About this Episode

Welcome to today’s episode of The Communication Solution podcast with Casey Jackson, John Gilbert and Danielle Cantin. We love talking about Motivational Interviewing, and about improving outcomes for individuals, organizations, and the communities that they serve.
The episode focuses on the intersection of communication strategies and the justice system. Judge Mary Logan, with 35 years of experience as an attorney and a judge, shares insights into how communication, specifically motivational interviewing, can be integrated into legal practice. The discussion revolves around balancing compliance-based models with behavior change models, improving outcomes for individuals in the legal system, and innovative approaches in judicial settings.

In this podcast, we discuss:

• Guest Profile – Judge Mary Logan: With 35 years of experience in law, transitioning from a public defender to a judge, Mary Logan discusses her approach to legal practice.


• Balancing Legal Models: The conversation explores the balance between compliance-based models and behavior change models in the legal system.


• Emphasis on Motivational Interviewing: Logan highlights the importance of motivational interviewing in legal settings to improve communication and outcomes.


• Specialized Courts for Targeted Needs: The establishment of veterans and community courts is discussed, showcasing tailored approaches for different groups.


• Empathy in Judicial Proceedings: The significance of empathetic and effective communication in court proceedings is emphasized.


• Challenges of Time-Limited Interactions: The podcast touches on the difficulty of making a significant impact in the short interactions typical in court settings.


• Judge’s Role in Facilitating Change: Logan speaks about the judge’s potential to contribute to behavior change while maintaining legal responsibilities.

You don’t want to miss this one! Make sure to rate us or share this podcast. It would mean so much to us!

This has been part one of a two-part podcast. We hope you’ll join us for the second portion. You don’t want to miss this one! Make sure to rate us or share this podcast. It would mean so much to us! Thank you for listening to the communication solution. This podcast is all about you. If you have questions, thoughts, topic suggestions, or ideas, please send them our way at casey@ifioc.com. For more resources, feel free to check out ifioc.com.

Transcribe

 Hello and welcome to the communication solution podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. I’m your host, Danielle Cantin, here at the Institute for Individual and Organizational Change, otherwise known as IFIOC. We love to talk about communication. We love to talk about solutions and we love to talk about providing measurable results for individuals, organizations, and the communities they serve. Welcome to the communication solution that will change your world.

Hello, this Casey Jackson.  I am excited to be here.  I’ve got a judge, Mary Logan,  who is somebody that I’ve known for years.  In spite of how young we are, we’ve known each other for quite a few years.  Actually Mary knew my mother extremely well too. And they were buddies and kind of on the same team and advocating.

And we’re talking today about. It’s kind of that balance between where do you find the kind of that that sweet spot or a corridor between compliance based models and behavior change based models with all the things we talk in my so I asked the judge if she would come on and she was like, absolutely.

I’ll come talk to you. So so Mary, would you just kind of. Introduce yourself and talk a little bit about kind of your role. And then I’ve got at least 5, 000 questions that I want to dive into and kind of let your free reign as well, too. So. All right. Thank you, Casey. I appreciate that. And I really appreciate being on here with you and having this opportunity to talk.

 I, I don’t know where you want me to start with it other than I’ve been a judge since 2009, but actually I’m celebrating as of this very day, my 35th year as an attorney,  which that actually just struck me about two seconds ago. And,  I think I, in my whole concept of where I wanted to go in my legal profession, it was always to change people’s lives.

Of course, when you’re younger, which I am no longer,  it is, you want to change the world, right? What came very clear to me as I matured in my role was that. If I could help one person and then the next person, that I, there’s a possibility that I might be able to actually have that super small ripple effect throughout the world.

So,  you have to humble yourself sometimes in the, in those capacities, but.  In 2009, I ultimately was appointed as a judge,  after having spent,  years in the public defender’s office,  defending folks in the criminal legal system and seeing the really negative or non, non change outcomes with.

It’s simply the retribution model in the criminal legal world. I had, I have a civil background. I did medical malpractice. It was my first,  avenue of practice.  So definitely, you know, narrowing down on one individual family because we dealt with families whose children had been,  severely damaged in the birthing process.

And so, you know, you can only make, it’s just that one instance right there, what is, which is cataclysmic. But being able to make some, some change, even if it’s just applying money, as it were, because up in the civil realm, that’s what you do, but bringing those wrongs to redress and then having the family have at least some support so they could move forward.

So that’s a bit, a bit, a little bit of the flavor of my, my practice and, and my approach in the law.  But in 2009, when the city stood up its own municipal court,  instead of contracting for digital services, which is something that can happen.  We were able to do something different with this court.

And I took that mantle very seriously, having come from practice in the district court since 1997 until 2008. And, and just seeing that, you know, punishing people wasn’t really changing behavior. It was getting the pound of flesh for the moment. But ultimately I would watch as those individuals will just continue to come back into court over and over representing first the father and then representing the grandfather and the father and the children.

And it was just this awful cycle and really wanting to do something to change that. So Mary, the thing that I wanted to just find out is what was going through your head or what, when you a decided to join, because It wasn’t mandatory for you to join the motivation training,  with the, the folks that I was training at that point in time, what, what drew you to that training and then what kept your interest kind of locked into it or, or, you know, captured your, your thoughts around it.

Yeah, I was very excited when I learned about it because I had at that point in time.  We had already started two,  therapeutic,  problem solving courts. One was, actually stood up my veterans court, which is,  veterans enhanced treatment court before I stood up the community court.  And, but for each of them, it, it was with the idea being, you know, how, how best can I communicate with the individuals that are here before me?

Veterans, of course, are a very different population, very used to discipline, very used to order. And then they, their re entry is in the civilian world and we are chaos out here. And so,  I mean, some of their response to that chaos.  And some of it is, you know, PTSD and TBI and some, some other overlays that had happened in the, in the, their military experience and some that they brought to their military experience that was only made worse by their experience.

 Because they’re certainly trained to not reveal any aspect of any mental health issue that they have at all. And they’re, you know, it’s very individualized, suck it up, go forward, you are one of a unit, the unit is the thing, the mission is the thing, all of that messaging. Contrast that with my incredibly chaotic,  community court with individuals that are, you know, struggling with shelter.

 And, and that wasn’t my upbringing. And so that, that my upbringing was that I was placed in a position where I could help people. I was the youngest child, or for whatever reason, that was just what I took on.  I was somebody’s champion. I can remember all the way back to elementary school where I was just very motivated to not allow someone to be victimized.

 So all of that really culminated in then learning about motivational interviewing where there was this ability to reach someone in such a short period of time. And I always only have a short period of time. I’m the last one they talk to, right? They’ve spoken to, they’ve been,  they’ve been out of scene, they’ve been spoken to by police.

And just as a segue, the fact that there were officers that were going through motivational interviewing, I think at the same time. That was amazing to me that that, you know, that you could reach to them and that they would, and I’ve known many of your instruction videos have we’ve watched as police officers unfold this scene that is, it starts out again with chaos and then does not end with anybody getting harmed, including the officers.

 As they then handle somebody that’s, you know, on the outskirts of, of dealing very well with the situation. So I just, I was attempting and I have throughout my career attempted to educate myself on those things. I am no expert. I am far from anything of an expert on any of these topics, but, but at