Why Lawyer Mental Health Matters...To Everyone

Is there a mental health crisis drowning the legal profession? Is there a higher level of depression, anxiety and alcoholism among those licensed to defend our laws and freedom than other areas of the population? If so, does it impact society as a whole?

And...what can be done?

Our guest, Claire Parsons, an employment attorney and mental health expert. Claire weighs in on the intricate ways attorneys grapple with mental health issues, and the crucial role of self-care. With Claire's expertise, we navigate the powerful tools of mindfulness and compassion, revealing how they can bolster lawyers' capabilities and manage stress whilst dealing with challenging individuals. 

The conversation takes an even more critical turn as we uncover the silent enemy of isolation and substance abuse that lurks behind many legal professionals' facades. The magnitude of these issues on an individual's mental health is substantial, emphasizing the pressing need for open conversations and support within the legal community and beyond. Because, as our listeners know...the law impacts everyone.
 
As advocates for mental wellness, we bring to you the Surgeon General's guidelines for workplace mental health, underlining the importance of a supportive work environment where employees feel safe to seek help. The power of social support in handling stress is undeniable, so listen and get involved in easing this challenge.

Transcript

Bob Sewell: 0:00

It's a phrase from popular movies. It's also a question that comes up in our daily life. The question is is that even legal? We talk about the things that drive you crazy, the things you won't believe and the things you need to know and understand. I'm attorney Bob Sewell and this is the podcast. Is that Even Legal? Let's get started. Today on the show is Claire Parsons. Claire Parsons is an employment attorney in Cincinnati, ohio. She also has become an expert in mental health issues for lawyers. She's authored two books. One of them is called how to Be a Badass Lawyer and the other one is called Mommy Needs a Minute. Both of these books are available on Amazon. You can go get them now. Claire, welcome to the show.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 0:59

Thanks for having me.

Bob Sewell: 1:01

Mental health is something that's really important for lawyers. It's important for everyone, but we have a bit of a crisis in lawyering with mental health. I am the litigation section chair of my law firm and that means I have a number of people in the section my coworkers and one of the things I worry about is do they have good mental health? I mean, it's for their benefit, for the firm's benefit, for everyone's benefit. I want them to be able to experience a good work environment, a good mental health. What's going on with lawyering that we have this crisis?

Attorney Claire Parsons: 1:46

I will say that we do have a lot of concerns, just socially and culturally, in the United States and around the world, frankly, with respect to mental health. I think a lot of those concerns that we have for lawyers are really indicative of what is going on socially and culturally. I think with a legal profession and I'm a litigator as well we have some added pressures on top of those existing social situations, including the fact that we are in an adversarial situation. I think a big piece of it is also that we are handling other people's problems. I think that makes us feel like we have to present all of our problems already taken care of or they get pushed to the background. I think that creates a situation where there is a lot of loneliness and alienation within the profession. There's a hero, complex, but then also loneliness. That can add in an element of shame and that really compounds the situation so that people don't get help.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 2:47

Mental health conditions don't necessarily mean a crisis. Many mental health conditions, like anxiety and depression, there's treatments and there's things available that people can do to take care of themselves. But I think one of the issues with lawyers is, because of stigma, loneliness, a lack of time, there are many lawyers who aren't getting the support that they need. That has been part of the issue and why I think people have been trying to raise awareness around these issues to make sure people can get supports. When people are supported with mental health challenges, it's just a totally different situation than dealing with those mental health situations and not having the requisite support.

Bob Sewell: 3:28

Yeah, one of the things you do is you've been teaching mindfulness, right.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 3:34

Yes, what is that? That's correct. So I teach mindfulness, but I also teach compassion. The two things are related and I like to emphasize compassion because I think that a lot of people emphasize mindfulness for lawyers, and lawyers want to focus on mindfulness because they think it's about a lot of focus, mental acuity being sharp and they like all those things.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 3:55

But what I think we really need is the compassion.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 3:58

So mindfulness and compassion actually work together.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 4:01

Mindfulness is the ability to have present, moment awareness with your experience, without judging it or reacting to it, and compassion is that basic level of kindness that allows you to even face and acknowledge difficult parts of life, difficult people, difficult parts of yourself, so that you can have mindfulness and the two things work together.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 4:24

But I think what happens is that a lot of lawyers get very balanced towards logical and rational thought processes. They are less comfortable with emotional awareness and intelligence and so they have less ability overall to deal with stress and develop skills that help them learn about caring for themselves, and I think that translates into more difficulty with respect to their behaviors out in the profession dealing with the difficulties of life. But the thing about mindfulness and compassion is that you can train up both of those skills their innate human skills for all of us, but you have to many of us because of how we function in modern life. We might have to actually train them to have them really working for us in our day-to-day lives. But you can train both of those things up over time with meditation practice, but also with other things, and it can make a huge impact on your life in terms of how you manage stress, how you relate to other people and just how you look at yourself in your life.

Bob Sewell: 5:29

But, claire, let me push back on you for a little bit here, okay, because don't we want a pit bull attorney. We want an unfeeling jerk as an attorney. Someone who crushes their opponent, destroys the competition. That's what we want. We don't want no wimp as an attorney, right?

Attorney Claire Parsons: 5:50

Did I say anything at all to suggest that mindfulness and compassion means you are a wimp?

Bob Sewell: 5:57

Tell me how it works. That was obviously.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 6:00

that was obviously hyperbole and actually I will say like I mean, I understand that people might have perception about what mindfulness and compassion means based on who they typically see doing these practices, but I don't think that the research actually bears it out that you will become any kind of a wimp or ineffectual at all. The research on mindfulness and compassion shows that people who have higher self-compassion are more likely to achieve their goals. They're more likely to take risks. People who have greater mindfulness are better at focusing, better at collaborating and working in teams. So one of the things I'm talking about is I'm not talking about turning into a wimp or not dealing with the problems of life. Mindfulness and compassion are there to help you face the problems of life as they are so you can handle them better.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 6:47

But I will say a lot of clients.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 6:50

They come to lawyers because they have some kind of a conflict or maybe they've been mistreated or have a situation where they're concerned about, and so do they want a strong and effective counselor and advocate to help them through it.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 7:05

Yes, and sometimes strong advocacy is really needed for a case, but if your lawyer can only do one thing and that's be a pit bull, then that's a relatively. That's a one-trick pony as a lawyer, litigation matters in particular, and also counseling and advising, all the things leading up to litigation or after it. There's a lot of different skill sets that are needed to be able to handle matters effectively, and so sometimes being a pit bull is needed, I guess, but it's very rare situations. And just one thing I'll kind of remind clients about you know, one of the things I talk to my clients about is the cost of fighting, and I do it almost every case, and I'm a defense lawyer, so most of the time I am fighting and I don't necessarily have a choice, but I encourage settlement and thoughts about settlement early on and throughout the case, because it's expensive to be right in our legal process.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 7:58

And if your lawyer isn't helping you evaluate those costs and all those factors, including the emotional ones, and how hard it is on people. They're not really serving all your interests. So you know I understand the need for strong advocacy and nothing I say, you know, says that there's no need for that. But it isn't the only thing that clients need, and so I would. I would hope that clients would understand and look for lawyers with a little more holistic skill set to be able to really address everything that they need and all their real interests 100%.

Bob Sewell: 8:30

I mean, I just had this conversation a few weeks ago and person comes in and says I need a pit bull, I want a bulldog, and you're the guy. And I said, oh, okay, so I'll be a pit bull. And so we have this conversation. Oh, let's, let's be, let's talk about that. And you know and I start outlining the litigation strategy of a pit bull this is what we're going to do and we're going to crush our enemy. And you know, we walk through this and, and well, you know how much is this going to cost? Oh, you don't worry about that. I mean, I mean, I, you want a pit bull, right? And she was so insistent. So I'm walking through this and, well then, I want, I want to do this strategy. Okay, let's do that strategy.

Bob Sewell: 9:16

You're going to lose, by the way, with that strategy. It's a terrible idea. Well, you don't have to say that. Well, well, you want me to be that pit bull to you, right? You want the pit bull all the time, right? Well, maybe I don't. Oh, so you want something different, right? Oh, yeah, what you really want is resolution. You want to have be able to move on in your life. You want to have something that gets you back to normal, whatever that is. Yeah, that's what I want. Okay, let's talk about how to do that. And you know, you're right, there is that conflict, that it was constant as lawyers, and, and, and because we're constantly dealing with that conflict, you know, we, we need to be mindful of compassion, you know, and I, I, I. That's why I wanted to have you on what. What brought you to this? You know, why did he become so passionate about this?

Attorney Claire Parsons: 10:22

because it helped me. So I have struggled with anxiety, overthinking and depression for most of my adult life and a lot of my adolescence, and it was something that I would occasionally. I would sometimes, when it got really bad, go to therapy. I'd take any depressants periodically if it got really bad, but the worst experience I had with it was when I had my first daughter. I was pregnant with her and I'm 5'11, you can't see.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 10:54

So I played basketball my whole life. So I was a 10 pound baby and they told me my first baby was gonna be small. And that was the last thing I ever expected to hear, and so I blamed myself for that. Like that I couldn't grow her. And then she came out. She was five pounds. She ended up doing okay, fortunately, but she couldn't breastfeed and so then I couldn't breastfeed her. And so this most important thing in my life, I couldn't do the way I thought I was supposed to do and I basically fell apart.

Bob Sewell: 11:26

Now.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 11:27

I had support. My mother is actually a domestic relations attorney, so she took charge right away. She was used to dealing with people in crisis and said Claire, you're done with this breastfeeding, you need to get some sleep, we're gonna do formula and you're gonna get in therapy. And so she helped me get stability. But that situation really woke me up, cause what I realized was it was a lack of self-compassion, a tendency to isolate, not ask for help, and this feeling like I always had to rise to some certain level or I wasn't good enough. And so I started to kind of change my life In the year after I came back to work and about a year after that situation, I started meditating and it immediately helped me.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 12:12

I was able to slow down a little bit, I was able to not get sucked into overthinking all of the time, I learned some skills for dealing with stress, and then I also learned about self-compassion and learned ways to take care of my emotions and acknowledge them and then not let them hold me back.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 12:32

You talked about anger and how clients come to us angry, but one of the things I know as a lawyer is anger doesn't last forever and oftentimes underneath that anger is something else Usually hurt or a feeling of weakness or vulnerability, and so when you are as a lawyer, you gotta tend the interest and not just the immediate emotions, right, but that's true for us too, and nobody teaches us how to do these things. So when I started meditating, it changed everything and it opened my eyes. And then, after several years of being really kind of obsessed with the topic, I started speaking about it and writing about it and it just went really well. So I got additional training, I started the blog Brilliant Legal Mind and just started presenting and speaking and writing all over the place about it.

Bob Sewell: 13:21

You were so good to do this and you were so right and 100% on. And I have a complaint about our profession and that we. First of all, a lot of people don't know this, but lawyers lead the way on substance abuse for professionals. You know, we're among the top abusers of substances. And it starts, frankly, in law school. And there's this macho persona about drinking. If you see television shows, right, what do the senior partners do at the end of a long day? They sit down and they go back to the relic of cabinet and they pour themselves a drink, and that's how they blow off their steam through drinking. And that mentality starts in law school. They train us to be that At least it started in my law school like this and they train us to be like that. And then they wonder hey, why are our lawyers mental health screwed up so bad? Because we have no effective tools to deal with it. You know, why are they turning to substances? Well, because they don't have any effective tool to deal with it, and it's something that we need to address as lawyers, not only for the public's sake, but also for our own sake.

Bob Sewell: 14:49

I mean, I had a litigation and it was incredibly clear that the damage is involved. Right, I went out. I was one of my last. I'm a probate interest litigator now, but back in the day I did commercial litigation. This was one of the cases that cured me of wanting to do commercial litigation and my clients. Damages were like 50,000 bucks and the opposing side was asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the end it was like $500,000. And it was a ridiculous ask and the best day in court it was 50 grand and I knew it and they should have known it. And I go to the opposing side and I say, hey, frank is the guy's name, not Frank, and we were just engaged in motions practice. He just lost the motion. I won the motion. It was obvious I was going to win. I don't even know why he was fighting. And I sit him down and say, hey, frank, at the end of the day, your best day in court is 50 grand. And I walk him through why and I try to get him to talk to me and I say but if you can get more, if you think it's more, tell me, why, give me documents, tell me how you get to 50 grand.

Bob Sewell: 16:06

And it was. We're sitting here and we're talking and I can see it's not getting through. His eyes are bloodshot. He has obviously has a substance abuse problem. He wasn't sleeping that night before and I've seen this not just once, it's been multiple occasions where they show up to shoveled no-transcript. You know he could not get himself to the place to have that conversation with me and into the end of the day he won. I knew he'd win the case and he won $27,000. You know I chalked that up to a win because he was asking for $500,000. But it was his inability to look at it honestly. It was his inability to have a rational discussion, to show that, to reach a level of compassion when I sat him down and said, hey look, let's just talk as human beings. It was his inability to reach that human status that really harmed him and his client. And so and I went on a tear there how do we spot a lawyer in distress?

Attorney Claire Parsons: 17:18

Well, I don't know. So I don't know if you're talking about other lawyers, are you talking about other clients spotting it Both? How about let's try both? Who are you asking?

Bob Sewell: 17:26

Let's try both.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 17:27

So I don't know that necessarily when we're talking about other people's situations, I don't know that we need to necessarily get in the business of diagnosing their condition and sort of getting into the judgment mode of what's going on with them.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 17:45

I think one of the things that is really important for me as a lawyer and frankly, just as a control freak and someone with a hero complex who wants to save everybody, is I just got to always remember what is my role here. And I think when you have, if you add compassion to your list of values, I think the first question you always got to ask when it comes to other people is are you really helping? Okay, so sometimes with other people, the best you can do is just not do them any harm, and that does not necessarily mean as a lawyer with opposing counsel, you let them do whatever they want. But I think, like when you're starting to see signs of substance abuse or other kind of thing that are affecting a case, you know, lawyers, our job may be under state ethics rules, that we have to report those people or consider a referral to our lawyers assistant programs, but it's really not our job to necessarily get into their business. But what I would say is is it? How? Is it affecting their performance? And if it's not affecting their performance or their ethical obligations or something, or affecting you on the case, then it's. It may not be your business, okay. If it's a matter of safety or something like that, where you're concerned about something, then that is where you, you know, that's where if you see like a market change of behavior, real withdrawing, you know you're not getting any information from the person. It seems like there is a mental status change. Those are obviously big red flag.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 19:15

Now for clients. The role of the client is to focus on making sure their needs are met. So again, I don't know that clients necessarily need to know in detail what is the condition of my lawyer. Are they an alcoholic or whatever? The issue with the client is is the lawyer meeting their needs? Is the lawyer communicating with them well and being effective in handling their situation? If they have concerns along the lines of safety and all the same things, then they can make referrals to lawyers, assistants or they can. If they think that their you know, their attorney hasn't honored their ethical obligations, they can consider a bar complaint too. But really I think one of the things that what we can do on mental health for other people is remember our role and do we need to get into their story, because I don't know that we always do? The reality is that substance abuse, mental health, some of these things are so pervasive that the odds are, yeah, people out there that you're dealing with do have these conditions.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 20:16

But remember what your role is and how can you be of help in terms of advocating for yourself and doing the things that you need to do in your life.

Bob Sewell: 20:26

Let me. Let me push back a little bit and, in the form of you know, a personal story. I have a good friend, litigation attorney. I see him one day and I'm like you know, I'm actually on multiple occasions and I see him, there's something's up. He's a good friend, and I say Frank, his name's not Frank I say, hey, frank, how are you doing? I'm worried about you. What's what? You know, what's going on? And Frank later, you know I'll be fine, I'll be fine, and you know, and Frank later ends up leaving the profession. He has a break, he ends up, he ends up really struggling with his mental health, hospitalized for a period of time. What do we do? You know, as, as, as you know, these are our friends, these are our family members in many cases. What do we do for how do we? How do we help them? I guess, is my question. And then, okay, yeah, we can't leave.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 21:34

You're talking about a little different situation than what you asked before.

Bob Sewell: 21:38

And.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 21:38

I would say that it's a different. Your role will be different with your friends or your relatives than it will be with your opposing counsel or potentially like your clients right.

Bob Sewell: 21:50

Sure.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 21:51

So you know we do have some professional boundaries that still remain. Some of those are blurring now, but we still have some of those. So you may not be in a position to actually help your opposing counsel or or even your clients or your lawyer, if you're the client, the same way that you would be with a friend or family member. But I will tell you I mean the story that I just shared at the beginning. I know that there's always this advice out there about mental health that says if you're struggling, reach out for help, and I always kind of get upset when I hear that I understand what they're saying. I think they're trying to give permission who are struck, to people who are struggling to ask for help. But remember the reality that people who maybe are struggling with depression or other kinds of mental health conditions, they might not be in a position to ask for help.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 22:40

When I had postpartum depression, I'll tell you I knew the symptoms of depression. I had received training on that in high school, in college, in law school. I knew what they were. I could probably identify them all by memory. I was exhibiting almost every single one and never would I have thought for myself that I should go seek therapy or other help to deal with it. The reason was that I was in survival mode because I had a newborn baby and I was trying to get through the day. That's really it.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 23:09

It wasn't until my mom heard me sobbing on the phone that she was like Claire, you got to get some help, and she drove over and took me over there. So, yes, sometimes we do need to reach out for to help our friends and we may have to push in a little bit more than we normally would be accustomed to. It's not always our role to impose our will on someone else and I would be cautious about that. But yeah, there are times when you get the sense that someone really needs some help. Then offer it, tell them and try it. And what I would say is, in your language and dealing with the people like this, try to watch the tones of judgment as much as you can. Be real cautious. Where you're offering help and support, you're not taking their agency away and you're not judging them and making them feel more ashamed, because that might make them retract a little bit more. But, yeah, you may have to reach out and support people who are close to you when you know enough to understand what the situation is.

Bob Sewell: 24:16

As employers. We have employees, we have people in the law that are struggling, our younger associates in the office, our paralegals and how do we help them? You know, if you could. I guess let me change that if you could wave a magic wand and you could say I now Give you the skill and what, the talent and the resource as an employer to Whatever Claire wants on this subject, what are you gonna? What are you gonna anoint them with? I?

Attorney Claire Parsons: 24:57

Would say here's it, here's a resource from some some really great people who know a lot more than me.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 25:03

On a broader level, I would refer to you to the Surgeon General's guidelines and framework on workplace mental health because, they really talk about it holistically and they kind of connect the dots from like employment laws, employment practices to like wellness plans and all of those things. So I would refer to that as a really good resource and Help you understand the context of it. But I would kind of say so one of the first things is, if you're running a business, consider what the work lives are of your employees. Do they actually have time to access your, your metal, medical and mental health benefits? You know? Do you have a plan that off offers those sources to employees? You know, obviously having an EAP or employee assistance program is something you should have. Other wellness related perks and services and things are really good as well. But I would say that if you aren't focusing on the culture of your workplace and you don't make it clear to people, not just in your words and not just in your policies, but through your conduct and the way you treat people, that people can reach out for support if needed, then you know then that's a missing thing.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 26:22

You know I have experienced as a law firm partner, you know, someone reaching out with a situation like that and asked me for help and it was a difficult thing to deal with. But at the same time, I was so relieved that they asked because it's so much worse when the person doesn't seek help. It's actually a good thing when someone seeks help, as much as it can be really difficult and scary to deal with. So those are the things that I would really think about. But, yeah, you. So I talk about mindfulness and I talk about compassion. I know a lot of people get upset sometimes and are like why are you teaching people to meditate when that's not gonna fix anything? Well, it can fix things for individuals, but no, I don't represent that meditation is gonna take the place of good workplace practices and cultures. It absolutely will not.

Bob Sewell: 27:13

Could not agree more. I mean you. We need to have an environment where people can talk, where people could feel safe, where people can do their job at a safe place and and we have to remember, you know, we're in a competitive environment and we have to remember that Our co-workers or our friends, and that's so they're supposed to be.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 27:38

Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest and most important ways that anybody, any human, deals with stress is Social support. So if that social support is not there or the workplace is actually toxic, then that can be really damaging to mental health. So, it's essential that that is honored and really taken care of yeah so.

Bob Sewell: 28:03

If you could teach one thing to me and you could say I want, I Want Bob Sewell to know, or to try or to do that one thing, what would you teach me?

Attorney Claire Parsons: 28:23

So the the one thing I really hope could come through with everything that I teach. I mean, I teach a lot of different practices and skills and ideas and I bring in science, but at the end of the day, what I am teaching is that struggling with mental health conditions Doesn't necessarily it's. It's not a destination, it's not a Something that you necessarily have to have in your whole life. Right, you can change some of the practices that you do, you can get the requisite support, you can learn some new skills and it can make a difference in your life. I know from experiencing depression and anxiety and overthinking that there is this feeling of hopelessness and also a huge lack of control that comes with it.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 29:13

And you can't necessarily change a lot of those patterns overnight and not necessarily without effort, but you can do it with some consistent changes and it doesn't necessarily mean changing your whole life. It's really small practices over time that can make a huge difference for you. And the reality is I mean mental health is not just essential for your work performance as a lawyer, you know, the thing I like talking about the most is no. Lawyers affect so many people. Our jobs are there to help people. So if anybody deserves good mental health, it's lawyers.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 29:50

And when we do that when we, when we help ourselves in that way, we benefit our whole community and so many lives in the process. So it's just so important and I just hope lawyers understand and and take advantage of Practices and supports to help themselves.

Bob Sewell: 30:06

Claire, thanks for coming on. Keep up the good work. I mean, this is really an important subject and it's and I like what you had to say there at the end about how we are. You know, we're public servants and in many ways we're out there to serve the public and and Our good mental health will make us better at what we do. So thanks for coming on.

Attorney Claire Parsons: 30:30

Yep, thanks for having me.

Bob Sewell: 30:31

Thanks for listening to. Is that even legal? Remember this isn't legal advice. If you have a legal question for yourself, reach out to an attorney. Remember that we're fun, we're lovable and we are here to help you To my listeners in 62 countries across the world. If you have something you want to explore, email us at producer at even legal calm, and don't be shy about leaving a review for this podcast on your favorite podcast form. See you next time.