We all know that lawyers suffer from stress, anxiety, depression, and alcohol/substance abuse at a much higher rate than the general public. The ABA has released a new study that shows the numbers are worsening.
Findings indicate:
21% of the attorneys responding to the survey acknowledged that they are problem drinkers, 28% struggle with depression, 19% experience anxiety, and 11.5% have reported suicidal thoughts. The project surveyed 15,000 lawyers around the United States during 2014 and 2015.
Let’s pause just for a moment and think about the implications of this study. Assuming there are 10 attorneys on your team, statistically, two to three of the attorneys are suffering from drinking problems, depression, anxiety, or are contemplating suicide. Now, ask yourself — what implications does this have on the firm’s ability to service its clients? If you’re the client, do you really want 20 to 30% of the attorneys working on your case to be suffering from a mental illness or substance abuse? Obviously not.
What’s puzzling is that even though we’ve been gathering and reporting these numbers for the past few decades, no one seems particularly alarmed. It’s a problem that someone else has. It’s a problem that only exists in some other firm or someone else’s team. Biglaw firms, employing hundreds of lawyers, are deeply in denial, pretending these statistics do not apply to them.
In this age of increased client demands, increase in billable hours, and more work with less support, it is imperative that law firms provide tools for lawyers to self-regulate and increase self-awareness. Bar associations need to offer preventative measures rather than simply focusing on discipline.
There Are No Easy Solutions
Alcohol/substance abuse, stress, anxiety, depression, suicide — these are difficult problems without easy solutions. Let’s face it, lawyers are a group of very intelligent people and if there were an easy solution, we would’ve found it by now!
I’m often baffled by law firms that want to offer a one-hour “stress reduction” workshop. When I inquire about the purpose for the workshop, the problems run much deeper and it’s completely unrealistic to think any one-hour workshop is going to have any meaningful impact.
Path to Wellness
The solution to these problems is, of course, wellness. I like The World Health Organization’s definition:
…a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
What is explicit in this definition is that wellness is something that requires consistent effort and attention. It’s not enough to go to the gym once on January 2nd and never think about it again for the rest of the year. It’s not enough to think about your mental, physical, and emotional well-being when you’re experiencing depression.
When I talk to lawyers about self-care, lawyers will often tell me that they “don’t have time.” I’d like to call bullshit. Every single one of us makes time for those things that are important — for example, doing your lawyer work.
As discussed in the ABA article:
Cases, clients, billing and collecting—not always in that order—take center stage, she said, while most lawyers put their own emotional and physical needs last.
By always putting our own needs last, we’re constantly borrowing from our reserves and are running on fumes. Self-care isn’t being “selfish.” Self-care is necessary so that we can care for our “physical, mental, and social well-being” so that we don’t develop a physical or mental illness.
Role of Mindfulness in Wellness
The American Bar Association specifically lists “mindfulness” as part of the solution. I personally started practicing meditation and mindfulness on a daily basis because I was part of the statistics. I was struggling with anxiety and mild depression. (You can read my story here.) I wasn’t unique and I certainly wasn’t alone, but at the time, I felt completely isolated in my experience.
It turns out, this is a very common experience. I have given over 100 talks on using mindfulness and meditation to increase resiliency, self-awareness, self-regulation, and as a tool to manage stress and anxiety. I wrote a book on the subject for the ABA.
The consistent message lawyers have repeatedly shared with me is the deep sense of isolation. The shame. The fear. Trying to hold everything together while inside, they were falling apart. I can’t help wonder how it is that we have so completely failed as a profession.
Self-Care Is Your Responsibility
Which brings me back to self-care. We must stop paying lip service to the importance of self-care and actually prioritize it. We must stop perpetuating the residual hazing ritual of abuse that is so prevalent in our profession. When a lawyer in your firm pulls yet another all-nighter, this isn’t something to encourage, but rather discourage.
It’s time to rethink the law firm culture. We have to fill our toolbox with a lot more tools. Law firms cannot rely on yet another happy hour as a means of pacifying a much deeper issue.
Finally, self-care is your responsibility. No one is ever going to tell you — hey, you’re really working too much. It’s time to practice self-care.
My deepest wish, my dear reader, is that you not only recognize the importance of self-care, but put it into practice. Carve out time to practice self-care into your calendar and honor it. Because let’s face it, you cannot be the best lawyer, wife, husband, significant other, friend, mother, sister, brother, if you’re not physically and emotionally well.
This article previously appeared on Above the Law.