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Imposter syndrome ‘common’

The Lived Experience panel (from left) Chair Belinda Winter, Justice Mellifont, Nick Dore and Mishelle Zara at this year's breakfast.

Even judges can suffer from imposter syndrome. That was one of the observations around mental health that QCAT President Justice Kerri Mellifont shared yesterday.

Justice Mellifont was part of a panel at the Queensland Law Society’s Mental Health Breakfast: Lived Experiences in the Law, along with Nick Dore, Managing Principal of Fisher Dore Lawyers, and Mishelle Zara from Converge International.

The event, held during Queensland Mental Health Week, was chaired by Belinda Winter, Partner at Cooper Grace Ward Lawyers and chair of the QLS Wellbeing Working Group.

The panellists generously shared strategies for coping with stress and tips for self-care based on their own experiences.

They also discussed imposter syndrome and the importance of removing the stigma around talking about mental health.

Justice Mellifont broke imposter syndrome down to essentially “Oh my goodness, some day soon someone is going to realise I’m actually crap. That I’m not a good lawyer, that I’m not a good parent, or I’m not a good whatever”.

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“For my entire career at the bar, I would be really worried going to court that I would be good enough,” she said. “That the judge would work out that I wasn’t good enough. I came to the bench and I worked out fairly quickly that I, in fact, was good enough.

“You see the levels of competence, good and bad, and I fit somewhere amongst the middle of that, and I was, in fact, good enough. And I also learned along the way, that many, many, many other people suffer from exactly the same thing.

“The only piece of advice I have in respect of this is not from the position of expertise, it’s from my personal view, that the sooner you can become at peace with yourself the better.

“So I may not have ever been the best lawyer in the room, or the best judge in the room, or the fastest, I’m not even the cutest sometimes, but I worked hard. I was honest. I acted with integrity. Every time I turned up I did the best I could do on that day. And what I have learned is that, in fact, is enough, and that competing against others and comparing yourself to others is really unproductive.

“Your goal is to be the best you can be on any given day.”

Justice Mellifont also had advice for early career lawyers around wellbeing and “the power of getting help and surrounding yourself with good people”.

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“You have to remember the brain is the most complex part of the human existence and about it the least is known,” she said.

“It is a good idea to place yourself in the hands of people who have learned it about five or six or 10 or 15 years.”


Justice Mellifont had advice for early career lawyers.

Justice Mellifont’s other tips were stressing the importance of being in healthy personal relationships; understanding the nature of stress; and recognising that much of social media is “utter nonsense”.

Nick spoke about his self-care practices, saying he was “a big fan of routine”, and that making time and space for routine, whether personal – workouts or shopping – or work-related – saving file notes – was vital.

“We only have so many lockers inside that some times you’ve got to empty some of those to make space for other stuff,” he said.

“I’ve had to make certain decisions in my life and say ‘well, all right, I can’t commit to that anymore’. I know I am going to miss out on something over here, but to be able to do what I want over here, that’s going to be a consequence of what I do.

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“Having that internal understanding of going ‘I can’t be everyone’s best friend, I can’t please everyone, some people are going to be upset but what’s my number one priority’.

“Routine is really important. All these things that most lawyers hate but I find really important because it reduces the stress.”

Nick said it was important to make positive steps in organisations and career decisions based on your core values.

“Anchor yourself back to some core values, your own personal values – make sure they align with the firm,” he said. “If it doesn’t, then maybe it’s not a good fit. I think a lot of stress comes from that.”

Mishelle said well-being in the profession had come a long way since the early 2000s from her own experience as a lawyer “where we were dealing with a very different culture”.

“It was a very different landscape,” she said. “At that time, wellbeing just wasn’t a conversation that was being had.

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“I think if fast-forward to now and we are sitting here today at a wellbeing breakfast in the profession. Even that to me speaks volumes that there is progress and things have changed.”

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