Becoming an Authentic and Values-Driven Legal Professional
Gabriela Brunner
July 16, 2025
In our series so far, Jennifer Riggs and I have shared information and research about how stress impacts the brain, mindset shifts for resilience, and ways to improve your brain health. In this last post of our series, we focus on applying what you’ve learned to the workplace, paying special attention to confidence, setting boundaries, and connecting (and re-connecting!) to your values, especially in times of challenge.
We also have a special invitation for you, our reader! Please join us on Wednesday, July 23, at 12:00 pm Central / 1:00 pm Eastern for a live conversation to debrief what we’ve learned, ask questions, and build community. Check out all the details here.
----
Preparing for law school is challenging. Navigating law school is challenging. The legal profession is challenging. We don’t say this to be discouraging, but to acknowledge a reality about the legal profession: it is challenging on its best day and super challenging on its worst. It’s time to get used to navigating challenges.
Those who are drawn to the law tend to be high achievers. They are usually smart, driven, focused, and ready to take on challenges. They can also be prone to anxiety, people-pleasing, and unused to “failure,” which is why there is such a focus on law student and lawyer well-being these days (source).
In this post, we are going to talk about how you, as a pre-law, law student, or legal professional, can develop ways to navigate the inevitable challenges that come with being part of this profession. We focus on building confidence through value-based authenticity, learning how to say no, and leaning on your values when faced with critically challenging situations.
Values-Driven Authenticity Builds Confidence
Confidence can be a powerful tool in the legal profession and life. The type of confidence we are referring to here is not the ego-based, arrogant kind. It is the kind that comes from knowing who you are at a core level, living a life guided by your values, and showing up with authenticity every day (or almost every day). Taking the time to build confidence through values-driven authenticity is like taking the time to design and build the foundation of your home properly. You can’t put the roof on a house before you’ve built the walls. And you can’t build the walls before you pour the foundation. And you can’t pour the foundation before you’ve drawn and redrawn the blueprint for the house. See what we are getting at?
Additionally, learning and living your values pays dividends. Once you know what your core values are, they become a guiding compass that can help you navigate any challenging situation.
We’ll start by defining “values” and walk you through an exercise to help you understand what yours are. Values are the things that are most important to you and form the foundation of your life. They are the principles, standards, and qualities you consider worthwhile or desirable, and they guide your actions, decisions, and choices. Oftentimes, if you are struggling with a situation or something doesn’t feel right in your life, it can be because of a conflict with your values.
Click here to download a Core Values Assessment created by Gabriela.
Here is why living according to your values matters:
Your values serve as an internal guidepost or compass to help you navigate any situation.
Your values, when identified and honored, can help you create meaning and motivation for even the most mundane of tasks.
Honoring and focusing on living a values-based life helps protect us from stress. It takes a lot more energy to mold yourself to be what someone else wants instead of living authentically rooted in your values.
If data and studies are your thing, here are a couple that you can refer to:
A study at UCLA in 2005 focused on giving undergraduates a series of stressful tasks. Those who had reflected on their values before undertaking the tasks showed significantly lower cortisol levels after a stress test.
The same study shows that authentic self-affirmations not only help reduce stress but also improve performance. Interestingly, the core values being affirmed do not need to be related to the task at hand.
Living from your values is synonymous with being authentic. Once you identify your core values, you may experience a sense of alignment that causes your shoulders to soften and your brow to unfurrow. This is what authentic confidence feels like, and understanding your values is key.
Values-Driven Authenticity Supports Boundary-Making
Boundaries. Saying no. Saying no and meaning it. These can be difficult to practice, especially when you are a young attorney trying to prove your worth at your firm, or a pre-law student trying to build a resume to help get you into your dream law school. Boundaries, however, are a crucial part of maintaining your overall wellness and living a values-driven, authentic life.
Many of us were raised and socialized to seek social approval, particularly girls. Often, this approval even equates to our self-worth. The more people like us, the better we must be, and the better we can feel about ourselves.
Social approval is a reward the brain learns to anticipate when we please others. Even anticipation of that reward causes a release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with reward and pleasure (source 1, source 2). Interestingly, if you anticipate social approval but instead feel disappointment or rejection because you set a boundary (i.e., you said no), the brain will pay attention and remember that the next time. You will then avoid the negative response, leading you to say yes when you really mean no. This can quickly snowball, setting a dangerous precedent for what others will learn to expect from you.
Sometimes, it feels like we will lose more by saying no than by saying yes. However, when we don't say no, we often end up taking on too much, leading to stress, overwhelm, and resentment. (And we know that chronic stress is not healthy for our brain, mind or body!)
But another, more subtle downside of prioritizing people-pleasing and not setting boundaries is losing connection with yourself. When we prioritize pleasing others and use that to guide our decisions, we stop checking in with our values, desires, and beliefs. In short, we stop living a values-driven, authentic life and base our self-worth on social approval.
We create this pattern in the brain: the less we set boundaries, the more we prioritize pleasing others, and that becomes the guide for our decisions. By repeating this behavior, we strengthen the neural pathways in our brain that turn this behavior into a habit or pattern. At the same time, we weaken the neural pathways that help us value and honor our own needs.
The good news is that, because our brains have neuroplasticity (the ability to rewire), we can absolutely change our patterns! As we do, saying no becomes easier. Each time we say no, we begin to break a pattern of people-pleasing and strengthen our internal compass. It builds our voice, confidence, and our authenticity as we regain control over our decisions. Respectfully setting boundaries is a message to others that we value ourselves and our time. But more importantly, it sends a message to ourselves that we deserve to have our needs met and our time respected.
We invite you to play with setting three boundaries in the next week.
Sometimes what is asked of us is beyond what is needed; what is expected of us is not what we truly want; and how someone treats us is not ok. I challenge you to respectfully express your boundaries.
And, we encourage you to start small.
Here are some ways you can start setting boundaries today:
Say no to leaving the office to get coffee when you know you need those extra 30 minutes to finish a task that will allow you to leave work on time.
Ask a colleague if you could chat at lunch or at a different time so you can finish the task you started.
Put up an email away message and let others know you will not be replying to emails during your time off.
Let your classmates know you will be studying alone today (because you know it works better for you) and that you would be happy to socialize later.
Values-Driven Authenticity Helps You Make Difficult Decisions
Once upon a time, I (Gabriela) was placed in a very difficult situation at work. I felt that what I was being asked to do was unethical, in addition to making me really uncomfortable. I grappled with what to do for a long time until I remembered my values. As soon as I leaned into my core values, the answer was clear: I needed to leave.
Was it scary? Very much so. Leaving this job left many unknowns I would need to work through, including finding another job. But you know what was scarier? Knowing that if I said yes in that scenario, I would be expected to say yes in other, potentially worse scenarios. And it would snowball from there until I was buried so deep, I would not be able to see a way out. I simply could not live with that.
Living a values-driven, authentic life doesn’t mean that you won’t be faced with challenges. It also doesn’t mean that things will always be smooth sailing. What it means is that no matter what comes up in your personal or professional life, you will have a solid foundation, a guiding compass, to help you make the best decision for yourself.
Authenticity is a marker of confidence and trust and will get us farther than simply being agreeable or pleasing. The more you live a values-based, authentic life, the more people will trust you, the deeper your connections will be, the more your confidence in yourself and your abilities will increase, and the more your energy will grow, leaving more room for you to accomplish the things you want to accomplish in life.
And in that energy of authenticity is a freedom, lightness, and contentment that will serve you at every stage of your legal journey.
----
Thank you for following along with this series. We are grateful for the opportunity to share what we have learned through some tough lessons over the years. Experience has made us seek out additional opportunities to learn and grow so we can share important wellness information with others.
Let’s take the conversation off the page and into real live connection! We invite you to join us for a conversation, via Zoom, on Wednesday, July 23, at 12:00 pm Central / 1:00 pm Eastern. Click here to learn more and register.
Wishing you a healthy brain, a strong nervous system, and solid core values as you journey through your legal career!
Gabriela Brunner holds a JD from Chicago-Kent College of Law and a MS in Higher Education Leadership from Western Illinois University. Prior to becoming a prelaw advisor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Gabriela practiced law for ten years in business litigation and immigration law. She has a passion for mindfulness and meditation, particularly as it applies to pre-professionals.
