Dr. Peter J. Weiss

An Open Let­ter to the Legal Pro­fes­sion

Are your clients healthy?  Prob­a­bly not, since most Amer­i­cans aren’t.  Plus see­ing an attor­ney for almost any rea­son is pretty stress­ful for most peo­ple, and stress is a big part of our health prob­lems in Amer­ica today.  And what about you?  Are you healthy?  I hope so, but it’s hard to be healthy in the cur­rent toxic envi­ron­ment.

Our col­lec­tive lifestyle is the prob­lem.

In gen­eral, our diets are lousy.  We don’t sleep.  Exhaus­tion has replaced exer­cise.  Drugs and alco­hol are con­ve­nient escapes.  We accept high lev­els of phys­i­cal and emo­tional stress as a part of life, and we turn to med­i­cine to solve our lifestyle-created prob­lems.

And you know what?  Med­ical care doesn’t really help many peo­ple get well.  Believe it.  Most peo­ple with lifestyle dis­eases get slowly worse despite good health­care.  With every pass­ing year Amer­ica spends more and more money on health­care and we use new high-tech treat­ments, but our over­all health con­tin­ues to dete­ri­o­rate.  That’s why I resigned as a health plan CEO to become a Well­ness Evan­ge­list.

What if well­ness started with you?

What if a lawyer visit was bet­ter for your clients’ health than a doc­tor visit?  Peo­ple don’t need doc­tors to live dif­fer­ently; they need trusted friends to help them.  Could you be that trusted friend for your clients?

Think about it. You prob­a­bly have a client rela­tion­ship strat­egy — some way in which you nur­ture your rela­tion­ship with your clients beyond pro­vid­ing legal ser­vices.  Why not make your rela­tion­ship stat­egy a con­ver­sa­tion about health and well­ness?

My book “More Health Less Care” is designed to start that con­ver­sa­tion.  It’s sim­ple and prac­ti­cal — you can read it in 90 min­utes — but it’s also deep.  It will make you think.  It could change your life.

If you find it valu­able, you can pass it along to your clients as a gift, express­ing your desire for their good health and long life.  If you’re sin­cere, your follow-up con­ver­sa­tion will be mean­ing­ful.

You don’t have to vol­un­teer to be their health coach, but you can con­nect on a deeper level and per­haps encour­age each other towards bet­ter health.  The topic is time­less, and you’ll be talk­ing with clients about it for years.

Why am I, a physi­cian, sug­gest­ing this to you attor­neys?  You have many influ­en­tial clients — busi­ness and polit­i­cal lead­ers whose per­sonal health aware­ness may help our nation.  You also have clients that may be ready to change — indi­vid­u­als in a cri­sis or per­haps draft­ing an estate plan.  Your clients do trust you and close rela­tion­ships can facil­i­tate change.  And of course you’re a very influ­en­tial group your­selves.

Is this a crazy idea or just a way to sell books?  No.  I’m for real — a seri­ous per­son who thinks it’s crazy to look for health from health­care.

Why couldn’t health and well­ness start with lawyers?