Troubling and concerning trends have been observed throughout the country when it comes to lawyers’ well-being and mental health. While many law students have become accustomed to the stress and demands of law school, are we preparing our next generation of lawyers for the stresses of practice?
Many law school orientations now talk to incoming first year students about substance abuse, mental health, and how to maintain personal relationships while in law school, but for many students this is simply lip service, as the assignments start piling up immediately after the empowering and empathetic talks that the law school administration offers.
According to the Florida Bar Association, 21% to 36% of practicing lawyers qualify as “problem drinkers” and 28% of practicing lawyers struggle with depression. When the numbers are broken down even further, half of those lawyers struggling with alcohol and depression are in private practice in the first ten years of their career.
For many in law school, these numbers should not come as a surprise. While by the end of the third year of law school, many have learned to manage the stress and demands of the workload of law school being balanced with internships, clinics, or part-time jobs, less time is spent developing the skills necessary to manage the stress and demands that a career in law brings.
Would this concerning trend in new lawyer’s mental wellbeing be helped or remedied by more life skill-based courses being required law school curriculum? Classes covering Law Practice Management, Accounting for Lawyers, or other subjects that help young lawyers enter practice confident that they can focus on the difficulties of signing clients and winning cases rather than worry about the basic business skills that may be holding them back.
What do these trends mean for those who are in law school right now? Well, it is not too late to turn things around. Understanding that the work-load, responsibilities, and commitments are likely to increase rather than decrease when leaving school and entering practice, the time in law school is the time to develop the organization, discipline, and motivation to thrive in a high stress environment, so that when things get more chaotic and busy, young lawyers are not already drowning in the pressures of their career.
See the following article from the Florida Bar for more statistics and information.
https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-news/report-lawyers-well-being-falls-short/
Hi Colin,
ReplyDeleteThere is an interesting dynamic that has been created in the legal field - a lot of talk for mental health support, and little action toward solving it. These issues start to flare in law school, and we are indeed fed a lot of lip service. Rather than aiding in teaching skills for coping, we are thrown into the same fire all former law students were.
Is this the only way to teach those lawyerly skills, or is this just normal and everyone has to go through it? I think it is the latter, and it does not get easier with the dreaded billable hour requirements that never seem to wane - they increase if anything.