SJC effort focuses on mental health of lawyers
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The John Adams Courthouse in Boston houses the Supreme Judicial Court.
While so much of the criminal justice system is focused on victims and defendants, Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Ralph Gants is urging a new focus on the lawyers who represent victims and defendants and the ways their profession affects their mental health and well-being.
"The health of our legal system depends on the health of the legal profession, and the health of the profession depends on the health of our lawyers," Gants said Wednesday as part of his annual State of the Judiciary address. "The practice of law has always been demanding, but it is especially challenging now, fraught with ever-increasing financial pressures, client demands, and work expectations that are taking a terrible toll on many of our most resilient attorneys."
Gants cited a 2016 study published in the Journal of Addiction Medicine that surveyed 13,000 practicing lawyers and found that as many as 36 percent qualified as problem drinkers, about 28 percent were struggling with depression, 19 percent struggled with anxiety and 23 coped with stress. He said many of the issues are "exacerbated, if not caused, by the way that law is practiced today."
Gants tapped former SJC Justice Margot Botsford to head up the court's Steering Committee on Lawyer Well-Being and said that group will explore ways to help lawyers restore a healthy work-life balance, increase professional satisfaction and support those with mental health or substance abuse issues.
The chief judge said the steering committee will also "consider whether structural changes need to be made to better foster the health of the profession."
Gants recalled a lawyer's story about being pulled aside by a firm's partner and being told that taking care of clients is important, but taking care of yourself and your family is more important.
"We need to make sure that this advice is bred in the bone of every lawyer, and we need to create the conditions in our legal profession that allow every lawyer to follow that advice," the chief judge said. "I do not know if we can pull this off, this but I damn well know that we need to try."
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