Visualizing an Om Run

On any given day at Boston's Bingham Dana, you might find senior partner Justin Morreale sitting quietly at his desk with his eyes closed taking deep, relaxing breaths. You might also see him once a week teaching fellow lawyers and staff how yoga poses such as the Downward Dog can help them remain "calm and centered." It's all part of his strict yogi lifestyle that he says has made him a better lawyer.

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On any given day at Boston’s Bingham Dana, you might find senior partner Justin Morreale sitting quietly at his desk with his eyes closed. Morreale isn’t sleeping on the job. The head of the corporate department at the 500-lawyer firm is busy overseeing the sale of his biggest client, the Boston Red Sox. But no matter how grueling his schedule, Morreale, a certified yoga instructor, spends 10 minutes a day taking deep, relaxing breaths. It’s all part of his strict yogi lifestyle that he says has made him a better lawyer. Morreale’s go-with-the-flow attitude has helped him handle the intense preparations to sell the baseball team. By some estimates, the Red Sox sale will be valued between $300 million and $350 million. At press time Morreale was sifting through the first round of nonbinding bids from potential buyers. (The sale will be completed sometime after the postseason this fall.) He admits that the sale would likely mark the end of the firm’s GC role. “But we might stay on in areas … like the [construction of a new] stadium or litigation,” says Morreale, who will help the team’s current owner distribute proceeds from the sale. To a true yogi, the cup is always half full. When he isn’t overseeing due diligence, Morreale teaches about a dozen Bingham Dana lawyers and staff how such moves as the Downward Dog — a basic yoga pose that involves bending at the waist, arms stretched forward canine-style — can help them remain “calm and centered.” A tough sell to the buttoned-up set, perhaps. But the 60-year-old Morreale is a convincing model. Shortly after he began practicing yoga and eating a healthy diet 30 years ago, he quit smoking (a pack a day), and his frequent stress-induced headaches did not come as often. He noticed “a tremendous difference in my flexibility and peace of mind,” he says. Now, every Wednesday at 6 p.m. sharp, Morreale’s students, associates, partners, and staff leave their worries and their cell phones — ringer set to off, please — at the door: “I say, ‘Stop thinking about your e-mail and voice mail. Let it all fall away,’ ” says Morreale. He leads the class through 20 minutes of warmups, 45 minutes of yoga postures, and about 15 minutes of breathing exercises, then caps off the class off with some “ relaxation and a little chanting.” It is, he says, “a ’60s moment.” This yogi does not charge like a big-firm partner — his rate is only $200 for 14 weeks of classes. He gives all the money to charity (there’s always that partner draw to fall back on). The class has Bingham Dana lawyers unwinding throughout the firm — literally. Thanks to Morreale’s instruction, longtime partner Daniel Goldberg, who handles all of the Red Sox’s litigation matters, has started doing subtle neck and back stretches throughout the day. “I take advantage of the ride in an elevator or while sitting at a conference table,” he says. While yoga still isn’t common at large law firms, Bingham Dana isn’t the only Zen zone. A group of lawyers at Boston’s Hale and Dorr gathers informally to practice weekly, and a recent yoga workshop at New York’s Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson has left lawyers clamoring for more. Yoga, says Morreale, doesn’t make a lawyer soft, just flexible and calm; doing yoga doesn’t mean a lawyer can’t be a hard-nosed negotiator. “A guru has the right response for whatever it is,” he says. “You get more of that the more yoga you do.” Your clients will thank you, or as yogis say in Sanskrit, “Namaste.”

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