Those of you who have read my stuff before may have seen my article titled, “Beyond Pizza and Yoga: Let’s Get Serious About Mental Health for Lawyers,” in which I advanced the theory that billable hour expectations, a dearth of mentoring, cultures of disrespect, and lack of transparency around career paths, all contribute to the mental health crisis in the profession.
Or perhaps you saw my articles titled “The Simple Solution to the Mental Health Problem in the Legal Profession,” “Twenty-Four Hundred Hours,” and “Greed,” which triple-down on my argument that the evil all stems from the unreasonable workloads imposed on lawyers.
In my imagination, my wisdom has spread near and far. At least that is what I was hoping when I watched a recent Law Society program about mental health. Alas, I must now admit that I have not had quite the influence that I fantasize about.
I looked forward to the session on work/life balance, hoping to hear some real solutions. Instead, I heard from people who were forced by personal life circumstances to exit big law or private practice and find a less unreasonable work environment to support their personal lives.
My dissatisfaction with the program was not that the presentations were not valuable, because they certainly were for people looking for ways to survive (or maybe even thrive) in the legal profession. My problem is that they all appear to have been based on the same premise, being that life in law firms of any substantial size is too demanding and unhealthy for people who want to both have real lives and excel in caring for their clients, their families, and their health.
The takeaways for me were the following:
- Nobody is working on fixing the system.
- To survive at many law firms, lawyers absolutely have to learn about meditation, alternate nostril breathing (a breathing technique that can be used to reduce anxiety), setting boundaries, and other techniques to manage their stress.
- People who are prepared to devote most of their time to their careers may cope in sizable law firms, but will probably still have to sacrifice their families, personal interests, and health.
- Everyone else should work in-house or set up their own firms so that they can set their own priorities and try to make things work.
An over-arching theme was that, in our system, having a personal life will be an impediment to one’s “climb up the ladder,” and that significant personal sacrifice of family, mental health and physical health, is still a fundamental job requirement, not an option.
Personally, I found it depressing. I started practicing law 45 years ago, and I can only describe what is going on as “same shit, different day.”
Although the presenters did a fine job telling people how to try to cope within the confines of the system that we have, I remain profoundly disappointed that this is all that the Law Society has to offer.
A version of this article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.