Health / Wellness

It’s Mental Health Awareness Month, But Is The Legal Profession Truly Aware?

Our profession lives and dies by court deadlines and filing calendars. Try to pencil in some time for yourself.

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Mental Health

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With the month of May comes the fragrant bloom of spring flowers along with the realization that we’re well into Q2 of the year and summer is on the horizon. It’s also Mental Health Awareness Month, a topic that remains unresolved in the legal profession.

I’ve previously written in my column about lawyer mental health and lawyer burnout. Our profession sees time as an ever-moving facet of our daily work — it controls and dictates everything we do. In private law firms, we think and operate based on tenth of an hour increments. Every email exchange, every phone call, every Westlaw search, and every moment of analysis is part of that one-tenth.

Our profession lives and dies by court deadlines and filing calendars. We’re conditioned and programmed to think that all emails require immediate responses, whether they’re at 7 a.m., 5 p.m., or encroaching on our bedtime hours. All of this contributes to and weighs heavily on our mental health as lawyers and as professionals. It’s also why our profession has such high rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide.

We Need To Stop Treating Everything As An Emergency 

While we’re service providers, we’re not urgent care practices or 24-hour emergency rooms. Yet, we treat ourselves as such and put the message out there to our profession that we’re always on-call, always on standby, and always available. We’re dialed into our email, and firms are fantastically strict about always having access to us.

I’ve worked with partners who haven’t taken a vacation in 10 or 15 years with their spouse and kids because of billable hours. Even my husband seemed surprised when I told him my vacations were minimal when I was a private firm lawyer — sure you had vacation time allotted, but taking it was frowned upon. It never seemed to get the “vote of approval” from the supervising partner.

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I still remember sleeping with my BlackBerry in my hand because the partner I worked for expected me to be on high alert to respond to her 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. emails regarding upcoming appeals we were collaborating about — fully billable time, of course.

While private law practice taught me to be creative with billing my time, when I stepped outside the practice of law, I had to retrain my brain to think as to how to maximize my time and value to my clients as well as myself. I carried the burden and weight of 12 years of conditioning and programming.

This meant becoming better at time management because I was solely responsible for all facets of my business — marketing, business development, client interactions, and all written client work. Yet, I also put off doctor’s appointments and put myself on the backburner in exchange to create an endless funnel of client work and upward income generation that seemed only possible in my dreams.

Changing these old ways of thinking does not come easy — why?

Our society glorifies the hustle culture, and the legal profession demands it. If you’re a lawyer who leaves the practice of law, that hustle mentality doesn’t suddenly disappear. We tell ourselves to work harder for those first five or 10 years so that we can work less in the next decade. But, at what expense to ourselves and our health are we living out that philosophy?

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Give Yourself A Mental Health Check 

The past two years have caused all of us to feel burnout, fatigue, and utter exhaustion, on top of the normal workloads we’ve carried. It’s the first time we’ve looked introspectively at ourselves and considered our mental health as well as our personal and professional happiness. It’s why many lawyers are choosing to leave longstanding careers at law firms and companies in exchange for remote work and more family time.

Whether you’re in in the middle of a career transition or a major life pivot, give yourself a mental check — take that walk, take that break, and pencil in the time for yourself.

You matter. Your mental health also matters.

If you or someone else you know needs help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is open 24/7 and 365 days a year: (800) 273-8255.

Wendi Weiner is an attorney, career expert, and founder of The Writing Guru, an award-winning executive resume writing services company. Wendi creates powerful career and personal brands for attorneys, executives, and C-suite/Board leaders for their job search and digital footprint. She also writes for major publications about alternative careers for lawyers, personal branding, LinkedIn storytelling, career strategy, and the job search process. You can reach her by email at wendi@writingguru.net, connect with her on LinkedIn, and follow her on Twitter @thewritingguru.  

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