Finding the Route to Post-Pandemic Attorney Wellness Through Service

By Anna Archer

The pandemic intensified stress levels for many lawyers, and returning to normal—already elevated—stress levels is a slow process. While not a panacea, many specialists recommend that those who are experiencing greater than normal levels of stress focus more on self-care. This column will first discuss the pandemic’s impact on the mental health of attorneys. It will then introduce the “wheel of self-care” and discuss specific ways lawyers can improve outcomes on some of the spokes of the wheel through service to others.

Pandemic’s Impact on Attorney Wellness Law

is unquestionably a stressful occupation. Most people who enter this field are perfectionists, and practicing lawyers frequently deal with issues that have profound effects on the lives of their clients, making the drive to be perfect even stronger.1 This contributes to an increased prevalence of depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and burnout in the profession. Prior to the pandemic, at least 21% of licensed lawyers were problem drinkers, 28% struggled with depression, and 19% exhibited anxiety symptoms.2 These numbers are significantly higher than the percentage of Americans, in general, who misused alcohol or suffered from anxiety and depression during the same timeframe: 14% of Americans were considered “problem drinkers,”3 8% of Americans over the age of 12 had moderate to severe depression,4 and 18% of Americans had an anxiety disorder5 (with 4% considered severe).6

The pandemic had a major impact on the mental health of Americans. Mental Health America reports that use of its online screening tool for anxiety increased 634% from January to September of 2020, and use of the depression screening tool increased 873%.7 In 2020, 8.4% of American adults had a major depressive episode, with many of these episodes left untreated.8 According to the CDC, the “average anxiety severity score increased 13% from August 19-31, 2020 to December 9-21, 2020,” and the “average depression severity score increased 14.8% from August 19-31, 2020 to December 9-21, 2020.”9 No statistics are available indicating that the already higher percentages of depression, anxiety, and alcohol abuse in the lawyer population increased, or that the severity of those challenges increased for lawyers; however, since studies have found that lawyers are more likely than people in other occupations to suffer from depression and anxiety, and some studies indicate that lawyers are five times more likely to abuse alcohol than those in the general population, it is fair to conclude that the pandemic was rough on the mental well-being of lawyers.10

This conclusion is supported by pandemic-related statistics for broader categories of mental health concerns that adversely impact lawyers. In a survey conducted by The American Lawyer in 2021, 70% of lawyers reported that the pandemic had a negative effect on their mental health.11 Those who reported a decline in well-being often felt they could not disconnect from work and reported a heavier workload and more trouble focusing at work than those who did not have a decline in well-being during the pandemic.12 Additionally, according to a recent Workload and Hours survey conducted by Bloomberg Law, “lawyers have consistently felt burnout at their jobs at least 44% of the time since January 2021.”13 While that percentage decreased throughout 2022, it is still concerning. These statistics signal to employers the importance of emphasizing more wellness initiatives to ensure a healthy workforce and caution lawyers to consider ways to improve their mental well-being.

The Wheel of Self-Care

The statistics reiterate that lawyers already have stressful jobs, and the pandemic made it even harder. But what is the solution? While reading a column in The Federal Lawyer cannot alleviate the readers’ stress levels, perhaps it can provide some insight. Most people, including lawyers, will concede a need to do a better job at self-care, but figuring out practically how to fit that into a busy schedule is more challenging. The “wheel of self-care” may help.14

This wheel is comprised of six categories—or spokes—of self-care: physical, personal, mental, emotional, spiritual, and professional. While these categories are mostly self-explanatory, examples of the types of activities that may be of interest to lawyers and also fulfill each category are as follow:

• Physical: exercising, getting enough sleep, going to the doctor regularly;

• Personal: setting goals, budgeting, connecting with people at work, spending time with family;

• Mental: journaling, talking to a confidant about stressors, relaxing, going to therapy;

• Emotional: laughing, crying, finding a hobby, forgiving;

• Spiritual: meditating, doing pro bono work, volunteering; and

• Professional: taking time for lunch, setting boundaries, taking a vacation.15

Lawyers are busy. Thinking about what one should be doing to improve one’s mental health can be overwhelming, mostly because it is often a low-level priority. But taking a few minutes of time to sit down and make out a list—or draw a wheel—noting areas where selfcare needs are being met and areas where small changes might make a big difference is a worthwhile exercise.16

Alleviating Stressors by Helping Your Community

Helping our neighbors is part of our national identity,17 and being a part of that tradition improves multiple spokes of the wheel of selfcare, including the emotional and spiritual spokes. Certainly, service to others is not an answer to all of the challenges lawyers face that have intensified due to the pandemic and associated stressors, but continuing the tradition of service to our community is one way in which lawyers can practice self-care and improve their mental well-being.

Taking a pro bono case is a traditional form of giving back that is often encouraged by firms and bar associations, but there are times when lawyers, particularly those who are most in need of a mental health boost, do not have the bandwidth to take on a case.18 It is also sometimes difficult for those who work in the federal judiciary to find pro bono opportunities that do not conflict with ethical standards.19 There are, however, other ways lawyers can give back to their communities that will also help with general emotional fulfillment levels.

Volunteering at Your Local, State, and National Bar Associations

One way to give back to one’s community, that would also boost the personal and spiritual spokes of the wheel of self-care, is volunteering through local, state, and national bar associations. For example, most bar organizations offer continuing legal education opportunities, and by volunteering for a committee or group that plans these programs, lawyers can give back to the legal community and also interact with other attorneys. Local bar organizations also often offer opportunities to work with other lawyers on community service projects, such as volunteering at a food bank, cleaning up a park, or building a house for Habitat for Humanity. These are usually short-term commitments that are easy to work into one’s schedule, and working together with other lawyers to make the world a better place for people in your community can significantly improve several spokes in the self-care wheel.

Formal and Informal Mentoring Programs

Another way to give back and improve the emotional, spiritual, and personal self-care spokes is by participating in formal mentoring programs or informally mentoring a student, new associate, or young lawyer. The amazing benefits to mentees who find the right mentor are well known, but lawyers at all levels who act as mentors also benefit by gaining self-esteem, leadership skills, and confidence while playing a role in the careers of younger lawyers or law students.20 Generally, mentoring does not require a large time commitment, but the wisdom more seasoned mentors have gained along the way is invaluable to younger lawyers and students—who often are uncertain about the same decisions that their mentor, or those in their mentor’s network, made years ago. Hearing about how others have handled these challenges is immensely helpful to the mentee, and watching a mentee be successful and thrive is extremely rewarding to the mentor.

There are multiple types of mentoring opportunities for those who are interested in this method of boosting the levels on their wheels of self-care. Informal mentoring usually happens organically, but spreading the word that one is willing to help encourages these mentoring relationships to develop. As to formal mentoring, many law schools, firms, and organizations have programs and are in need of alumni or employee volunteers. Additionally, local, state, and national bar associations usually have mentoring programs.21 For example, the Federal Bar Association has a Lift Up Leaders Mentorship Program that focuses on “creating pathways to leadership in the professional community as well as in the association.”22

Know When to Say No

The wheel of self-care looks different for everyone, and lawyers should consider the extent to which they are able to take on additional obligations. It is imperative not to lose sight of the forest for the trees—the end goal is to take care of oneself and be a healthier and happier lawyer. If planning a vacation to fulfill the personal spoke or going to a networking event to improve the professional spoke causes more stress than benefit, there are likely ways to improve those spokes that fit within the comfort level of the individual lawyer; everyone is different. Importantly, remember that overcommitting may cause more harm than good. Know when to say no—which, by the way, improves the professional spoke of the wheel.23

Considering how to improve the spokes on the wheel of self-care, as modified to fit each lawyer’s own personal style, is an important tool in warding off the stressors inherent in this profession. For lawyers who find that attempting to improve the spokes on the wheel is not enough, and are feeling overwhelmed, depressed, or burned out, resources offered by each state’s lawyers’ assistance program, employee assistance programs, or peer-to-peer support groups like the Lawyers Depression Project, may help.24 Help is available. And if your levels on the wheel are mostly full, maybe you can lend a hand to a lawyer who is struggling through one of these programs and boost your spiritual spoke a bit more. We may at times be adversaries, but we are all human beings, and we are in this profession together. 

Endnotes

1Leslie A. Gordon, How Lawyers Can Avoid Burnout and Debilitating Anxiety, ABA J. (July 1, 2015, 6:00 AM).

2See Kendra Brodin, On the Heels of a Global Pandemic, WellBeing Week in Law Is More Important Than Ever, ABA J. (May 3, 2021, 9:00 a.m.); see also ABA Nat’l Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change (2017)

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(recommending positive changes to help reduce these statistics). Another study found that lawyers suffered depression 3.6 times more than those in 100 other studied occupations. See Gordon, supra note 1 (citing a 1990 Johns Hopkins University study).

3Associated Press, 33 Million Americans Are Problem Drinkers, or 14 Percent of U.S. Adults, Wash. Post (June 8, 2015).

4Which Americans Suffer Most from Depression?, CBS News (Dec. 3, 2014).

5Jamie Ducharme, A Lot of Americans Are More Anxious Than They Were Last Year, a New Poll Says, Time (updated May 8, 2018, 9:36 PM).

6Neighborhood Psychiatry & Wellness, Why 75 Percent of Anxiety Sufferers Fail to Get Proper Care, Psych. Today (Aug. 13, 2018).

7Number of People Reporting Anxiety and Depression Nationwide Since Start of Pandemic Hits All-Time High in September, Hitting Young People Hardest, Mental Health Am. (Oct. 20, 2020).

8Major Depression, Nat’l Inst. of Mental Health (Jan. 2022); Depression Facts & Statistics, Anxiety & Depression Ass’n of Am. (July 5, 2022).

9Haomiao Jia, et al, National and State Trends in Anxiety and Depression Severity Scores Among Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic—United States, 2020-2021, CDC (Oct. 8, 2021).

10See Billie Tarascio, Depression Among Lawyers: The Statistics, Modern Law Practice, (last visited Nov. 16, 2022) (discussing a study from Johns Hopkins University published in the Journal of Occupational Medicine); Silent Suffering in the Courtroom: Lawyers Substance Abuse, Addictions.com (Sept. 16, 2021).

11Dylan Jackson, Legal Professionals Were Already Struggling with Stress and Isolation, and the Pandemic Has Made Things Much Worse, Am. Law. (May 3, 2021, 5:00 AM).

12Debra Cassen Weiss, Surveyed Lawyers Report They Experience Burnout in Their Jobs More Than Half the Time, ABA J. (Mar. 8, 2022, 8:43 AM), (discussing the Bloomberg Law survey from the last quarter of 2021).

13Jessica R. Blaemire, Analysis: Attorney Burnout Abating, but Not Extinguished, Bloomberg L. (Sep. 19, 2022, 4:00 AM). The sample size for this survey was 638 attorneys. Id.

14Thanks to Alicia Freeman of Texas Lawyers Assistance Program (TLAP) for introducing the author of this column to the Wheel of Self-Care on the Behind the Lines: The Houston Lawyer Podcast See Behind the Lines: The Houston Lawyer Podcast, Overcoming the Impact of Vicarious Trauma, Hous. Bar Ass’n, at 51:44 (Aug. 31, 2022). While this column relies on the wheel used by TLAP, there are other versions of the wheel that categorize the self-care concepts embodied in the wheel differently. Whichever version one chooses, organizing self-care needs into categories is helpful.

15Id.

16E.g., Jeremy Sutton, The Self-Care Wheel: Wellness Worksheets, Activities & PDF, Positive Psych. (Aug. 13, 2020).

17See Robert W. Gordon, The Citizen Lawyer—A Brief Informal History of the Myth with Some Basis in Reality, 50 William & Mary Law. Rev. 1169, 1181 (2009) (discussing how “American lawyers have an exceptionally robust tradition of public service and public involvement”).

18Consider, also, that not all pro bono work involves taking an entire case. Local bar associations may offer opportunities that require less time commitment such as a will-a-thon or helping seal juvenile records.

19E.g., Fed. Jud. Ctr., Maintaining the Public Trust: Ethics for Federal Judicial Law Clerks 20-21 (4th ed. 2013) (“You may act pro bono in certain civil cases (although you may not enter an appearance in any state or federal court or administrative agency).”).

20See Nicola Cronin, The Positive Impact of Mentoring on Mental Health, Guider (Feb. 3, 2022); see also Jonathan B. Amarillo, A Virtuous Cycle: The Mutuality of Mentoring, Chi. Bar Ass’n, Rec. 48 (Oct. 2014) (“What many non-mentors don’t realize, however, is that the personal development that attends mentoring is mutual.”); Elizabeth A. Wright, Survey Says . . . Mentors Reap Benefits of Mentoring, Utah Bar J. 35 (July/Aug. 2012) (“The benefits of mentoring include building leadership skills, expanding horizons, revitalizing an interest in one’s own career, and expanding one’s professional network.”).

21E.g., State Mentoring Programs, Am. Bar. Ass’n (last visited Nov. 21, 2022).

22Lift Up Leaders Mentoring Program, Fed. Bar Ass’n (last visited Nov. 18, 2022).

23See Martha M. Newman, Take Control: How to Prioritize Your Schedule and Get Marketing Results, 80 Tex. Bar J. (Sept. 2017) (“Train yourself to confidently say, “No” to participation in outside activities that compete for your valuable time and do not qualify as priorities.”).

24See Brian Cuban, The Lawyers Depression Project: A Support Group for Legal Professionals, Above the Law (Oct. 10, 2022, 11:00 AM); see also, e.g., Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program; California Lawyer Assistance Program; New York Lawyer Assistance Program; Illinois Lawyer Assistance Program.

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