Common questions about drinking habits and how to address them can often be shifted to whether you experience "loss of control" -- Find out what that means and more below. The video embedded below was produced by the Northeast Chapter…
Therapists are in short supply and we can't fix the problem -- but we're still here to help legal professionals in Massachusetts. For most of my 23 years at Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, I’ve been encouraging lawyers to get…
REVIEW OF FINDINGS:
LCL SURVEY ON DEPRESSION IN LAWYERS, 2018
With the recent publication of our ABA book, The Full Weight of the Law: How Legal Professionals Can Recognize and Rebound from Depression, co-author Shawn Healy and I were invited to make a presentation on depression in lawyers at the 2018 National Conference for Lawyer Assistance Programs in September 2018.
Feel free to leave a voice-mail or send an email, and we'll get back to you when the office reopens, presumably on Wednesday.
In addition to the very good and comprehensive list of tips provided by our Nov 22 blog post from my colleagues Barbara Bowe and Shawn Healy, you may enjoy listening to this perspective on sober holidays from Sarah Hepola, the…
If you or your family member is a candidate for alcohol/drug rehab of the month-long (or longer) inpatient variety, we have noted in a previous blog post that your health insurance plan will probably not help you with the cost. So you are in the position of trying to make a choice as an “educated consumer.” This is not easy, even for us at LCL, since we make very few such referrals in this era when access to that level of care is beyond the means of most of our clients.
In 2013, Shaneka L. Davis, Esq. -- now a Director at the MBLA -- was a rising 3L, wanting to study the issues of stress, stress management, and overall work-life balance among both law students and lawyers. Shaneka conducted her…
Does your work recurrently bring you in contact with clients who have been the victims of traumatizing/stressful experiences? Lawyers often forget to check in with their own wellbeing, but consider whether you may have absorbed some of this stress and…
If the main rules of real estate are “location, location, location,” then the main rules of thriving emotionally in the field of law are “boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.” You can preserve your emotional and mental health by establishing firm boundaries early in the legal career. These boundaries will help you successfully navigate all of the ego-damaging obstacles along the way.
Some boundaries, like drawing the line about how late you are going to check that flashing BlackBerry on a Friday night, are obvious. Other boundaries are equally as crucial, but it’s slightly more difficult to recognize their importance when you are just starting out your legal career and are eager to advance. The determination to excel and the mental stamina required to climb the metaphorical legal ladder are very admirable. It takes a special kind of personality and strength of character to be willing to compete in the field replete with aggressiveness and power games. The legal discipline embodies survival of the fittest at its best.
To survive, developing the instinct of self-preservation is a must. In this case, we are talking about the preservation of a stable self-image, which leads to the preservation of the emotional and mental well-being.
The self-image of a young lawyer can get attacked from a myriad of directions:
A report published last month by Wisconsin’s state bar, based on a survey of new lawyers, found that newly admitted attorneys faced “huge law school debt, unemployment, underemployment, or inadequate pay,” along with fewer opportunities for training. The result, of course, is not only economic depression but emotional depression. (Click here to read the Wisconsin Bar article.)
None of this comes as a surprise to me as a clinician at LCL,