Articles on the mind at work in law.
More than a hundred articles on how legal professionals think, decide and hold up under pressure, written for the profession from inside it. Search the library, start with the pieces most people begin with, or browse by theme.
The latest articles.
Six articles most people begin with.
Your Brain Has a Bandwidth Limit
Working memory is not unlimited, and legal practice hits the limit faster than almost any other environment. What that means for how you perform.
Nobody Performs Well Exhausted
The profession treats sleep deprivation as evidence of commitment. The neuroscience has a different view.
The Decision You Regretted Almost Immediately
Most failures of legal decision-making are neurological events, and understanding the mechanism changes what is possible.
Attention to Detail: Why Smart Legal Professionals Still Miss Things
The practitioner who misses something important is operating in conditions that exceeded what attention can sustain.
Does Working More Hours Make You Better at the Work?
Output flatlines after 55 hours a week and then falls. What the evidence shows about overwork and cognitive quality.
The Work Is Not Getting Harder. Your Bandwidth Is Getting Fuller.
Cognitive agility is holding complexity and moving between matters with your decision-making intact from the first hour to the last.
The full library.
Every article on the site, grouped by theme and listed with the most recent first. Use the search box at the top to find a subject across all themes.
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Browse the articles as a feed, newest first →The monthly column.
Cognitive Performance in Practice, written by Sonja Cilliers and Maryke Swarts for De Rebus, the journal of the South African attorneys’ profession.
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