You may already know about all of the personal benefits of creativity; in case you don’t, let’s go through a few. Creativity boosts your mental health, it boosts your physical health, it reduces your risk of dementia, and it can help you become more intelligent. What’s more, pursuing creative endeavors can create lasting friendships with others who share your hobby, if not your demographics.

You can understand pretty easily why anyone would benefit from creative pursuits, though it’s obviously especially useful for professionals who work creatively. Professionals like artists, actors, musicians, and attorneys. Now, one of those things may not sound like the others, but attorneys, as you know, are some of the most creative people. Whether you’re working criminal cases or tort law, you have to piece together seemingly disparate elements in order to make the best case for your client. Fitting odd pieces together is one of the cores of creativity. The research you do, arguments you make, decisions you advise your clients on - all these things require creativity.

With this established, it’s obvious that becoming more creative is valuable for any attorney. The next question is, how do you become more creative? There are a lot of different potential answers. You can take up a new hobby that you don’t know anything about. You can go to a place that you don’t know well. Basically, any time you’re leaving your comfort zone, you’re helping to increase your creativity.

Why? The answer to that question may lie at the root of what it is to be creative. Being creative is, ostensibly, making something new, but as we all know there’s nothing new under the sun. Creativity, then, is a lot like common law; there are a million small building blocks that stack up to whatever we create. Going into the unknown is like gathering new blocks. The blocks themselves might already exist, but you can now take them and add them to blocks you’ve already gathered in order to create new forms. The components may be the same, but the structure you build will be different.

This building block philosophy applies to legal work in a myriad of ways. That’s why it’s a good idea to take CLE in a domain that’s completely foreign to you; learning about different branches of the law will expand your view and enhance your creativity. You might also take on pro bono cases that are outside your usual work; you’ll experience something similar, but different, from what you usually do. While you’re getting all of this creative exercise, you might find you have a bit less time to travel to far off locations for appearances; that’s why we have court appearance professionals ready to help you at the drop of a hat.