A lot of spilled ink is devoted to the pernicious mental health issues plaguing the legal profession. From simple burnout to tragic episodes of substance abuse and even suicide, the industry takes a brutal toll. A pair of former Biglaw partners who’ve taken on second careers as psychologists have a proposal: mandatory (subject to opt-out) counseling at targeted career milestones.
This… seems to be a complex solution to a simpler problem.
From Law.com:
As such [Jonathan Moult and Jonathan Coppin] have now joined forces to come up with a service that they believe could make a fundamental difference to the state of lawyers’ mental health. What they are proposing is a series of seven psychotherapy sessions for every lawyer in any given firm at key points in their career.
The first point would be at three to four years’ post-qualified, which is usually when the pair have found anxiety has started to kick in for lawyers; then at 10 years’ qualified when the strain of making or not making partner is taking hold; and then again at 20 years’ qualified where it is common for partners to plateau and feel they have wasted their lives while also dealing with problems in their private lives.
Mental health should be treated more seriously by everyone, not just attorneys, but Moult and Coppin are entirely right about the career turning points where the undue stress upon practitioners can take a turn toward the tragic.
But I just can’t help but think this is another instance of the Biglaw mentality run amok. Confronted with all these negative impacts, Biglaw tries to find the right counseling while the simplest solution would be to address a model that thrives on putting people in a pressure cooker. Pull back on the hours, provide more leave, assign and manage tasks more humanely, ditch the “up or out” model that creates artificial career deadlines… basically address the source of stress rather than try to manage it.
Sorry, that’s just crazy talk. Biglaw isn’t going to change.
Would Mandatory Psychologist Appointments Reduce Burnout in Big Law? [Law.com]
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.