Digital Exhaustion: Regaining Control in an Always-On Legal Profession

Why Attend?

This seminar will provide tools required to combat digital exhaustion while maintaining productivity. By the end of the program, participants should be able to:

• Define digital exhaustion and distinguish it from ordinary busyness, stress, and burnout.
• Explain how attention, inference, and emotion contribute to digital exhaustion, cognitive overload, and diminished performance.

• Assess how individual digital work habits and organizational expectations contribute to interruptions, excessive task switching, urgency, emotional reactivity, and cognitive fatigue.

• Recognize how digital exhaustion can affect judgment, communication, competence, diligence, and other ethical responsibilities in legal practice.
• Apply practical, evidence-based strategies to reduce cognitive load, improve attention and focus, establish healthier digital boundaries, communicate more intentionally, and use technology in ways that support sustainable legal performance.

Technology has changed the practice of law. Attorneys can access information instantly, communicate from virtually anywhere, collaborate across multiple platforms, and leverage powerful digital tools to enhance efficiency, improve client service, and streamline legal work. When used intentionally, technology can increase performance and client service.

Yet, the same technologies meant to make legal practice easier have also created an “always-on” culture. Lawyers are expected to respond instantly to emails, text message, notifications, and virtual meetings while simultaneously managing multiple digital platforms and tools to practice law. The result is constant interruption, frequent task switching, fragmented attention, and an ever-increasing cognitive load. Over time, these demands contribute to digital exhaustion, which can impair decision making, communication, professionalism, judgment, and overall effectiveness.

This interactive program explores the growing problem of digital exhaustion in the legal profession. Participants will examine the key drivers of digital fatigue including attention, inference, and emotion, and how everyday work habits, rather than technology itself, contribute to stress, distraction, and burnout. Rather than advocating for digital minimalism or abandoning technology, this program focuses on using technology with greater intention. Participants will evaluate which digital tools genuinely enhance their work, recognize habits that undermine focus and productivity, and develop sustainable practices that improve both professional performance and personal well-being.

Participants will leave with practical, evidence-based strategies to reduce cognitive overload, minimize unnecessary interruptions, establish healthier digital boundaries, protect focused work time, communicate more intentionally, and use technology in ways that support effective, ethical, and sustainable legal practice.

Registration Deadlines:

Cancellation Policy: Cancellation/transfer requests will be honored until 5:00 p.m. the day preceding the seminar. You will, however, be charged $40 if you cancel or transfer your registration to a different seminar after the link to the materials has been e-mailed by Virginia CLE^®.

Full refunds or transfers are available up to two days after a webcast in the unlikely event that you experience technical difficulties.

MCLE Credit Caveat: The MCLE Board measures credits by the time you spend in attendance. If you enter a seminar late or leave it early, or both, you must reflect those adjustments accurately in the credits you report on your credit reporting form. A code will be given at the end of the seminar, which must be written on your MCLE form.

Private recording of this program is prohibited.

Can’t Attend?

E-mail distance_ed@vacle.org to be notified when/if this program is made available as an online or USB seminar.
E-mail publications@vacle.org to be notified when/if this program’s seminar materials are made available for sale.

Course Schedule

• Q&A will be handled via chat room for Webcast attendees.
• Q&A will be handled via e-mail for telephone seminar attendees.

Faculty

Charlene P. Reilly, Esq., Assistant Director and Education and Outreach Manager, Virginia Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program (VJLAP) / Glen Allen

Jesse Gordon, Esq., Partner, Reaves PLLC / Chesapeake

About the Speakers

Charlene P. Reilly, Esq., Virginia Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program (VJLAP) / Glen Allen

Charlene Reilly is the Assistant Director of the Virginia Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program (VJLAP). She joined VJLAP in 2003 as the Education and Outreach Manager and was promoted to Assistant Director in 2005. Before joining VJLAP, Ms. Reilly practiced law as in-house regulatory mortgage compliance counsel, advising a national mortgage loan subservicer, and a Virginia banking institution, on consumer financial services laws and regulations. Drawing on her experience as a practicing attorney, she understands the unique pressures facing legal professionals and is passionate about promoting lawyer well-being, reducing the stigma surrounding mental health, and helping attorneys build sustainable, fulfilling careers.

Ms. Reilly is a frequent speaker on lawyer well-being topics, presenting continuing legal education programming on issues including emotional intelligence, chronic stress, imposter syndrome, and more. In recognition of her leadership and service to the profession, she was named a 2025 Virginia Lawyers Weekly Leaders in the Law honoree. She is admitted to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia and Washington, DC. Charlene earned her BA in Psychology in 1998, her MA in Psychology from Pepperdine University in 1999, and her JD from The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law in 2003.  Outside of work, she enjoys volunteering in her community and spending time with her husband and three children, enjoying their hometown of Virginia Beach.

Jesse Gordon, Esq., Reaves PLLC / Chesapeake

Jesse Gordon is a Partner at the law firm of Reaves PLLC d/b/a Reaves GovCon Group, a boutique law firm specializing in Construction and Government Contracts.  He is licensed to practice law in Virginia and was formerly admitted in Washington, DC.  Mr. Gordon earned his Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Virginia and his Juris Doctor from the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law, where he served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy. While in law school, he served as a law clerk with the Norfolk City Attorney’s Office and for the Architect of the Capital.

Mr. Gordon’s practice has focused on construction law since 2007, when he worked for a Chambers-rated construction boutique with offices in Northern Virginia and Washington, DC.  Mr. Gordon is a former chair of the Virginia Bar Association’s Construction and Public Contracts Law Section, and a former member of the Board of Governors of the Virginia State Bar Construction and Public Contracts Section.  He is a current member of the Virginia State Bar’s Standing Committee on Professionalism.  He is the author of Virginia Construction Law and Practice, published by LexisNexis.