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As a 1L, it seemed obvious to me that people needed something they weren’t getting. There were people having anxiety attacks by October.
If you don’t do well on the LSAT, you don’t get into the right school. If you don’t do well in the right school, you won’t get the Big Law job you’re meant to want to get. My read on it is that, particularly if you’re in a school with a curve — which is the vast majority of them — from the day you start, you are in constant competition with everyone around you. That’s isolating. It’s awful for people’s mental health.
There was some resistance when I started on this issue, rooted in the idea that it will make the school look bad if you are doing an activist-y mental health thing. I think there’s a realization now that actually it’s a good thing. If you’re trying to recruit the best or most mature students, then showing that you take people’s emotional and mental health seriously is a selling point.
— Luke Finn, a rising third-year student at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, commenting on his efforts to increase awareness about law student mental health and wellness at the T14 school. He started the Students Mental Health Alliance at the school during his first semester and founded the Law Students Mental Health National Alliance group on Facebook last year, where students now share their advice on everything from starting mental health groups at their own schools to lobbying state bars for changes to the character and fitness process. Finn says Northwestern’s current dean supports his advocacy.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.