask leading questions on cross-examination,” but these are just rules, and sometimes you should break these rules in certain situations. Knowing when to follow the exception rather than the rules takes practice and a great deal of learning. In Episode 8, Erin Cowling talked about a huge pivot she made by leaving active practice to start Flex Legal, a freelance legal company (Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple). Also, Erin published a book titled The Modern Freelance Lawyer (Flex Legal Network Inc., 2025). In Episode 2, Lindsey Mazza talked about how she decided to pivot away from active legal practice to begin her own consulting company (Listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple) (also see Everyone went up to the plate with a plan, but had to adjust when life threw them curveballs they did not expect.

5. Pay Attention to the Process – Even When Results Are Not What You Want

If I had to choose one tip from this list, this would be the one. When I am frustrated with an outcome over which I have no control, it is helpful to think about the process. Creating a repeatable, scalable process not only improves productivity but also helps prevent oversights. In Episode 5, David Skinner, Karen Dunn Skinner, and I discussed their book, The Power Zone Playbook for Lawyers, and the types of processes lawyers can create in their law firms to maximize their “power zone”, which is essentially the sweet spot where you are working on tasks that: 1. You are uniquely qualified to do; 2. You love to do, and 3. Adds the greatest value to your business (picture as a Venn diagram). These authors also discuss creating processes, such as Standard Operating Procedures. To be clear, as in baseball, one cannot guarantee outcomes. That is a hard pill to swallow for most lawyers, who are competitive and “type A” personalities by nature. Sometimes you go up to bat and hit the ball hard, but it goes straight at someone.

When we pay attention to the process, it is a little easier to deal with results that are not always predictable. We can do our best and follow a specific process, but we cannot control how a particular judge will decide a case. We also cannot control when clients choose to do the exact opposite of what we have advised them to do (I know every single lawyer has a story about this topic).

CONCLUSIONS – ON LAWYERING AND BASEBALL

I said it at the outset, and I’ll say it again: a baseball season is 162 games. The best teams in the sport’s history lose 60 or 70 of them. They lose, then they show up the next day and play again. A legal career works the same way. You will lose files. You will have days (or weeks, or longer) where you wonder whether you made the right choice. You may deal with anxiety, depression, or the kind of quiet exhaustion that comes from carrying other people’s problems year after year. None of that means you don’t belong here. It means you care. It means the work is real to you.

What the guests of the Wellness Docket have taught me (and what I hope comes through in these five tips) is that none of us are figuring this out alone. There are lawyers ahead of you on this path who have already faced what you are facing. Some of them have been guests on this podcast. Some of them have written the books I mentioned. Some of them are in the communities I described above. Find them. That’s your team.

I hope this post has made you think, and I would love for you to check out the Wellness Docket on your chosen platform. Please reach out if you have any questions about your particular legal journey: lwdcanadainc@gmail.com. We are all in this together, even though it sometimes does not feel that way!