Mental Health Awareness is a Must in the Legal Profession

By Scott Goode

We all know that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a widespread physiological disaster worldwide. Strangely enough, it also placed a spotlight on mental health. In the past few decades mental health and emotional wellbeing has been moving up in our community’s hierarchy of importance but the shock of the COVID-19 shutdown seems to have brought it to the forefront. Due to this, our legal community and individual lawyers have become more acutely aware of the particular mental and emotional strains we lawyers suffer in our day-to-day professional lives.

Even prior to the pandemic, us lawyers were starting to realize that there was an emotional and mental toll paid for practicing the law. However, it wasn’t until 2016 before any major study was conducted on this topic. That year the American Bar Association and the Betty Ford Foundation joined forces and conducted a study on nearly 13,000 practicing lawyers and 3,500 law students. The study involved 15 state bar associations and the two largest counties of an one other state. It involved alcohol use, drug use, and symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress. It found that between 21% and 36% qualified as problem drinkers; 28% suffered from mild or higher levels of depression; 19% suffered from mild or higher levels of anxiety; and 11.5% suffered from suicidal thoughts at some point in their career.

It found that law students weren’t doing much better. The study showed that 17% suffered from depression; 14% suffered from severe anxiety; 23% suffered from moderate anxiety; 6% suffered from suicidal ideation; 43% reported binge drinking at least once in the two weeks leading up to the study; 25% reported binge drinking twice or more in the two weeks leading up to the study; and 25% fell in the area of risk for alcoholism. The students haven’t even started practicing law and yet, they were well above the general population in all of these areas.

Then in 2021, ALM Intelligence, as part of the Mind Over Matters Project, conducted a Mental Health and Substance Abuse Survey on 3,200 practicing lawyers. 52% were male and 48% were female. 44% of the respondents agreed that mental health and substance abuse are at a crisis level in the legal profession. 55% agreed that mental health and substance abuse were worse in our profession than in any other professions (only about 9% did not agree). 35% stated they suffered from depression and about two thirds stated they suffered from anxiety. Also, about 64% stated their personal relationships suffer due to their practice of law and about 75% stated their profession detriments their mental health over time. Finally, 19% reported that they have contemplated suicide. Based on my own personal experience and my experience as a volunteer with Lawyers Helping Lawyers, I believe that these statistics are more representative of reality than the ABA study in 2016.

When asked to select factors that negatively impact their mental wellbeing 72% stated always being on call and not being able to disconnect. 59% stated that the pressure of billable hours was what was causing the most problems for them. 57% stated that the lion share of their problems came from client demands and 55% stated that lack of sleep causes the most turmoil in their personal lives.

These studies show that anywhere between 20% and 66% of us practicing lawyers suffer from severe anxiety. That number is astronomical! In applying this number to my own personal life, I tend to believe the actual percentage of us that suffer from anxiety is closer to the 66% range. We are in competition all day, every day. Either with ourselves or with opposing counsel or with some other attorney in the firm. This is the one negative emotion that I feel more than all others in my everyday professional life. I am constantly under pressure from clients, judges, opposing counsel and trial. This list goes on and on. Due to this anxiety issue, I tended to work constantly and stay late almost every night at the office. Even when I was home, I was still at work going over research and trial strategy in my head. I remember lying in bed at night with my eyes open thinking about if I had failed to list that one extremely important witness on my witness and exhibit list, or did I fail to ask that one very specific interrogatory that might have gotten that piece of information I needed. My brain would not turn off and

I was getting less and less sleep as the years went by. I think it is important to compare that rate of anxiety in the legal profession to the rate in the general population. Where probably half of all lawyers that are in practice today suffer from severe or moderate anxiety, only about 18% of the general population suffer from the same. Not even a quarter! Finally, 19% of lawyers suffer from suicidal ideation when studies show only between 4% and 7% of the American population at large suffer from suicidal thoughts. That is staggering.

The results from both of the studies are clear. Lawyers and others in legal support professions obviously suffer from mental health and substance abuse issues at a much higher rate than everyone else. If we would only look up from our computers, transcripts and trial prep to look around every once in a while, we would see that this fact is being demonstrated for us. I personally know of two lawyers who have taken their own lives this year alone. I was having a conversation with a mentor of mine who has volunteered with LHL for decades and she relayed that there was a time not too long ago when we were, on average, losing a lawyer a month to suicide. It is impossible to even imagine the numbers we have lost to overdose and physiological conditions attributable to drug and alcohol addiction.

Upon coming to this realization, I couldn’t help but to ask myself, why. Why was this happening to us? Just a short period of introspection upon my own problem answered that question for me. Even before law school I had been obsessive and a perfectionist. I thrived in competition and structure. Becoming an attorney meant everything to me and when I finally achieved that goal, nothing much mattered except for work. I threw myself into it headfirst. I lived and breathed my client’s problems, and in doing so, ignored my own. I worked 15 hour days, 7 days a week, taking barely any time for myself. The short periods of time I wasn’t in the office were spent either obsessing over legal matters that should’ve been left at the office or drinking with my colleagues/friends from the office while we discussed, you guessed it…work. It took only one catastrophic event in my private life to push me over the edge.

In 2008 my father died from lung cancer. I sat with him during the last week of his life and witnessed him suffocate. I was utterly unprepared and still, went straight back to work before his body was even cold. Very soon thereafter I was prescribed Xanax and thus began an 8-year drug and alcohol addiction. In 2010 I attempted suicide. Shortly thereafter I reached out to Lawyers Helping Lawyers and my mentor showed me that I was not alone. In 2015 (yes I am a slow learner) I entered into an in-patient treatment center and have been clean, sober and capable of being happy ever since. Then in 2019 I began mentoring other lawyers through LHL. By going through my own battle and being front row for other lawyers going through theirs, it has become very clear that the attributes that make us exceptional and capable of great things, are also our greatest weaknesses and could, in the right circumstances, become deadly.

I believe the question of “is there a mental health problem in the legal profession” has been answered. Yes, there is a problem, and that problem is apparent. Just look around the courthouse, read the bar journal or look into the studies I referenced earlier. Since that question is answered, I now have to ask myself, “what causes this problem.” I think for me the answer is simple, I was wholly unprepared for what the practice of law actually entailed and gave 100% of myself to my clients, leaving nothing left over for me at the moment that I needed to deal with my father’s death. In a more general view, us lawyers have attributes that make us great and are unaware that those same attributes can be detrimental. Couple that with the extremely high level of negative emotions we have to deal with in our daily lives due to our profession, and you have the perfect storm. Now knowing there is a problem and where it stems from, what can we do about it?

First and foremost, after honestly admitting that there is a problem, I have to take active steps to better myself. I personally do a few things to ensure my own emotional wellbeing stays healthy. I get up early and go to the gym and break a sweat. I attend therapy monthly but in the early days of my sobriety, I went weekly. I have instituted healthy boundaries at work with my colleagues and clients. When I am in a suit during my business day, I am all business. But when I leave the office and my day is over, I am not a lawyer and don’t check emails or voicemails. I take trips and vacations as often as possible and will even schedule a day off without a trip just to break free and reset as often as possible. I have hobbies that I do as often as possible. Healthy coping mechanisms are a must for me and these are not ideas that were taught to me in my youth. I didn’t learn they were necessary until my life was out of control. Not everyone has to get to the bottom that I did to begin instituting these ideas in their own lives. Just be aware of how you feel and be honest with yourself that you feel the way you do, and then do something about it.

Also, we need to dismantle the stigma of weakness that is incorrectly attributed to mental health issues and substance abuse. This is the reason behind me being as open as I am about my own past. Let’s be honest, we all have some form of mental health issue. If I were to call someone “normal” (which I never do by the way), I would only mean that their issues are not yet exhibiting themselves in a way that cannot yet be seen by a bystander. Notice I said “yet”. We all have mental health problems. The only real questions are, do I recognize mine and, if so, what am I doing about it. Admitting this and doing something about it takes courage and honesty. Ignoring and/or not accepting the fact I have an issue and doing nothing about it is a weakness. Not the other way around.

And most importantly, we have to remember that we are all in this together. We have to be able to battle for our clients and, at the same time, treat each other with respect and dignity. Be mindful of that opposing counsel that comes to court disheveled and unprepared or that opposing counsel that is always unreasonable and gets personal for no reason, and instead of ridiculing them behind their backs to your friends at the office, ask them how their day is going. Go to lunch with as many other lawyers as possible and make connections. Not for networking but to make friends. Once a day text another lawyer and let them know that they are on your mind. I doubt that my LHL mentor knew the impact he had on my life…and my wife’s and children’s lives, by simply letting me know that I was not alone in this. If you are feeling alone, if you feel that you are so unique in your personal issues that you stand no chance of ever solving them and finally being happy, remember there are those of us that have been there. There are those of us who tried to end it and couldn’t even do that right. Yet only a matter of time later, we find ourselves writing articles for distinguished periodicals hoping to make yet another connection with a lifelong friend.