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Lessons in Lawyer Well-Being From the COVID-19 Pandemic

Issue March/April 2020 April 2020 By Anna Levine
Solo/Small Firm Law Practice Management Section Review
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Anna Levine

Lawyer well-being is all the rage — and rightly so. Legal professionals experience depression, anxiety, and alcohol and substance use disorders at above-average rates.1 The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) recently convened a Standing Committee on Lawyer Well-Being, following the July 2019 recommendations by its Steering Committee of the same name. Similar committees and task forces dedicated to exploring lawyer well-being are popping up throughout the country.

With interest in lawyer well-being expanding, a growing number of law schools and legal employers have in the last year pledged to reduce stressors on attorneys, judges and law students. Amid such pledges, one might wonder how these expressions of commitment might manifest as actual improvements to attorneys’ subjective sense of well-being.

Lawyer well-being is all the rage — at least it seemed to be until the middle of March.

And then the whole world changed . . .

Now, with all attention focused on stopping the spread of COVID-19 and almost everyone working on some form of modified work arrangement, all the concerns that were so pressing a mere month ago seem almost surreal.

Everyone, from lawyer to bricklayer, feels anxiety and uncertainty in the face of unprecedented measures, both voluntary and externally imposed, to restrict our movement and social interaction. One of our Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (LCL) clinicians, Dr. Jeffrey Fortgang, recently published an excellent article on the topic of anxiety in the COVID-19 era: https://www.lclma.org/2020/03/13/covid-19-anxiety-news-in-the-massachusetts-legal-profession/

When I first committed to writing this article several months ago, I had originally intended to write about how to really prioritize lawyer well-being. Well-being is, after all, an expansive topic and, while institutions and individuals may be paying more attention to it as a priority for the legal profession, the effects of organizational commitments may not always trickle down to the active attorney on the front lines of legal practice. It’s all well and good for a legal employer to emphasize the need for work-life balance and encourage its attorneys to take more vacation days, but if they do not also decrease billable hours expectations, these institutional reprioritizations might not translate into better results for staff. Similarly, legal aid attorneys and public defenders may now better understand the need for boundaries or their vulnerability to vicarious trauma as a result of renewed interest in lawyer well-being, but that heightened awareness of susceptibility to certain stressors might not be enough to improve their work conditions and alleviate related stress.

I was going to encourage folks to take some simple initial steps, such as committing to going to bed an hour earlier every night, adding a few more vegetables to their diets, finding ways to integrate regular exercise into a busy daily routine, practicing mindfulness and self-forgiveness, and the like. I had a list of 10 simple steps to improving your sense of well-being. Now I find myself pondering how COVID-19 provides an opportunity to reflect and consider changes that have the potential to permanently alter the landscape of lawyer well-being.

It’s unclear how long the COVID-19 state of emergency will last, but, inevitably, this crisis will come to an end as more people become infected and recover from the virus, vaccines are developed and immunity spreads — but our lives will be forever changed and there are many lessons we can learn from this experience, some of which could have lasting impacts on improving lawyer well-being.

Here are just a few of these:

  1. We can change: For a good number of lawyers, working late hours at the office is synonymous with productivity and professional success. Through the recent crisis, many of us have learned that we can change our habits. We can work remotely; we can modify the pace of our work and we can adjust to changing circumstances that may even, heaven forbid, require us to relax.
  2. We don’t need to wear a suit every day in order to do our jobs well: While suiting up and showing up in the metaphorical sense is essential to competence in any profession, a large percentage of legal work can be accomplished in our bunny slippers — perhaps a much larger percentage than we might ever have imagined.
  3. Routine matters do not require in-person contact: As any busy litigator can attest, too often lawyers find themselves in court, sometimes for many hours, to handle matters that should only take a few minutes. My spouse and I collectively have well over 30 years of experience practicing in the criminal courts. Our experience is that most pretrial conferences in the state criminal courts boil down to setting a new date for further proceedings. The last month has proven that the courts can accommodate new date requests without in-person appearances, but until COVID-19 came along, in-person appearances for such routine matters were the norm and required an attorney to essentially set aside a full day for court. I had similar experiences in the probate and family courts; many of my appearances there ended in the setting of a new date, as I knew they would at the outset of my workday.
  4. Basic technological literacy is necessary and possible: We are now in the third decade of the 21st century. While the “I cannot use computers” justification for certain styles of work has become less ubiquitous, I still frequently encounter the plea that a given person has a technology allergy and, therefore, certain means of remote communications should be eschewed.

    Anyone with access to a computer and web browser can access a remote conference, often with just a click of the mouse. Not only is basic technological literacy relatively easy to acquire (for educated professionals) and a good idea, it is a requirement of our profession. Rule 1.1 of the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct requires Massachusetts attorneys to provide “competent representation.” It states that “competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness, and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.” Comment 8 to this rule further explicitly states that “[t]o maintain the requisite knowledge and skill, a lawyer should keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology, . . .” (emphasis added).

    Over the last week, as we have moved most of our LCL support groups online, I have met people in their late 70s using remote conferencing technology for the first time; they seem universally delighted to discover how easy it is. People who may not even be comfortable using a smart phone are quickly adapting to using Zoom or GoToMeeting or similar platforms on their personal computers. There is no perfect substitute for in-person meetings, but if we cannot have them, technology is available to offer close approximations.
  5. Gratitude and mindfulness practices are great for elevating a person’s sense of well-being: Staying at home all day is an adjustment; it can be difficult, particularly for parents of small children. Working from home is extremely problematic without day care. For some, however, a little forced isolation is a great opportunity to reflect on our many gifts and practice gratitude. While there are challenges to overcome, some insurmountable, I am hearing from many that this experience has made them aware of and truly grateful for the abundance and blessings they have in their lives.

For many professionals, including attorneys, social distancing policies have had devastating financial impacts. The current situation is suboptimal at best and for many it is catastrophic; my intent is not to minimize or claim that this is all a blessing in disguise. But, when this period of crisis ends and we transition back to normal, I am hopeful that it will be a new and improved normal. The changes that these unprecedented societal shifts have wrought on our personal and professional lives are not all negative, and I sincerely hope that the lessons we continue to learn over the next few weeks or months will forever change our lives and institutions in ways that will permanently improve the overall well-being of our profession.

Anna Levine is a Massachusetts attorney and Certified Peer Specialist. She has served as executive director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers Inc. (LCL) since 2016. The mission of LCL is to promote well-being and resilience in the legal community, improve lives, nurture competence and elevate the standing of the legal profession. To fulfill this mission, LCL provides free and confidential mental health resources, addiction recovery support and practice management services to the Massachusetts legal community. Levine wants Massachusetts attorneys to know that LCL is open for business during the COVID-19 crisis. LCL runs multiple support groups, and LCL clinicians and law practice advisors are available for one-on-one consultations. All of these groups and services are currently accessible via remote technology. Levine can be reached here.                      

1 Krill, Patrick R., JD, LLM, Johnson, Ryan MA and Albert, Linda MSSW, “The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns Among American Attorneys”; Journal of Addiction Medicine, Feb. 2016, Vol. 10, Issue 1, p. 46–52