Podcasts about bree buchanan

The legal profession as a whole now has a heightened awareness of the fact that wellbeing is a critical piece in the life of a lawyer, but rates of addiction, depression, anxiety, and other mental health struggles are still high. How can we support fellow attorneys, judges, students, and ourselves when dealing with a crisis? Molly Ranns and JoAnn Hathaway welcome Bree Buchanan to discuss her personal addiction and recovery story and learn about her work with the National Task Force on Lawyer wellbeing. Bree describes strategies and resources for reducing stigma and encouraging those who are struggling to seek the help they need.  Lawyers & Judges Assistance Program - State Bar of Michigan Bree Buchanan is co-founder of the National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing and co-author of its 2017 groundbreaking report that launched the Wellbeing in Law Movement.

The legal profession as a whole now has a heightened awareness of the fact that wellbeing is a critical piece in the life of a lawyer, but rates of addiction, depression, anxiety, and other mental health struggles are still high. How can we support fellow attorneys, judges, students, and ourselves when dealing with a crisis? Molly Ranns and JoAnn Hathaway welcome Bree Buchanan to discuss her personal addiction and recovery story and learn about her work with the National Task Force on Lawyer wellbeing. Bree describes strategies and resources for reducing stigma and encouraging those who are struggling to seek the help they need.  Lawyers & Judges Assistance Program - State Bar of Michigan Bree Buchanan is co-founder of the National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing and co-author of its 2017 groundbreaking report that launched the Wellbeing in Law Movement.

Bree Buchanan is a Senior Advisor at Krill Strategies, which improves lawyer well-being by reducing the impact of mental health issues and substance abuse in the legal profession. With a 30-year career as a litigator, lobbyist, law professor, and legal assistance program director, she was a Founding Co-chair of the National Task Force of Lawyer Well-Being and co-authored its report, The Path to Well-Being.  Bree is a member of the Lawyer Well-Being Committee of the National Bar Association. From 2013-2018, she was the Director of the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program, where she worked with lawyers experiencing behavioral health issues and legal employers seeking resources and support for their staff. Bree frequently speaks for national and international law organizations and global law firms on lawyer well-being and impairment issues. As the co-host of the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, Bree shares her story of addiction recovery, and her writing has appeared in publications, including Law Practice Today and The American Lawyer. With a warm presentation style and engaging presence, she breaks the stigma and silence of mental health to tackle the crisis in the legal industry. In this episode… According to the ALM, 35% of lawyers feel detached and isolated, often leading to anxiety, depression, and substance abuse disorders. This is especially prevalent among younger attorneys, who must navigate steep learning curves and face pressure to exceed expectations. What resources can law firms offer to promote lawyers' mental health and well-being? With so much stigma surrounding mental health in the legal profession, many lawyers struggle to disclose their challenges. After experiencing burnout and alcoholism from a demanding career in law, Bree Buchanan became dedicated to sharing her experiences with others. Hearing stories from lawyers facing similar issues fosters connection and encouragement to seek help. Additionally, law firms can provide confidential employee assistance programs (EAP) with professional psychologists. However, reducing the pervasiveness of mental health issues in the legal profession requires easing work-hour expectations and motivating employees to take vacation time. In today's episode of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast, Elise Holtzman welcomes her guest Bree Buchanan, a Senior Advisor at Krill Strategies, for a conversation about addressing the mental health crisis in the legal profession. Bree shares mental health resources promoting confidentiality, how to raise awareness of substance abuse in the industry, and the increased mental health epidemic among younger lawyers. 

Chris Newbold:  Hello, well-being friends and welcome to the Path to Well-Being In Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being In Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, executive vice president of ALPS malpractice insurance, and I'm once again joined by my favorite and only co-host of the podcast, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how's it going today?  Bree Buchanan:  Good answer, Chris. It's going great. Great to be here with you.  Chris Newbold:  Obviously most of you know Bree. Bree continues to be a forceful advocate in the well-being space working for Krill Strategies and doing a number of different speaking engagements around the country. So again, most of you know by now that our goal here is to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the well-being space, in the legal profession, and in the process build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. And I got to tell you, one of the things that I think I've come to realize the more work that I've done in the well-being space is the power of storytelling and the power of what motivates people to get involved in things that are close to the heart or things that have had a personal impact on individuals. And today's guest I think really epitomizes when something can happen in your life that changes the course of life.  There is certainly a notion of that propelling a passion and an interest in an issue, and that certainly is the case with somebody that we really love in the well-being movement. One of the newest additions to the Institute for Well-Being in Law's board of directors, and that's Javoyne Hicks out of Georgia. I'm going to let Bree introduce Javoyne to the listeners, but just know she's one of my favorite people. It's really a joy to bring her on this particular podcast, and so much of why I do this work is because of stories like you're going to hear from Javoyne. So Bree, love it if you could introduce Javoyne to the listeners.  Bree Buchanan:  And I've just been so happy that Javoyne has joined us on the board of directors and she just has this quiet, persistent, persuasive nature to her, and you're going to hear about all the things that she's been able to achieve. So Javoyne Hicks serves as the chair of the State Bar of Georgia's Lawyers Living Well Committee and is a member of the executive committee for their State Bar's Board of Governors. She helped develop the State Bar of Georgia's first Wellness and Practical Skills, 12 hour CLE, which now, which is coming up in just a few days, is really blossomed into a wellness institute, and I'm excited Javoyne to get to be one of your speakers at that too. She has spearheaded the movement to create a wellness center as part of the State Bar of Georgia, and really just all of these developments have her fingerprints on all of them as a catalyst for what's going on there.  Javoyne's goal is to normalize the attention everyone should be paying to their own well-being and minimize the stigma that exists that keeps people from seeking help when needed. As such, Javoyne serves on the board of IWIL and the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. In her day job, and yes, besides all of that, she also is the chief senior assistant district attorney in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office. So welcome Javoyne. Thank you for being here today.  Javoyne Hicks:  Thank you so much, Bree, for having me. I'm really excited about being here. Just as excited as I'm about being on the IWIL board. Very excited.  Bree Buchanan:  Absolutely. Javoyne, I'm going to ask you the question that we ask everybody on the podcast at the beginning to tell us why you are such a passionate advocate for well-being in the legal profession. What is in your life that really drives that passion?  Javoyne Hicks:  Well, Bree, that question is one that most people ask, but it started over 18 years ago. It was 19 years ago now when the father of my children and a very exceptional lawyer was dealing with depression and refused to get the assistance that he needed because he said, "I'm a good lawyer. I know that despite the confidentiality that exists, good lawyers can get past those guidelines and can get access to information." He did not want people to know that he needed help, so he wouldn't go get help in August of 2004, so it's been 19 years, he died by suicide because he would not get the help that he needed. I have two extraordinary daughters who were five and seven at the time.  And I had to watch them like hawks. It was apparent that there were mental issues in his family that existed and were known, and he had examples of his uncle was a member of the bench in Detroit for 30 years. He was diagnosed, he took medication, and was still successful. But yet, and still even having that example that you could deal with it and still be successful, he still didn't want anybody to know he needed help. And so my fight, and the reason I do this work is to normalize the conversation around mental health and wellness and how it is okay not to be okay. And it's important that you get the help that you need, and like I told my children, "We are not going out like that. We are going to make sure that every way possible that is available for you to get help. If you need it, we're going to get it." My oldest is now an attorney herself, is an assistant DA like me.  Bree Buchanan:  Oh my goodness. Wow. That's exciting.  Javoyne Hicks:  But she does work that is human trafficking work and it is very difficult for her. Sometimes because she takes it home, because she wants to help these children and she can't help the children and the justice system doesn't necessarily help these children. And just yesterday it's like sending her a new list of people to choose from to find a counselor to release that pressure. She knows it's okay to get help because we've had that conversation so that she won't be like her dad. And I have to add that his sister also died by suicide a few years after that. So it's just ingrained that if I can save a life, I'm going to do that.  Bree Buchanan:  And I have no doubt that you have already through all the work in the advocacy that you have done, and your daughter is a new lawyer too.  Javoyne Hicks:  She is. She's only been practicing two years.  Bree Buchanan:  The extra pressures that young lawyers are dealing with too.  Javoyne Hicks:  Yes.  Chris Newbold:  Javoyne, tell me about, again, this notion that so many lawyers are prone to suffer in silence. And just give me your impressions of, I mean obviously I think a lot of us surmise what the why is, right? But the notion of, in the time that's went by, do you feel like there have been positive evolution in this area within the legal profession that it's as bad as it's ever been? What's your general sense of where we're at in terms of, again, lawyers being willing, able, and making that step to be able to talk about issues as opposed to suffer in silence?  Javoyne Hicks:  I do believe, Chris, that we have made major strides in lawyers going and deciding to get help and not suffering in silence in the same way. And a lot of that has to do with the work that we all are doing here as far as just giving it a voice. Because a lot of times people didn't know that other people were dealing with the same stressors. Unfortunately though that number that still feels like if they need help as a lawyer, if they tell people they need help, then people won't come to them for help and therefore they won't be able to be the lawyer and have their livelihood that they need. Because if you can't, people just think, "Well, there's something wrong with them, so let me go to another lawyer." That's the reason it's so important to normalize this conversation. When people realize that we all have mental health issues, it's just in differing degrees of what's happening in their life at the time and that it's okay, then you won't see someone and judge them.  There's that stereotype that, and I don't know why we have placed this different attack on the mental health versus physical health. There's a difference. And until we conquer that, we're going to have to continue to deal with that issue. But it has gotten better and a lot of students, the law school students, because law schools are talking about it and including wellness as part of their processes, even if it's not part of the curriculum, they have someone in the schools who address mental health. And so there are a lot of younger lawyers that aren't putting up with some of the things that we, as I would say, seasoned lawyers had to deal with in just expressing our growth. I work in the office and I've been a prosecutor off and on for most of my career, and now I'm back into it and there was no saying, "Mental health day, okay, well take your file with you and come back tomorrow."  I mean, that just wasn't part of the conversation. And now it is. You can take a sick day if you need it to regroup. And one other thing that we also tell people is that you don't have to wait until you're in crisis. As we spread that message that has helped to be able to say, "Hey, reach out, talk to somebody. You're not in crisis. You just had a bad day." Because you want to get to the point where you're not waiting until you're in crisis in order to get that assistance. And that helps across the board.  Bree Buchanan:  It makes such a difference. And because of that stigma, when I was a director of a Lawyers Assistance Program, what I saw over and over again, what you'd always think after you'd answer the phone is, "How could this person wait so long?" And that really is an issue. People terrified of the blowback, and so they just don't ask for help. And it's not that it's too late, but it's just so much more difficult too.  Javoyne Hicks:  So much more difficult.  Chris Newbold:  And don't you think, Javoyne, that when we talk about this culture shift that's needed in the legal profession, that it is... Progress feels to me like the ability to raise your hand and say, "I need help." And to not be judged, to not feel like, "Well, how's this going to affect my standing in the firm?" That seems to be a pretty critical element of success in a culture shift, is that maturation toward that level of vulnerability that people when they're struggling mentally have the ability and feel like they're going to be supported, not the opposite.  Javoyne Hicks:  And that's so true and that's why it's so important, if you can, in your wellness journey to find partners that are leaders in either the firm. We try to partner with as many judges as possible because lawyers do what judges say is okay to do. And so when you have a respected judge, especially because when you have judges who will go and say, "I get counseling." I mean, I had one of my judges who can be as honorary as he wants to be on the bench, but he spoke at one of our wellness CLEs last year and he talked about he goes to counseling every week. And so in my mind I'm like, "Well, what would you do to people if you didn't because you are something else."  But that made it okay for a lot of people. It resonated that this judge says he gets counseled, this judge, especially. When you have someone in leadership that people look up to and they are willing to say that they get help and you see that they're still able to carry on their jobs, people still respect them. Then you get other people that say, "Okay, well it's okay for me to go get help too." And that's what we work towards. We partner with people especially that are in the field and doing well. The partners, I don't have as much myself impact with partners, but we partner with people who do, who are in the big firms.  A lot of the big firms have instituted either a wellness partner or they have a counselor within the firm that people can go to. And so they're seeing that they get a better product from a well lawyer, and they can see that it always comes down to the bottom line in those instances. And when you can show the bottom line not only does not decrease, but increases when you have well lawyers and you support your lawyers, it makes a difference.  Chris Newbold:  Javoyne, we're obviously recording this during suicide prevention month, and I know that you've thought a lot about this topic. What do you believe the profession should do to prevent more suicides? What's actually effective in your mind in terms of suicide prevention?  Javoyne Hicks:  Talking about it, just like we said. I mean that right there is the number one way to help the profession and reduce the number of suicides among our profession because when people know that they can talk about it, we normalize the conversation, it's not a closed door conversation anymore. We're having these seminars, we're having these CLEs, we're inviting our CLE that's going to happen on at later this week. We have a full judges panel of judges who are talking about the things that they have gone through. I remember one of our CLEs was very powerful because we had a judge that talked about dealing with substance abuse. What? That never would've happened before. When you have someone that is willing to put themselves out there, other people are willing to go and get the help that they need. To me, that's the number one thing. Continuing to provide these educational opportunities, these conversations where people can hear from others who aren't just talking about it but have lived through the struggle, lived through the struggle.  And I say that again, lived through the struggle, so that there's a positiveness on the other side. Doesn't mean the struggle is over, but they're living through it and able to show others how they can make it work for them. And so that to me, number one, hands down, that's why I also work beyond our legal profession in working with suicide prevention on a broader scale. Our teens are suffering at alarming rates and that's social media driven in my mind. And there's data to support that. When you see it looks like everybody else's life is perfect, it makes yours look not so great. So we have to work on that. But conversation is the number one key in my opinion.  Chris Newbold:  And it feels like, I just love what you said about it's the living through it and the ability to be able to reflect and share those stories. It does feel like one of the things that makes me optimistic is that more and more attorneys are willing to do that at all sorts of various phases of their career, which ultimately either gives them the courage to be able to either pivot or seek the resources that they need. But as we all know, there's so many different degrees of surviving through it, but all of those degrees are important, whether it's contemplating situations where Lawyers Assistance Programs step in, or even just the average associate who doesn't feel like they belong in a law firm culture and wants to talk to somebody about it.  Javoyne Hicks:  Exactly.  Chris Newbold:  All sorts of stressors and anxiety creating things that happen to all lawyers. But if we again, kind of internalize it and don't feel like we can talk to others about it, then in some ways we may be part of perpetuating it.  Javoyne Hicks:  Correct. I totally agree with that. One of the things that we, in Georgia, besides starting a suicide prevention and awareness committee, we had a state bar president who died by suicide and the president of the bar at that time, she took it upon herself to establish a suicide awareness and prevention committee, and we did a full year How to Save the Life campaign where we worked with ICLE, we did full videos. And that's how I actually started my advocacy because she asked me, because she knew my story because my husband wasn't just an attorney, he was also the county attorney for where we live. And so he was pretty prominent and she knew my story.  And so she asked me to be part of that campaign. And what we did was, what she did was work with our CLE approving committee, the CCLC, and got them to approve showing a minute of a segment before every ICLE that year. For a whole year, if you took a CLE course, you heard how to save a life and got information and links to how to get more or see the rest of the videos and that kind of thing. And that campaign was powerful.  Bree Buchanan:  I bet.  Javoyne Hicks:  It had to reach everybody because you had to have 12 CLEs so you saw that thing 12 times, at least 12 times.  Bree Buchanan:  You couldn't get away from it.  Javoyne Hicks:  You couldn't get away from my face.  Bree Buchanan:  That's brilliant.  Javoyne Hicks:  That was one of the faces that took part.  Bree Buchanan:  That's a wonderful strategy, forced audience. And so you've really been such a leader in the area of instituting well-being, suicide prevention, et cetera. Among the bar associations, and I know we have plenty of listeners who are parts of the state task forces that we work to start around the country. You up lead that effort there in Georgia. Are there other things that you've seen or suggestions you have aside from CLE for what some of these Bar Association folks could be doing around the country?  Javoyne Hicks:  So one of the primary things, like I said, is having conversation. So it's important to partner with other organizations who are maybe like-minded, but they don't appear that way. I mean, you can partner with your Lawyers Assistance Programs, but you also partner with your local bar associations with their walks. It could be an AIDS walk, it doesn't have to be a walk that's specific. It could be any kind of walk because it's physical activity. You partner with associations that are doing whatever, and they have you come and talk to their people. It could be a class or a session, or it could be like the lawyer's club, for instance, where people are going to get business and interacting for business, but they put you on their program and you're in front of people that you normally wouldn't be in front of because they're not going to come to your wellness CLE, but they're going to go to a business interaction or business meeting or a development meeting.  And then you have an opportunity to partner with them. And when you bring people together, then you're spreading your message. You also get some information about building business as you give them information about how to institute wellness in that business. So that's one of the things that we do a lot of as partner with other organizations. Again, not just limited to the legal profession because lawyers are in other organizations as well. So churches, we partner with some church activities depending on what it is because we have a lot of the local bars will have events at church. It may have a Wills seminar, for instance, at a church or adoption day, those are different kind of audiences that you can reach, that you can share information with. And so that's all, again, we're back to communication and conversation. So it keeps coming back to that partnerships.  Bree Buchanan:  And I love how creative-  Javoyne Hicks:  Specifically...  Bree Buchanan:  Creative in finding places to go and share that message. A lot of times we just think up to CLE and then stop thinking, but you've really taken it so much farther than that.  Javoyne Hicks:  You can't stop thinking because it is not just us. We go home and the family is affected. You may be the only lawyer in your family, but you have other people that are going to their jobs and they're affected by what you bring home. And so that's the reason you have to find ways to include them as well. A lot of times when we partner, even when we're talking about the legal profession, we need to make sure that we're including paralegals and the support staff because they're dealing with that attorney that's maybe struggling and they're covering for them if they're having problems with the way their practice is going because they won't get the help that they need. So we have to have our tentacles out, if you will, to make sure that we're reaching as many people as possible.  Bree Buchanan:  And paralegals and court staff too.  Javoyne Hicks:  Yes.  Bree Buchanan:  Big ally.  Javoyne Hicks:  Yes.  Chris Newbold:  It feels like Javoyne, that again, I think my big takeaway from your conversation today, again, anywhere that you can start a conversation within a community of folks who face similar challenges, that's a healthy conversation. Whether it's bringing together county prosecutors and talking about common challenges, whether it's about bringing paralegals together and talking about that nasty boss that makes me feel like I'm not deserving of the recognition that I am.  Javoyne Hicks:  Exactly.  Chris Newbold:  Or the plaintiff's lawyers at the trial lawyer conference, somebody getting up there and telling the stories of struggle and perseverance and finding a way through and how, and every time that we normalize a conversation through storytelling, we make it easier for the next person to come forward and say, "I need some help." Or something's structured here in the way that our profession is operating that needs either attention work or probably both.  Javoyne Hicks:  And one of the things that we do when we partner with Lawyers Assistance Program, they have a program called Lawyers Helping Lawyers. And so just like we said, we want to get to the point where you're not waiting until you're in crisis. So you partner with someone who's similarly situated with this particular problem or issue. It doesn't even have to be a problem, an issue. And you partner with them so they can understand. Because again, we're trying to catch people before things become catastrophic. And so if I'm struggling because I got a major case, or for me, for instance, I have a murder case coming up and it's really gotten under my skin. Before it feels like, "Well, I don't feel like I need to go see a therapist about that. Therapist is not going to understand, but another prosecutor may understand. And because that prosecutor can help me with how to deal with this particular issue, I'm not taking it all on."  And it build upon itself so that I am then can't move or I'm so overwhelmed I can't do my job. But if I had just partnered with somebody at that initial phase, then you don't get there. And so I'm all about not getting there as many people I can keep from getting there. And then if you are there, provide the resources that people need to keep going.  Bree Buchanan:  Support by a peer is just such an effective way to spread the message and support for folks. And I love what you're saying about not even having to go to a therapist, but to be around people who have a similar background, who have faced the same problem and as using your words, lived through it and coming out the other side, really, that can be very impactful and effective.  Chris Newbold:  Let's do this. Let's take a quick break. I want to come back and Javoyne, I want to unpack some of the stuff specifically that you're doing in Georgia, right? Because again, I think you're leading the charge to the discussion, the conversations, the solutions, and I want to spend some thoughtful minutes in that particular area as well. So we'll be right back.  Speaker 4:  You expect most things to be easily available online. So why should your malpractice insurance be any different? Your job as an attorney is already hard enough. You deserve an application that's easy. With ALPS, you can apply, view rates, and accept your policy a hundred percent online. Get back to your practice faster and add valuable time back to your day. Want to talk to a real person? Call, chat, email. ALPS is here for you.  Bree Buchanan:  Welcome back everybody. And we are here today with Javoyne Hicks from Georgia who is talking to us about what all is happening in the state of Georgia around well-being. And she's really shared with us also a very powerful story of her own personal loss that's motivated all of this. Javoyne, let me just drill down a little bit and talking about the well-being movement there in Georgia where you're such a leader, particularly with a state bar and being on the board of governors even. Could you just tell us real quickly what you've done over the past few years, what you've been able to develop, but also really what is your plan for the future? What still remains to be done there?  Javoyne Hicks:  I can tell you I'm so excited about Georgia and its path toward well-being. I mean, we started as a task force under leadership of one president who was like, it was part of his strategic plan. I was fortunate, and we in Georgia are fortunate that we've had state bar presidents that have put well-being at the forefront of their activities. So the president elect happened to be the one selected to be the first chair of the wellness committee. So when he became president, I was tapped to take over for him as chair of the wellness committee and have done so since then. And so we came from a task force to an established committee of the bar. We took that and established, like I said, that CLE where he actually paid for out of his president's budget to get us going. So we've had tremendous support.  We've had, like I said, we had a chief justice of the Supreme Court as part of our wellness committee when we first got started. So when, again, have partnerships and having someone with that voice that can help carry the message. Now, I had to do some work with him too because he would say, "I didn't want to have a CLE while I was breathing for the whole time." So I was like, "Okay, Judge." But we also established CLEs that were wellness CLEs before. To do any wellness activities, it had to be incorporated into professionalism. That was the only way we kind of could couch it in order to do some wellness presentations. So we established a separate CLE that's wellness that you can get credit for all by itself. So we did that.  We have subcommittees that focus specifically on well-being, physical, mental, law students, social, so conquering and tackling that you have to only socialize at law firms with alcohol present and making it so that it's acceptable to expand that to mocktails and mocktails being a signature drink as well as... One of the things that I, and some people disagree with me, which is okay, I'm trying to normalize the conversation. I don't want to penalize people who, they like those activities where they go and they get a drink and they drink responsibly. The thing is to make it so that you don't feel like you have to in order to do that socialization. I don't want to make it so that you can't, or you look down on the wellness community if you want to take a glass of wine, but I want to make sure that you don't feel like you have to take that glass of wine in order to be part of that interaction.  And so that's the changes that we're making in the mentality of the interaction. We've done that. We've moved on to establishing a wellness... We're right on the cusp. We've got approved for a wellness center. It's talking about moving forward to our future. So we've taken this committee, which is not going to go away because the committee is still part of the bar as a standing committee, but the wellness center will pull together all of the activities that the State Bar of Georgia is phenomenal in the different ways it addresses wellness. So we have the wellness committee, we have the Lawyers Assistance Program, we have suicide prevention and awareness. We have SOLACE, which is the organization that helps when there's a catastrophe that happens in a lawyer's life. The house burned down, there's a major illness, and someone can't continue to practice so they need that other kind of support.  I mean, the young lawyers have a Lawyers Assistance Program that they institute, and we also work with our law schools. So the center would bring all of those entities together so that when someone calls the bar and they'll call the wellness center, there's someone that can point them in the right direction, kind of to be the one-stop shop, if you will. So people will know what resources we have and can help people get to where they need to be in order to get the help that they need specifically. That's the goal of the center. Right now, we're going to be virtual, but I'm knocking on that door for a space and I'm knocking on that door for a person and they know I'm coming. They know I'm coming. They already know I'm coming. That's how we're moving the process forward.  And again, like I said, we partner with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. We partner with all the local bars. We partner with the affinity bars too, because one of the things we know that wellness has not been... We still have a long way to go when we talk about mental health and people of color because they have a different challenge a lot of times because a lot of their cultures have made a level of stigmatizing mental health in a way that's beyond just general. And so we partner with those bars as well. And then you have that problem in the Black community period, as far as my affinity. And so I work with that as well. Those are the things that we're doing to move forward the bar. And I'm just so excited. I think that Georgia is doing so well in this area. Still a long way to go, but we are moving that bar forward.  Bree Buchanan:  You really set a great example for others to follow.  Chris Newbold:  I think one of the things that I most respect about, I'll just call it the Georgia model, so to speak, is that you started small, presumably with a few individuals. Those individuals became a task force. That task force became a center. That center became the impetus, the driving force between the partnerships that's also expanded. I mean, you've in essence built a microcosm of what IWIL is trying to build at a national level, which is you've grown a movement from the concerns that you saw coming out of obviously your personal story.  Tell me why you think so many people are leaning into this issue. Because I do think, I mean one of the things that Bree and I are most excited about is, I mean, the number of people who are following IWIL, leaning in, volunteering, saying, "If there's a place I can give back to my profession, this is the place where I want to give back because I think I have something to say or there's something that's bothered me in terms of my own personal journey." So tell me why you think so many people in legal and so many facets of legal are leaning into this particular issue?  Javoyne Hicks:  Well, I think one thing is that we are doing a better job of meeting people where they are. So a lot of times people don't know they're doing wellness activities. They're doing their activity, but it hasn't been identified. And once you tell them, "You do go walking, right?" And you are working on that committee over there or you have conversations with people about how they're doing in your private conversations. You are a support person for your friends. Do you do know that has value? And that once you tell people, "Hey, that has value." They're like, "Huh, it does." And then they're more willing to share. A lot of times also you just tap people on the shoulder. A lot of times people haven't done anything because nobody's asked them.  Bree Buchanan:  That's right. Absolutely.  Javoyne Hicks:  And once you ask them to share their story or tell me how you're working out. When we first started our wellness committee, we had a judge from the federal bench who she was an avid cyclist. No, a runner. She was an avid runner. So we pointed and said, "Would you chair our physical well-being subcommittee and help us, just the runs that you do, just the running that you do so that we can create other people that want to run? The state bar started a cycle, a bicycle section, so hey, when you're doing one of your bicycle sections..." Because they also talk about bike law and blah, blah, blah. But when you're doing one of your rides, we've incorporated their rides into our annual meetings. And so things that weren't connected to wellness, we're now connecting them and people see that they fit and people just, what's the acronym on it? Was it FOMO? FOMO is real.  Bree Buchanan:  It is.  Javoyne Hicks:  And if you let people feel like they're going to miss out because they're not participating because you've tapped into something that they're interested in, it's just going to expose them to another way of experiencing it, take advantage of it. FOMO is real.  Bree Buchanan:  It is. And that's a great motivator. Absolutely. Javoyne, I'm thinking about people that may be listening to this and thinking about what they could do to motivate their state bar. And I'm just curious, did you learn any tips, tricks, things you could pass on to somebody who might be thinking about moving forward to try and create a committee or create a wellness institute, that sort of thing? What worked for you aside from your great passion and persistence, what worked for you? And is there anything that didn't work that you think you would tell people, "Don't do this if you're dealing with your bar"?  Javoyne Hicks:  I really didn't come across anything that didn't work. Again, I keep going back to conversation. Take a look in assessment, who in your organization or who in the organization, who you want to move, do people listen to, whether it's the chief judge or the bar president, or it could be the executive director of the bar. It could be just, not just, but it could be someone that doesn't have a leadership title but people go to, see what it is they like, don't like and talk and speak to that thing to be able to build that rapport, to build that conversation so that they can buy in to the wellness movement. Because again, a lot of times people are doing wellness things and you just have to talk to them the right way. We just had an example of a judge who was kind of dismissive about helping out.  Nobody's going to go out there and say, "I'm anti wellness." They're not going to say that. Not today. They're not going to say that. But you have to meet people where they are. And so saying, "Well, Judge, we don't need you to give us an hour. Give us what you can and let's have a conversation." And he was like, "Oh, yeah, sure." It just came across as a dismissal because of the way it was the first approach.  And sometimes you may have to talk to a person a few times to be able to get them to open up and see what you're talking about is not a catastrophic change in what it is they're already doing or thinking about or been exposed to. But if you just come at it, "Oh, you need to do this for wellness and you need to take breath exercises and you need to meditate." I'm not a good meditator. That's not me. I tell people all the time, unfortunately, I calm down by watching Criminal Minds on TV.  Bree Buchanan:  That's your meditation.  Javoyne Hicks:  That's my meditation. It helps me sleep at night. Don't judge me, but I'm just saying, find what works for you. And then if you're trying to build something, find what works for them, the person you're trying to convince, find what works for them. And if it's not you that needs to talk to them, maybe it's somebody they already know that you have a relationship with that person and they have a relationship with the other person because it is worth the work. So if it takes a few extra steps to get there, then take the few extra steps to get there. And I promise you, you can get there.  Chris Newbold:  Javoyne, we know that we have the ability to transform what our profession looks like in our lifetime. You've already mentioned the fact that you feel like in the last two decades, we've come a long way, which gives us optimism that we can continue to transform, I'll just call it poor habits, into healthier, stronger habits that allow us to put well-being as a core centerpiece of professional success. As you think ahead to the future, what does success in the well-being movement look like to you? What type of legal profession would you like to leave? I mean, you have a daughter now in our profession. As you think about her journey, what's your visual notion for what success looks like as we think about what lies ahead?  Javoyne Hicks:  I would really like our profession to look at how we do business because we have a structure that doesn't necessarily support wellness overall. I'm not going to say that B word, but we all know that it exists and it causes a stress that is like none other and is not always necessary. So some of our clients don't want you to turn around something like in 24 hours in the middle of the night or while you are on vacation because that means they have to then deal with it when you give it back to them. But make sure there's ways to have conversations so that you may not get rid of the B word, but find ways to have different conversations with clients so that expectations aren't just, "Well, we've always done it this way and we know that's what is expected of us." Well, it may not be.  So make sure that if you're going to put yourself on that wheel, it's something that your client really needs and desires. A lot of times if you have that conversation about expectations ahead of time, then that can help the flow of how we interact with our clients and therefore how we do business. I would love for us to get to that point where that all-nighter or taking a call when you're on vacation and it's halting your time with your family and your friends that you already planned. You didn't just buy that ticket yesterday to Italy. I'm just saying that because I just got back from Italy, but you didn't just buy that ticket. So you plan this time off so make it so that you can have that time off. Emergencies happen. Yes, we know that. But make sure it's an emergency and make sure that your client understands that.  And I think more clients than not would move along so that you know that if they are calling you, it is an emergency. I mean, it's not going to be across the board, but it can be a lot better than it is right now. On the broader front, I am committed to working and trying to find, getting involved with the insurance industry, because if you can make wellness one of the free annual checkups the same way most of the insurance companies have instituted having an annual physical, then you help reduce stigma because everybody's available to get an annual mental health checkup, for instance, and therefore you have somebody that can maybe monitor from year to year if there's some major changes that aren't coming out. Or it allows somebody the freedom to talk when they've been scared to talk because everybody has it as part of their insurance. "It's just my wellness check." And that would go a long way to normalizing the conversation. So that's one of my big heavy lifts beyond just the legal.  Bree Buchanan:  Well, and I believe that you will accomplish it because it seems that whatever you put your mind to, Javoyne, you do.  Chris Newbold:  I was just going to say, Javoyne, you are a powerful force in our well-being movement. We are so fortunate that you have joined our ranks. It's a pleasure and a privilege to serve with you on the IWIL board. And we really want to genuinely thank you for sharing your story today and all of the things that I think when you look through such a healthy lens in terms of where we need to go behaviorally, organizationally, through storytelling, through facilitating conversations, there's just so many good nuggets that you've thrown to our listeners today. We are so thankful that you came on the podcast, and we'll always be in your cheering corner as we continue to move on and do great things together.  Javoyne Hicks:  Well, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It's been quite a pleasure. And again, I don't talk to you. I'll talk to anybody about wellness stuff.  Bree Buchanan:  All right.  Chris Newbold:  For sure.  Bree Buchanan:  Thank you, Javoyne.  Chris Newbold:  All right, so for our listeners, we'll be back in just a couple of weeks. Bree and I are kind of contemplating some evolution in the formats of doing some different kind of things, bringing some round tables on, talking about recent news and things that we can kind of weigh in on. And again, continuing to vary the content because if folks are coming to us for content, we want to be right there on the cutting edge of what people are talking about or going to be talking about in the near future, on the well-being front. And so we're excited about some of the things that are coming on the horizon here with the podcast. But again, one special, again, thank you to Javoyne for joining us on this particular podcast, and we should be back in just a couple of weeks with fresh content. Thanks for tuning in.   

[Ed. Note: This episodes discusses sensitive issues including depression and suicide. -GL] Mental health and wellbeing issues have long posed challenges in the legal profession.  However, in this thoughtful episode of The Geek in Review podcast, hosts Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert have an enlightening discussion with three experts on concrete ways to foster greater wellness. Defining wellbeing holistically, Bree Buchanan, co-founder of the Well-Being in Law Movement, explains it encompasses mental, emotional, occupational, spiritual, and physical dimensions. She argues the profession needs “systemic, structural change” through total leadership buy-in, not just HR-led programs. As Buchanan emphasizes, “What I see frequently, then you'll have a practice group or a team, and the leader of that is not bought into this at all.” Reviewing startling statistics from a new Thomson Reuters survey, Nita Cumello reveals over 50% of legal professionals have taken a mental health day this past quarter. She worries this implies “even more days spent, where they're operating in a negative or stressed or in best case, state of neutral headspace.” Cumello asserts, “if more than half of the people are struggling with mental health difficulties enough that it forces them to take time away from work, it means that there are even more days spent, where they're operating in a negative or stressed or in best case, state of neutral headspace.” Saskia Mehlhorn courageously shares her family's painful experience losing her youngest son to suicide and the importance of removing stigma through authenticity. As she recounts her eldest son telling her, “You can't make the last thing that people will know about [him] something that isn't him.” Mehlhorn stresses, "if someone lives authentically, we have to pick them up at the point where we, as a family, as a community, as a society fail and don't allow them to live authentically any longer." Offering insights on providing genuine support, the guests emphasize taking helpful actions, active listening without platitudes, and cueing off what colleagues need. Buchanan advises firms should intervene to assist struggling employees rather than ignore issues or terminate them. She observes, “there's much more willingness to sit down and give the person a chance and work with them.” Cumello concludes wellbeing can't be crowded out by urgent business demands, stating “we have to keep the well being movement as and think about it in that reframe sense of how foundational it is to performing optimally." She advocates assessing workforce wellbeing, training at all levels, and equipping leaders to role model healthy behaviors to drive lasting cultural change. Links: The Unmind report on The State of WellBeing in Law Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals Report  DIal 988 - Suicide and Crisis Lifeline Contact Us:  Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@gebauerm⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@glambert⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threads: @glambertpod or @gebauerm66 Voicemail: 713-487-7821 Email: geekinreviewpodcast@gmail.com Music: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jerry David DeCicca⁠⁠⁠⁠ Transcript

Chris Newbold:  Hello friends. Welcome to the Path to Well-Being In Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being In Law. I'm your co-host Chris Newbold. I'm always thrilled and to be with my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing?  Bree Buchanan:  Doing great, Chris. How are you?  Chris Newbold:  Good, good. As our listeners know, I just want to reset this. Every time we do a podcast, I think we're welcoming new listeners in to the wellbeing movement. And Bree, one of our passions is to continue to introduce thought leaders doing meaningful work in the wellbeing space within the legal profession and in the process build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift in the profession. And I think we are super excited about our guests today because the ability for us, I've always thought that the secret sauce of creating a culture shift in this profession is the ability to engage in storytelling and the realities of what people's lives have been like in law and to give people platforms to tell their story.  And we are really thrilled to be welcoming Julian Sarafian to the podcast, a noted social media influencer who is really a champion for mental health based upon his own personal story and what appeared to be just a straight direct success track in law. And so Bree, why don't I hand it off to you to introduce Julian, and we're really excited about where the conversation's going to take us today.  Bree Buchanan:  Absolutely. And I think Julian and his ability to do the storytelling and pull people in, and another thing I'm excited about, Julian, having you today is somebody that is of a younger generation than us because that's critical. One of the things I often say is that the legal profession will change. It will, because as the younger generations come up to positions of power, I truly believe they're not going to tolerate basically the working conditions that predominate through the legal profession right now. So it's inevitable. But I would say Julian is somebody who is accelerating that change to his work. So I'm going to give you a quick introduction of him and then we'll get to meeting Julian really quickly here. And I also will say, Julian, that you have such a humble bio. I am really impressed with that. So I try to refrain from pumping it up, but there's a lot of humility here and I see that as a great sign for somebody.  So Julian Sarafian is a lawyer and content creator, but owe so much more. That was my editorial. His law firm For Creators by Creators PC is the premier law firm focused on representing content creators and social media influencers. As a content creator himself, Julian produces videos and blog posts related to the legal profession, law and mental health on TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram where, drum roll here, his cumulative following is nearly 350,000. He's given multiple TEDx talks, the cost of success that he did dove into what originally made him viral, his mental health story as a high achiever who faced mental health challenges along the way, culminating in him quitting his job in Big Law during the COVID pandemic. And there's a story there. He has written and published op-ed pieces in the American Lawyer, Law360, Business Insider, Bloomberg Law, and CNBC. And his advocacy for mental health has been covered by the New York Times and Bloomberg Law. So Julian, welcome. We are so delighted that you're here with us today.  Julian Sarafian:  Thank you Bree and Chris for the very warm introduction, and I'm very happy to be here, excited to talk about these really important issues with you guys.  Bree Buchanan:  One of the things I really appreciate so much and looking at, thank you for giving me this excuse to spend a lot of time on TikTok, by the way.  Julian Sarafian:  Oh man. I don't know if I'll say you're welcome to that one.  Bree Buchanan:  But it's been, you really are such clearly a spokesperson for what I find is so important, which is humanizing the practice of law, realizing that we are human beings with basic needs and honoring that. And so tell us a little bit about why you're so passionate for this work, because it really does come through. You've been doing this work for a good number of years and are so consistent, never let up the throttle on this. So tell us your story.    Julian Sarafian:  Yeah, yeah, very happy to. And I'll give the shortened rundown version of the mental health story that you alluded to earlier, and this is the thing that brought me into social media. I've always been the stereotype and archetype of "success in academic world." Valedictorian in high school, UC, Berkeley in three years, worked at the White House when I was there, onto law school at Harvard, and now I'm in Big Law at 24 years old, making the $225,000 salary, including bonus at the time. But it wasn't all starry-eyed and fun and games on the inside. When I was studying for the LSAT, I had panic attacks. There were periods of extreme loneliness and isolation in college. I had a nausea and breathing disorder for most of my twenties. That was stress and anxiety induced, but I didn't know that at the time.  And throughout this entire period, the world is telling me, you're doing fricking awesome. You are getting the best grades, you're going to the best schools. You're getting the best job opportunities. You're a winner, Julian. This is exactly what you should be doing. Everything you're doing is right. Even though on the inside there was a lot of turmoil and my life in many ways could have been a lot more enjoyable and fulfilling. This culminated in the pandemic when I think I'm not alone as a lawyer or even as a professional when I say that it was a very tumultuous and rough period on the mental health front. Personally, I was stuck in the same room week after week after week after week. And Big Law at the time was only getting busier ironically, I think clients wanted a way to feel powerful and in control, and an easy way to do that was to boss around their Big Law associates and their attorneys that they have on staff.  So work accelerated. My mental health and the habits that I had built to this point in my mid-twenties were not sustainable, to put it mildly. That resulted in burnout. It resulted in anxiety developing and taking over more and more of my life, basically making me feel like I couldn't enjoy or even sit and relax something as simple as a TV show or a movie. And that eventually led to mild depression and feeling like everything was turning gray. I didn't feel like I had purpose anymore, and I felt completely helpless, no matter what I did to try to fix this it wasn't working, working out wasn't going to work, watching TV wasn't going to help, playing video games that didn't cure this. So I took the step of accepting, you know what? I have no idea what I'm doing here. I'm going to go and check myself with the mental health services with my then medical provider, Kaiser, and see what they say.  I get handed the diagnosis of severe anxiety and mild depression at the time, and it was definitely a wake-up call. Okay, this is a lot more serious than I realized. This is going to take a lot more effort, energy, and time to heal from and learn to manage than I originally thought. And so that led ultimately to me investing time in therapy, in journaling and meditation and all of these fundamentals that I encourage everybody out there to practice regardless of how they feel their mental health is, because I think it's just a good balance, especially in our day and age of being constantly overstimulated, speaking of TikTok, Bree, that's what that app is. And eventually it came to a point where I felt like I was gaining a lot more out of my time spent advocating and working on my mental health than I was doing the Big Law associate corporate job at my old firm, Wilson Sonsini, which was frankly earning me a big paycheck and looking good on a resume, but I didn't find the work intrinsically gratifying or fulfilling.  And certainly the culture was not one, in my opinion, that was steeped in innovation, pushing the envelope or prioritizing wellbeing. And that's not to say that Wilson specifically was bad, if anything, I think my old firm is excellent in that regard, but it's an industry-wide phenomenon, which I'm sure we're going to talk about in this conversation. So I ended up quitting that job outright, not knowing what I was going to do next, posted my mental health story, which I just described to you on LinkedIn, out of the blue and on a whim, no real impetus or motivation behind it other than if this helps one person, then great. Because I went through this and I think it's important for people to know that, and ended up going viral. I get thousands of messages supporting me, telling me that it made a huge impact on people's lives, and I see that there's clearly value here.  And I ran with that momentum. I went onto every social media platform that I could think of. I wrote articles about mental health, and I continued telling my story everywhere that I could, which led me ultimately to TikTok of all places, which at the time in 2021 for a millennial like me was, isn't that the dancing app for people in Gen Z? But it's very much more than that. And it's been the engine of growth for thousands of creators. And now being a creator, myself and attorney for creators, we can talk about that angle of its importance and relevance. But to make the answer short, Bree, I think the thing that led me to social media was the importance of advocating for mental health because I thought that it was important for other people out there who may be going through similar things that I went through to know that they're not alone, number one. And to know number two, that there is a path out of it and that there is a sense of community out there for them that welcomes them.  Now, that said, when it comes to humanizing the legal profession, it's been an unfortunate reality in my own platform building that talking about mental health for 60 seconds versus talking about a Big Law firm for 30 seconds, the first video is going to get 5,000 views, the second one's going to get 50,000 views. And this was something that I realized and faced very early on in my creation career, a constant tension between what people actually want to hear and in my opinion, what is more relevant and pertinent and important and purposeful. And so I don't mind, and I have no issue unpacking the legal profession for folks outside of it who don't have easy access to a lawyer that they know. Our profession is very buttoned up, it's very guarded. And I think because of its extreme importance in how we function as a society, it's really important that people understand the basics of how it works and what it means. So anyway, long-winded answer, but happy to continue. Go from there.  Chris Newbold:  Yeah. When we think about going to law school, when we think about what practicing law is going to be like, when we think about success, when we think about all those things, I think I continue to remain convinced, and we've talked about it on this podcast before, that there's this notion of an expectations gap as to what you think it's going to be versus what it is. And then the natural realities that once that sets in, you made a very bold move to depart and to leave. I think a lot of folks in your situation stay cross their fingers, turn to self coping mechanisms and other things that just then start to couch them.  When we think about wellbeing, when Bree and I do, we try to think about it in a holistic, how do we set people up for professional success? And then just that reality that oftentimes more often than not, there's just a lot of people in our profession that when you ask them whether they're professionally satisfied, the answer is no. Yet they stay and endure. And I don't want to say they suffer, but they suffer and oftentimes they suffer in silence. Is that fair based upon your followers and what you're seeing from your community?  Julian Sarafian:  Yes, it's exactly correct. And it's what I saw in the industry in Big Law when I was there. And I think again, at my old firm, I was at one of the better places that was more human. It was a West Coast based law firm. I worked with the most relaxed, relatively speaking, and most humane partners. And yet I could still see in so many of these partners' eyes and the way that they carry themselves, the inherent unhappiness and not being able to spend more time with their family, or in my associate colleagues feeling like they were trapped and not knowing what to do or feeling powerless to make a change.  And it's no surprise if I say I think that lawyers tend to be risk averse people. And I think that combination of being so risk averse with the system that we're going to discuss but has a lot of things pushing against folks' wellbeing, especially in Big Law, it creates a perpetual cycle of folks feeling trapped, feeling powerless, feeling hopeless, and like you said, turning to self coping mechanisms a lot of the time looking like substance abuse disorder, which is rampant in the profession, certainly binge-drinking and these days, I think increasingly marijuana use and even opioids.  Chris Newbold:  Yeah. Julian, your story again, it feels like your first viral video was your three minute, This Is Me, This Is Who I Am, This Is My Story, launched or struck a nerve with a community that has built into a following, and I'm just very interested in how that occurred, and how you embraced that and how your followers have reacted to not just your story, but now your position as the champion for mental health.  Julian Sarafian:  Yeah, I think social media to some degree is a formula. So when I first started it was experimenting with having fun while trying to advocate for mental health. Let me do a skit that roasts Harvard kids for avoiding saying Harvard when they're asked, because it's fun. Why not? It's so different than what I was doing in my old job. It was refreshing. But then let me do a trend and talk about three signs that you might have anxiety, see how that goes. But I saw over time that something that really sticks on the app is raw authenticity and being vulnerable and showing up in front of the camera as a human being as you are and just saying your piece, whatever that is. Clearly I knew what that was for me at the time, and I still do. It's not like it's changed a whole lot.  It's showing people that outside the sheen of everything that they look at and think is the greatest and the perfection and what they aspire to be, that it could be much darker on the other side. And it's something that many people refuse or don't ever talk to because their pride gets in the way or they're afraid that people will judge them or things of that nature. So you're right. When I initially posted my mental health story, that was the first thing that went viral. It got me up to, I think 12,000 followers let's say, but I didn't stop there. I continued that narrative and that discussion of tearing down what you think success is people and what it actually can look like on the other side. And I continued telling my mental health story in different ways, wearing a suit in one video, embellishing certain parts and focusing on other elements of grief, for example, or the pressure of going to law school and the videos continue to go viral time after time after time again.  Obviously it was a lot to adjust to at first suddenly having hundreds of thousands of followers, none of whom I know. These are people that chose to hit the button on the internet. I couldn't tell you the first thing about them for the most part, other than that they're an incredibly supportive group of folks, and many of them relate to what I was talking about in one way or the other, be it because they're a high achiever or they've struggled with schizophrenia or they have a family member that they've lost to suicide. I think all of them felt connected to what I said in some capacity, and that drew them to me initially. And in the long run, they've been only supportive and kind both to each other and to me as the leader and creator of the community.   Bree Buchanan:  That's really so impressive. And I'm not surprised, I guess I'm a believer in the goodness of people. And when you create a community around that, we do see that. And I'm just wondering what kinds of strategies you've used around your mental health and just in life and being your very best that you've shared with them that seemed to resonate.  Julian Sarafian:  Yeah. Honestly, this part of the discussion I think is a lot more boring than some people would prefer because a lot of it is the basics. It's 10 minutes of meditating every day. It's going to therapy and accepting that you don't have the answers, and that's okay. It's reading books about mental health to educate yourself and gain perspective. It's journaling when you feel overwhelmed. And probably the most important, especially for high achievers who struggle with chronic overwork is learning how to set adequate boundaries. Because certainly for myself, being a chronic workaholic my whole life, you build habits of consistently and continually multitasking for one. And on top of that, when you're always working, you don't really need to set boundaries because you're always working. That's the default. When you're not working, okay, you're not working for those X number of hours per day.  But the problem with building those habits and lack of boundaries is that it bleeds into everything else in your life, your personal relationships, the way that you manage things outside of work, even basic things like exercise and dieting and eating well. And if you don't set those boundaries in the long run, that's how things become really dangerous when you don't feel inspired or fulfilled by your work, which a lot of lawyers, as we've discussed don't, and that makes these mental health conditions and the misery exponentially worse. So I think if I had to summarize it in one sentence, what's resonated the most with my community is remembering to take things slower and that that's okay.  Bree Buchanan:  Great. Wonderful.  Chris Newbold:  Julian, is there anything that you've learned from your audience, from your followers that you've found either interesting or insightful as you continue to see their stories come back to you?  Julian Sarafian:  Yeah. For me, the biggest thing is that there are always more people than you realize out there that are struggling that you'll never know. So many people message and comment about being in similar situations where they feel isolated and alone, that no one understands what they're going through, that everybody thinks that they're one thing, but on the inside they feel a certain way. And for me, that's just a constant reminder of the trope that you hear when you're young, that you should never judge a book by its cover because you have doctors and high power lawyers, partners in law firms that reach out to me, Am Law 50 firms who tell me in a similar vein that everybody thinks one thing of them, but they don't think the same way and they don't feel the same way to a point that it's very concerning for them.  Bree Buchanan:  Imposter syndrome at the highest levels.  Julian Sarafian:  Some of that certainly yes, definitely. And also a mismatch of I think their internal sense of worth and what they want versus the external validators that they're receiving, which are very easy to define themselves by. What I mean is being a partner of a Am Law 50 firm as an example, it's going to be hard for somebody not to be impressed by that. And they're going to get respect from everybody around them. They're going to get praise, they're going to get a ton of money, they're going to get power and influence. All of those things are external validators telling them, this is good. This is what you want. This is positive. We like this. But on the inside, that's probably not what they really want in some cases. And no number of external validators can change that and will alter that feeling. They have to take action to find something else that better resonates with them.  Bree Buchanan:  Yeah, big disconnect.  Chris Newbold:  Julian, one of the interesting things, I think, a couple weeks ago I spoke in front of the National Conference of Bar Presidents on the future of wellbeing, and one of my observations was that one of the things that has me optimistic about where things are going is a couple things. One, that society's talking about mental health more, just more engagingly everywhere in all facets of life. That's good that more people are telling their stories, more people are hitting the pause button saying, I have an issue. I need a space to be able to talk and clear that before I reengage. That's healthy.  And then the other part that I think is, Bree mentioned earlier is there's a generational shift that's clearly in play right now in society and in particular the legal profession. You got the baby boomer generation that's reaching that retirement age, although retirement sometimes doesn't come traditionally for most lawyers. And I'm curious about just some of your perceptions on the incoming generation of lawyers that we're going to entrust the legal system too, and as it relates to wellbeing, some different opinions frankly about what they're hoping to have as an experience as a lawyer or in law or sitting on the bench or whatever they ultimately pursue. I just think that there's some things that are in play that are very different than historically have been the norm.  Julian Sarafian:  Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Our generation and certainly the younger generation realizes that the world moves really fast. And in our day and age, especially with social media, you can become an entrepreneur from your bedroom with a camera in a month making six figures a year just like that if you know what you're doing and if you create valuable content. And that's just one example of the way that innovation in our current day and age leads to economic opportunity and prosperity. All of this means when they work really hard, when we work tremendously hard to get into the best law schools, to get the best grades, to get the best Big Law summer associateships and full-time jobs, when we get there, there is some expectation, some, that the firms are going to be high caliber, are going to be innovative, are going to be pushing the envelope, are going to represent that level of thinking, analytical mindset and hustle that got us to that associate position.  That's certainly what I expected, and it was something that I was disappointed to find when I got there that as you mentioned earlier in our conversation, our profession is very slow to change and it's very resistant to change. And because of that, there is, I think, a shock factor that hits people in their twenties. We're talking about the younger generation of attorneys when they get there as a first year associate and they realize we're doing things operationally that we could have improved on 20 years ago, the culture seems to be stuck in the mid 2000s. Why are we still using email when we could use project management software like Asana, for example, that's more efficient? And I think the folks that get impatient and try to change it from within, myself as one of them, eventually self-select themselves out of that industry because of this frustration, because we're devoting the vast majority of our living waking hours to this employer.  And clearly it's a transaction, we get money in return, but when we put in all of our energy and purpose and time into this institution, we want it to match similar values to the ones that we have. And when they're too slow or they're too dismissive of what the younger generation thinks, because that's just not the way we did things last year, that's just not the way we do things, period. It doesn't encourage buy-in or build morale amongst the younger associates and the younger generations of lawyers. And what will probably result in the longterm is an increase in folks flocking to the areas of the legal profession that are more open to innovation and more open to new ways and lines of thinking and more focused on wellbeing. For one example, being a solo practitioner like myself, I never expected to be a solo practitioner when I quit my job in Big Law. And yet here I am in large part because I enjoy legal work, just not on the terms that Big Law was offering.  And being a solo practitioner, obviously you can run your own schedule, but it's not just being a solo practitioner, it's going in-house at progressive companies. It's starting a smaller firm with multiple associates at the same time. And I think that self-selection is important, but it's also important to note that when we're talking about Big Law specifically, I don't see it changing much in the long-term or even the midterm because I think the people that stay in it, even from my generation and the younger generations, I think are ones that are more or less okay with what the culture offers and what that lifestyle is like. And so though there will be movement on the edges, more benefits for folks to get therapists, maybe a mental health day here and there, maybe a reduction in the billable hour requirements, I think it's going to be really, really slow and too little, too late for a lot of people who value the things that I've been discussing earlier, innovation and open-mindedness, et cetera, et cetera.  Chris Newbold:  So the sense there is that they would look to make sure that people knew what they were getting into and find that group of folks that are willing to do that.  Julian Sarafian:  Yes, that's right. And the people who are not willing to do it will self-select themselves out, like myself and many colleagues at my level, good friends of mine who were like-minded all left the industry too.  Bree Buchanan:  And many women, for example, are leaving or self-selecting out too, because it's just not, what they get in return is not worth what they're asked to give up basically.   Julian Sarafian:  Yes. A 100%.  Bree Buchanan:  It's a huge issue right now. I'll just say we having a high level discussion and about these things and the image that's popping into my mind, Julian, is one of your TikToks where talking about the inefficiencies and old school style of law firms where you're going on about having to go through and insert Oxford commas-  Chris Newbold:  Oh, yes.   Bree Buchanan:  ... a thousand pages or something. That was just such a great little demonstrative piece there. I love that.  Julian Sarafian:  Oh yeah. And among many other stories, one of the moments I had before quitting that made me really realize I had other things I wanted to do was spending 45 minutes copy and pasting entries from an Excel document into a Word document and billing a client, whatever it was, 750 an hour for it. And that was the task. That was what I was expected to be doing. That was good job, Julian. And in the same period of time I realized I could write an article about getting into law school and probably help some underprivileged kid out there reframe their expectations. What am I doing? Copy and pasting for a big paycheck. Yeah.  Chris Newbold:  Well, Bree, should we take a quick break? And I think this is a good time, obviously so this podcast is being sponsored by ALPS Malpractice Insurance. Obviously that's my employer, so I'll be a little favorable to that. And it's interesting that one of the things that we see at ALPS is, again, a large number of folks coming into the solo space and the small firm space looking for something different, looking for something that has the type of balance that they're seeking. So it reflects, Julian, a little bit of your own personal journey of just that reality of maybe there's a different pathway for me and maybe it is in an area that has a little bit more flexibility and balance. And so I think that's interesting. So let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.  Okay. We're back with Julian Sarafian and who's just got a really compelling personal story and has leveraged that story into becoming a champion for mental health, particularly through social media channels. Julian, I think it's fair to say that one of the things that's resonated in your ability to attract a following has been, one, your authenticity, and two, your willingness to be a truth teller when it comes to the realities of the legal profession. Tell us again, just your perspective on both where the profession is today, what some of your inclinations are about where it's heading. And I know you probably to be more likely an optimist than a pessimist, but just tell us what you see on the horizon as you think about this particular issue and the intersection of our ability as lawyers to deliver in a high functioning legal system.  Julian Sarafian:  Yeah. Well, I think you're right, Chris, that I am an optimist and just since I quit my role in Big Law and started speaking out, I can't count the number of stories of similar folks that have come forward on and off social media talking about similar issues, the lack of purpose, feeling like there was other things in life calling them, realizing that being locked into this bubble of working as a mid-size law firm or Big Law attorney or even solo practitioner just wasn't for them, and they wanted to explore other things. On top of that, social media has accelerated the ability for culture to be built and normalized in not just the legal profession, but everywhere. And what that does has, and what it will continue to do is shed a light on, first of all toxicity. And one example I think that's prominent as of late is the Barbara Rainin scandal where folks had sent racist and sexist emails around and the internet went wild over it. And I don't know what these folks are doing now, but certainly I can promise you they're not well-liked in the public sphere.  Things like that for me speak to the power that every individual has in our system to use their voice to both inspire other people and call out toxic or unreasonable expectations or habits that folks in the profession put on them, which in the long term I think will lead to mental health and wellbeing and being more reasonable with our expectations on ourselves, being cool and being normal and being the default setting. And those are the things that we need to make happen if we want these old ideologies to fall by the wayside. And I think it will happen and it already is happening. It's just going to take time for that culture shift to actually impact institutional policy and the structural incentives, for example, the billable hour that I think are holding the profession back irrespective of the culture, but I am optimistic and I think it's only going to get better from where we are now, and it's already gotten a lot better in my perspective in the last few years since the pandemic and coming out of it.  Bree Buchanan:  Yeah, I'm glad you said those two words, billable hour and the third rail of the legal profession here, and since you invoked it, I was going to ask you about it anyway, but what about that and any other barriers you see that are just endemic to life in Big Law, but the billable hours, something that people say, if we could just change that-  Julian Sarafian:  Yeah. Well, I think the problem is in the American culture of work, the goal is to be number one at all times and make infinite money, period. Legitimately that's the goal. There's never a target, okay, for any business or firm, certainly the most competitive amongst us. It's make as much as possible. And when you tie your revenue to the number of hours that you work, which is what the billable hour is, this is the result that we get. When you mix that with the American culture of work, it's chronic overwork, it's continually billing all the time because you want to make more money for your boss, or the partner wants to make more money for themselves, or you want to look really good for your senior associate because you want to go up for partner eventually, and you know that that will help. All of it comes down to money, and the reason that it comes down to money is because it's being tied to the hours that we work.  On top of that, there are psychological damages that come with the billable hour structure. When I was in Big Law, I remember thinking every day, okay, I could either get lunch with a friend for 30 minutes or bill half an hour. I'm going to probably bill half an hour most of those times because every moment that you weren't working felt like an opportunity cost to be getting more work done and hitting that target for your bonus, or again, looking better for your bosses. You mentioned things that firms or the industry can do to push back or help restructure itself to avoid some of these problems. For the life of me, I can't tell you why firms don't do this, but this is partially why I left the industry. It would be the easiest thing in the world to just create different segments of salary and bonus structure based on how many hours you bill.  This is basic math. I'm talking fourth grade math. Okay. If you bill 1500 hours, you get paid a 150. If you get 1700, you get paid a 170. You hit 1950, you get paid 200. And magically suddenly, I think firms will find, okay, if we make less money from this person, that's fine because we also pay them less. The try hards are going to continue to try hard because that's what they want to do and they want to make more money, but there won't be an inherent pressure on every single associate to fall in line and work their tail off. There also won't be an intra competitive mindset amongst associates to out bill each other or a stigma, oh, you didn't hit the bonus, you're screwed. That's a big no-no, you're not going to rise up the partner now, and you're probably not even well liked. You'd get rid of all of that.  Instead, you'd have a more healthy system of people who, okay, they want to work a little bit less hard, they'll make less money for it, and that's okay. Before I quit my job in Big Law, I actually went part-time at Wilson, and part-time in Big Law is literally that, it's a pro rata percentage of hours that you take on is the percentage of the salary full-time that you receive. I don't see any reason why that sort of structure cannot be institutionalized broadly, not just in Big Law, but in Midlaw and small-law too. And I think that that would just give people a lot more autonomy and feel a lot more in control of their own destiny, which can help alleviate a lot of these pressures.  Bree Buchanan:  Yeah. And the consulting that I do with Big Law, I see a real issue around the billable hour, and it's not just it in and of itself, it's the lack of transparency around what the law firms really want. And so like you said, the default is that you just keep working. When you're not really clear what's expected of you, then you always, always just work.  Julian Sarafian:  Pretty much.  Bree Buchanan:  Yeah.  Julian Sarafian:  Well, and honestly, I don't know if the firms even know what they want to be blunt. The partners are moving around half the time to other firms because they're getting offered more money, and the partners themselves are overworked.  Bree Buchanan:  Absolutely.  Julian Sarafian:  If the leadership team is overworked and can't spend inadequate amount of time thinking and processing what the community, broadly speaking, needs, we shouldn't be surprised that things are getting lost in the shuffle.  Chris Newbold:  And Julian, is that a business model reality or is it just a lack of an awareness to one, talk about what the employee's objectives are versus what the firm's objectives are and to make sure that those are in part aligned?  Julian Sarafian:  Yeah, go on.   Chris Newbold:  Well, I was just going to say is it... Because it still seems like we're lacking the conversation as to what the collective ambitions are, and again, there's an employer and an employee, and so there is a power dynamic there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that both objectives can't be met if there's transparency and communication on the front end.  Julian Sarafian:  That's exactly right. Big Law and many law firms, not just Big Law, will tout themselves on annual growth rates of 10%. Okay, let's go to the other side of the economic spectrum of technology companies or startups where 10% means that your stock is going to nose dive because that's a joke, 10% for some of the smartest, you're telling me the smartest, most ambitious, hardworking lawyers all in the same bucket and under the same umbrella, you can only grow 10% a year? What are you guys doing? But they tout themselves and they're proud of that because as a collective that is, let's just do what we did last year. That's the norm. It's a short-term model of thinking, in part because I think partners are looking at their own paychecks, they're compensated based on the performance of the firm that year. They're not going to see the value in generating long-term revenue 10 years from now because they're looking one year ahead.  So to your point, I think the cost of training a new associate is something to the tune of $200,000. By the time an associate is a mid-level in Big Law as an example, that is the most profitable time for the law firm, when nearly 80 to 90% of their worked hours and billed hours is pure profit. When these firms don't curate themselves or open themselves up to what the younger generation, junior associates have been asking for basic things, more strict boundaries on weekends, maybe a more flexible dinner reimbursement policy, all of these collective things that lead them out the door before they reach that mid-level stage, the firm loses hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential revenue. I'm just one example of the type of person that I didn't dislike the practice of law. I do a very similar practice now on my own.  I would've stayed if certain conditions were being met, if I felt that the culture were more cohesive, that associates were taken care of, that there was a long-term vision that included me in it, rather than what felt like a very short-term model in between distractions meant to, Bree, to your point, shield leadership from being truly transparent with the younger ranks. So I think in the long run, it's something that technology companies figured out a long time ago, that happier employees are more productive employees, more productive employees generate more value for the business, but the legal profession hasn't really cared to adopt that, and so I think it's pretty obvious that it would be financially beneficial to them in the long run. But that requires long-term thinking. And I question if these firms-  Bree Buchanan:  That's right. That's right.  Julian Sarafian:  ... I question if these firms really have that or care about it, because truthfully, the people leading them are folks that are looking at their annual paycheck every year, and some of them, dare I say, have no real loyalty to the institution of the firm because when another firm comes along next year and offers them three million more for their book of business, they jump.  Bree Buchanan:  Yeah. Yeah, I was about to just comment on that. Absolutely.  Chris Newbold:  Well, good. Julian, I guess the last thing that I just wanted to explore is, again, thinking about creating a culture shift in our profession. It could take decades, it could take, there needs to be education awareness. We know that that's probably at its peak right now relative to historical norms, a lot more folks doing, it's hard to not go to a state bar annual meeting in your jurisdiction and not hear something or see something about wellness. That's good. That doesn't necessarily amount to a culture shift, but it's definitely a precursor to most social movements that there needs to be an education awareness, understanding and appreciation that there's a problem and that we can all be part of the solution. So there's that element of it.  I have to think that some of the work that you do on social media has the potential to be an accelerator of that culture shift, because again, you're providing platforms for people to come forward, tell stories, share experiences, and the more that we normalize those experiences, the more that we can appreciate that it's okay to come forward and share those experiences because that will serve as a catalyst to change. As you think about the future, how do you think about that and how do we try to do this more quickly than await decades if we're really serious about achieving a mission of putting wellbeing as a core centerpiece of professional success?  Julian Sarafian:  Well, first of all, I think what you guys are doing with your work in providing a platform like this podcast and opening up a space for these conversations, that's incredibly important. Working directly in the space, creating content about it, starting the conversations with employers or colleagues or friends, all of that is crucial. But in the longterm, I think the power of the internet and what social media provides is, and this is changing, but right now I still believe this is true. If you post a piece of content, you're entering the 1% of the folks on social media who are creators, whereas 99% of people on the internet are consumers. And so my platform and what I've built with advocating for mental health, breaking down barriers in the legal profession, in some ways, I hate to say it, but it's not that special. When I talk about Big Law firms and what people talk about and what Cravath feels like on the inside, these are things that everybody in my law school talked about openly and knew about, but they just never cared to put that on social media or talk about it openly.  And I understand that there's a lot of apprehension with putting yourself out there on the internet and with social media. The Internet's written in ink. You can't take back what you say, and it will potentiall chase you around forever, and you have haters who are going to potentially disagree with you and attack your character or how you look, et cetera, et cetera. But at the same time, you can be part of that process and inspire who knows how many people with a simple post, even reminding your own network about the importance of mental health and wellbeing. It doesn't need to be a tell all mental health, raw vulnerability story like I did. It could just be an insight that somebody learned talking to a colleague about how Big Law wasn't always cracked up to be, or I'm a lawyer and I thought I'd love the work, but it turns out it's really draining.  The more conversations and the more courage that we can have to bring these things to light, I think the more encouraged and inspired other people will be to do the same and to actually accept where they are at, which in the long run will lead to the important thing, which is action, putting pressure on employers, signing onto petitions, attending wellbeing conferences, supporting creators who talk about these issues, writing and creating content about wellness in the legal profession and its importance, or just crafting and being part of leadership initiatives in state bar associations, for example, to help the process move forward. So I think something that everybody can do at a baseline is talk about the issues. And if they're feeling courageous enough post about it digitally, even if it's something they've never done before.  Bree Buchanan:  Lots of tales of courage here. It takes a lot of... Yeah. Especially-  Julian Sarafian:  The internet right now is not a fun place.  Bree Buchanan:  Yeah. Yeah.  Julian Sarafian:  Let's be clear, in 10, 15 years, I think it will be, and I think LinkedIn is the safest platform right now, but when you normalize anonymity and the ability of people to say things behind masks, which is what TikTok and Twitter and Reddit are all pretty much normalized, have normalized, it could be ruthless on top of the harass of effects. If you talk about something controversial and have people harass your home and send police to your door and all that, it's not a great system we have right now, and our 9,000 year old Congress folk have yet to regulate it adequately. So I'm not holding my breath on that one, at least right now.  Bree Buchanan:  Absolutely.  Chris Newbold:  Well, awesome. Julian, thank you for joining us on the podcast.  Bree Buchanan:  Thank you so much.  Chris Newbold:  We certainly want to continue to build bridges with you and between I Will and other influencers like you. Again, I think it's a critical component to what we're working to do, to be inclusive of the strategies and the techniques that have really proven to be so successful for you and your aspirations to do your part, and sharing your own personal story and sharing that authentically with your followers. And again, so many of them are coming forward with reciprocally and sharing their stories back. That's the type of, I think, interaction that does lend itself toward culture shift. And we're very thankful for the work that you're doing.  Bree Buchanan:  Absolutely. Thank you, Julian, for your work and your courage.  Julian Sarafian:  You're very welcome guys, and the feeling is very mutual.  Chris Newbold:  All right, so we'll be back in a couple of weeks. Bree and I are exploring some variations in doing some different things with the podcast, introducing some different segments and so forth. Again, storytelling a big part of what we want to be able to aspire to do. Start making some predictions, start focusing on some of the research that's coming out in the wellbeing and law space. There's just a lot of opportunity for us to be able to, as Julian said, get more content out there into the public domain and be initiators of dialogue in this important area. So we hope that you'll tune in for that. So signing off, be well out there, friends. Thank you.  Bree Buchanan:  Take care.   

We are on the cusp of one of IWIL's most notable programming events of the year, Well-Being Week in Law, and we have a very special guest with us today to talk about one of IWIL's highest priorities. That's Tara Antonipillai, who is serving this year as our Chair of Well-Being Week in Law. — Transcript: Chris Newbold:  Hello and welcome to this special edition of the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast. My name is Chris Newbold and I'm here with my co-host Bree Buchanan. Bree, how's it going?  Bree Buchanan:  Great, Chris. How are you?  Chris Newbold:  Good. I'm actually pretty excited actually because we are on the cusp of one of IWIL's most notable programming events of the year, Well-Being Week in Law, and we have a very special guest with us today to talk about one of IWIL's highest priorities. That's Tara Antonipillai, who is serving this year as our Chair of Well-Being Week in Law. Tara, how's it going?  Tara Antonipillai:  I'm great. Thanks for having me, Chris and Bree. It's nice to be here.  Chris Newbold:  Yeah. So let's first of all get right to the dates. Tara, when are we queued up to go on Well-Being Week in Law for 2023?  Tara Antonipillai:  Well, Well-Being Week in Law is exactly two weeks away. So it's May 1st through the 5th, 2023, Monday through Friday.  Bree Buchanan:  And what amazes me is that this is our fourth annual, boy as time go by. So tell us, Tara, is how this week is structured, how is it set up?  Tara Antonipillai:  Sure. So just a little bit of background. Well-Being Week in Law occurs the first week of May to launch Mental Health Awareness Month. So it is meant to focus on folks in the legal profession who may be struggling with mental health and alcohol use disorders, but also on those that while not dealing with a diagnosable illness, may not be fully thriving in their work in their life. So the aim of this is really to raise awareness about mental health and encourage action and innovation across our profession. So the week is structured in themes. So each day has a theme and as you look through it, you can see Monday is physical wellbeing, Tuesday is spiritual wellbeing, Wednesday is career or work wellbeing. Thursday is social wellbeing and Friday is emotional wellbeing.  Bree Buchanan:  Wonderful.  Chris Newbold:  I was going to say, one of the things that I think is really awesome about this particular week, and I want to give a lot of credit to the founder of this particular week, and that was Anne Bradford back several years ago. She said, "Listen, if we can get a date on the calendar in which we can shine the light on wellbeing as an issue, we can organize around that. We can talk about issues, we can set out the welcome mat, so to speak, to organizations, law firms and individuals to advance the dialogue." And it certainly feels, Tara, like that concept has really worked and worked well. And we continue to see growth in this opportunity.  Tara Antonipillai:  That is definitely true. I mean, we owe a huge debt to Ann for both the idea and also for the structure and many, many of the resources that serve as the foundation for Well-Being Week in Law. She put a tremendous amount of her intellectual capabilities and her really just her hard work into this and so to build it into what it is today. And I think we should be thankful to her and I think she's very happy to see what Well-Being Week in Law has become.  Bree Buchanan:  And Tara, one of the things that is so amazing about this... Well, two things. It's free for everybody, but also the amount of resources that are available on our website, lawyerwellbeing.net. Can you talk a little bit about what some of those resources are and how people can have their own Well-Being Week in Law?  Tara Antonipillai:  Yeah, for sure. So the way that we have set up the website is so that really it's a hub for folks to plan their own Well-Being Week in Law if you happen to be inside an organization or if you are an individual to participate in Well-Being Week in Law using the resources that are there. So each day there is a live event. So we sponsor one live event each day this year. Those are at 1:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time, each day for 60 minutes. And they key to the daily themes. Those webinars are free to participate in, although you do have to just register so that you get the link.  And then we also have daily posts, which are very popular. Those are great for people who might be very busy. They have some really small things that again, are related to the daily themes. So each day there is a read this watch or listen to this and do this item. So those are meant to be small things that you can do to improve that element of wellbeing. And then the other thing that is on the website are a tremendous amount of activity guides and really detailed planning guides for organizations, for bar associations as to how they might go about organizing a Well-Being Week in Law inside their organization.  Bree Buchanan:  So Tara, I was just going to say, what's the first step to get involved? What are we asking folks to do?  Tara Antonipillai:  Yeah. So the best thing that you can do is, you can register as an individual or you can register as an organization. And that allows us to directly funnel the information to you, send all of the webinar information to you and make sure you receive all of the daily posts as well as access to the webinars. And then the other thing is if you'd rather not register, it's not required, it is free, but you can also go ahead and just start to check out the website and see what you find. One of our other really popular resources that's been updated for this year is the Mental Health Awareness Month calendar. And many, many people and organizations have told me that they use that calendar extensively throughout the month of May. It is linked to a lot of our resources. It includes an activity, something small each day that people can do to improve or focus on their mental health and wellbeing. So really that's just another way that you can use what we have available in a way that suits you.  Chris Newbold:  So again, just to reiterate there, all of the resources for Wellbeing and Law Week are on the lawyerwellbeing.net website. I think everything is easily accessible through a click in the upper right-hand corner of that. Tara, I think it's fair to say that once they click on that, there's then a pathway to say, are you an organization? Are you an individual? You pick your journey so to speak. And I think one of the things, and I know that we're still two weeks out, but if memory serves me, we already have a over 150 different organizations who have already come in and registered to participate. That's an incredible number. And again, I think it demonstrates a couple of things. One, how much this issue is being talked about within the legal community. How many different types of organizations and stakeholders ultimately want to get engaged, and how many of them are ultimately coming to IWIL as part of us being able to provide resources to help them structure a very productive week in that first week of May.  Tara Antonipillai:  Yeah, I think that's really true. I have been really floored with how many people have registered. I think right now we have 172 organizations registered as of today. And it's fun to see how people are participating, which actually reminds me, we do have a participation challenge again this year that relies heavily on one of our sponsors, Canyon Ranch, who donates a really great three day prize getaway for anyone who participates. And all you really have to do is fill out a survey that's very easy to access online. You'll see it multiple times on the website that just says, tell us how you're participating in Well-Being Week in Law. And it can be anything from participating in one of our webinars to I've gone for a walk every day at lunch. It can be very simple and that enters you for a chance to win some really great prizes. So it's been very popular in years past and I expect it will be this year as well.  Chris Newbold:  Just give us a brief sampling of, because again, I think when we say organizations that are participating, I got to think that there's a real interesting diversity not just in diverse groups, but diverse stakeholder groups that are opting to participate from, I got to guess, law schools and perhaps regulators, insurance carriers, law firms. I'm guessing it runs the gamut because everybody is looking at the issue just from a different perspective or lens.  Tara Antonipillai:  That I think is very true. So even if you look at the first few on our list, we've got Akin Gump, it's a large law firm, and then we've got the Alabama State Bar Quality of Life and Health Wellness Committee. We have the Aramark Legal Department and then Armstrong Teasdale below them. And then we have the Brooklyn Defender Services and several law schools, the North Dakota State's Association. So just this really wide cross section of organizations that are not only participating but are collaborating with us to get the word out and encourage their members to participate.  Bree Buchanan:  That is really exciting. Tara, one of the things we like to talk with our guests about too is, if you could just tell us what has driven your passion for wellbeing and law? How did you get to working in this space?  Tara Antonipillai:  Well, I was a lawyer. I was a tax lawyer at a large firm in Washington DC. I did mostly nonprofit tax work and I have a lifelong interest in yoga and meditation. So when I stopped practicing law, I found my way, coincidentally back into law firms. My old firm, Arnold & Porter asked me to come back to teach some stress management programs and I just became super interested in it. I never really thinking that it would be a second career for me. Ultimately, I went back to graduate school and to coaching school at Brown and to graduate school at Penn in applied psychology.  So I became really interested in how we could help people and focus on maybe some small changes. My husband was a partner in a law firm and he runs a company now. So I think I really understand that people are very busy and don't always have a lot of extra bandwidth. So in my research and in my work, I really am focused a lot on behavioral economics, behavioral changes, ways that people can harness and use the time that they have and not necessarily trying to find a lot of extra time towards promoting wellbeing. So that's the angle that I come at it from, and really where my passion is, which is that overlap between busy people and wellbeing.  Chris Newbold:  Good. So any last words of advice or counsel? Obviously we want to invite as many listeners and their respective organizations or as individuals to become an active participant in Well-Being Week in Law. I would say probably the easiest thing for folks to do if they're interested, and again, you can do this all the way up until the day before, or you can actually do it during the week of that, I would guess, Tara, advise folks to go to the Well-Being in Law or lawyerwellbeing.net website. So the IWIL website, is that the easiest way to start their journey?  Tara Antonipillai:  Yeah, for sure. The IWIL website is definitely the way to go. And my final words would just be that there's a path for everyone when it comes to Well-Being Week in Law. You can participate as little or as much as you would. So I encourage people to check it out and maybe just lean in just a little bit, try out one or two things and see how it goes. But I hope that you will join us and participate in the way that works for you. It's really a week, a program, a system that's designed for everyone and to be used in multiple ways. So we hope you will join us.  Chris Newbold:  Yeah. And like I said earlier, I mean, this is an offering that you should feel free to take your own journey. As long as you're doing anything in the space of wellness, you can certainly opt into the structure that we can help provide you and the resources and the communication toolkits that are available. But if you want to do one thing during the week or organize something in your respective law firm around wellbeing, I mean, you have the ability to lean in to the greatest extent or the least extent that you want to. We're just here to obviously support you and anything that you want to do to advance the cause of Well-Being Week in Law. Anything else, Bree, that you would mention?  Bree Buchanan:  I think that's it. I think it's time to get out and go take a walk or something from Well-Being.  Chris Newbold:  I do want to give a special shout out to sponsors, upcoming Well-Being Week in Law. One of them has obviously already been mentioned Canyon Ranch. And we're going to be, I think, raffling off a three night all-inclusive pathway experience at Canyon Ranch. And then two other supporting sponsors that I want to give a special shout out to. And that would be Virgin Pulse. And obviously they're doing work in the wellbeing space. And then the good folks over at Unmind who are also providing resources to folks interested in advancing wellness in their particular organizations.  Bree Buchanan:  And we have this a daily sponsor Guide and Thrive as well.  Chris Newbold:  That's right. That's right. Excellent. Well, Tara, thanks for joining us. Again, a very heartfelt thank you for the work that you are investing. Tara is a volunteer with the Institute for Well-Being in Law. She has stepped in as... Anne has taken a little bit of a breather. Tara has stepped up and done so in just a really thoughtful, big time way. And we're really proud of you, Tara, and everything that you've done to advance this particular week, and we're really excited about what lies ahead.  Tara Antonipillai:  Awesome. Thanks for having me. I can't wait.  Bree Buchanan:  Thanks, Tara.  Chris Newbold:  Excellent. Thanks.   

In the latest episode of the podcast, Chris and Bree sit down with Professor Nathalie Cadieux, Ph.D. with the University of Montreal, a specialist on the mental health of professionals in a regulated profession, to learn more about her national research project on the mental health of Canadian lawyers. Transcript:  Chris Newbold: Hello, wellbeing friends and welcome to the Path to Wellbeing and Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Wellbeing In Law. My name is Chris Newbold, I'm executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And we're excited to kick off our 2023 menu of speakers. And as most of you know, our goal here on the podcast has always been to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the wellbeing space and within the legal profession. And in the process build and nurture a network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. And I have, am always excited to introduce my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing? Bree Buchanan: I'm doing great, Chris. And I will just say even better that now I am immediate past president of I-Well presently. Chris Newbold: Kind of exciting news for us on the institute front that after two really incredible launch years for the Institute for Wellbeing and Law, Bree Buchanan was our president and in many respects also our executive director. And she was the one who steered us to just an incredible launch of the organization. And I know on behalf of our board of directors, Bree, a heartfelt thank you for that commitment. You're not going anywhere and I know that you're going to be actively engaged as we continue to move ourselves forward. But again, it's been a real honor watching Bree lead this movement in the United States. And I know again, her contributions, there are many on the horizon sure to come. Bree Buchanan: Thank you, Chris. That's so kind. Chris Newbold: Yeah. Bree Buchanan: It was a pleasure. Chris Newbold: And so the other part of that is then who did the baton go to? And, Bree, do you want to drop that news? Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. And so I looking at who would be the best person. We brought along, I reached out to Chris and he was gracious enough to agree to take the baton from me. And so I've gladly passed that on. And Chris is just the right person, the right leader at this time as we really start to develop a long-term vision. And that's something. He is a visionary and that's something that he's really great at doing. So after two years it was time to have a switch of leadership. And so Chris has stepped into that place, my podcast co-host. And I'm really excited about what the future holds. Chris Newbold: And again, it's an exciting time for us. Bree was really visionary in getting all of our leaders together back in August to kind of launch a strategic plan for us. And, Bree, I think it's safe to say that the pillars that we created in terms of the areas that we wanted to focus our work. And just want to take a quick minute to ensure that all of our wellbeing advocates are aware of where that's going. We've done such a great job I think on the raising of education and awareness around wellbeing. In fact, this is a perfect time to make a plug for our upcoming Wellbeing in Law Week, which is set for May 1st through the 5th this year. Again, contact us at I-Well, if you're interested in plugging into what will be just a fantastic menu of activities going on each day during that week. So education and awareness. I know, Bree, you've been very vocal about our need to continue to be a strong voice, particularly when we think about systemic opportunities for change in favor of wellbeing. And so we're looking at amplifying our advocacy voice. We're definitely also looking at on our strategic plan, the ability, which is the focal point of our podcast today. Which is elevating our research and the data accumulation to understand where the opportunities are, how we outline our priorities, and where we go next? So we'll obviously spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about research. And then the last part that I think is noteworthy is I-Well's opportunity to be a facilitator of dialogue amongst stakeholders. And whether that's wellbeing directors at large law firms, whether it's solo practitioners, regulators, professional liability carriers. There's a real opportunity for I-Well to bring these stakeholder groups together to advance action oriented plans to continue to move toward our ultimate mission of the culture shift. So again, really excited about the future of where I-Well is and where we're going today. But let's turn to the podcast today. And again, I've previewed it a little bit. That I'm really thrilled today to kind of broaden our scope a little bit and actually look beyond the US border. And we're really excited to welcome professor Nathalie Cadieux, who's an associate professor and researcher with the Sherbrooke University's Business School. Bree, I'd love it if you could, I know that you've met Nathalie before and talk about groundbreaking research related to the Canadian legal profession. We're really excited about the conversation that's on tap for today. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. And so yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting Nathalie at a conference in Canada a few years ago. And it really, what it seems, it's a Federation of Law Society's Conference, which is the bar there is organized a little bit differently than the United States. But we all came together, this was a focus on regulators. And out of that conference there were so many ideas around wellbeing for lawyers and it truly became an incubator for great ideas. And so it is so exciting to be able to report and bring Nathalie in to talk about what all has transpired and has come out of that one conference. And then just the beauty of being able to bring together passionate advocates and the law and see what can come from that. So just a little bit more about Nathalie. She is been leading a national research project and is the principal investigator on mental. Then this project is around the mental health of Canadian lawyers. And the project, the research was conducted on 7300 lawyers, which is a really great population group to get data from. And it's a two phase project and have completed the first phase and published that report and recommendations. And we're going to hear some more about that from Nathalie. So we are thrilled to bring Nathalie Cadieux to you, to our listeners. And Nathalie, one of the things that we always start off with is just to learn a little bit about the background of our speakers, our guests, to find out what has drawn you to this area. So how did you become interested in researching the legal community? Because you're not a lawyer but an academic and a researcher. And what makes you so passionate about this work? Nathalie Cadieux: In fact, Bree, it was at the intersection of several events that led me to become involved in the topic of mental health among lawyers and later among other legal professionals. Not many people notice, but I will tell you a confidence, Bree, I was in law school myself when I started my university and I left after only a few days. And I have to admit that it was really difficult. And I have to admit that the culture particularly and the pressure to perform and the competitiveness between the student, for example, killed my career intention at the end. And nevertheless, it was just a coincidence that I became interested in the mental health of legal professionals, because after leaving law school I began studying in industrial relations, particularly related to my interest in the labor law. And then I did a master's degree in professional ethics and I realized that professionals in a regulated profession, are subject to particular stressors on a daily basis. Such as decision making in complex situations, professional accountability, ethics, and ethical pressure. So I therefore did the PhD thesis to better understand these stressors. And my thesis demonstrated that the models, the stressors that we included to understand occupational stress or wellness in the knowledge-based economy, do not capture the complexity of the professional realities of regulated professionals specifically. So once my PhD was completed, I was determined to go back to the real world and to better understand. And as I began my career as an academic researcher in 2013, I observed a very significant increase in request to the Quebec Bar Member Assistance Program. And I therefore concluded a partnership with the Bar of Quebec to understand why, and later with the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and the Canadian Bar Association. So in short, to answer your question, these last 10 years I've been invested in the Legal community and there are so many challenges. So I could never think of being interested in another profession. So it's a coincidence that I went through a law school, but you can understand that today with the benefit of this perspective, it helps- Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. Nathalie Cadieux: Me to make sense of this trajectory and to be sensitive to the challenges that professional face from the moment they enter law school. Chris Newbold: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, today obviously we're talking about the first comprehensive research on mental health in the Canadian legal profession. Nathalie, tell us about how we got there. Who commissioned the wellness study? What led to it being a priority? We're just always kind of interested in the kind of how did you get to the point of idea to publication? Nathalie Cadieux: The following first study conducted between 2014 and 2019 in Quebec, in the province in Canada, in which more than 2700 Quebec lawyers participated. We were able to establish that a significant proportion of lawyers experience psychological distress and many are also exposed to professional burnout. And we developed a data collection tool that included the several stressors specific to the practice of law, such as pressure related to billable hours for example. And I was then invited, as Bree explained before, by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada in October 2019, to present these results to Hall Canadian Law Societies. And it was the first study of its kind in Canada. And this presentation was used after to initiate further discussions with the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, but also with the Canadian Bar Association, to conduct a Canada-wide study involving all societies for this project in two phases. The first phase was founded by these partners. And the phase two of which has just begun is founded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Bree Buchanan: Great. Digging into a little of the details about the survey. Who did you include in that? Which I think is interesting for Americans. How many joined in? And why did you feel it was so important to include these different groups beyond just a lawyer? Nathalie Cadieux: Yes, as you explained before, more than 7300 legal professionals, mostly lawyers, participated in the first phase, which was published in November 2022. But our sample also included young professionals in articling, paralegals, it's paralegals in Ontario and notaries in Quebec. And even though there are fewer of them compared to the lawyers, we choose to include these different groups for two reason. The first because daily life in many legal environments is difficult and not only for lawyers. And we want to reflect this reality and be as inclusive as possible. And second, because we also want to understand the dynamics sometimes common, but sometimes slightly different, that may exist within each of these groups. And finally, articling students are our future lawyers and we felt it was very important to include them in order to evaluate different mental health indicators in this population. But also to understand the determinant of mental health. And these young people are the future of the provision and is therefore essential to pay attention to them now in order to prioritize action. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. And, Nathalie, just for our listeners, could you tell us Americans, what is an articling student? Nathalie Cadieux: It's the last moment before the entry in the profession. You have, it's the last part of the training, the academic training at the end of your university. When you entry in the law society, you have a period when during this period, you are supervised by another lawyer. Like mentoring, but it's not a mentoring, it's a condition to entry in the profession. Bree Buchanan: Great, thanks for that. Chris Newbold: Nathalie, you measured rates of psychological distress, depression, anxiety, burnout, and suicidal ideation. What was most concerning about your findings? Nathalie Cadieux: You know all health indicator are very high, but we anticipated this before to start. Prior to the pandemic, Chris, indicators related to mental health among legal professionals were of concern. In the 2019 study that we made in the province of Quebec, the indicators related to mental health were already higher than in the general population. Around 40% of psychological distress, for example, compared to 25% in the working populations. So not surprisingly, the indicators that we measured in the last study are not only high, but they are even higher than in the general population. So a majority now of legal professionals are experiencing psychological distress with a proportion of 59.4%. So it's more than 10 to 20% of the estimates made in the Canadian workforce during the same period. And I think across the different indicators that we measured over, I think that we have many concern about the percentage of legal professionals who experienced suicidal thoughts since the beginning of their professional practice. It's just over 24% and it's a high proportion compared with the general population. Because when we compare with physician, for example, for the same question for Canadian physicians, it's around 19%. So it's very high. And beyond the health indicators, and while health issues are very important enough concern for sure, I believe it's also important to highlight other consequences that sometimes arise from these wellness issues, namely commitment to the profession and the intention to leave it. The work of professionals is a fulfilling environments and wellness issues can challenge future career paths. For example, more than half of respondent consider that they could stop practicing law and take another job at the same pay level at the moment of the data collection. And less than a half of participants said that they look forward to starting a day's work. More than one out of four of legal professionals frequently dream of working in another profession. And one out of three with less than 10 years of experience, regret having chosen their profession. Bree Buchanan: Oh, my. Nathalie Cadieux: I think it's very important to highlight this kind of collateral damage following wellness issues. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. And I just want to tell our listeners, we will provide you, or are providing you a link to the study. It's a beautiful document with lots of graphics and so an easy and helpful read, so that you'll have a link to all of that. I wanted to just dig a little bit deeper on another topic, Nathalie, which is around help. What we talk about in the United States is help seeking. The willingness of somebody who's experiencing one of these problems to actually reach out and get some professional help for it. And in really the foundational research for the wellbeing movement in the United States, it was very clear from the answers that both lawyers and law students were extremely reluctant, unwilling to seek help for psychological issues that they were experiencing. A lot of it around the role of stigma. But what are you seeing or what did you see with Canadian lawyers and students here? Or the entire population that you researched? Nathalie Cadieux: It's a very good question, Bree, and a relevant questions because it's one thing to live some or some experienced psychological distress, but if the professional don't seek help, it can can lead to worst problematic. Like depressive sometimes anxiety problem and the use of the lead to coping, negative coping strategies for example. And while a large proportion of legal professionals in Canada have sought health help in the past, many other have been not able to do so. When we ask, "Have you ever felt the need to seek professional help for psychological health problems but now don't?" So almost half of professionals who provided an answer on this question stated they did not seek help despite needing. This is especially important because of this percentage, two out of three of professionals experience suicidal ideation during their practice. And why? Many we ask different question related to the confidence in the assistance program linked to their law society. Confidence related to the assistance program of their organization. But we ask people why? Despite this confidence or beyond the confidence that you have in your assistance program, why? And many responded, said it will pass. Other did not have the energy to engage in such a process. Lacked the time, the financial resources. Some professionals were unsure, yes, whether professional help was appropriate. And we can excluded that seeking or not seeking help may also be the result of a sense of stigma associated with mental health issues and sometimes limits professionals from seeking help. And in this study specifically on this subject, we measured personal stigma and we develop a scale about the personal stigma and the perceived stigma. So we asked many questions to the professional, related to their perception about professionals in their profession with mental health issues. And we asked after the same question, what do you think that people in your profession think about that? The same question. And what do you think the gap is, Bree? The gap is just over 40%. That's a huge gap. This gap is related to the fact that few professionals have a negative perception of professionals or colleague who experienced mental health issues during their practice. But many perceive that people in their profession have a negative perception of mental health issues. And there is a significant gap, not support by real and measurable facts, but it does create a significant barriers to seeking help. And I think that we have to discuss about wellness, we have to discuss about wellbeing in the profession. And I think we have again, a lack of communication about health. And I think this stigma, yes, is feed by professional culture. But also on individual beliefs fueled by a lack of collective communication related to wellness. So I think we have to talk about it in whole settings and raise a awareness to break down taboos. Chris Newbold: Yeah, it's fascinating. I think one of the things that, I don't think it's a surprise to me, but it's interesting how much to the research that you've done with respect to the Canadian legal profession, really in fact mirrors the US legal profession, right? And when you hear the things about, again, the stress, the depression, the regret of going into the legal profession in the first place. You just hear some of the same themes, which again kind of moves us to the question of why is that? And what was expected? What the realities are? What's driving the realities? And I think it's just very interesting that two countries, two different legal systems, so to speak, same profession, same realities when it comes to the challenges of wellbeing. Let's do this, let's take a quick break, hear from one of our sponsors. And want to delve in even further to some of the other I think key findings from your really impressive research of legal professionals in Canada. We'll be right back. Speaker 4: Meet Vera, your firm's virtual ethics risk assessment guide. Developed by ALPS, Vera's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots, from client intake to calendaring to cybersecurity and more. Vera: I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you a summary of recommendations to provide course corrections if needed and to keep your firm on the right path. Speaker 4: Generous and discreet, Vera is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS to help firms like yours be their best. Visit Vera at ALPS Insurance.com forward slash Vera. Chris Newbold: Welcome back and we are really honored today to be talking to Professor Nathalie Cadieux, who was at really at the forefront of the first comprehensive national study of its kind in Canada when it comes to wellbeing. Again, Nathalie, thank you so much for joining us. You researched the factors also in your study that impacted wellbeing, both work and non work-related. And I'm just curious of kind of what you found in terms of the things that are additive to wellbeing and also corrosive and detracting from a legal professional's wellbeing. What were some of your findings when you looked at the research kind of underneath the surface? Nathalie Cadieux: It's a very important questions and we measured in this study more than 100 risk and productive factors. Including different individuals, social, and organizational, and professionals factors. And regarding risk and protective factors for wellbeing in the organizational sphere, it is important when phases, that the results indicate that risk factors have a prep on their own weight on health. And this means that actions aim at adding resources, will often have a limited or insignificant effects on health. Conversely, any action aimed at acting on risk factors will have a very important effect. Among the risk factor, emotional demands are the most important risk factor for sure. And a majority of lawyers are confronted with these demands and they are not like any other's demands. They have a short term effects but also longer term effects. Among the effects, we include a part in the report about the competition fatigue and vicarious trauma for experience many professionals. We also identify consultative overload, work and security, and hour work that are the main stressors in the working condition. The result also indicate that professionals who have billable hour targets to meet, that are more likely to experience mental health issues. And this is related to the pressure felt by many professionals to meet billing targets. But also to the fact that billable hours represent an average of actual hour work in the sample, and the percentage is around 62%. So it's just 62% of your overall hour work in a week. And if the risk factor are not surprised, we founded many interaction between some of these risk factors which contribute to generate explosive cocktails for practitioners. For example, related specifically to billable hours, professionals who have a billable hour targets within the first two years of practice are particularly at risk. And professionals who are exposed to high emotional demands and have a billable hours target to meet, are also particularly at risk. So it's the risk that we identify. And among the protective factors, because I think despite the impact is the impact of protective factor is less than when we compare with the risk factor. I think it's important to talk about these protective factors in combination to the diminish the reduction of risk factor. We founded that case skills like assertiveness for example. It's the ability to set limit and say no. And psychological detachment are particularly relevant to protect wellness in law. And we also found that autonomy, consistency of values, career opportunities, tele-work or the adaptation to tele-work, and the support from colleagues, are among the main important factors to protect the wellbeing of lawyers. Bree Buchanan: And I was just interested in hearing how much that, as sort of rhymes with what's going on in the United States in regards particularly to younger lawyers and what the research found here too. About them being so disproportionately impacted in the early years of the practice. And making that a focal point really for all of us in providing resources and solutions in this. Another thing on I-Well, the institute had made a point of highlighting how lawyers and legal professionals of varying race, ethnicity, gender, and identification as LBGTQ, may be impacted more dramatically than the historical figures that we've had in the legal profession and leadership of that. How did that play out in Canada? What did you find in regards to those different groups? Nathalie Cadieux: Beyond the health indicators which are higher for these professional, we also found that these professionals are particularly impacted by discrimination in the practice of law. And on this point, we included in the study, many questions related to the live. It's the experience stigma, but it's the concept of discrimination in the practice of law. So it include 10 or 11 questions like I have been discriminated against at work. We ask the question at work because I identify as LGBTQIA2S+, or because I'm indigenous, or because I live with a disability. And after we ask 11 question, I have been discriminated against, I have been ignored or taken less seriously. I have been given fewer career opportunities, for example. So we include this kind of questions. And you will be surprised. And I asked many question in my team about it and we found the answer why LGBTQIA2S+ community felt less discriminate. I was really surprised of this result. And I found why it's because close than a half of professionals who identify as LGBTQIA2S+, as a member of LGBTQIA2S+ community, don't discuss about it in their workplace. So this is the reason why. People don't know in their organization so they don't feel discriminated related to this. But I think it raised the importance of this because when you come back of your weekend for example, and you discuss about your weekend with your colleague. And you are not able to discuss that, "I was with my husband to go skiing," for example, because you don't share any information about your personal life in your workplace. I think it's an issue because we pass more time with our colleagues in the week compared to our family. So I think it's very important. And not surprising, the main group, the higher proportions of discrimination are observed among women, again today in 2023. And among professionals with a disability. It was an area of concern too. Chris Newbold: Now your research group, one of the things I love about when folks engage in research is not just the identification of the data but also the endeavor to identify solutions. What were some of the most impactful recommendations that you believe were made as a result of the research and in the report? Nathalie Cadieux: We made 10 main recommendations at the end of this report. These recommendations are in core in the data that we obtain in this project. And the first one is to improve preparation of future professionals and provide them support to deal with psychological health issues. And it means insure for example, a balance between theory and practice in university or in college curriculum. But also to include critical transverse skills in the education of legal professionals. That will benefit them throughout their professional life. Like time management for example, or emotion management. And promote also a healthy lifestyles to increase awareness about mental health issues. But beyond the preparation of future professionals, we also suggest to improve supports and guidance available at the entry in the profession. And I think it will means for law society to evaluate the possibility to create a professional integration plan in the first or two first years of practice. Promote also mentoring for those entering in the profession. And for organization, it will mean remove billable hour targets for professionals in their first two years of practice. Just to give the chance for the young practitioners to develop the case skills they need to be well in their profession after. We also develop a recommendation around the importance to improve the continuing professional development offered to legal professionals. Because we've seen that we don't have at this point, an evolving vision of professional development needs throughout one's career. And I think it's very important to develop this kind of evolving vision, but also to better structure mandatory trainings' hour for professional and develop a training aligned with risk factors. Because in many profession, stress decrease and psychological distress decrease when you have a higher, better experience, and when you progress in your career. But it's not always the case for legal practitioners and for lawyers. And why? It's because it's the overlap of stressors and the stability of some stressors throughout the career too. So I think that we have to work on this to improve the professional developments. We also suggest we are relevant to evaluate the implementation of alternative work organization models. Because when I give conference everywhere, I exchange with professional. And I like this kind of moment to when I'm able to exchange informally. And I said, "Why some engineer, for example, engineer work with billable hours? But they are not stressed related to billable hours." When you exchange with engineer, you don't talk about their billable hours. It's not an area of concern. But why? Why when I discuss with the lawyers, it's always a subject of discussions and we discuss about the stress about it. The reason is the stricter of work organizations. Because engineer work by project. And lawyers will have the responsibility of a case and he will work alone on their case. So he will be alone to manage the emotional demand related to their case. And he will also alone to manage the risk associate to the time that he will be involved in their case. And the billable hours and the expectation related to billable hours. But if we share the responsibility in a team and work in team in a case, I'm sure that we will limit the impact of billable hours. So I suggest to revise the organization of work. And I think it will be a very important recommendation in the future to implement in some organization. And we'll have for sure to work on the distinct messaging, mental health issues in the legal provisions, and implement some action related to this. Improve the access to health and wellness support resources and breakdown barriers that limit access to these resource. For example, by promote the use of available resources and increase the willingness of professionals to seek help. But also too, we will have to work on the perception of confidentiality, to increase trust in the Law Societies' Lawyer Member Assistance Program. For example, I suggest to remove any question related to wellness in the form when you make your application to the Law Society. To remove the fees on your professional fees when you, for your license, remove all fees on your bills related to the Law Society Assistance Program. Because I think that if I see this on my bills for sure, it suggests a proximity between the assistance program and the Law Society. And for sure, work on the promotion of diversity. Considered the health of legal professionals as an integral part of the justice systems. I don't know if you have the same issues in United States, but in Canada, the access of justice is a very important subject. And the pressure on the system justice have an impact of wellness issues in the profession. Bree Buchanan: And it's interesting to see that in the United States there's studies done about lawyers and showing that we are the loneliest profession of all the professions out there. And having worked for years with the Lawyer's Assistance Program, I was really able to see the detrimental effect that isolation has. Isolation, working on your own for a long period of time is really a breeding ground for depression and substance abuse, et cetera. So that really resonated with me. What lessons should the American legal community learn from your research? And are there ways you'd like to see us work together? Nathalie Cadieux: For the first part of your question, Bree, I think we have three things are important. The first thing that should be learned from this research is the demonstration of the complexity of mental health in the legal practice. The direct consequence of this complexity is the multidimensional nature of risk and productive factors. The second thing of this research demonstrated is the dominance of risk factors compared to protective factors. The first reaction when we are managers, or as professional association, is to invest in resources. For example in the assistance program, access to psychologists in organization. A better pay, more flexible hours. And this is normal because it's much easier to do. However, the very marginal weight of these resources compared to the risk factor, highlights that the only way to achieve a sustainable and healthier practice of law is to act on the risk factor. Work overload, number of hour worked, technical stress, the feeling and invasion of technology, work organization, emotional demands. I recently explained this to the Law Societies in Canada and I using the metaphor of a float. Imagine you are in your basement and your basement is full of water and a huge wave is coming near your house. If I give you a cup, it will certainly help you, but it won't stop the water from rising. The cup here is the assistance program and the wave is the major stressors that influence the lawyer's daily life. The water in the basement is the cumulative stress from years of practice. So I think we need to keep this metaphor in mind when we take action to avoid acting on the symptoms rather than the causes. And finally, the third thing that this research has highlighted are explosive cocktails for the practice of law when we observed an overlap of some stressors. Intense emotional demands and high expectations in term of billable hours. High emotional demands and high workload. These cocktails must be considered from an intervention perspective in order to limit as much as possible the combination of stressors that have a significant weight in the balance of wellbeing. And regarding the second part of your question, I certainly dreamed that the significant progress made in this study could allow us to work together. Who knows, maybe by conducting this kind of survey in the US but to compare us. But also maybe working together to develop, for example, a wellness index in the practice of law. An index for which the evolution could be evaluated through a longitudinal survey every three or five years. I think it's important to measure us and to follow the evolution of wellness. To be proud of the action that we made and we move forward. And to evaluate this progression and the better wellness in the proposition, for sure. Chris Newbold: Nathalie, as we conclude, let's spend a quick minute just looking forward. If we were to have you on the podcast 10 years from now, how would you hope the legal profession in Canada is different? And what needs to happen to get us there? Nathalie Cadieux: It's a good question. In 10 years, first I hope it will be easier for professionals to talk about mental health and also more automatic to seek help. I hope that talking about mental health over the years will have significantly reduced the sense of stigma for those experiencing mental health issues. I hope a more inclusive and diverse practice of law. And finally, I hope that we will better protect the younger lawyers. First by better preparing them for what is coming down, but also by taking care of them when they come into the profession, by reminding us that they are the future of this profession. And at the end, none of this result are the result of a single action or a single stakeholder. It's the result of a dynamic within the legal profession in Canada, but also elsewhere in the world. And we have, if everybody taking action and small action, I'm sure that it will be better. Bree Buchanan: Well, Nathalie, thank you so much for being here and joining us today. It was such a pleasure to meet you in Canada. And I am thrilled to see the amazing work that has come in Canada since that time. And I'll just say I hope we can find ways to work together because clearly there are so many similarities between our two countries and the profession. And so I want to thank you very much. And to our listeners, thanks for joining us today. Thanks to Chris for my co-host. And we will be back to you very soon with additional podcasts to help you and us find a better way towards wellbeing in the law. Thanks to everyone. Chris Newbold: Thanks, Nathalie. Nathalie Cadieux: Thank you so much. Take care of you, Chris and Bree. Chris Newbold: Thank you.  

Transcript: CHRIS NEWBOLD: Good afternoon, well-being friends. Welcome to the Path To Well-Being In Law, an initiative of the Institute For Well-Being In Law. I'm your cohost, Chris Newbold, executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. Most of our listeners know why we're here. Our goal is to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the well-being space within the legal profession. And in the process, we're working to build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. Let me be the first to introduce my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you? BREE BUCHANAN: I'm doing great, Chris, thank you. I am so excited, you know, about this episode because we have just increased our staff at IWIL. I'll let you finish, but I'm just excited. CHRIS: Well, I was going to say that there's a couple notable things about this, right? Bree, you and I have been at this for least going well beyond five years now, but a couple things that I think are really unique about this particular podcast, first of all, our 25th podcast. I'm totally excited about just the incredible people that we have met on this journey. It's a reflection point, so to speak. I just think it's been a great ride for us as we've introduced people from around the country and welcome in new listeners to the podcast. BREE: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. CHRIS: It has. And then I think the big point and I think maybe a little bit of historical perspective is good to share with the listeners today that obviously the Institute for Well-being in Law started now just over 18 months ago. Really the intent was as a natural outgrowth of the National Task Force on Well-Being in Law was that we wanted to look toward a greater level of sustainability for the movement. Bree and I and many other leaders in the movement got together and we ultimately decided that the creation of the institute as a national think tank to be able to work and lead efforts on a national basis was the move. CHRIS: A lot of that was with the intent of being able to hire a full-time professional staff that could work on this issue, not just for the short-term, but for the long-term. Again, without further ado, we are super excited about today's guest, which is our friend Jennifer DiSanza, who is the first executive director of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I know that we are really excited to introduce her to our listeners, talk about the vision, talk about where the organization's going, talk about her own personal journey as it relates to well-being. CHRIS: Bree, why don't I kick it to you for an introduction of somebody who I think will be a pivotal leader, spokesperson. I know she's thoughtful. Again, we're just super excited to have Jennifer on board. BREE: I'm going to let Jennifer talk about her background, but I'm going to talk about as way of introduction how we got her to us. Like you said, there was this whole plan of how we were performing IWIL and then be able to fundraise and then be able to hire staff, and Jennifer's the first one of that. We went out and did a national search, really cast the net wide and far. We had over 80 applications to the position. It took us a good number of months to go through all of those, many interviews. Ultimately, I'd say at least it was a six month search process, we found our Jennifer DiSanza. Jennifer, we're finally going to let you talk now. JENNIFER DISANZA: I have to say, after that introduction, I feel like an athlete, like I should have had play on music or I should have some theme music, because that was quite the introduction. Thank you, both. BREE: It was really a buildup. What I was thinking is that in the old radio shows that they had the button you could hit with the applause. All that too. JENNIFER: I heard it all in my head, Bree, so it was good. But no, I appreciate both of you so much. It was a long process, but one of the things that attracted me to this, and I've told this story, so those people who know me who are listening know this story, is that I was really looking for an opportunity to be entrepreneurial. But I didn't necessarily want to go out on my own. For those people who can work for themselves, that's great. When this position was posted, I had been following IWIL because my background is in legal education and nonprofit work. I'd been following the organization and just wonderful things that I knew about it. JENNIFER: I had friends on the advisory board involved in different ways. I really believed in the mission. I have never felt so strongly about something as I did when I saw IWIL was hiring an executive director. What brought it home for me is so many people sent it to me because they knew what I wanted to do. It was a confluence of events, I feel. I am so grateful to the search committee, to the board, because I really feel like I'm doing my life's work here at IWIL. BREE: Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Jennifer, we're going to start you off the way we have started off all of our guests, which is to ask you about what are the experiences in your life that drive your passion for well-being in the legal profession and clearly you have a passion? Tell us about that. JENNIFER: Again, it really comes from my background and experiences. A lot of times you go through your career and you're doing things that you're well-positioned for, that you're well-skilled for, but not necessarily something that drives you past just an everyday job. From a personal standpoint, it really came to me when I went to law school oh so many years ago. Actually, not to date myself, this is our 20th anniversary from graduating. It's been 20 years since I was in law school. But from a personal standpoint, even before that, I struggled with depression and anxiety throughout my life, but law school was the point where it was at the most difficult. JENNIFER: I faced my most difficult challenges. I chose to go to school part-time while working full-time and getting my master's degree. There were a lot of different layers on that, but I really didn't have the resources. I actually didn't even have the language at that time. I was very much of the standpoint, "I got to get through it, I got to get through it," without really thinking about what toll it was taking on me mentally and on my health just in general. Well, I didn't realize the context. I was a first gen student. I never had met anyone that went to law school. I really thought it was going to be like graduate school. JENNIFER: I'd go a couple nights a week. I'd do my homework on the weekends. After being in law school education for almost 20 years, I realize that's an impossible thought. I incorrectly assumed that. It's no secret to those people who know me that I really did not enjoy my law school experience. CHRIS: It's so interesting when you go back and you talk to folks who have went through that experience. Some love it, some it was a terrible experience. That forms a lot of how you think about coming to the law and making some decisions about, "Boy, did I make the right decision here?" Jennifer, I think one of the things that's interesting I know as on the hiring committee that we thought was really pertinent was your career in legal education. Can you tell us a little bit more about your professional journey after graduating from law school that you think has prepared you for taking the leadership baton here and running with it? JENNIFER: Sure. I think most people are like, "Well, if you hated law school so much or didn't enjoy the experience, why did you stay there for an additional 20 years?" But the reality is that I was lucky enough to have someone at my law school who I could go talk to, and it made my experience better and I realized that I could continue doing that. I could be that person for other people. I had been in human resources, in manufacturing and well-being at that time, it was the late '90s, early 2000s, I had safety as part of my human resources responsibility and it was really about physical safety. There was no holistic approach to employee well-being. JENNIFER: But I took what I learned as an HR manager to law school student affairs. I worked at three different ABA-Approved schools. You get students. They come in as you find them, basically. Some of them have preexisting issues, whether it's mental health or substance use, whatever it is. But I knew once they got to law school, whatever it was either started in law school or became much more exasperated while they were in law school. Really over the years of working in legal education, I tried to focus on ways to make the experience better. JENNIFER: The majority of my time during those almost 20 years was counseling students or developing programs to support students in finding out better ways to handle their stress or their anxiety, providing accommodations for students. But I also think one of the things that's sort of a catch 22 in the legal education world is that we're preparing people to have resilience. I was just having this conversation with a law firm well-being person last week. Resilience in itself says there's something you have to be resilient about. There's going to be something difficult in this process. I'm not saying law is easy or should be easy, but we're creating this expectation that they're already going to find difficulty in it. JENNIFER: Well, we had to, in the law school environment, create these programs to deal with life after law school. The reason I love IWIL is we want to fix those issues. We want to look at it and say, "What's causing the burnout? What's causing the turnover so we can make it better?" Even with my last position for the last three years, I was working in financial wellness issues with law students, it's also better to understand the financial pressure students went in, why they went into maybe big law or different world, different jobs. JENNIFER: They went to law school and they were willing to sacrifice their health because they wanted to make a lot of money or because they were hoping for public service loan forgiveness. It really is this confluence of events, like I said, to bring me here now. BREE: Jennifer, I think one of the things that was so attractive for me with you, many things, but also this law school background because we really are there for the groups of law students, judges, and lawyers. And because law students, of course, it's corny, but they are the future of the profession and we know that the youngest lawyers suffer the greatest level of behavioral health problems, it just seemed like a really great way for us to ensure that we're focusing on this critical group. Listen, I've got another question for you just about how you're kind of doing, what's going on now. BREE: I'll date this episode. We're in August. You've been with us for two months now. You've been through a strategic planning session that we had in Chicago with a board a couple of weeks ago. Talk to us now about what are your priorities for IWIL over the next couple of years, which, to be fair, is not just your priorities, it's the board's too, but talk a little bit about that. JENNIFER: The strategic planning session was really eye-opening for me, not because there was a lot of new information, but just having this group of well-being advocates in the room committed to improving the profession. It was inspiring actually. One of the things, probably the most important thing that we focused on during that strategic planning is really focusing on where we can have the most impact. It's nothing new, but we helped articulate it. We're already doing education and awareness. JENNIFER: We have wonderful programming through our biennial conference and our Well-Being Week in Law. We are getting started with a research agenda that's very exciting. And our policy work. We have wonderful initiatives coming up in our policy work and our technical assistance. We work with state task force, getting them up and running, supporting them, looking at opportunities to comment on policy change, that's really one of my priorities, and making sure we are involved in every conversation that impacts well-being in the legal profession. We need to be the thought leaders in this. I want to see those ongoing research projects. JENNIFER: I want to see those comments. I want to see us out in front of everything and being the thought leader in that. I also want to be the gathering space for well-being advocates. I want them to come to us for those questions on how we can support them. CHRIS: That was a great day for us, right? Because I think for the listener's perspective, a lot of us... Obviously IWIL was formed during the pandemic, right? While we probably have spent hundreds of hours together on Zoom calls, the ability to be physically together and meet people that you feel like you know, but you never know people until you're physically with them, right? It just was a fantastic experience to bond with people in a physical setting. Again, Jennifer, I'll just kind of come back to the notion of, I think it's fair to say that going into that retreat, your vision of where you thought the movement was heading was probably a little bit blurry. CHRIS: Coming out of that session, do you feel better about what that outlook looks like relative to where IWIL and other constituencies will be able to put their time, talent, bandwidth, and resources to advance the movement and to advance the culture shift in a more accelerated way? JENNIFER: Absolutely. As I have said over and over again, those first couple months, I really felt like I was drinking through a fire hose. And that's typical of any new job. You're getting up to speed and there's so many things. But I really feel good about where we landed because one of the most common things I hear is, "What are you doing, or what are you going to support?" They want deliverables and they want action items. I feel like defining those pillars as we did and coming up with action items is something that is important. JENNIFER: It also helps to hold us accountable in what we dom and that is really important. We have sustaining donors that we need to be accountable. We have the general public. We have our volunteers. We need to be held accountable, and I feel like we can do that. CHRIS: Jennifer, one of the things that I think is just really interesting about your role is in some respects, our "business model" is premised on the notion of effective volunteer management. Obviously, I mean, one of the things that I think has been one of the great accomplishments of IWIL thus far in its kind of short history has been the manner in which we've offered an on ramp to people interested in this issue to become more involved. CHRIS: Whether it's through a committee structure, whether it's through service on a state task force and then connecting with IWIL through that, whether it's through participation in the annual conference or Well-Being Week in Law, we have created an opportunity for people to come together. I just would be curious on your opinion as to how has it been for you to meet them, that volunteer base, and how important is that group obviously to what we're trying to do relative to our mission? JENNIFER: Well, we do not exist without our volunteers. I mean, it's as plain as simple. I am one person, right? I am one paid staff member. But my listening tour in these first few months has been the best part of this job, because I've become connected to so many of these well-being advocates that are out there. Not only they have their primary professional career, that they have committed their time and talent to moving this shift forward. I'm just amazed by all the time and thoughtful comments and the way they have embraced me, I mean, it's just been phenomenal. JENNIFER: I'm so grateful to them. I would also like to thank those of you, those volunteers out there, who have been very transparent with me and saying they love being a part of IWIL, but they need more focus, which is one of the reasons why we needed a strategic plan. It really helped inform that. BREE: I think one of the things that seems so unique, you look at other think tanks, a couple of people had an idea that they want to dig into and they form a think tank and go forward. We did this, but we also opened up the doors to bring everybody we could along. Just so people know, between the state task forces that we work with regularly and the committees, we have over 200 volunteers that are working with IWIL monthly. It's a very large, very active volunteer base. BREE: Jennifer, we're going to go ahead and take a break at this point in time to hear from one of our sponsors, and then we'll be back and continue our podcast. We'll talk a little bit about DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging with Jennifer and how that fits into the whole well-being puzzle. — Advertisement: You expect most things to be easily available online. So why should your malpractice insurance be any different? Your job as an attorney is already hard enough. You deserve an application that's easy. With ALPS, you can apply, view rates, and accept your policy 100% online and all in about 20 minutes. Get back to your practice faster and add valuable time back to your day. Want to talk to a real person? Call, chat, email. ALPS is here for you. — BREE: Welcome back, everybody, and we have the most special guest today, our new executive director, Jennifer DiSanza. Jennifer, tell us about... The first thing that the IWIL board did was pass a resolution, a statement, a policy around diversity, equity, and inclusion and how imperative it is to be looking at those issues alongside contemporaneously with the work that we're doing on well-being, because you can't really do one without the other. BREE: Could you talk a little bit about your views on that? I know that you've heard a lot of discussion about this at the board level. What are you thinking about the future of where we meld, raise awareness, et cetera, these two things of DEI belonging and well-being? JENNIFER: I think most importantly that this has been something that was articulated very early to me in the interview process. I have seen it play out throughout my time here. It's great that we're including diverse points of view and supporting them, but you hit the nail on the head when you talked about belonging, right? There's enough room at the table for everyone. We need to make sure that we are not only including people, but we have a place where there's psychological safety. We have a place that people feel comfortable and they feel belonging, because we know that's key to well-being, right? We know that belonging is important. JENNIFER: That is on the premise of everything we do. We know that DEI and B has come to the forefront lately, but there was definitely a struggle to get there. But we have a unique opportunity as we build this movement and create it to really create it as a foundational premise of every single thing that IWIL does, that we have an eye to ensuring this inclusivity and this belonging. Because without it, we're not serving all our stakeholders, we're not serving the profession, and we're not holding to the policy that we stated we would do. We have to live it. BREE: Right. Well said. So well said. I accept that I am privileged white woman, cisgendered lawyer, and I have to be continuously vigilant about these issues. It doesn't just happen without really paying consistent close attention to it. I'm just thrilled that you are here to help us in that endeavor. I have no doubt that you will keep us on that path. JENNIFER: Thank you. I am excited about the opportunity, but I also am glad that we have such a wide variety of volunteers who can keep us accountable on this point too. CHRIS: The reality is, if you've met one lawyer, you've met one lawyer, right? We all come from perspectives that are unique, different, all across the spectrum. Again, this notion of how people struggle for inclusivity and belonging in our profession is something that just has to be at the forefront of everything that we do. I was proud as part of our strategic planning process that we continue to, again, ensure that we're looking through the right lens in our discussions. We always are striving to be a little bit better than we were previously, because sometimes even the most well-intentioned folks can sometimes have a little bit of blind spots here and there, right? JENNIFER: Absolutely. I agree. CHRIS: Jennifer, one of your first achievements was a recently announced partnership and establishment with Thomson Reuters. Can you tell our listeners about what that entailed and how that came about? JENNIFER: Sure. This was actually very exciting for me because I was pleasantly surprised when within the first few weeks of me starting with IWIL, I was able to connect with Thomson Reuters. And more importantly, I was able to reconnect with somebody who I went to law school with. Bree had already established the relationship, but I was able to connect with Ina Camelo, who is leading the space in their global large law firm area. She and I went to law school together. She was year or two behind me, but it was really nice to have this conversation with her about all the wonderful things that Thomson Reuters and IWIL can do together. JENNIFER: This is different than a traditional sponsorship. They have unique areas that we can leverage, whether it's their research, whether it's their practical law area, even marketing and technology. I believe that this partnership might be example moving forward of some of the things that IWIL can do. I feel like the sky's the limit, and it's just harnessing all of that and figuring it out. We've been having continuing meetings with them about some of the work that we can do together. It's very exciting. BREE: Absolutely. Jennifer, what else interests you and excites you and I'll say worries you, of course, because as an executive director, you do a lot of worrying about the future of the well-being in law movement? JENNIFER: Well, obviously being a startup has its pros and cons. As I talked about earlier with diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, we have the opportunity to build something from the ground up and thinking about all the pieces. We have the opportunity to be the preeminent think tank on well-being in the legal profession. We also have to expect there's going to be growing pains. As I talked about drinking out of a fire hose and trying to figure out where we're going to focus our energies, we only have that staff of one. JENNIFER: We do have dedicated board members, advisory board members, and volunteers, but we need to make sure IWIL is sustainable. It's an ongoing process to make sure we're thoughtful as we grow and how we fund initiatives to make sure that we're here for the long-term. It's very exciting from a startup perspective, but we also have to be thoughtful about where we put our energies and time. CHRIS: Jennifer, I think one of the things that's always interesting about the roles that we have as leaders is obviously working to leave the profession a little bit better than we found it. As we think about your tenure and our mission, if we were to look forward a decade, if we were to do a good job around changing attitudes, hearts, and minds, how will the legal profession be different? JENNIFER: In my dream scenario, I want legal employers to set the standard on employee well-being. I want to see organizations highlighted for their employee first approach to the work environment. I really would love to see the profession to be able to put up against some of the other professions that are already doing a lot of work in well-being. I'd love to see those shifts. We're seeing these issues debated right now that were accelerated by the pandemic, remote work, vacation. But the truth is, the issues we're coming regardless. I want to make sure the legal workforce is able to be agile as these things change and generations change as they come up into the workforce. JENNIFER: I want the legal profession to be able to weather any future crises like a pandemic because their employees feel psychological safety. I also want law schools to embed well-being from day one. I don't want it to be an afterthought or trying to fit it in here where you can. This is not a function that can come easily because there are a lot of rules and regulations, but it needs to be inextricably tied to the curriculum culture. Because as we said earlier, law schools are preparing people for the practice of law, but we want that to be a holistic approach. JENNIFER: They're charged with preparing students for practice, but that includes not only doing the job of being a lawyer, but it also helps informing that professional identity and understanding the culture of the legal profession. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that base, that foundational culture of legal profession is now well-being at the forefront? BREE: Absolutely. CHRIS: For sure. Jennifer, as we look to wrap up here, again, I think one of the things that's interesting as we think about the future is, how do we know whether we've made progress or not? Do you have any just early inclinations as to the business world? They talk about key performance indicators. Do you have any early sense of, as we talked about this phrase of engineering a culture shift, any sense of how we might want to be thinking about the measurement of progress? JENNIFER: I think there are some standard measurements of progress, retention, burnout. I know there are law firms out there looking at their employees, there are some larger scale surveys, but we talk about different groups of lawyers leaving the profession or changing or moving areas of practice because of the type of their work they're doing. If we see some of those things change, I think we'll be making progress. JENNIFER: If we see the path to partnership change that allows more flexibility, if we see more alternate work environments, if we see some of those things as a standard, remember, because there are firms that might be able to do it and employers that might have to do it, but then it becomes the standard, I think we will have made a difference. CHRIS: Awesome. Jennifer, again, on behalf of everyone who I know has labored on this particular issue and set us up, I mean, we're so excited that you're joining us as a leader in this journey. Our best days continue to be ahead of us. We know that there are some things going on both in society and generationally that might give us a little bit of tailwind for some of that acceleration of activity. I think one of the most important things about this podcast is how can people reach you? Because you are now in some respects the face and the day-to-day kind of operational execution of some of the mission. I would love it if you would let the listeners know how do they get a hold of you? JENNIFER: As I often say, I have a virtual open door. I've been taking meetings regularly, but you can reach me at my email address, jdisanza@lawyerwellbeing.net. Feel free to reach out. I have plenty of availability on my schedule if you just want to chat with me and talk about your thoughts about the Lawyer Well-Being movement or how you'd like to contribute to the Lawyer Well-Being movement. I look forward to talking to many more people. CHRIS: Again, Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us. I have a hunch that you will be on the podcast again at some point down the road. In fact, you could even probably be a guest host on the podcast in the event that Bree or I have to take a little bit of a leave or a vacation. Again, I know that for us, that labor on this issue is something that we've made as part of our professional opportunity to give back. It's certainly refreshing to be able to have someone of your talent join our team. I know that you've been passionate about this issue from the forefront, but now you get to work on it day-to-day and that's awesome for us and it's awesome for where this movement is ultimately going. BREE: Absolutely. Jennifer, we're so glad to have you. And me on a personal note, I love working with you. Delighted you're onboard. JENNIFER: Thank you both so much. CHRIS: Well, again, thanks everyone for listening in. We'll be back probably within the next couple weeks, two to three weeks, as we look forward into the fall. It's going to be a busy fall for both IWIL and well-being activities. We will see you down the road. Thanks for tuning in.

Today, on the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, co-hosts Bree and Chris hear from Helen Wan, a lawyer and the author of the 2013 novel, The Partner Track, which just launched as a new TV series on Netflix. On this episode, Helen discusses her journey towards writing her novel, how to get other stories told, and how getting senior leadership to show up for important discussions on inclusiveness and equity can shift a firm's culture from one of competition to one of community. Transcript:  CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, well-being friends. Welcome to the Path To Well-Being In Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I am joined again by my great co-host, Bree Buchanan. My name is Chris Newbold, Executive Vice President of ALPS. Bree, I'm pretty excited about our guest today. How about you? BREE BUCHANAN: I know. We've got somebody who's really famous. CHRIS: That's right. That's right. It's always great to bring... I think it's fair to say that the legal profession in general, perceptions of it can be driven by media, television, movies, books. And I think that we are super excited to have a guest today that is really kind of sharing her novel was the basis for a Netflix series that is pretty popular right now. And so our guest today is Helen Wan. And Bree, if you could quickly talk a little bit about Helen and who she is. BREE: Absolutely. I would love to. And Chris, when you were talking about the history of portrayal of law in the media, I first thought of Legally Blonde. CHRIS: Yeah, Yeah. I always think of L.A. Law, right? Again, these are not oftentimes real perceptions of the legal profession, but the reality is people, particularly folks considering law school and other things, I think it does have, even going back to the old Perry Mason days. I think it does actually have folks look at the law through the lens, and I think the media creates some of that lens. So that's why I think this will be a really fun conversation, particularly given Helen's, the subject matter that she tackled based upon her own personal experience. BREE: I know, and I think of Helen creating this lens through which so many up-and-coming law students may see the profession. So enough about you, me, Chris. Let me talk about Helen. Helen Wan is an author and a lawyer and a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Virginia School of Law. She's the author of the 2013 novel, the Partner Track, which just launched as a new TV series on Netflix. Incredibly exciting. It's the story of an Asian American woman and her law colleagues as they compete in the culture of a prestigious global law firm. The book is taught in colleges and law schools and first-year seminars and ethics courses, and is used by law firms and companies in dialogues about DEI. And the book is being translated into several languages, including Turkish. I just think that's so interesting that partner track began as subway scribblings on a legal pad when Helen was a first-year associate at a large New York law firm. She writes primarily about how race, gender, socioeconomic, class, and culture impact am ambition in our pursuit of happiness, and I will add wellbeing. And Helen has written for the Washington Post. In fact, she has appeared on the cover of the Washington Post magazine, CNN.com, The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post among others. Before becoming a writer, Helen practiced media and intellectual property law in New York, both at law firms and as an in-house council. At the time, Inc. Division of Time Warner, Inc., A&E television networks and the Hachette Book Group USA. You could follow her on Twitter, @HelenWan1, the number one, and visit her website, at HelenWan.com. Helen, we will now let you speak. How are you? Welcome to the podcast. HELEN WAN: Hello. Thank you both for having me. It's really a pleasure to be here. BREE: Yeah, it's so great. And so Helen, I'm going to jump in and ask you just the question that we really like to start off our podcast, to take us into a place that is personal and just in our background and where we come from and how we see the world. So tell us about what are the experiences in your life that made you care about and be, I would say, even passionate about the wellbeing of those and the legal profession, particularly those from a diverse background? HELEN WAN: Sure. Well, just by way of a little background about how I even came to law school, I was born in California, but raised on the East Coast. And I went, went to undergrad in Massachusetts and then I went directly to law school. And it wasn't based on any sort of burning desire to be Perry Mason that I went directly to law school. It really was that when I was a senior trying to decide on a career path. I grew up the eldest child of first-generation Chinese American immigrants. And so there were certain kind of family-approved or culturally or society-approved careers such as law, medicine, engineering, finance, accounting. I was trying to decide on a career path and I thought, well, what is it that I'm passionate about? And it was words, working with words. And so truly, the calculus was not much more complicated than that. It was really kind of like, okay, well out of this group of careers, well, lawyers work with words. BREE: Yeah. Right. HELEN WAN: I guess, great. So I suppose, let me try the law school, the legal profession path. And I went and took the LSAT and I did well enough, I got into law schools and I picked the one where I knew I was going to get a good legal education, plus in-state tuition, because I had grown up in the northern Virginia suburbs. So there I was in law school. And then my first job out of law school was literally like Ingrid, the protagonist of the Partner Track, my first job was in the corporate mergers and acquisitions department at a large law firm in New York City. CHRIS: And Helen, obviously, I think a lot of law students, when you make that jump into that first career position, what'd you think? Did you like it? Did you detest it? Talk about your emotional mindset as you went and took that leap. HELEN WAN: Sure. So when I first landed at that firm, I truly didn't know what to expect. To be perfectly honest, I didn't have any specific expectations for that first job. But when I got there, I realized, "Oh wow." I might as well have landed on the moon because it was such a, to me at least as a young freshly minted lawyer to have landed there, it just felt like such an alien culture to me. And at that point in time, now, obviously, just to date myself, it's been decades and decades obviously since I have been in law school. But I felt like law school did not really prepare people for the cultural entry into your first law job. BREE: Right, right. HELEN WAN: Everyone there obviously had the academic goods, otherwise you're just not going to be at a place like that. But on top of that, there needed to be this extra kind of familiarity or knowledge of how the game was played, what rules really applied, and what rules nobody followed. And I just kind of felt like I didn't have the decoder ring. I felt like everyone else did. Somehow I was absent the day they passed them out. BREE: Helen, can you give some examples of that? Anything? HELEN WAN: Just the very, very first weeks we were there, they had us attend a very thorough, well-executed and beautiful orientation for the new recruits, for the new associates. And it was in a hotel ballroom. And the person sitting next to me, also, obviously another entering junior lawyer, turned to me and said, he introduced himself with his law school name and that he was on law review and that he hoped to, in three years, have done X and, in six years time have done Y. And then had everything all mapped out, his whole career plan. And I just thought to myself, oh wow, I just kind of want to get through this orientation week. He turned to me and he said, "Well, what about you? Where to you see yourself in five, 10 years from now?" And I said, "I just want to have found meaningful work and be pretty satisfied with where I am with my career and family, or what other things that I've chosen to do in life." And he said, "Oh, okay. Well, I'm in it to win it." He said to me, "Well, I'm in it to win it." BREE: I know that guy. I think we all know that guy. HELEN WAN: Oh, Bree, you know him as well? Oh, okay. It's a small world. And he said it totally unironically, totally unironically. I actually am still in touch with him, and he is a partner now. He's a senior partner. BREE: Of course. CHRIS: There you go. HELEN WAN: So it worked. BREE: Oh my gosh. Well, tell us about your book, Partner Track. HELEN WAN: So my novel, the Partner Track, which I think as you mentioned, was originally published back in 2013. It's been very interesting and I feel very fortunate that it's kind of gotten, I guess, fresh life breathed into it now, almost a decade later. I think, because there's more of a cultural lens focused on these topics, on these DEI topics now. It's timely. But I started writing the book because while I was working these 80-hour work weeks and I just needed sort of a creative outlet. And I literally started putting literal pen to paper, on paper, and I would journal about these observations and patterns that I was seeing, like who was sitting with whom in the corporate cafeteria, in the law firm lunchroom, who was being invited along on certain client pitch meetings and who was not, who was finding themselves spending good quality bonding time with certain mentors or sponsors, and who was not getting that kind of face time. So all of those kinds of things I began writing down as little sketches. And then when I found that I had a critical mass of sketches and pages, and I started showing them to a group of trusted friends, like confidants, who by the way, were not all lawyers, they were working all different kinds of industries and roles. But they had faced similar experiences in their jobs. I shared some of those pages. And then people, my friends responded like, "Nobody's telling these stories. No one's talking about these issues. Why don't you try to get some of them published?" And I had no idea how to go about getting something published. So I literally went to the bookstore and got one of those, how do you get a first book published for Dummies type books? And literally, I followed those rules and it kind of worked. BREE: That's great. I love it. CHRIS: And Helen, can you, just for our listeners who have not read the book or seen the series yet, can you just set the storyline of at what point is the book focused on? And just kind of set the table a little bit for the setup of the book. HELEN WAN: Sure. Yeah, happy to. In a nutshell, the novel follows a young Chinese American junior associate who is trying to make partner at a very, very large and prestigious and rather traditional global law firm in the New York office. And it follows not only her, although it focuses primarily on her POV, but it also focuses on the experiences of her cohort, that she's up against, competing against for partner. And what I was trying to accomplish with my novel was... Well, just personally as a reader, I love really tight ensemble cast-type novels and movies myself that talk about group dynamics in a tense kind of pressure cooker-type environment. And so that was what I was trying to bring across with my book. And I just wanted to show an underrepresented perspective on navigating that kind of corporate culture. BREE: Yeah. So this podcast, we really have spent our, I guess, 25 episodes plus, Chris, and counting on amplifying the voices of those in the wellbeing and law space. And your book, which is now a TV show, really has added to that conversation. So I'm wondering if Helen, you could have 30 minutes in a room with law firm leadership, maybe you could throw in some of the leadership from the firm you worked for, I don't know, and could talk to them about what you think they should do differently, what would you say? HELEN WAN: Well, I actually have been pretty encouraged by the evolution in the, I guess decade, since initial publication of the book until now, with the launch of the TV series, because in that intervening time, I've been lucky enough to have spoken with and seen the behind the scenes DEI strategies at a lot of different legal employers, primarily law firms. But a lot of other places too, like in-house legal departments or even the academic world. And there definitely is a lot of progress left to be made, but at least progress is being made, I think. Because when the book was first published in 2013, and I was speaking to audiences of lawyers and law students, a lot of times at a firm, it would be a beautiful, gorgeous, gorgeous cocktail party and no senior management in attendance. And hey, we're talking about diversity in the legal profession here. It would be a whole bunch of summer associates, which is great, but not a lot of visibility with the firm senior leadership. Nowadays, I think that I truly have seen a change in that way. So I see more firms really kind of putting their money where their mouth is. I have seen firms do things such as, well make it basically mandatory for all senior managers, all partners, to show up for one of these dialogues and discussions about increasing inclusiveness at the firm, the feeling of inclusiveness and equity at the firm. They do use often my book as a teaching text. And I've seen some particularly just, well, really carefully planned events where the firm even has prepared a list of discussion questions and breakout sessions and breakout groups, et cetera, that are pretty thoughtful. And the discussion turns into a really fairly meaningful one. I am encouraged by the changes that I have seen. BREE: And it seems like that kind of tracks I'm thinking in just to the general wellbeing space in that what we're seeing now is that it's become a part of the conversation. HELEN WAN: Yes. BREE: It's a start. You got to start there. You got to get people talking about it and thinking about it. But there's still a long way to go to bring about real change. Absolutely. HELEN WAN: Right. Yes, I totally agree. CHRIS: And Helen, one of the things that I think is really powerful about what you've written about, and now what the big screen is, is the perspective of associates. Because we all can envision a scenario in which, let's just call it the power structure is not tilting in your favor, which necessarily has folks competing against others in ways that sometimes are, let's just be honest, unhealthy, and then a lack of a willingness or a wherewithal to speak loudly when there are things that are unhealthy going on within the firm for stigma reasons and otherwise. And so I just think one of the things that's really interesting, and I think one of the areas of wellbeing that I think there's an associate community out there that probably really empathizes with the plight that both, you write about you went through, and just that it certainly feels like there's more on-ramps to be able to vocalize challenges that you're facing. But let's face it, 20 years ago that might not have actually been the case and actually might have been more summarily frowned upon. HELEN WAN: Yeah, absolutely. That is, I think, one of the reasons why I started my little journal scribblings to and from work, is that I was observing the same patterns happen in terms of really talented people, really talented lawyers taking themselves off the vine very early on. And then I'd ask them or have some private candid conversations with them, everyone essentially said more or less the same thing, which was, "Oh, well I could look around." And I could see that my career was not going to go smoothly here in the same way that X, Y, Z perhaps. CHRIS: And then obviously, you add gender issues and diversity issues into the mix. And boy, I just think that the story and the nature of it with kind of historical cultures in the legal profession... What you're bringing and what you're raising in terms of the consciousness and the awareness of some of these real issues that continue today, I think is a really powerful element of what will come out of your work. Hey, let's take a quick break here, hear from one of our sponsors and come back and talk a little bit more about the show and the book. Sponsor Announcer: Meet Vera, your firm's virtual ethics risk assessment guide. Developed by ALPS, Vera's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots from client intake, to calendaring, to cybersecurity and more. Vera: I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you a summary of recommendations to provide course corrections if needed, and to keep your firm on the right path. Sponsor Announcer: Generous and discrete, Vera is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS, to help firms like yours be their best. Visit Vera at alpsinsurance.com/Vera. BREE: Welcome back everybody to the Well-Being In Law Podcast. And today we have author Helen Wan, who wrote the book Partner Track in 2013, and has now been turned into a television show that was just recently released, because I started to watch it and I love it, Helen, it was the beginning I think, of August 2022. But what was it like to work on turning that book and to a TV show? HELEN WAN: Truly, it's been a very thrilling ride. Because I just never, never, never, over two decades ago when I began writing the book, I never would've expected that the stars would align in this way and that one day I would be walking, literally would be able to be walking through Times Square in Manhattan and look up and see the Partner Track featured on the big old gigantic Netflix digital billboard. BREE: Helen, that gave me chills. HELEN WAN: Yeah, it really did. It really did, Bree. I stood there and I just stood there for a couple minutes. It just was amazing because I just stood there and watched the loop several times. So there's Ozark, Stranger Things, Squid Game and Partner Track. I was like, "Wow. Okay." BREE: Oh my gosh, I wish I could have seen a film of that, of you seeing that. CHRIS: What's been the biggest surprise to you since the launch? And obviously, Netflix has a worldwide audience. And so I got to imagine that quite a few folks have come out of your history and your background to reach back out to you. And I'm just kind of curious on what the biggest surprise was? HELEN WAN: Yeah, you kind of hit the nail on the head. I have been lucky enough to be hearing from so many old dear friends and colleagues and I heard from my high school prom date. I heard from my prom date, I heard from my a middle school English teacher. And it's just been pretty amazing. Who knew so many people read Variety or Hollywood Reporter. BREE: Yeah. HELEN WAN: It's been amazing. And the other, probably the best and happiest surprise for me has been just the tremendously positive and enthusiastic support that the show has gotten. But not just from lawyers or groups of law students or even groups of women lawyers or Asian American lawyers or what have you, no particular this community or that community or that community. Just people in general just from all quarters. And that has been just really positive and encouraging for me to see. BREE: No kidding. So Helen, looking back, now that you have the benefit of being able to deploy hindsight, a 20/20 vision, what would you have done differently? What do you wish that you had known when you started? What was the decoder? [inaudible 00:26:54]. HELEN WAN: Now that I'm a lot older and a little bit wiser, I would like to think... I think I just would've walked in there with more self-confidence, to be honest. I think that I would've walked into not just that particular law firm role, but every job that I have helped since with, just with more confidence that I could try to bring my, I know this is kind of a cliche way to say it, but bring my authentic self to work. And if it didn't work, then I would know that, hey, perhaps it's time to seek out someplace that perhaps is more where I would feel more included or would feel more valued, or perhaps the values of that particular workplace would be more aligned with my own. So I think that I would've just walked in with more confidence and not hold the belief that, hey, okay, what a legal employer wants is someone who just lives, breathes the law 24/7. Because that's not true. What they want is, I think, happy people who are pleasant to be around. I wish I had come to that conclusion sooner because I think that I would've wasted less time kind of spinning my wheels. BREE: Yeah. And being able to have the belief that when you walk into that space, you deserve to be there. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. CHRIS: I'm curious, as you reflect on the book, the storyline, and so forth, do you see it as a cautionary tale, an expose, a tutorial? I think you shared in the storylines just a number of, I think, very interesting elements to a journey. Again, with gender, with race, with first-generation elements and even remarking upon the person who's like, "I'm in it to win it." But I'm just curious on how you look at the storyline today versus obviously when you wrote the book almost a decade ago. HELEN WAN: It's funny, I did not think of it as an expose when I was writing. Truly, what I was trying to do when I first began this project, it was just kind of like my creative outlet, my written therapy from a stressful week at work. But then it eventually evolved into a proper story arc and it populated with different, more perspectives and more characters. Truly, I wrote it just as of my creative outlet. It was sort of my way to have well-being in the law. I needed to have a creative outlet, and so that was mine. BREE: Absolutely. And do you have advice for law students or those contemplating a legal career? What could you say to them? HELEN WAN: I think the best advice someone could have given me back when I was trying to embark on my first steps in my legal career would be just to take more time to really ask the savvy questions about the workplace's environment and culture before making any decisions. Because I realized fairly early on when I got to my first law job that, oh, okay, I don't think that this culturally is the right fit for me. Now, that's not to say anything about anybody else's decision because personally, I have very good friends who are senior law partners now and are really good at their jobs and just amazing lawyers. So it's each person. It's person by person, obviously. For me, that was not the right fit culturally. And I think that I would've taken the time to do a little more research, to ask smarter questions, to understand before making any decisions. And also to realize that hey, just because just you can continue grabbing more gold stars, you don't have to. CHRIS: Yeah, I think it's very interesting that one of the things that I makes me optimistic that well-being will continue to become a more prominent conversation topic, particularly in the big law community, is the fact that I think the most talented law students coming out are asking more of the tougher questions on the front end. There used to be, I think again, oh, I really want to get in at that particular firm because that will cement a pathway for me to success. Where generationally now, there's a little bit more of a, I know that I have a lot to offer, but I also am coming at this with more appropriate expectations as to what my work-life balance might look like and are asking those questions as part of the interview process. So it's a two-way hiring street versus kind of a one-way. And if we've gotten there, that I think can be a catalyst to the culture shift that firms, what they value in terms of talent acquisition and talent retention, changes the game quite a bit. And I think that your story and the Partner Track sheds some interesting new light on some of those kind of realistic elements of culture in firms that I think will play out, I think, in very interesting ways in the years to come. HELEN WAN: Yeah, Well thank you for that compliment because yeah, I've been fortunate enough to be speaking with lots of groups of law students and their law profs. And these students are really just asking very wise questions, questions about their future employers. And not just about future employers, but just about the state of the profession generally, or really asking things like, okay, well at this place, what is the partner group makeup? How long did that person take to make a partner? How many partners? And what is the path to partner? Is it clearly laid out? What happens... These are all very savvy questions that I, to be honest, I personally did not even know to ask when I was a 2L or 3L. BREE: Yeah. I think Chris and I both are first generation to go into law. And absolutely, you don't have somebody laying that down for you. You don't know what you're supposed to ask and those questions and things. CHRIS: Yeah. And the waters can obviously be pretty choppy when you don't have perspective and then you come into environments in which, let's just say that the environment can be some welcoming, some not so welcoming and then with undertones that you would've never known before. HELEN WAN: Right, yes. And I will add too though, that sometimes some of these instances where I did not necessarily feel very included in conversations or whatever the circumstance was, I don't feel that it was intentional or necessarily intentional or blatantly racist or sexist or anything. It's what you know, who you know, what is comfortable and familiar to you. And one thing that happened to me, which really made me want to start writing this, was that I was invited, see, I was invited along to a lunch along with some other, my cohort, who had also just entered the firm recently. And it was at a fancy steakhouse-type restaurant. And the conversation turned to sailing and sailing camp. Now, I had never been to sailing camp in my entire life, but apparently everybody else had, or I don't know, but apparently, to me, they all had. So he was talking about, "Oh my gosh. Well okay, I went to this sailing camp. Oh my goodness, do you know," blah, blah, blah. "Yes, we went to summer camp all of the time together and then we went to this academy together before college and law school." So I was like politely trying to listen and trying to get a word in edgewise. And sometimes I would succeed, but then no one was intentionally trying to exclude me from being a part of the conversation, obviously, it's just that I had no way to join that conversation and no one was allowing that foothold into the conversation. And so when I would try to get a word in edgewise, inevitably, the conversation would soon quickly turn back to sailing. And that's when I was like, hey, I'm going to take the legal pad and start writing this stuff down. And decades later, now it's on Netflix though. BREE: There you go. CHRIS: Yeah. Well, so much of what... I know that we did a kind of mini-series on the podcast on the nexus between and the inherent nexus between diversity, equity, inclusion, and this sense of what I think you're getting at, which is also the sense of belonging, right? And sometimes not having the context to feel like you can be part of conversations because you don't have the shared experience. And I just think that's a real element that sometimes has people feeling like they're just, maybe this isn't my place. And that maybe not be intentional, but the reality is that there are elements to that and they're real. HELEN WAN: Right. Yes, absolutely. CHRIS: Well, Helen, this was a great podcast and I appreciate, we had a chance to meet back in August in Chicago. Helen was the keynote speaker in front of the National Conference of Women's Bar Associations, where I had a chance to meet her before the series dropped. And I could immediately tell that Helen has a passion for seeing people want to ultimately find professional satisfaction in the practice of law. And again, her willingness to be able to, I think, identify some of the real issues that associates face in their journey in the legal profession, I think will kind of continue to serve as an important part of the well-being conversation moving forward. So Helen, thank you so much for joining us and we continue to want to incorporate you into well-being activities with the Institute for Well-Being in Law, and thanks for sharing your experience. BREE: Absolutely. Thank you. HELEN WAN: Thank you both so much for inviting me today. It was a pleasure. CHRIS: All right, we will be back in a couple weeks with the next podcast. And until then, be well out there friends.  

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, wellbeing friends. Welcome to the Path To Well-Being In Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. As you know, my name is Chris Newbold. I serve as executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. You know, our goal here on the podcast is to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the wellbeing space within the legal profession, and in the process, build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. As always, I am joined by my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing today? BREE BUCHANAN: I'm doing great, Chris. Great to be here. CHRIS: Good, good. As you all know, Bree is the president of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. Bree, we have some really exciting news to share about the institute and the journey that we're on to engineer this culture shift. Would you maybe give us a clue as to the breaking news that I think that we were so excited about? BREE: Nobody could be more excited than me because you said, you know, Bree is the board president. Well, up until this news, I had two jobs. I was the acting executive director, so I am just delighted to let people know we have hired our first full-time staff person and that is our inaugural executive director. Her name is Jennifer DiSanza. She comes to us with a whole host of experience in wellbeing issues and particularly with the law students. For many reasons, we wanted to bring Jennifer on board, but also strategically, we really realized that's where she's coming from is the future of our profession. And also, aside of where we know there's a lot of behavioral health distress and stress on the youngest members of our profession and the law students. So we're just thrilled to have Jennifer on board. CHRIS: Yeah. See, I had the privilege of serving with you Bree on the hiring committee. Boy, we have a dynamic leader now that will be working day-to-day to think about advancing wellbeing in our profession. You know, there's so much work to be done as you well know. We're actually planning on having Jennifer as our next podcast guest, which will be awesome to be able to just talk about the vision, why she's passionate about this work. It will also happen to be after the conclusion of some strategic planning that we as a board will be doing. So things are just really aligning well with both what has transpired, where we're going, and then focusing on what lies ahead in terms of some big issues that we have to tackle as we think about the wellbeing of lawyers and legal professionals in the profession. With that, today we're going to circle back to, we've spent considerable time in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion. You know, we had anticipated a three part series on this, but sometimes you extend an offer and you get somebody who's so awesome that you sit there and go, we have to expand this even further. Right? BREE: Along came Kori. Yeah. CHRIS: That's right. Along came Kori. And when Kori came along, we're like, okay, we're breaking the rules. We're totally bringing Kori into the mix. And so we were really excited to welcome Kori Carew to the podcast. Bree, would you be so kind to introduce Kori? And again, this is I know a podcast that we've been very excited and looking forward to. BREE: Absolutely. So Kori is a people inclusion strategist, an advocate, a speaker, a writer, a status quo disruptor. Got to love that. Child of God, wife and mother of two curly-haired, wise, energetic, fierce, spitfire daughters. Her family is multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-religious and spans multiple nationalities. She brings a fierce love of community and belonging that transcends differences to work, ministry and life. She loves to sing, cook, entertain, dance in the hallways at work, we need a video component of that, and read. Equipping leaders to be inclusive, to interrupt bias and disrupt the status quo. At her day job, she focuses on developing and implementing strategies for individual career and diversity and inclusion success, and helps organizations build bridges across differences and improve inclusion. BREE: When she's not working, she focuses her voice and talent on issues of gender equity and rights, inclusion, and human and civil rights, serving in her church and community, and cherishing her phenomenal tribe and community. She's energized by helping people live their very best lives. Kori was the Director of Strategic Diversity Initiatives for seven years at Shook, Hardy. And then she came over to Seyfarth and is now the Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer there and oversees their really spectacular wellbeing program, Seyfarth Life, and a whole host of other initiatives we're going to hear about. So Kori, welcome to the podcast. CHRIS: Yay. KORI CAREW: Thank you. I appreciate you inviting me to be on this podcast and also very much the work that you are doing. This conversation of wellbeing for attorneys is such an important conversation. It's one that we probably started having too late, and it's one where diversity and inclusion, there's more work to be done than time. I'm super thankful for all that you do and all that you do to help our profession be better, so thank you very much. BREE: You bet. Kori, I'm going to start off. We ask all of our guests a variation of this question. What experiences in your life are drivers behind your passion for work around diversity, equity, and inclusion and belonging and wellbeing? KORI: Thank you for that question. And of course, you're causing me to go down a bit of memory lane. You would think this is an easy question, but it actually is not. It's not as easy because it forces you to look in the rear view mirror and try to understand where the dots connected to where you are. Before I do that, I do want to make one small correction. Seyfarth Life is an incredible initiative at Seyfarth that I am super proud of and one of the things that energized me about joining the firm. It has a steering committee that leads it. It's four partners at the firm, all of whom have a connection to wellbeing and mindfulness. My department and my role actually does not oversee Seyfarth Life, but we do work very closely with them. Because as one of the founding members, Laura Maechtlen noted from the very beginning, there's that intersection between inclusion and diversity and belonging and wellbeing, and the two work very closely together. But my department does not oversee Seyfarth Life. So just wanted to make sure I give credit to the right people. BREE: Absolutely, give credit where it's due. KORI: You know, because they're awesome and they do great work. In fact, if I may brag on them, out of the steering committee members, one of them is the chair of the largest department in the firm and an executive committee member and co-chair of the national diversity and inclusion action team. Oh, wait a minute. No, that's not right. Three are office managing partners. They're part of this steering committee, this leadership group, because they actually practice wellbeing and mindfulness and meditation in their own personal lives and allow it to influence how they lead. So I know Seyfarth didn't pay me to do a promotion, but I felt like I needed to shout some guys out. BREE: Absolutely. KORI: Our talent team helps them quite a bit in terms of organizing programs and handling the administrative and logistic things. Okay. So to answer your question, what are the experiences? I often say this and it is true that when I look at my life in the rear view mirror, how I ended up where I am makes a lot more sense as I connect the dots in ways that I probably couldn't have foreseen. For example, I never intended to be a diversity and inclusion professional. I actually never intended to go to law school. I started my university career as an electrical engineering major. When I came to the U.S., I wanted to build planes. That was my thing. I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. I wanted to build planes. I loved science. I could spend hours in the lab. One of the best gifts I ever got was a lab coat. My dad had a custom drawing board built for me when I was a teenager that I carried with me everywhere because technical drawing, engineering drawing was one of my top subjects. KORI: So a lot of things make sense in hindsight. I look at my family composition and my sisters and I were all born in different countries. We have different passports. We grew up in Nigeria, a country with over 300 different ethnic groups with different languages and traditions and customs, so there's that. My family is multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-racial and there's just so much diversity there. You know, in the family tree, there's a granduncle that's a Methodist church bishop, and one that's an Imam. And my grandfather's father was a teacher, was a teacher of the Quran. And so all of that diversity is there in the family, but it probably influenced how my parents raised my sisters and I and how even through childhood, I was always the person who was connecting the dots between similarities between people. And today we would call that cultural fluency, this ability to recognize cultural differences and not judge them but just adapt to them and be able to say, okay, you know what? KORI: It looks to me like person A is looking through a lens that's different than person B, but they're looking at the same thing. So how can I get these two people to be on the same page? So there's that family dynamic. But another thing that happened when I was growing up that I do think influenced me quite a bit. I grew up in Nigeria. Most of my childhood, we had one military dictator after another. So I grew up with coos happening more often than I would prefer. There were times that things broke out into religious violence. You're talking about incidents where a few people are killed or a lot of people are killed and everything goes to standstill, everybody's on edge. You don't leave your home. When the students go on riots because they're protesting something and things get out of hand, you're turning off the lights in your home and sort of huddled together, trying to make sure that you stay together as a family until everything passes over. So that was also something that I grew up around and experiencing. KORI: And then my parents are from Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is actually my home country. If you ask me where I'm from, I will tell you I was born in Canada, grew up in Nigeria, but I'm from Sierra Leone. Because in my culture, you're where your father's from. So my entire identity has always been that I am from Sierra Leone. In the '90s, Sierra Leone began to experience a very brutal civil war, which calling it a civil war is actually inaccurate. You have a bunch of people with weapons who terrorize the population for 11 years. And it's been one of the most brutal wars that the world has seen at least in recent times. And that impacted my family in the sense that we lost people, in the sense that I hadn't been back to Sierra Leone for a long time. And it kind of started with my mom not feeling it was safe enough for us to go and visit, with grandparents living on the run and being sick and dying and me not seeing them in a long time because of just this state of chaos. KORI: And all of this fueled how I ended up going to law school, wanting to do human rights work, wanting to be a human rights lawyer, feeling as if I learned so much about the American system and the role that the legal profession played in terms of maintaining democracy and freedom and wanting to multiply that. Right. But then I go to law school. I graduate. I fall in love with a boy who I actually started dating in college, and I ended up in Kansas City because I followed a boy. You know, career took a different turn, ended up being a defense lawyer. And then you fast forward to doing an evaluation and me going through a process of saying, okay, I've done a lot of the things I wanted to do. I've achieved a lot of the things I wanted to achieve. I wanted to try cases. I wanted to build this reputation. I wanted to be successful in A, B, C, D. KORI: And I started taking inventory of the things I was passionate about, the skills I developed, the experiences I had and where I was losing time. You know, where was I given my time in community? What were the things that I could lose myself doing in such deep flow that I don't even recognize that time has gone by? And that journey ended up leading me to inclusion and diversity work and I haven't turned back since. There's some aspects of the legal profession I miss. I miss trying cases. I miss solving problems for clients. It may sound like the weirdest thing, but boy, playing around with evidence, rules, and figuring out how to get things in or keep things out is a nerdy love of mine. And so those are just some of the experiences that I would say led me to this love for helping people build bridges and I'm empower people to succeed despite the challenges, and being able to create just a level of cultural fluency amongst groups of people so that we understand how much better we are together as opposed to isolated from one another. So that's a long answer. BREE: Well, what an amazing life you've had to date and an incredible background that informs your work at a depth that I know Chris and I can't even begin to imagine. CHRIS: For sure. Kori, how long have you been more squarely centered on the inclusion and diversity side of things? KORI: I have been for 11 years now full-time diversity. What I realized, you know, somebody asked me a question similar to this, how long have you been doing diversity work, which is different from what I usually hear. I actually did the inventory and realized that, you know, 29 years ago, when I first came to the U.S., that was when I actually started doing presentations. At the time, we called them multiculturalism. We started doing presentations on bridging differences, on being able to understand different cultures and how you navigate it. And so I've been actually teaching on diversity, inclusion, cultural fluency leadership topics now for 29, 30 years. But it being my full-time job, that happened when I left litigation and moved over to Shook, Hardy & Bacon. CHRIS: Okay. I think a good point to maybe start the conversation is, you know, again, your perspective is so unique and informed. For diverse members of the profession, can you talk to our listeners about some of the more challenging aspects of the last couple of years? KORI: Yeah. So the last couple of years have been tough for everyone. This pandemic, it's been brutal and it's impacted us in so many different ways. We've lost our sense of certainty to the extent that we didn't had any. We've lost our ability to have some kind of predictability, something that is a core need, a core need for many of us. Well, not for many of us, for everyone. It's actually a core human need. And so we've been sort of thrown into this whirlwind of uncertainty with no deadline, right? We went from thinking, well, I'll speak for myself. You know, since I'm not a scientist, I foolishly thought, well, maybe in two weeks I'll go back to the office. And then it was a month. And then I thought six weeks. And then I thought for sure by summer 2020 we'd be able to go out and about and things would be quasi under control. And here we are, you know, some 28, 29 months later and we still have COVID. I'm sick right now recovering from COVID after avoiding it for almost 30 months, I get it. KORI: So you have that benchmark that is impacting everyone and the uncertainty that we've seen with everything going on around us. But as with everything, I think people from historically underrepresented and marginalized groups, what happens is the things that... There's this saying that the things, and I'm going to probably say it wrong. And it may be an African American saying, but it's this thing that what gives some people a cold will give others the flu. And so what you've seen then is populations that have been historically marginalized and underrepresented and haven't had access to full equity, had been impacted very differently by the same storm that we're all in. So we're all in the same storm, but we're not in the same boat. We're experiencing it differently. So communities of color, we know got hit by COVID much harder. KORI: And you have that intersection between race, between housing inequity, between education inequity, between healthcare inequity and healthcare access, all of those things coming together to adversely impact some groups more. So if you are someone who is Brown or Black, or from one of these historically marginalized communities, and you are going to work during the pandemic, or you're working from home, you are more likely to have family members who have been directly impacted by COVID, right? You are more likely to have lost family members. You also, generally speaking are more likely to be in a position where you are in an extended family situation where you are responsible for more people than just yourself. You know, one of the things that we know, for example, that impacts generational wealth is that those of us from communities of color oftentimes are responsible not just for ourselves, but for extended family members. KORI: So you have that dynamic playing, then you have the racial pandemic, which has been going on, but in the last two years have come to fevered pitch. And so the daily trauma of dealing with racism and microaggressions then gets compounded by all the incidents, George Floyd, Charles Cooper, and all the other incidents that have been bombarding us from our television screens, from the news reports, from articles. And so now all of a sudden everything is right in your face and you're dealing with all of it at the same time. And so those are some of the things that are professionals from "diverse communities," from underrepresented marginalized communities have been dealing with. And our reserves have been tapped into and overstretched to where for some of us, it feels like it's been just too much. BREE: Absolutely. It's unimaginable just how much to carry on in that space. All of the things that you just described, this litany of horrors is on top of just the day-to-day difficulty as been expressed to me, and reading in my friends of people of color, just the microaggressions and just how hard it is. Just take away pandemic and everything else and the racial reckoning, how hard it can be just to get through the day. I can't even imagine. It is absolutely just too, too much. Kori, there's so much to unpack here. I wanted to kind of pushing us along here talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion and talking about belonging and overlaying that. I mean, when I started looking in the legal profession, we talk about DEI, it was diversity then DEI, and now we're getting into some of the really, to me, needy and interesting stuff around belonging. I know that you created a belonging project at Seyfarth. Could you talk to us about the importance of that, and also about this project that you got started at Seyfarth? KORI: Sure. Let me separate them out. Belonging is a conversation that more and more of us are having, and it is fairly new to the conversation when you're talking about diversity and inclusion. It started with we talked about diversity, and then we started talking about diversity and inclusion, and now we've included equity and belonging. Belonging goes to that sense, that feeling that each of us have when we belong and we feel like we are part of a group and that we belong to something that is bigger than us. It is also a core human need. Brené Brown has this phrase that she says that we have three irreducible needs, and they are to be loved, to connect, and to belong. What we know from the research is that when we don't have belonging, it impacts us. It is wired into our DNA to belong to something. KORI: So we will either have healthy belonging, or we will seek a belonging that may not be healthy and may not be good. This is where you can queue in hate groups and cult because they will do anything to belong. We will also conform to fit in so that we have a quasi sense of belonging. The problem though is that when we don't have belonging, we actually see physiological, physical, spiritual, mental, psychological impact on our wellbeing. It impacts our sense of health. Forget our sense of health. It actually impacts our health, right? We know that exclusion and the lack of belonging actually results in increased depression, increased high blood pressure, increased diabetes. Incidentally, a lot of the same things that racial trauma and microaggressions also causes on the human body. And so if we don't have that sense of belonging, then we are not able to actually actualize that sense of inclusion where everyone is able to be leveraged and their differences and their strengths leveraged so that they can succeed as they want to succeed. KORI: And without belonging, you don't get wellbeing. But conversely, without wellbeing, you can't cultivate that sense of belonging. And so those two things are intertwined as well as this concept of engagement, which also is in the mix, right? You can't create engagement unless you have social connection and belonging. And so all of these things come together. Unfortunately, in many of our organizations, they're treated as separate, right? In many organizations, you have the wellbeing function being managed in a way that it doesn't speak to diversity, doesn't speak to belonging at all. So imagine now we just talked about COVID and we talked about how COVID has impacted everyone. Then imagine you're developing a wellness initiative or a wellbeing initiative and you're not stopping to think, oh, wait a minute, because of diversity, this pandemic has impacted people in different ways. KORI: And so I can't just trot out a wellbeing program without factoring in diversity and how diversity has resulted in different people experiencing this pandemic differently. Similarly, we fail when we try to, for example, have a wellbeing initiative that doesn't stop and think, oh, wow, we're not talking about racial trauma. We're not talking about microaggressions. We're not talking about the impact of implicit bias and exclusion on the psychological and physical wellbeing of the people in our organization. And so what's happening is these concepts are tied together, but in our organizations and most of our organizations, we're not doing DEI and incorporating wellbeing and we're not doing wellbeing incorporating DEIB. Instead, we're acting as if they're completely separate and they're not. CHRIS: I mean, I think it goes without saying, we, I think as human beings, sometimes we compartmentalize of there's this and then there's that. I think that from the infancy of the institute, I think we've emphasized the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of, has to flow through everything, every lens that we look at from the wellbeing perspective. But I have to admit, it's been more challenging than I think, than we've appreciated because sometimes we look a little bit myopically at some of these issues without broadening our lens. That's the perspective that I think that you can bring our listeners that, again, this intersection of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging with wellbeing, I guess I'd be curious on just, how can we merge? Right? Because again, even the fact that there's organizations that work over here and organizations that work over here, and we really should be just the coalition and the umbrella and the totality of how it all works together is something that I don't know that we appreciate the magnitude of. KORI: Well, and the only way we can appreciate the magnitude is if we have these honest conversations. But we also have to have the conversations around the structural and the cultural underpinnings, right? How do we have conversations about wellbeing that take into consideration differences? That take into consideration, okay, we're telling people, hey, we have therapy or we have EAP, or we have whatever the organization offers. But how do you do that and also acknowledge that for some communities that there is a stigma around maybe going to a therapist? How do you have that conversation with those communities? Or that racial bias and racial aggressions are having an impact on people, but you have an entire generation of Black people, for example, who have survived by plowing through all the challenges that the world has put in front of us. And to sit down and talk about the way in which racism has impacted us is asking us to put our shields down, which means opening up ourselves to attack, which means possibly being accused of playing the race card. Right? KORI: All of things that you may have grown up in a time where we just didn't talk about that in mixed company, we only talked about that with each other. And so there are all these layers, all these layers. I recently listened to a friend of mine, Ratu Basin, and she was talking about how it feels for her as someone of Indian heritage to see how much yoga, for example, has been whitewashed. There's so many conversations to be had even in the wellbeing space, even when we're talking to people about things like self-care. Well, what are you recommending? Because some of the things we tell people to do for self-care, go get a massage, who can afford that? What culture support that kind of self-care? And is that really self-care or is that treating a symptom? Should self-care and wellbeing be about a way of life and a way of working such that we don't need these emergency [inaudible 00:32:26] like solutions to fix the symptoms, right? KORI: And that's the big conversation and that's the conversation I'm hearing some lawyers begin to ask where they say, the organization says they care about wellbeing, but we're getting these other messages that say it's productivity and hours and billables that matter, right? How do we shift the culture and how we're embracing these topics in a way that makes it more meaningful? I just realized, I didn't even answer your second question about the belonging project, but yeah, this is the stuff that to me, I see a lot of potential for us to have really good conversations that can lead to solutions that are more inclusive of a diverse profession. BREE: Kori, you're clearly such a thought leader and a visionary in this space. Can you talk a little bit about how do we get change to occur in a profession, the legal profession that is so reluctant to change? Even more so than general society. Where do you see the bright points of really being able to make some change? KORI: Can you repeat that question? BREE: Yeah. Just about how do we get change to occur in the legal profession? You know, this is a profession that is just so stayed and slow and bound up in tradition. This is the way we do it, that sort of thing. And here you are with these fabulous ideas, working with a very large law firm, having come from another very large law firm so you're in this space. What are your ideas for actually getting real change to occur? Where are the pressure points, I guess? KORI: Well, I think some of the pressure points are actually external. You asked me a question earlier about the last two years, something that I didn't mention that has impacted a lot. It's impacting individuals from underrepresented groups, but it's also impacting our organizations. Is this fake cultural war that is also going on, you know, regardless of what political party you're in, I think we can acknowledge that for the last six years, there has been an attack on everything that we are trying to accomplish in diversity and inclusion. White is now Black, Black is now white. And if we are in a state of being, for example, where I'll use Florida as an example where someone can say, we want to ban any training if it makes someone uncomfortable. What you're essentially saying is let's keep the status quo the way it is, even if the status quo supports white supremacy. KORI: Even if the status quo is inequitable. You would rather keep the status quo than have an uncomfortable conversation. When it comes to the legal profession, in particular, law firms, because of how we are constructed. A law firm essentially has multiple owners. It's not like a corporation that has a board of directors and has shareholders. Let's say you have a law firm of a thousand people and 300 of them are partners. You have 300 people running around who think that everybody should have an equal say in every single decision. It's one of the reasons that law firms function so differently from other companies and why decision making is so different. Everything we do is different. You know, we put people in leadership positions not because they're leaders, but because they're great trial attorneys or they're great business generators or whatever, whatever the criteria is, but rarely is it because someone actually is a good leader. KORI: And so we have this culture that we have built that really makes it difficult for us to have real hard conversations on the things that really matter, on the things that really can make change. So imagine that law firm now sitting in the last six years and even more so in the last three years. I can tell you when it comes to diversity, inclusion, many of us are throwing our hands up and saying, so how in the hell are we supposed to have this conversation then? If you're saying, oh, we can't talk about white privilege because someone says, oh, that offends me. Or we can't talk about systemic racism because someone's going to say, oh, wait a minute, if you say systemic racism is real, then that's anti-American. So we are living in a time where the terms racism, the terms CRT have been completely redefined to where they mean nothing that even resembles what they actually mean. KORI: And then we're over here arguing about these fictitious decisions, these fictitious definitions, and we're not actually doing the hard work that needs to be done, right. Because if you won't even acknowledge that systemic racism is real, then how do we evaluate the systems to see where we may be having inequitable results and then changing those systems? Because if you deny a thing exists, then we can't even address it. BREE: Absolutely. KORI: And so that's probably one of the biggest challenges I see, but also the biggest opportunity. And if anything is going to change when it comes to diversity, we have got to get more courageous about having difficult conversations, but conversations that are worthwhile, they are important. Nothing about creating equity is comfortable and cozy and touchy-feely, it's hard work. It requires us to say some things that we maybe may not have faced before, but we don't get to change what we won't face, what we won't acknowledge, and what we won't be honest about. It's like, you can't write a new end into the story if you won't acknowledge the truth of the story. That's the whirlwind that I think we are in now, not just as a profession, but as a country and a society. BREE: Absolutely. What an incredibly difficult place to be? Yeah, go ahead, Chris. CHRIS: Well, I was just going to say, I want to unpack that more. Let's do this. Let's take a quick break and come back because I mean, my burning question and Kori began to sort of thinking about it, which is what's the pathway to better, more productive, honest conversations, right? Because I think that you're right. The question is, how do we create the environments for ultimately that societal discussion to occur in the most productive way? So let's take a quick break and we'll come right back. — ADVERTISEMENT: Meet VERA, your firm's Virtual Ethics Risk Assessment Guide developed by ALPS. VERA's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots from client intake to calendaring, to cybersecurity, and more. VERA: I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you a summary of recommendations to provide course corrections if needed, and to keep your firm on the right path. Generous and discreet, VERA is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS to help firms like yours be their best. Visit VERA at alpsinsurance.com/vera.   — CHRIS: Okay. We are back with Kori Carew, our esteemed guests and the chief inclusion and diversity officer at Seyfarth Shaw. Kori, we were just getting into the, I think the discussion. I feel like we're going deeper than even I had thought we would in the conversation, which I love. You know, as we think now about we need to have the honest conversations, right. And so I would just be curious on your opinion as what's the pathway to get there. If we appreciate that there's a lot of noise and the volume levels are high, and there's a lot of yelling, frankly, on both sides of the equation. What's the pathway toward problem solving, thoughtful discussion, intentional discussion that ultimately advances the dialogue? KORI: Thank you very much for that question. Honestly, it's one I've been thinking a lot about. You know, I did do a TEDx in 2017 and the impetus for that TED really was that question that you just asked, which was, there's a lot of yelling and not enough dialogue that allows us to move into action. Since I gave that TED, I've sort of watched what's been going on in organizations and in the country. I don't think I would change anything about that TED, except that there are a few more things that I would emphasize. One of the first things that we have to do if we truly want to make progress, and I'm going to steal a Nigerian thing, tell the truth and shame the devil. We are avoiding being honest with ourself about so many things. Whether it is just being honest about the experiences people have in the organization, or being honest about where the gaps are, or being honest about what the failures are, or even individual honesty. KORI: That self-awareness to say, you know Kori, you talk a lot about wellbeing and you talk a lot about leadership, but the reason you talk about those things is because you were searching for something that you did not have in the leaders that you grew up under, right? So you were trying to create something for others that you didn't have, but you are also trying to create it for yourself. And there are many days that you totally suck. There are many days that you are making very bad wellbeing decisions. There are days that you are not as inclusive as you would want to be, but it's okay. And the only way you're going to get better is by acknowledging where you're not doing it right. Now, think about that when we're talking about gender or race or LGBT inclusion or disability inclusion. If we as individuals and we as organizations are not willing to be honest about our history, what has happened and what is happening, then we don't even have a starting point. KORI: And the way that we do that is very, very cliché. Getting comfortable with what is uncomfortable. I remember when I first started saying that, when I was at Shook, Hardy & Bacon and it wasn't even a thing many people were saying, and now people say it so often that it has lost its meaning. But it truly is the beginning point. And in too many of our organizations, we are shutting down any discussion or any movement in the name of trying to get consensus, or in trying to water things so much that they're meaningless, right? Or being so hyperworried about future possible hypothetical litigation that somebody may have over something that they don't like that they heard as opposed to possible litigation over people who do not feel like they are being treated equitably. You know, it's like we have to choose our heart. And so it's either the heart of sitting in the discomfort and learning things we may not want to learn, challenging ourselves, reaching deep to say, you know what? I don't really like that. KORI: When you talk to me about Christian privilege, this is a true story. Okay. True story. A [inaudible 00:46:22] of mine talked about Christian privilege. We're talking about something. She said, "Yeah, but there's also Christian privilege and people never talk about that." And can I admit to you that I was like, "Oh, is she for real? We're talking about racism and she's talking about Christian privilege." That was my initial reaction. But I sat with it. You know what? She was right. Because she was Pagan and I'm Christian. I've never had to use PTO for Christmas. My holidays are respected, they are recognized, they are centered, they are prioritized. But other people in this country who are not Christian do not have those privileges. Now that's a benign example because it's not one that makes people get as upset as some of the other topics. KORI: But the first step has to be a commitment to sit through the discomfort, sit through what may rub you wrong, and acknowledge that just because something is uncomfortable or just because something offends you does not mean the thing is wrong or it is offensive. And in many of our organizations, we haven't even gotten past that first part. Then the next part has to be a commitment to learn more. We have to operationalize being able to say to each other, tell me more, and not just, oh, I didn't like that training, or I didn't like what I was learning. But to say to yourself internally, okay, I didn't like that. But rather than projecting how I'm feeling it in this moment, I'm going to put myself in the position of saying, tell me more, help me understand why that bothered you, help me understand why you feel that way. Because until we're willing to do that, we're not going to learn. KORI: And without knowledge, we have no opportunity for growth. Growth comes with new knowledge. Growth comes with practicing new skill sets. Growth comes with trying things that you haven't done before. But if you're more invested in protecting the status quo than you are fighting for change, then the status quo will always win. And the status quo right now, it's not working for a lot of people from a lot of underrepresented and marginalized communities. Those are some of the things that have to happen. Oh, Chris, something else I want to add. Both sides. We got to talk about this both sides thing. Not every opinion and argument is equal, and that's something else that we're not willing to address head on. We've allowed inclusion to be so redefined that some people think it means anything and everything is of equal footing, right. KORI: But someone saying in the workplace, we need to be more inclusive of people with disabilities is not the same as someone saying, I don't think disabled people should have to work here. And sometimes what is crouching in is people want to hide behind inclusion to spew hate or bigotry or an excuse not to make the change and growth that is consistent with the so-called values of our organizations. I'll pause there because you're about [inaudible 00:50:05]. BREE: Yeah. I just want to comment to our listeners Kori's TED Talk, just in your browser, put in Kori Carew and TED Talk. I really encourage people to check it out. It is powerful and profound. So Kori, I'm going to ask you a question here that we also tend to ask this sometimes near the end, if you could look for, I don't know, five years or even a decade. If we can do a decent job around changing hearts and minds and attitudes around diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging and wellbeing too, hopefully, how would the profession be different? What do you want to see? KORI: My goodness, my goodness, my goodness. Excuse me. That cough came up. If we could actually accomplish all these things that we've been talking about for 20 years, we would see leadership teams that are more humble in their approach, leadership teams that are people-centric, organizations that are listening to employees and actually care about what employees want. We would no longer be having conversations as if it's either you focus on the bottom line or you focus on employee happiness. Like we will understand that without happy employees who are engaged and doing fulfilling and meaningful work, we actually don't have a great bottom line to talk about. Right? Our organizations would look like inclusion and wellbeing and belonging, it's just part of the business strategy. It's not this separate siloed thing. It's not this thing that we talk about when we are worried about how the woman or the gays may react. Right. KORI: But it's just something that is operationalized into our values, into our competencies, into how we evaluate people, into how we promote people, and that we are constantly in humility, learning from each other. Right. So that even when somebody who's a chief inclusion and diversity officer, here's a phrase and someone says, "Did you realize that that was ableist?" That I would say, "I didn't. Tell me more." And once you tell me more, I changed my language, because we understand that we're always going to be moving. We're always going to be learning something new and there's always an opportunity to be better. And if we do that, we will also see different representation at all levels. We will actually have critical mass of diversity in our organizations. And then I would be unemployed. CHRIS: I was going to wrap up with this though, Kori, like if I was to serve up to you 500 managing partners, that were, again, I think one of the things that you've already mentioned is every individual in an organization is either additive or perhaps distracts from the culture that you're ultimately trying to create. A lot of the wellbeing discussion is about connecting and emphasizing wellbeing with decision makers and those who set the tone of organizations. And so my question to you is this, if I served up 500 managing partners of all sizes of firms around the country and they came and Kori was the keynote, what would be your message to them? KORI: My message to them would be that they are ridiculously in charge, that things happen in their organizations because they allow it, or they create it. And that by choosing to focus a hundred percent on their inclusive leadership skills and up in their ability to interrupt bias, to be culturally fluent, they could transform their organizations because where the leader goes, everyone else follows. BREE: Right. CHRIS: That's great. That's awesome. Well, again, Kori, you have certainly cultivated my curiosity, which I know is one of the things that you strongly advocate for. Couldn't be prouder to have you on the podcast and the sharing of your perspective. We got to get you more platforms for you to be able to shout loudly about these particular issues, because again, we got a lot of work to do, right. We know that there's a lot to be done in terms of realizing the potential of this profession, to realizing the potential of historically underrepresented and marginalized lawyers within our profession. Bree, I think that we all would agree that even as we pursue our wellbeing mission, that so much more has to be done on the diversity, equity, and inclusion perspective that integrates in the intersection there between those two that lanes need to merge in a much more substantive way. KORI: Thank you. CHRIS: Thank you, Kori. KORI: I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me. I appreciate you allowing Justin to come and hold my hand because she's my blinky today. I appreciate you inviting us to talk about what we're doing at Seyfarth and just my perspective as an individual separate from Seyfarth. Again, I've said this before, the work you're doing is so critically important. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everything that you do to promote wellbeing in the profession. So important. CHRIS: Awesome. Well, again, thanks for joining us. We will be back with the podcast probably in a couple weeks with our executive director, Jennifer DiSanza, which we are so excited to be having her join us as we talk about the future of where this movement is going. Thanks again, Kori. And to all our friends out there, we will be back in a couple weeks.

Serving clients as their advocate takes a toll—mentally, emotionally, and physically. Bree Buchanan, Senior Advisor at Krill Strategies and former director of the Texas Lawyers' Assistance Program, is all too familiar with this problem. After years of representing clients in traumatic cases, Bree relied on alcohol to cope. As she began her recovery, Bree developed a passion for helping other lawyers take care of their own well-being. In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Bree joins Todd Smith and Jody Sanders to share her experience and tips on how attorneys can care for themselves and others. She also discusses her role at the Institute for Well-Being in Law and their efforts to reshape the profession to support attorney wellness and recovery.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!Here's How »A special thanks to our sponsors:Court Surety Bond AgencyThomson ReutersProudly presented by Butler Snow LLPJoin the Texas Appellate Law Podcast Community today:texapplawpod.comTwitterYouTube

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, well-being friends, and welcome to The Path To Well-Being in Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host Chris Newbold, executive vice president of Alps Malpractice Insurance and most of our listeners know that our goal is pretty straightforward. We want to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the wellbeing space and within the legal profession. In the process we want to build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. I am always pleased to introduce my co-host Bree Buchanan. Bree, how's it going? BREE BUCHANAN: It's going great, Chris. How is your spring starting off? CHRIS: It's a little colder in Montana than I would like, but the warm weather is on the way. So I'm certainly looking forward to that. So a lot going on, obviously, in the wellbeing world and super excited to continue with kind of thoughtful discussion here on the podcast. We're going to continue. I think our series here on diversity, equity and inclusion and the intersection of DEI with well-being and super excited to be welcoming Lia Dorsey to the podcast. Bree, would you be so kind to introduce Lia to our listeners? BREE: I would love to. So we are so delighted to bring to you Lia Dorsey today, and she is a thought leader in the movement to advanced diversity and a driver for inclusive change. As the chief diversity equity and inclusion officer at Ogletree Deakins, she's responsible for the development and execution of the firm's diversity equity and inclusion strategy. Ms. Dorsey collaborates with firm leadership, practice group leaders and business resource groups to expand in advance efforts in the recruitment development promotion and retention of diverse talent. BREE: Ms. Dorsey previously served as the head of diversity and inclusion at Denton's, U.S. There she was responsible for the strategic oversight, design and implementation of this very large terms, diversity and inclusion initiatives. Before that she served as the director of diversity and inclusion at Eversheds Sutherland and has also held senior positions at DLA Piper and Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney. All of those names that many of us know. Lia's also president emeritus, I told her the best place, best position to have, of the Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals. She's a sought after presenter in panelist on a broad range of topics covering diversity, equity, and inclusion at conferences across the country. Lia, welcome. We are so glad you're here with us today. LIA DORSEY: Thank you, Bree. Thank you, Chris, for having me. I am thrilled. Thrilled to be here. BREE: Yeah. Thank you so much. So Lia, I'm going to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests, because I think it just is well, so interesting. So what are some of your experiences in your life that are drivers behind your very clear passion for the work around DEI? LIA DORSEY: Great, great question. I like to start by saying that I've always been an inclusionist, if you will, although it didn't have a term back in the day as I was growing up and I'll just kind of share just a really funny story. I used to get in trouble a lot as a child, because I would give away my toys to my friends who didn't have them. So I would always just share, I would always just give. I was always that compassionate person and I think my parents appreciated it until I gave away my brand new pink and white huffy bike with the [inaudible 00:03:54] and then I think after that, it's "Okay, I think we need to kind of reign this in and pray." But all jokes aside I've always been a giver. I've always been a giver and I live by the verse, "To whom much is given, much will be required," and I seriously take that to heart. LIA DORSEY: I've long supported those from different backgrounds and environments. I've been a volunteer for a long time. I mentor, especially now in my role, I think it's very, very important for me to reach back and pull others forward. But for me, this was just what you did as a good person, right, it was never about shine or the accolades. You helped people who need it. I'm still an inclusionist, but now I like to refer to myself as a disruptor for good. BREE: All right. LIA DORSEY: Just today I heard someone else describe herself as a professional troublemaker, and I think I'm going to borrow that one as well, because at the end of the day to do this work, you have to be brave and you have to be bold. I'm also clear that it's not for everyone, that this is by far the hardest job that I've ever had, but it's also the most rewarding and I honestly can't see myself doing anything else. BREE: Yeah. I hope that I can be a professional disruptor at some point, but it does take a lot of courage. Absolutely. So good for you. CHRIS: It does. Lia, tell us a little bit about... One of the things I was impressed about kind of how your professional journey has kind of taken shape, is you've had the ability to move in and out of different cultures within the legal profession, which I just find is really fascinating. Tell us about your journey in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion and in the time that you have been a disruptor for good, how have things changed over that time? LIA DORSEY: Yeah, so I have been in law firms for a very, very, very long time. Although, I didn't start out in DE&I. I actually started out on the business side of the law firm for years and at one particular firm, we didn't have anyone at that time leading DE&I in an official capacity. So I raised my hand, again, I would love to volunteer and that's a reoccurring theme with me. But two years later, I found myself with almost two full time jobs. So the job that I was hired to do and the job that I was meant to do, and that was the DE&I role. So that same firm really saw how passionate I was about DE&I work and just how happy I was doing it. They actually created a role for me as the director of DE&I at that firm and as they say the rest was history. LIA DORSEY: But when we think about what changed over time, I think we've seen DE&I become more of a strategic focus in priority for firms. Even before the events of 2020, I think, we started to see firms dedicate more resources to DE&I, like creating full time positions, moving away from DE&I being embedded in HR or being seen as a compliance requirement from the GCs office. So we had really started to see kind of an elevation of DE&I and the role. Then 2020 happened and we'll talk about that a little bit more, but what we saw was even more of a cohesion around DE&I. We saw leaders speaking up, stepping up. We saw a heightened level of awareness. LIA DORSEY: People became aware of issues that weren't on their radar in the past. I think the murder of George Floyd was a pivotal moment. I'm often asked how that moment was so different because sadly George Floyd, wasn't the first Black man to be murdered at the hands of police and sadly he wasn't the last, but I think the difference that the world was at home, watching it happen and people who thought things like this didn't happen were now outraged, right. But that rage led to empowerment. We have to do something. We have to say something. LIA DORSEY: So we're seeing a lot of folks speaking up more because they aren't afraid and they're making demands for change. All of that is great and that is a big change, because I would say before 2020, I don't think that you would've seen people speaking up and standing up the way that we're seeing it now. I think all of that is great, but I also think that we're in an inflection point, right, because there are forces in this world who don't want things to change. The thought is the system has worked in one way for so long, so why change it? But the only way to move forward successfully is to change and I'm one of those change agents that's working to try to make this world a better place. BREE: Absolutely. Wow, absolutely. That's so wonderful. So [inaudible 00:08:48], I've seen you... Lia, I'm sorry, seen or heard you talk about your experience over time here. What have you seen now that legal employers are doing right in this area? What are some good examples and we'll get to weaving in the intersectionality of well-being, but right now let's stick with the DEI work. What do you see as going right here? LIA DORSEY: Absolutely. I think there's much more focus and intention being put around the advancement and retention of diverse talent, specifically minority talent. Recruiting is still a focus of course, but we realize that diverse talent need meaningful support once they join the firm. So for the listeners, I just challenge them to ask themselves, how are you investing in your diverse talent? Are you having real conversations around the development of your talent because we really need to make serious and meaningful investments. I've always said that the talent is there, but the opportunities aren't always there and the opportunities that I'm talking about are things like introductions to key clients and the ability to develop client relationships. It's getting the high value work. It's being able to tap into the resources for business development and the list goes on, because we all know that these are the types of things that can really impact someone's career. LIA DORSEY: So with that as the backdrop here, a few things that I'm kind of seeing that are having a meaningful impact today. We're seeing the creation of formal DE&I sponsorship programs. So we know the difference between mentorship and sponsorship, right. So a mentor talks to you and a sponsor talks about you and the best DE&I sponsorship programs that I've seen have leaders of the firms and that's the board, it's the managing partner, the executive committee and what I like to call the front page of the [inaudible 00:10:36] sheet lawyers. But that group of people are actually the ones serving as the sponsors. That has two great benefits. One is that it shows the stakeholders that the leaders are invested in the diverse attorney's development and they aren't pushing it off on someone else to do. So we know that law firms are top down organizations, right, but having those at the top who are actively engaged in the DE&I work has a profound impact. LIA DORSEY: The second thing is that that group of people are in a position to make sure that the lawyers are getting those opportunities that are referenced, right. So they actually have the work and they can make those key introductions. So I think sponsorship programs are definitely on the rise and I think that they can be very, very effective and can lead to retention. LIA DORSEY: The second thing that I'm seeing is kind of a focus on culture overall, because we know that culture is a differentiator, right. It's the reason people stay or go. A survey by McKenzie found that the majority of employees have considered the inclusiveness of companies when they're making career decisions. I like to say this, if you ask the people at the top of the organization to describe the culture, I'm sure that what they would say is probably different than what those who aren't at the top would say. I mean, and this is what we like to call that perception gap that often exists between the leaders and the employees and it's how do we get everyone to kind of experience the culture in the same way? So just think about it and ask yourself is your culture by default or by design. BREE: Wow. LIA DORSEY: Right. So we've been talking a lot about the great resignation and the she session, but now we're... I love that term. I mean, it's sad, but it's still a good term. BREE: I love it. I hadn't heard it before. CHRIS: I hadn't either. That's a good one. BREE: She session. Yeah. LIA DORSEY: The she session. Yeah. But now we're talking about the great reboot or the great realization and the reality is that the world is different since the start of the pandemic. People are expecting to work differently and they want companies to kind of meet more in their needs. So this is really an opportunity for firms to reimagine their workplace and their culture. Then the last thing I would say here is the inclusion of staff, right. Inclusion really is inclusion for all and not for some, but we know that law firms typically focus on the benefits of the lawyers and now we're seeing staff being introduced into that conversation, which is long overdue, but it's definitely necessary. If I can just touch just quickly on the things that don't work. BREE: Yeah. Please, please. CHRIS: Yeah. For sure. Lessons learned. LIA DORSEY: When companies don't make DE&I a priority. So when they still think it's just a nice to do, or if the efforts are just performative and they're doing it because their clients are kind of forcing them to do it. So you have to make it a priority. It has to be part of the overall firm strategy. And then if your leaders aren't engaged, and I'll talk a little bit more later about the difference between commitment and engagement, if they aren't engaged, then you're probably not going to have a lot of success. BREE: Right, right. So important. CHRIS: It seems Lia that you're, I feel like in your tone that you are optimistic that the level of engagement and particularly leadership leaning in, is increasing. Is that fair? LIA DORSEY: It is. It is definitely increasing. There were people who just because they could have been checked out of this conversation for such a long time, and now they are checking into the conversation. But I'll also say that just because you're checking in it doesn't always mean that you know what to do and know what to say and that's where folks like me and people who do this kind of work can really help with that. But I am definitely encouraged and I like to look at life as glass, half full with the way that things are progressing and the level of interest by certain stakeholders. It's really encouraging. CHRIS: Yeah. Because I know we're going to talk about this a little bit more, but I just think it's so fascinating how, as you know, even in the work that Bree and I do on the well-being front, so much of what maybe I'm going to say, not the easy part, but building awareness and educating others is one element to it. But ultimately action and taking on systemic barriers become probably the harder part of advancing social change and being a catalyst for cultural shifts, right. Sometimes it takes years, sometimes decades, right, to effectively be able to do that. But I find such interesting similarities in the efforts to advance both one DEI on a track, one well-being on a track and then the intersection of the two, which I think is even more interesting because some of the challenges are obviously unique and differentiated that... Really interesting. CHRIS: You said earlier in the podcast, Lia, that the hardest job that you've had, and that a lot of this has to do with, is the fact that you are trying to get people to change, right, and evolve their thinking and ultimately act in appropriate and effective ways. What works here and how do you get people to not necessarily... Well, I would call it evolve their attitudes and actions as they think about what the right work culture is and what ultimately is the right thing to do. But also, advances kind of where the firm is as a business entity. LIA DORSEY: Yeah. That's such a great question. You can't do this work thinking that you will be able to get people to change, right. There's a great cartoon clip of someone addressing a crowd of people asking who wants to change and everyone raises their hand and then they ask, who wants to change and then all the hands go down, right. That graphic perfectly sums up what it's like doing this work. A lot of people are committed to DE&I and they care and they have good intentions, but not many folks are actively engaged and I said I would talk about the difference between the two. LIA DORSEY: I think right now you'd be hard pressed to find a leader who would actively come out and say that they aren't committed to DE&I, but it's more difficult to get them to actually engage in the work. It's hard to get folks to willingly use their influence and internal capital to help someone else, especially if that individual isn't like them. So they don't look like them and you're not part of my in group, but that said, if we won't change, we cannot sit on the sidelines, right. So I believe that in action or neutrality is complicity. Action is courage and courage is a habit. It's a muscle that you build over time. It's consistently committing to something, knowing that at times you may get it wrong or you may be uncomfortable. I mean, look, sometimes I still get it wrong and I do this for a living, but- BREE: Thank you for saying that, Lia, thank you for saying that. Oh, my gosh. LIA DORSEY: It's just, it's continually showing up and engaging and if you get it wrong, you get up and you continue to try again. So, we spent a lot of times educating our stakeholders and raising awareness around DE&I. What does it mean to really be an ally or an upstander? What do those terms mean, right. What does equity really look like in a law firm? How do you work across difference? How do you have courageous and meaningful conversations with others who are not like you, right. What is bias? How does it show up in your interaction with others? LIA DORSEY: So once you understand some of these issues, hopefully that'll lead to greater empathy and then hopefully that will lead to action. Just in closing, I'll say, so instead of focusing solely on changing minds, focus on changing your systems and changing your processes and changing your policies, because that's also where a lot of this bias breeds, which sometimes folks don't want to change their minds because they're set on something. As my friend, Michelle Silverthorne, she is a popular DE&I and culture consultant says, if you change the system, you'll change the world. So I spend a lot more of my time focusing on changing the systems and then the hearts and minds will follow. BREE: Absolutely. That's just absolutely brilliant. Yeah. I've always thought that if you get the right form in place, things will follow. You ask the right questions on the right forms- LIA DORSEY: Absolutely. BREE: ... And that starts to shift the culture. Yeah. Yeah. So important. So Lia, I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit, we're going to take a break here in just a second, but you are just coming off as president of the association of law firm, diversity professionals, and I can really hear the polish of your message, which I'm sure that you honed over the time as president. What has that group been focusing on? What are you guys focusing on now? LIA DORSEY: Oh, absolutely. So, for those who may not know, ALFDP is an association of law firm professionals working in the DE&I space in the United States, Canada, and in the U.S. I'm sorry, UK. The association is around what, 16 years old at this point. As you mentioned, I served as president for two years. I served as VP before that. I'm technically still on the board and it is just an absolutely amazing organization just to be able to connect with people who are trying to solve the same problems, right, and achieve the same goals. So let's try to put our heads together and solve it together. But essentially we equip our members with the tools, tips, and talking points that they need to advance DE&I within their own firms and to help get the buy in and the resources that they need and resources is sometimes talent and then sometimes it's money. LIA DORSEY: Another great thing that we do is to collaborate with other DE&I focused organizations as well. Last year, we collaborated with Thompson Reuters and the ACC Foundation on a white paper called the Pandemic Nation: Understanding its impact on lawyers from underrepresented communities. It was a great white paper. I encourage your listeners to download it. It essentially was an in depth look at the impact of the pandemic on the careers and lawyers from underrepresented communities. What's great about that research even now is that it really points out the challenges and the opportunities of those historically excluded lawyers, which is really, really important. Particularly the opportunities part as all of us are slowly returning to the office. LIA DORSEY: There are things that organizations can keep in mind and I'm cleared about saying returning to the office and not returning to work because trust and believe for the past two years, we have been working hard, harder than we ever have. So I really want to remind people, we're talking about returning to the office, but ALFDP keeps on top of the primary issues that everybody is dealing with and then we try to find resources and give tips and tools to help solve some of those challenges. So great, great association and I'm so glad and honored to have been able to lead it. BREE: So, Lia, what is the web address for that in case our listeners are interested in checking it out? LIA DORSEY: Absolutely, www.alfdp.com. CHRIS: Lia, I have to imagine that, and this would be an encouraging sign that your membership has expanded significantly of late. Is that the case? LIA DORSEY: Oh, my gosh. Yes. CHRIS: Right. I mean that's a sign that, again, people are leaning in, that they're looking for a community that can provide national resources to be able to aid them. I mean, this is an organization that I wasn't aware of, but again, gives me cause for optimism that there are change agents that are coming together and sharing best practices that are ultimately going to advance our profession. LIA DORSEY: Absolutely. The membership grows every day and a lot of that is because a lot of these firms are creating a lot of DE&I roles and positions and sometimes they're elevating existing people. So the interest in DE&I overall, and in ALFDP, specifically, is just amazing. CHRIS: Awesome. Well, this is a great place... Let's take a quick break and hear from one of our sponsors and then we'll come back and I'm really excited to kind of start to talk about the intersection of DEI and well-being. So we'll be right back.   — Advertisement: Meet Vera, your firm's virtual ethics risk assessment guide. Developed by ALPS, Vera's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots from client intake to calendaring, to cybersecurity and more. Vera: I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you a summary of recommendations to provide course corrections if needed, and to keep your firm on the right path. Generous and discrete, Vera is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS to help firms, like yours, be their best. Visit Vera at alpsinsurance.com/vera.   — CHRIS: All right, we are back with Lia Dorsey, chief diversity equity and inclusion officer at Ogletree Deakins. This is an area that I've been just very excited to delve into, because I know that our board at the Institute for Well-being in Law, you can't talk about well-being unless you're integrating and considering elements of diversity, equity and inclusion as well. Lia, I'd love just to hear more about in your experience, how do they intersect, right, and how do we think about them, I guess not as two tracks, but two tracks, obviously intertwined. LIA DORSEY: Yeah. Mental health and DE&I are definitely closely connected. I would say right now, mental health and wellness and burnout, are very common topics in the workplace today and I think it's great that we're starting to normalize conversations around those topics. Asking for help now is not seen as a weakness and people are having dialogues and they're willing to talk about their personal experiences and their struggles. When we talk about DE&I, diversity, equity and inclusion, there's also another letter that's joining that and that's the B for belonging and that's really the psychological safety that folks feel. Honestly, we weren't talking about these things before, but it is just so important that we're having these conversations now and the fact that all of us spend the majority of our time at work, prioritizing mental health in the workplace is really, really a must. LIA DORSEY: Many of us are managing work related stress and experiencing diminished mental health because of the pandemic and the racial injustice crisis. This is, it's taken a toll on people and more so for those from diverse backgrounds in communities. We talked about, since 2020, there's been a much needed spotlight on racial justice, but it's also highlighted the serious lack of dialogue, addressing specific mental health needs and challenges for those from underrepresented communities. I think just kind of navigating and adapting to those challenges is really important because there's a lot of stress that that community is experiencing because of what's going on and that stress can worsen and it can cause health problems, it can lead to increased mental health conditions and so much more. LIA DORSEY: On the diversity piece of it, folks from diverse backgrounds often face increased bias and microaggressions and other stressors that impact their mental health and that psychological safety. So I think for the intersection between the two, it's really important to focus on that sense of belonging, because it's critical for overall mental health and well-being, because the more we feel like we belong, the more we feel like we can be ourselves, right. BREE: Absolutely. LIA DORSEY: [inaudible 00:27:16] like we have that support, then we can cope effectively with the stress and the difficulties in our lives. So firms and companies really need to prioritize creating this type of culture that supports, not only just mental health and wellness, but that inclusion and that belonging piece as well. I think another way that they intersect, and it's a way that a lot of people don't think about often is when you think about benefits. So really, evaluate the benefits that you are offering at your company. Are they inclusive? Are your wellness benefits available to everyone, or just... And now that we're talking about possibly, returning back to the office, look at your flexible working policies. Who gets to continue to work a hybrid schedule, who's asked to come back into the office, and when you examine that, you'll see how that too impacts diversity. So as we're trying to all come up with these solutions around mental health and wellbeing, it's really important to keep some key DE&I concepts in mind, as well. BREE: Absolutely. I just love what you're saying there around inclusion and belonging. One of the things that I teach about when I talk is also the idea, and this is where I touch upon the intersectionality here, and I talk about the impact on mental health outcomes of what's called thwarted belongingness. I don't know if you've heard that phrase before, but it's also something that's been studied in a precursor or predictor or suicidality. I mean, it's really serious. I think about, I use the example of, if you can't think of anything else, remember what it's like to be a little kid and everybody's being chosen for the basketball team and you're the last one, that was my experience, [inaudible 00:29:04], and just how awful that feels. Can you try to touch into that and have some empathy or compassion? So, yeah. That's brilliant. LIA DORSEY: Absolutely. If I may, there's one thing when you just shared that story and I was the person who got picked last too, I don't have any [inaudible 00:29:19]. But it just made me think about this amazing quote and I'm sure a lot of folks have heard at this point, but it's by Bernie Myers, and it says, "Diversity is being invited to the party and inclusion is being asked to dance." It's that last part that is just so important, right, because it's not good enough just to be seen, right. It's also about being included, being involved, feeling that sense of belonging and so that made me think of that quote, as you just shared [inaudible 00:29:48]. BREE: Yeah, that's great. I'm afraid I also the person [inaudible 00:29:51] not being asked to dance, but anyway, that's another story. So Lia, I really want to dig to hear a little bit about a theme that has run through our conversations here, is about the role of leaders in the profession. Of course there are the CEOs of the big law firms, some of the ones that you have worked for. There's other leaders of the profession that I think really have a responsibility here are the judges and the state bar presidents, people that really are at the forefront of the profession. So what thoughts do you have about how we influence these leaders, that if you care about wellbeing, you have to care about diversity, equity, inclusion, and vice versa. How do you get them to pay attention and to take action to become, I think you were saying, it's not commitment, it's engagement. LIA DORSEY: Absolutely. Absolutely. Deloitte conducted a survey. I believe it was last year, which found that DE&I and employment health and well-being are top priorities for CEOs. I thought that was very, very telling, right. So leaders really need to prioritize their employees total well-being, and that includes their physical, mental, emotional health and it also includes work life balance. But in order to do that leaders must understand and address the unique challenges that their underrepresented employees face. We talked about this a little earlier, so that's the bias, the microaggression, it's the health disparities potentially, it's different mental health treatment and outcomes. Sadly I think that list goes on. So I think you can influence and encourage them, if you will, by just making sure that they understand that this is really important for every single employee, right, and some of the current support programs that they have in place, it's just not enough. LIA DORSEY: Firms have to really take a strategic and a holistic approach to mental health and wellness because there isn't one solution to the problem or silver bullet, but it's really a series of actions that they need to take. Then you need to tie this some kind of way to retention and culture, because we talked about this at the top, culture plays a big role in mental health, right it's about those safe spaces. It's about inclusion, because we know that inclusive workspace are more engaged and productive, but if you can really help your employees feel like they truly, truly belong, then you can help them achieve that greater sense of satisfaction in health and wellness and that can impact retention. LIA DORSEY: So just to kind of sum this up, leaders really need to prioritize their people and they need to create a workplace that fully supports every single employee, even the one from historically excluded groups and they must address those needs. If they want to create connected and inclusive workplaces, they have to address mental health because it's not an option to continue to ignore it. BREE: That's right. CHRIS: Yeah. Well, said. Let's look forward a decade and if we were to do a good job around evolving and changing attitudes and encouraging engagement and affecting hearts and minds, Lia, how will the legal profession be different? LIA DORSEY: Well, for starters, I hope the profession will be more diverse 10 years from now. It's a shame that after all these efforts and initiatives and research and data that the legal profession is still struggling with diversity. I want to see more of this diversity at the top as well. We all know that representation matters and I'd also like to see more accountability, right. How do we hold our leaders to account? I would love to see firms and I'm sure a lot of people are not going to like this, but I would love to see firms link the compensation to the advancement of DE&I, because our corporate partners are already doing this, right. I always say that diversity isn't black and white, it's green, because when you start talking about money, people listen. [inaudible 00:34:10]. So I would love to see that link because I think that will get us more change faster and sooner. BREE: Right. LIA DORSEY: So that's what I would say. CHRIS: Okay, and I'm just curious as we think about one thing, law schools obviously have a role here to play as a kind of a pathway into the profession. I'm just curious on your impressions on how they're doing relative to some of these challenges. Obviously, a lot of our work on the well-being front kind of starts with how folks come into the profession. I got to think that there's some direct corollaries there. LIA DORSEY: It is. One of the things that I've seen, which I think is great, is that our law schools are talking about DE&I earlier in the process or period, because it was a time when they weren't. So the fact that they're introducing and they're talking about these topics in law school, I think is great. Then we're also seeing a connection with some of the law school offerings and partnering with firms and other diversity associations that are out there, NCCA, the DFA and LCLD are three that come to mind. They're really just trying to make sure that particularly the diverse students are well prepared for a full enriched career in a law firm and really looking at how do we make sure that they know what to do and to make sure that they can ask the right questions and to find that mentor early and all of the things that come with that. So I'm really encouraged to see that type of partnering with some of the law schools and some of the other associations that are out there and with some law firms, as well CHRIS: As you said earlier, evolution here or progress I think has been slower than almost all of us believe could have been achieved. Are you optimistic about the future, and if so, what are some of the accelerator drivers that have you particularly excited for what's on the horizon? LIA DORSEY: Oh, Chris, I have to stay optimistic because if I don't, I'll go in my room, sit in the ball and cry. I just think it's really just my outlook. If I think about when I started in this field, not that long ago really, but when I started, we weren't even talking about some of the stuff that we're talking about even now and we were not as bold then as we are now. So, that definitely gives me hope. Some of the people that I see who are starting to do this work gives me hope. The fact that we're seeing managing partners and CEOs who are standing up and speaking up and actually putting that capital and using it to help advance it, all of that gives me hope. LIA DORSEY: I don't think that we will get there in my lifetime, but I am happy to be a person right now and a change agent who's really trying to plant the seeds that hopefully folks will continue to water. I tell people, this is a marathon. It didn't take us overnight to get into this and it's not going to take us overnight to get out of it. It's going to take some time, but I am very, very hopeful. CHRIS: Awesome. Well again, thank you so much for joining us. Whenever we can have a disruptor for good or a professional troublemaker on the podcast, we are all in and Lia, we certainly commend you for your longtime commitment, the impact that you're having, the willingness to serve and leadership structures and challenging the status quo, improving cultures, right. I mean, you are doing critical work, not just for your firm in particular, but well beyond in terms of improving this profession and the ability for this profession to ultimately serve the legal needs of the country, all of the legal needs of the country, right, not just certain legal needs of our country. So again, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. BREE: Thank you. Wonderful. Wonderful. LIA DORSEY: Thank you, Bree. Thank you, Chris. I have enjoyed my time immensely and I would be happy to come back if ever you would have me. This has been great and I love this so much. I can talk about this all day. I feel like our time just flew by. So thank you. Thank you again for having me. CHRIS: It certainly did and we will be back in a couple weeks with one final installment of kind of our series on the intersection of diversity, equity, inclusion, and well-being. Thanks to all of our friends out there for listening in and if you have ideas, continue to reach out to Bree or I for suggestions on future speakers. BREE: Absolutely. CHRIS: So everyone be well out there. Thank you. BREE: Take good care everyone. Bye-bye.  

Promoting lawyer wellness is critical to the future of the profession, and bar associations are uniquely positioned to affect culture change within their communities. From the NCBP Virtual Midyear Meeting, Robin Wolpert hosts Bree Buchanan and Chris Newbold to discuss what bar leaders can do to support wellness efforts and help legal professionals prioritize both physical and mental health. As Board members for the Institute for Well-Being in the Law (IWIL), they also offer that IWIL can assist bar organizations -- free of charge -- to set up their wellness programs. Robin Wolpert, JD, PhD is NCBP Treasurer and Executive Council member, Institute for Well-Being in Law Treasurer, and an attorney at Sapientia Law Group in Minneapolis. Bree Buchanan is board president and acting executive director at the Institute for Well-Being in Law.  Chris Newbold is executive vice president at ALPS Lawyers Malpractice Insurance. 

Promoting lawyer wellness is critical to the future of the profession, and bar associations are uniquely positioned to affect culture change within their communities. From the NCBP Virtual Midyear Meeting, Robin Wolpert hosts Bree Buchanan and Chris Newbold to discuss what bar leaders can do to support wellness efforts and help legal professionals prioritize both physical and mental health. As Board members for the Institute for Well-Being in the Law (IWIL), they also offer that IWIL can assist bar organizations -- free of charge -- to set up their wellness programs. Robin Wolpert, JD, PhD is NCBP Treasurer and Executive Council member, Institute for Well-Being in Law Treasurer, and an attorney at Sapientia Law Group in Minneapolis. Bree Buchanan is board president and acting executive director at the Institute for Well-Being in Law.  Chris Newbold is executive vice president at ALPS Lawyers Malpractice Insurance. 

Chris Newbold: Hello, Well-Being friends. Welcome to the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, executive vice-president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. As you know, our goal here on the podcast is to introduce you to though† leaders doing meaningful work in the well-being space within the legal profession and in the process, build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. I'm very excited to be welcomed by my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you today? Bree Buchanan: I'm doing great, Chris. It's great to be back with you. We've taken a little break. Chris Newbold: It is. We are heading into the holidays here. Bree, I think you and I have been on almost a three-month hiatus from the podcast, but that does not mean that we have not been busy and active on the well-being front. I thought we'd take a couple minutes here in the beginning, just to talk about some of the things, Bree, that are happening at the national level, particularly with respect to the Institute for Well-Being and Law. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely, Chris. Yeah, the absence of us from the podcast actually indicates that we've been very busy in the kitchen cooking up and creating this new national think tank. So over the past couple of months, we have done amazing things. We've constituted and oriented a 21-member advisory board of some of the best minds around the country and the well-being movement. We've also opened up applications for our committee structure and God, we had so much interest. It was amazing that there were actually people that we had to turn away, and we now have over 110 people on our committees. So we have really filled out the people that are working on this movement and it's exciting to have so many new folks on board and a little scary, too. Chris Newbold: Yeah. I think it's fair to say that, again, as the topic of well-being continues to take on, it's been in the national forefront for quite a while, but I think one of the things as leaders that we've been looking to do is to welcome more leaders and ambassadors into the movement. Boy, I know it was heartwarming for me to see the level of individuals out there around the country and oftentimes, worldwide, who are saying, "I want to be a part of this. I want to engage in it." When you put out a call for volunteers to join the movement, the fact that we had over 100 responses certainly, to me, indicated that, again, there are folks that really want to work on this issue and we are certainly, encouraging both them to do that and for us to continue to join the movement and there's lots of different ways to be able to do that. Bree Buchanan: Yeah. Absolutely. Another thing that's an indicator of what's going on our first annual conference, which is going to be virtual, is coming- Chris Newbold: Yeah. Big deal, huh? Big deal. Bree Buchanan: It is January 19th through the 21st, three days, three tracks, pricing, so people can pick a day or pick the whole thing. Again, just like with the committees, we put out the RFP and we got so many people wanting to be a presenter at the conference. I know it was incredibly difficult to choose, and so I think that bodes well also just for the quality of what we're going to end up having. So if people are listening to this, please go check out our website at lawyerwellbeing.net and register because it's coming up. By the time you're hearing this, it's around the corner. Chris Newbold: Yeah. Let's say that one more time, so lawyerwellbeing.net. I think that is really the welcoming mat to the movement. Again, there's still opportunities in there to fill out and join the movement to learn more about news and resources going on around the country. The conference that's coming up in January, many of the folks and listeners of this podcast are also very actively involved in Well-Being Week in Law, which was another great success back in May. So as we, Bree and I very much take pride in the fact that we're a little bit facilitating and being dot connectors of the movement. I think that is the glue that still keeps this movement together. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. Absolutely. Chris Newbold: So, well, let's get into the podcast today. Today, I want to circle back to the influence of research and scholarship in the real realm of well-being. We're really excited to welcome Professor Terry Maroney from Vanderbilt University, who specifically has explored, I'm super excited to be able to hear about the intersection of law, emotion and the judiciary, which I don't think we've had a conversation about those particular intersections. Bree, would you be so kind to introduce Professor Maroney to the listeners? Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. I've worked with Terry on a variety projects in the past, so I have the honor of also a part of her introduction is saying that she's a friend and a colleague. So the official introduction is that Terry Maroney is a professor of law and a professor of medicine, health, and society, and the Robert S. and Teresa L. Reder Chair of Law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She's been a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and she researches the interaction of emotion and law with a focus on the role of emotion and judicial experience and behavior, which I just find fascinating. As a leader in state and federal judicial education on these topics, she graduated from Oberlin College and NYU School of Law, summa cum laude; clerked for Honorable Amalya Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and was a litigator at the and are Urban Justice Center and at Global Firm, WilmerHale. So Terry, welcome. So glad you're here with us today. Terry Maroney: Thank you. It's really wonderful to be here. Bree Buchanan: So just before we get started, the idea of judges and their emotions and I think who is listening to this and those phrases who's been in a courtroom, probably has a story to share about the emotional regulation or that lack thereof in the judiciary. But it's not something you hear discussed, and so I'm delighted that we're going to really talk about this today, but Terry, I'm going to start you off with a question that we start all of our guests off, just to give us its view and to our guests and their background. So are there, were there experiences in your life that's really a driver of the passion you have for this work in general, and particularly, in the Well-Being and Law Movement? Terry Maroney: Absolutely. Before I became a lawyer, I was a social services professional, and also worked in community activism in New York City in the early '90s, almost all around the HIV-Aids crisis at that time. Clearly, my passion for people and their experiences and what can make their lives better didn't originate during that era of my life, but it certainly solidified during that era of my life. When I faced a bit of crossroads professionally, when I knew I'd reached a level where I wanted to go to grad school and pursue some different kind of work I really was choosing between, say, a public health career or a social work psychology career or law. Terry Maroney: Really, I could have gone in any those ways, so what I have done is I chose law, but I've circled my way back to all of those things. So I've managed to do them all at once in some way. So I was always very, very interested in psychology and counseling and what makes people tick, how I can, again, be an agent for positive change in people's lives, and in communities then and after a very satisfying career as a litigator, and then also, as a law professor have found a way, I think, to weave all those interests together. Chris Newbold: Yeah. I enjoyed reading your career arc, which was law student to law clerk, law clerk to litigator, litigator supplemented with teaching and then to academia. I'm just curious what your reflections on that and the impact that you're having, and from there, researching the judiciary, how did you get into that particular area? Terry Maroney: Yeah, those are all good questions. Again, the arc of one's life always looks quite tidy and in the rear view mirror it never looks like that in the living of it. But I've described to you one crossroads I took, which result to me going into law at all. A second crossroads was once I was a number of years into my litigation career, I really needed to decide was that what I wanted to stay in for the foreseeable future, or did I want to move into academia? Pardon me, and I chose to go into academia for a number of reasons. One is that I found myself always being intrigued by the big issues and litigation provided me many wonderful opportunities to engage with big issues. I was very lucky in the kind of practice I had, but I found that that's where I was happiest. I thought, "Well, if I go into academia, I can do that all the time." I also love teaching and wanted to be able to build that into my day-to-day life, so that's the choice I made. Terry Maroney: I have to say, just like my first choice was actually a difficult one, because there are aspects of legal practice that I quite miss, and I miss, again, the human element of it, the human stories. So that gets to how I got to researching the judiciary. So there's a long story and there's a short story. I shall endeavor to tell you the short story. When I was still in practice, I had the privilege of working on an insanely interesting case involving a white-collar criminal defendant, who, as we had discovered had suffered a very serious form of brain injury from a medical incident. This brain injury from this medical incident had seriously impaired some of the emotional processing aspects of her brain function. So she was cognitively and intellectually intact, but emotionally, extremely disabled in a way that actually directly contributed to the behavior for which she been [inaudible 00:11:35] a very small part of a very, very large Ponzi scheme, exactly the kind of scheme that somebody [inaudible 00:11:45] Terry Maroney: So working on that case, I became absolutely fascinated by the interaction at the psychological and at the neurological level between emotion and reason. I became very puzzled about why law, unlike the fields I had been in before, for example, psychology and social work, why law had this very entrenched, very strange idea that emotions and rationality are separable and opposing forces and that law existed for the purpose of privileging one at the expense of the other. I thought that was weird. I thought, to use a technical term, it didn't match up with anything I knew about human behavior and human life and what creates a good and flourishing human life. The more I read about the science, I realized that I wasn't alone in that, and if anything was alone, it was law that held onto this very irrational idea about the role of emotion. Terry Maroney: So when I went into academia, that was the first thing I started writing about and it's like a minor hits of vein. I hit vein and I've literally just never left it, and as I've gotten deeper and deeper into it, just because it's such an incredibly rich vein to say, "What are all the implications for the legal system, for legal theory, for legal practice of us believing some version of a big lie about the way humans function? What are all the implications of that?" That's the work of many lifetimes for many people, I'm just doing my bit. As I continued on that vein, the bit that I found that has been the most personally satisfying has been judges that I realized that if there's a big lie going around about emotion and reason being separable and emotion being the enemy of reason, nowhere is that stronger than with judges and judging. They are what historically have been thought of as the paragons of should be emotionless, or what I've called 'the cultural script of judicial dispassion.' Terry Maroney: That's a very definition of a good judge is a judge who has eradicated all emotions in the course of his or her work, and that just can't be right. So there you go. That was the medium-size story, but again, I've hit that sub-vein probably about 10 years ago and, again, just never left it. It has led me into an incredibly satisfying research agenda, but even more importantly, into a very satisfying work with individual judges and with the judiciary, which has just really deepened my regard and affection for the profession and my commitment to trying to make them live happier, healthier lives. So, Bree, you'll appreciate this, but shortly after the presentation that you and I were both a part of at a circuit court conference recently, a judge came up to me and said, "You know what? I'm glad we're talking about this, because healthy judges make for healthy courts and healthy courts make for a healthy, fair society." I said, "That's it, in a nutshell. That's my life. There you go." Chris Newbold: There you go. Terry Maroney: Right? Really, I felt seen and heard. I said, "Exactly." Bree Buchanan: Oh, wow. Terry Maroney: Yeah. Bree Buchanan: Yeah, and it is really meaningful. Just, again, going back to my days as a litigator, there were so many times when I was in the courtroom where I saw the exact opposite going on of what you would expect or would want. You just really have to worry about the impact that it has on people, the litigants, who were there and saying, "This is what the civil justice or the criminal justice system is about." But I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Let's continue laying things out here, Terry. Talk to us some more about the research you've conducted of the judiciary. What has been your [crosstalk 00:15:58] Terry Maroney: Absolutely. [crosstalk 00:15:59] Yeah. So for a long time, I was just trying to set the theoretical foundation and just trying to bring into legal theory the idea that is so prominent in virtually every other discipline these days, which is that you can't understand human behavior without understanding emotion, and the end goal is not emotional eradication. That's actually not a sensible or possible or productive target to aim for. So this big lie or the cultural script of dispassion is not something that, of course we can't ever get there, but the trying to get there will do good things for us. The trying to get there actually does bad things for us. It does bad things for judges. It does bad things for the court. It does bad things for society because what I bring in my research and research of primarily from affective science and from the sociology of emotion shows is that the effort it takes for judges to try to divest themselves of a normal range of human emotion is itself, counterproductive. Terry Maroney: So I could have a much longer conversation with you about that, but the core message is the most important thing that judges can do is to notice, name, and understand their work-related emotions and not assume that they're a bad thing. Assume that they're a relevant and interesting thing that should be interrogated so you can decide what to do with them. Some you're going to want to try to set aside some, you're going to follow, some you're going to try to morph in some way, again, much longer conversations, but that's the core message. So what I have done in addition to just bringing in research, again, primarily from affective psychology and sociology and showing how it sheds light on judges and judging about how we should encourage judges to notice, name, and understand their emotions. Terry Maroney: In the more recent years, I've moved on from that theoretical foundation and started doing empirical research of my own, and that has two, well, I guess at this point, I should say three main prongs. So the largest prong is that for a number of years now, I have been conducting a national purposive sample qualitative interview study with federal judges, both districts, judges, and judges in the courts of appeal, where I go and I talk to a diversity of judges from all over the country with different geographies, different types of dockets, different number of years on the bench, a diversity in terms of gender, race, political party of the appointed president, et cetera, and just invite them to educate me about their work-related emotions; what they are, why they think they have them, what impact they think they have, but in a very biologic way, trying to get past the party line or generalities and get very, very specific like, "Let's talk through an instance in which you are unhappy with how you handled a particular situation, for example." Terry Maroney: So these are very deep, and I dare say, intimate conversations and I feel extremely privileged to have had so many of them. So that is prong number one, which is a serious qualitative deep dive, just into the mental maps that judges have of the kinds of emotional experiences they have at work, what they think they're about, how they try to manage them and why, and what impact they have on them and their families. So that's prong one. Prong two is more squarely about wellness, and I see these things as quite intertwined. In fact, I came to the wellness game a little late. I was very much about emotion and emotion regulation in judges. I found that I kept going to judicial conferences and being put in the wellness programming section of the conference. I'd be like, "No, no, no, I don't do wellness work. I do high-level theoretical work about the interplay of cognition emotion." Terry Maroney: Then after a few years of that, I was like, "Oh no, wait. I am doing all this work," and that's a good thing. So I'll just give you one snippet about why I think this is such an important connection is I've focused for a long time on the ways in which judges try to regulate their emotions at work, which means why are they motivated to do so? How are they trying to do it? Are they using regulation strategies that have been shown to be productive to decision making or that cause undue cognitive load or are counterproductive, et cetera. It turns out that one of the biggest predictors of burnout, for example, in workers, and I think of judges as a species of worker, is basically how well or how poorly they do with their emotion regulation. So I'm drawing on work on the concept of emotional labor, for example. I started to see that all these things are intertwined. Terry Maroney: So if judges can notice, name, and understand their work related emotions and treat them with a curiosity and a value-neutral perspective that enables to figure out again, what are they about? Are they appropriate? What should I do with them? Why? If they can do that, not only is there judging better because it's a factor that if unacknowledged could have impact that you're not conscious of, right? It gives judges more tools with which to choose what they do and do not incorporate into their behavior and decision making. It allows emotion to enrich that decision making in some instances and it allows them to space and time to set them aside in others, if they can do that, in my view, then they're at far lesser risk of some of the well-being impacts that we worry about such as burnout, compassion fatigue, right? People who are more granular with their emotions are better at emotion regulation. People who are more granular with their emotions have better health outcomes. These things are interconnected. They drink less when they're upset. So again, I've stopped resisting the wellness pull. Bree Buchanan: Good. Good. Terry Maroney: Okay. I've forgotten, I lost track now. I'm in prong number two or three? It doesn't really matter. Here's the wellness prong. So what I've started doing most recently is literally to study the judicial wellness movement. I have had a small army of really wonderful research assistants and some great colleagues in the qualitative research core at Vanderbilt. We have been, basically, trying to figure out what is this quote/unquote movement? Why now? Why are we focusing on not just lawyer wellness, but specifically now judicial wellness? What do we think the problem is? Why do we think that and what are we trying to do about it and why? So we've literally just been scrubbing the internet for any and all evidence of pamphlets, conferences, articles, YouTube videos, judicial education seminars about judicial wellness and also interviewing judicial wellness leaders and are trying to figure out what is this movement? What's it trying to do and why? And mapping that data onto wellness research to see if there are obvious gaps or areas of growth. So that's been a lot of fun. Bree Buchanan: Wow. That's fascinating. Awesome. Listen, I wanted to ask you, Terry, just a little bit digging down in the specific area around compassion fatigue, which is also known as secondary PTSD [crosstalk 00:24:43]. Terry Maroney: Mm-hmm (affirmative), or secondary trauma. Yeah. Bree Buchanan: Yeah, in my work with a judiciary in education, et cetera, that seems to be a really big topic. Can you unpack that a little bit about a little bit what it is and what you are seeing within the judiciary these days? Terry Maroney: Yeah. Absolutely. I don't want to make any grand claims about where the judiciary, in general, is with compassion fatigue, but I definitely believe it to be a problem for many, and a severe problem for some. So the way I think about it is very similar to what you just said, Bree. It's a secondary form of trauma, it like a contact trauma and those sorts of things that I hear judges talk to me about that are relevant to this, I think are, for example, a lot of them talk about being exposed to really traumatic evidence. Think about the role of a judge. Let's think for a moment about trial judges in cases at might involve traumatic evidence, which could be in a civil case, like with a gruesome injury, or it could be in a criminal case. For example, a lot of judges are exposed to direct evidence of extreme child sexual abuse and child pornography. Terry Maroney: So the role of a trial judge is to look at all that stuff and figure out what can and can't go to the jury, and part of that determination is how traumatic is this going to be for the jury? Is it going to be so, so overwhelming that they can't get whatever the intended informational value is out of it? Well, in order to make that determination, the judge has to look at it herself. Then she has to guess, based on her own level of shock and trauma, what the average juror's level of shock and trauma is going to be. That's just one example, but it's a job that literally requires you to become traumatized so that you can do your job. That's a really hard thing to put on normal human beings. So that's just one example, but a lot of judges say the hardest thing about what they do, and this goes for trial and appellate judges is just being exposed to how broken the world is. Terry Maroney: They often say things like "I see people at their worst. I never hear a good story. Federal judges love doing naturalization ceremonies, because it's such a happy day. State court judges love to do adoption, consent adoption because they finally get to do something good." It can be a real grind. I hear judges say, "I basically process evictions all day and I can't do anything about it." So it's that combination of requiring the judge to have emotionally difficult experiences. It's being exposed to a very disproportionately negative account of human reality because most reasons why people are in court are not good reasons. Somebody's usually very unhappy, and then the sense frustration that can be the nail in that coffin I think, and that, "I can't really do anything about it. I can't solve the problem of child pornography. I can just handle this one case. I can't really solve the housing crisis. All I do is inflict pain by processing evictions and I have no choice." Terry Maroney: So I think that's the danger zone for judges is that if they're getting those negative inputs without any opportunities to feel elevated or to feel a sense of agency, I think that's when you get into compassion fatigue and that can just make people shut down. One judge who was interviewed by some colleagues of mine in Australia at one point said, "You have a choice of remaining open to it all, which you can't do because then your emotions are essentially too raw at all times, or just growing a skin on you thick as a rhino," and this judge's words, in which case you can't be a good judge because he lost the feeling for humanity. So there's this feeling of a rock and hard place, and I'm interested in the third way, what's not the rock and what's not the hard place? How can you notice them even understand the things that are hard and process them and think about them and work through them in a way that allows you to be healthy and to do your job well, but also take care of yourself. Chris Newbold: All right. Let's take a quick break right here. Terry, I think you've done a wonderful job setting the table about all the different areas that you've been involved with. I'd love to continue to drill down in the second half about where do we go and what you've found and what you advise, as we think about the confidence in the legal system is so important in terms of the wellness of our judges is to the public's confidence and its effectiveness. I just love the work that you're doing. I got to imagine that there's not a lot of people doing what you do, which is, I think another really interesting part of- Terry Maroney: That is true. [crosstalk 00:30:15] Chris Newbold: ... who you are and [crosstalk 00:30:15]. Terry Maroney: I wish there were more. Maybe they'll hear this podcast. Chris Newbold: That's right. That's right. So let's take a quick break. — Advertisement: Meet VERA, your firm's Virtual Ethics Risk Assessment Guide developed by ALPS, VERA's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots from client intake to calendaring, to cybersecurity, and more. Vera: "I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you a summary of recommendations to provide course corrections if needed, and to keep your firm on the right path." Generous and discreet, VERA is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS to help firms like yours be their best. Visit VERA at alpsinsurance.com/vera. — Chris Newbold: All right. Welcome back. We are joined by Professor Terry Maroney from Vanderbilt University, and we are exploring law and emotion and the judiciary. Terry, I want to pick up a little bit about just how you see your own personal role. Obviously, you've done a lot of work as you've done, you're working to understand the forces that are affecting judicial effectiveness, and ultimately, confidence in the system. Do you see yourself as an insider or outsider to the wellness movement as you've observed? Do you see yourself as an advocate after you've conducted the research? Are you building the trail map to a better judicial outcome and a better way of going about the work from the bench? I just love the fact of what got you involved in this movement, that's to help people. I certainly can see that the way that you're going about it is a very interesting one, in which there can't be many others in your space who are actually doing what you're doing. Terry Maroney: Yes, that's true. Again, I wasn't joking when I said I hope some people join me after hearing this podcast, because we need more people in this strange, little world that I inhabit. But so to answer your question, though, Chris, can I just choose all of the above? There's not a thing you said that I don't identify with in some way. I am an insider to both the lawyer/judge Well-Being Movement, and I'm an insider, to some degree, within the judiciary because I think I've earned their trust and they've earned my respect. I work directly with courts and with judges on trying to strengthen capacity for judges to be able to notice, name, and understand their emotions and service of being better judges and more satisfied people. Terry Maroney: Sometimes, I'm a bit like an embedded anthropologist, but I think one benefit of being a scholar in addition to all those of other things, is I'm very, very committed to correct paths, which sounds perhaps a little opaque, so let me say what I mean. I do not want to be in a position of advocating well-being practices, for example, that are not productive in the way judges need them to be productive, or I'm not interested in forcing a particular account of how judges' emotions ought to infuse their work and their work product. I think it's very important to actually have that academic distance to follow the evidence and to follow the stories and try to see what's true. Terry Maroney: I think that's something that scholars can really bring to this field is saying, "Let's not assume, for example," I'll pick a random example," that conventional anger management sessions "work," or that they're going to work for judges with anger regulation problems in the way that will be most productive for them, and best for the courts, and best for public trust in the judiciary. Do we know that?" I don't think we know that, so I would like to know that. I'd like to know what works, and in order to know what works you have to know what you're aiming for, right? What do we see as the new model of the good judge if it's not the person who's divested of all emotion, but a person who is conscious of his or her emotions then uses them in certain ways and not in others? Terry Maroney: That's a more complicated view, and it's not completely obvious what it is. So I'm giving a long answer to a short-ish question, which is, "Who am I in these spaces?" I think I'm, I'm a fellow traveler. I think I'm an advocate for things that increase the public's face in the courts, because the courts deserve it. I'm not interested in artificial inflation of their brand, but I am absolutely in favor of helping the public, see what it is that they do and what they do well and help them do it better. But I'm also just an academic who wants to make sure that we're collectively not just following well worn paths, assuming that certain things are or are not true, certain things will or will not "help" in a certain way, just to bring that of discipline and some distance to it. So yes, all of the above. Chris Newbold: Yeah. But based upon your research, though, it certainly feels like you would be at the potential epicenter of also being helpful in writing the prescription. Is that fair to say? Terry Maroney: I hope that's true. Again, this is where it's an all of the above answer. I do you work specifically with courts to help them implement real changes and real things. I talk to real judges in groups about how, for example, to help their appellate court achieve a higher level of productive collegiality, which requires a lot of emotion regulation in a group, and avoiding toxic behavior patterns, et cetera. So not all academics make that journey into helping to write and implement the solution, but I do. Again, as long as I always can feel comfortable that I haven't talked myself into something without adequate basis or that I'm not pushing an agenda without real things behind it, as long as I'm not crossing that line, I think that's really, the best and highest use of that scholarly set of skills, the discipline and the distance. What are we all here on earth to do really, if not to try to help our fellow human beings do a better job for each other. Right? Chris Newbold: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Terry Maroney: So that is my somewhat grandiose hope for this research is that I have this little sticky note on my computer monitor that I scratched out a little while ago that said, "Strengthening democracy, one judge at a time." It's a little silly, but in some ways that that's how I like to think of myself. Bree Buchanan: That's wonderful. So when you're talking to judges around the country, and it sounds like you do talk to them about what to do for themselves individually to support their staff, maybe the lawyers that come in their courts, what do you talk to them about and how are those messages received? Terry Maroney: So I definitely want to make clear that I'm not a therapist. I'm not a judge whisperer, and that's not what I'm trying to do here, but I am somebody who sits at the center of a Venn diagram, that again, not that many people have, which is I really, really understand legal culture and I really, really understand courts and judging to some degree, and I understand affective science and sociology of emotion. So it's translational, I guess, what I do. What I try to do when I'm working specifically with judges or with groups of judges, which is, of course, more are common, is try to take lessons, for example, about productive and non-productive forms of emotion regulation. For example, the difference between learning to think about things differently, which leads one to feel differently about them. That's called cognitive appraisal. Terry Maroney: The difference between cognitive appraisal or reappraisal, which is a very high order, intellectually-challenging, but very productive emotion regulation. It tends to, again, buy a person a whole lot of perspective on what their emotion is about. It gives them room to work with. It helps them distinguish good reasons and bad reasons. It can elevate positive emotion, minimize negative emotion. It's an all-around really great emotion regulation tool. Contrast that with suppression and denial, which is actually what we encourage judges to do through our cultural narrative, which are disasters. They don't work very well. They don't actually minimize the emotions you want and minimize, and they backfire and they eat up all sorts of your cognitive glue. One of my good friends, James Gross, an affective psychologist at Stanford once quipped, "Suppression and denial make you temporarily stupider," and it's true. Terry Maroney: We don't want our judges to be the temporarily stupider, nor do they, right? They don't either. So I think what I try to do at my core is I try to take these lessons from the sciences, including the social sciences and I translate them into the context that judges understand, which is the context of their daily work. So we try to work towards identifying moments of work- related emotion that they're experiencing, identifying the kinds of emotion regulation tools that a person can throw at such a thing, educating them about what these different tools are, and giving them the data on, basically, what's going to work out well for them in the long run and why, and how can they practice those things? Hopefully that gives a sense of what I do. Chris Newbold: Terry, what are you seeing in terms of judicial involvement in terms of leaning into the Well-Being and Law Movement? Are you seeing barriers, and if so, how do you think that we can overcome some of those and are there generational elements to that? Terry Maroney: Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, it makes me realize it's connected to the last part of your last question, which I didn't quite answer, which is, how are these messages being received? So I think, in my experience, judges overwhelmingly have been very hungry for this kind of information and this kind of recognition. It's a weird thing to walk through a very, very important job as a human being and yet, be treated as if you're not really supposed to be a human being. I think it really stifles a lot of judges' ability to interact productively with peers, to reach past the isolation inherent in the job. We're not doing judges any favor by treating them as some like super beings that are supposed to pull off something that no ordinary human being can pull off. Terry Maroney: So judges, I have been very surprised, well, I'm not surprised anymore, when I started, I was very surprised just how excited they would get about it. It wasn't particularly breaking down along any demographics, like judges that I might have predicted would not be open to the message have been open to the message, because it reflects the reality. Who doesn't crave having their lived experience seen and recognized, and given the space to actually talk about it in a non-judgmental way and give tools to try to do a better job, be a better judge, be a happier person? So the reception has been great. That said, that's the sunny part. That said, there are very real barriers. So I would not be telling the truth if I didn't say that there's also a very significant element of pushback. Though, again, I don't personally experience a lot of it. Terry Maroney: The people who come to my workshops, for example, either choose to be there, so there are self-selected groups, or they're forced to be there and they just don't say anything about it, and they just walk out of the room and think, "Well, that was a lot of bunk, great?" So I'm often not exposed to the pushback personally, but judges tell me about it. So I'll give you a couple for examples. Once I was doing a very small workshop with a particular court. So I was, basically, at a court retreat and I was doing an emotional granularity session, basically, and presenting data on the kinds of work-related emotional experiences that judges, have giving a lot of examples and stories, and it could get pretty sad. It's like "Here are the things that are making people sad. Here's what disgusts them. Here's why they're angry. This is when they feel hopeless," et cetera. Terry Maroney: At one point in the granularity session, one of the judges, now keep in mind is this small group I think is fewer than 20 people, all of whom know each other very well, just shouts right in the middle of me saying something shouts, "What is the point of all of this?" Just yells it out. He just could not tolerate it for one single second. I took it in stride and I treated it as an interesting moment. I said, "You know what? That's a good question. What is the point of this, folks?" What happened then, was what I thought was one of the best discussions that we could possibly have had, because the other judges were so mortified that he had done that, that they were like, "Here's why this is important because we really need to notice what we're feeling," and they taught themselves what I was trying to teach them. So that was a very dramatic moment of pushback. Terry Maroney: More broadly, judges talk to me about, there are a lot of their judicial peers, well, I'll tell you, one said to me once, "I would talk to you," meaning me, this is in an interview, "I'll tell you all these things, but I'm never going to tell the judge down the hall. I just wouldn't do it. I don't want to be perceived as weak or as squishy or as flawed," or like, "I'll talk to you, but I won't talk to them." That's, I think, the deepest form of pushback is when you don't feel like you can have honest, supportive conversations with your peers who are the only other humans on the planet who know what your job is like, right? Bree Buchanan: Right. Terry Maroney: That's, I think, the deepest barrier that I'd like eventually to see completely dismantled. Chris Newbold: Yeah. Well, we certainly appreciate it. We just a couple minutes remaining, terry. Do you feel like the judiciary understands the impact and the role that they have had and can continue to have on this movement as a whole? Obviously, Bree was at the forefront of getting our report in front of The Conference of Chief Justices, which I think was- Terry Maroney: Right. Chris Newbold: A really big deal in terms of catapulting- Terry Maroney: It is. Chris Newbold: ... this movement. Terry Maroney: Yep. Chris Newbold: Do think that they, as a collective group, understand how important this is to the future of the profession.? Terry Maroney: Yes and no. One, it's hard to say anything about the judiciary as a whole, especially in a Federalist system like we have. We have so many different types of judges spread out and so many different types of judging. So I'm always slow to group together judges with wildly different jobs who work in wildly different places, and we're talking tens and tens and tens of thousands of people. So that's my huge caveat, as I would never say the judiciary block. That said, I have definitely seen change among both the state and the federal judiciary, that there is absolutely an increased awareness of, pardon me, the need for a wellness programming and the need for a broad range of wellness supports. I think that's because of not just the amazing work that y'all have done with building up awareness of lawyer well-being, but also just pioneers within the judiciary. Terry Maroney: So I would be remiss. For example, not to call out the Wellness Committee of the U.S. Court of Appeals For the Ninth Circuit, which in the federal system is really the pinnacle of a court that got it early and leaned in early and has continued to do just terrific work and people look at them as a model, and that's starting to proliferate. It hasn't proliferated completely through the federal judiciary, of course not, but you don't hear anybody making fun of it anymore, which you would have as recently as five, 10 years ago. On the state level, again, I have seen even more movement in this direction often as an outgrowth of what started as, say, a Lawyer Assistance Program, or a LAP, and is now a Judges and Lawyer's Assistant Program, or a JLAP, which is a really important move. Terry Maroney: Again, there have been some states that have really been leaders in this space, some that are still catching up, but absolutely. I think, especially as public attention just continues to be focused on the courts, more and more court proceedings are being recorded. It's so easy to find evidence of, for example, anger displayed by judges on YouTube. I wrote this article years ago called Angry Judges and had these research assistants who I basically said, "Go on the internet and find me salient examples of judges losing their temper." We couldn't even keep up with the volume of it, because our culture loves that stuff, and it's terrible for the image of the judiciary, that we love that stuff. So I feel like there is more attention now to the human beings in these positions and a recognition that when they're regulating their emotions poorly it has very negative impacts, not just on them, but also on justice and on the fairness of our court system. Terry Maroney: I think courts live in some fear of having such an incident within their system because, again, it's obviously bad for the litigants, but it's just bad, generally. I think there have also been quite a lot of cases, of course, have had to confront colleagues who are experiencing, say, severe cognitive decline, but aren't realizing it and really shouldn't be hearing cases anymore, but they are, it's a very delicate situation. So yes, the short answer is yes, judges and judicial leaders see this and they want to make sure that judges are being given every single opportunity and encouragement to live the longest, happiest, healthiest lives they possibly can because their individual flourishing is crucial to the court flourishing, which is crucial to our societal flourishing. These things cannot be separated. The one grows from the other. Chris Newbold: Excellent. Excellent. Well, we've been joined today by professor Terry Maroney. Terry, we, again, thank you so much for your insights and your research and the work that you're doing in the judicial environment. Obviously, when you go to work every day and your professional mission statement is, "Strengthening democracy one judge at a time," that's a pretty cool lifelong pursuit, for sure. So again, Terry, thanks for joining us. That wraps up a three-part series on the research and scholarship side of well-being, and I think Bree and I are talking about moving into the diversity, equity, and inclusion side of well-being as we head into the new year. So again, thanks everyone for joining us and thank you, Terry. Terry Maroney: Thank you so much for having me. Chris Newbold: All right. Thanks.  

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, Well-being friends. Welcome to the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. Obviously, Chris Newbold here, executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. We've been very clear on what our hope is for this podcast and that's to introduce you to people doing awesome stuff in the well-being space as we work to build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. I am joined once again by my fantastic co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you? BREE BUCHANAN: I'm doing great, Chris. And when you started, just there was a little bit of introduction of yourself, I realized we're well into our 17th or 18th episode of the podcast, which is really exciting. And I just want to let everybody know who we are a little bit again and why we're doing this if people didn't listen to the first episode. And Chris is a great podcast host, he's also an integral part of the Institute for Well-Being in Law, which is who is bringing you this podcast series. He's our vice president of governance and I have the great privilege of being the board president of the Institute. And so just giving you a message from that and the progress that we're doing is it's really exciting to be able to host this podcast, get more involved in communications and spreading the word about the work of the Institute and the well-being movement and getting ready for our annual conference in January of 2022. Lots is happening in regards to the Institute. And so, just a little message for our listeners there. CHRIS: And it's been a wonderful five to seven years since this movement started and there's been one constant in the development of this movement and it's been Bree Buchanan. In terms of being the original co-chair on the national task force on lawyer well-being, Bree has just invested countless hours to give back to the profession through this work and Bree, we're just so fortunate to have you and to continue to have your leadership of this movement. It's important and I just want you to know how much we all appreciate it. BREE: Thank you. I'm glad this is a podcast and not a video because I'm a redhead and I blush easy so I'm flaming red right now. Anyway, to our guest. CHRIS: Let's get to it. Let's get to our guest. Again, we love our guests because our guests are bringing interesting angles and I think it's so important that we think about the collective holistic sense of well-being. And one of the areas that I think really catapulted the movement was the fact that we could actually for the first time, based upon a couple of groundbreaking studies, that we could rely on data to drive the well-being movement. And again, we are an evidence based profession, so the ability for us to really kind of put some numbers behind and some statistics and some scientific nature to the well-being movement, I think it's been really critical in terms of catapulting what we've been working to do to engineer the culture shift. This is again, part two of our, kind of our research focus. We had Larry Krieger on previously and are really excited to introduce you and our listeners today to Matt Thiese. And so Bree, why don't I pass the baton to you to introduce Matt and kick off the podcast? BREE: Sure. Matt, Professor Thiese is really, I think the key position that he holds in the movement right now is to be a lead researcher and looking at what's happening with lawyers today in regards to their well-being and really assisting us getting that data so we know what to do, where to go, what to work on. Matt is an associate professor in the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Utah. One of 18 centers funded by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention across the US. He's deputy director for the center, director of the occupational injury prevention program and director of the targeted research training program. Matt has a PhD in occupational epidemiology, a Master's of science in public health and is a prolific writer, having co-authored 99 peer reviewed articles, 46 practice guidelines and 19 book chapters. Whew. Matt, welcome. CHRIS: Busy. Busy guy. MATT THIESE: Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. BREE: Yeah. I warned you a little bit, we have this question, first question we ask all our listeners about what brings you to this work because we found everybody has something that's driving their passion and for you, it's interesting because you're not a lawyer. You come out of the sort of the field of occupational health, which is a new kind of construct for me to think about all of this work that we're doing. Let me ask you the question, what in your life are the drivers behind the passion, your passion for this work? MATT: Sure. I'll start sort of broadly and then get into a little more specifics related to lawyer well-being but just generally occupational health and safety for me is really important. One of my first jobs was working as a mover. I worked as a mover for one day and working there it was during the summer between high school and college. And when you have people in the profession telling you, "Get out, go do something else. This will just tear you apart," it really makes you look and think and say, "Well, you're here, you're 50 years old. You've been doing this for 35 years. Why are you here?" And it's got to be able to be better. There needs to be a way to improve it. That's what got me into occupational health and safety originally and I've just really, really enjoyed it. MATT: We all spend so much time at work, whether we like it or not. And I think any way that you can make that healthier and safer is good for you as an individual but then it's also good for those around you, whether it's your business or your family or both. In terms of law specific, all of my interactions with lawyers have been really positive. And I know a bunch of lawyers. I know a lot of people who went to law school and decided not to actually go practice law and a lot of reasons that they cited were because of the mental challenges, the stress, the depression, that type of stuff. And then I have a neighbor across the street who was really involved and said, "Hey, we would like to be able to have some data to help guide decisions." And I said, "Hey, that's actually something that I know about. What can I do to help?" And that was in 2019 and we've just been off to the races since then. BREE: Wonderful. CHRIS: Again, thank you for your work. We're excited to kind of talk about some of your findings and your first foray into the legal space. Professor Thiese, talk to us about, you're an occupational epidemiologist. That's something that I certainly don't have on my resume. What sorts of things do you study? What's the goal of your work? MATT: Sure. And please call me Matt, unless I'm in trouble, then call me Matthew. And so as an occupational epidemiologist, before the pandemic, epidemiology, I'd say I'm an epidemiologist to people and they say, "Oh, so you study skin diseases? Or what exactly do you do?" The pandemic has been good in that sense, if there's any type of the silver lining, it has really helped highlight the importance of individual health and having data to make these types of decisions. I've done all sorts of different things. Another area of interest for me is transportation health and safety. Truck drivers have all sorts of different challenges. Some of them are oddly somewhat parallel to law professionals but there's all sorts of other things going on with them too. I do all sorts of stuff. Really anywhere your job overlaps with your health, whether that's physical, mental, looking at different types of exposures, chemical hazards, electrocution, slips, trips and falls, automobile crashes, interactions with clients and violence, all of that type of stuff. BREE: Yeah. Matt, you started to intersect with the legal community. I think it came about with the Utah Supreme Court's lawyer well-being task force and made a recommendation that there needed to be a study of their lawyers in their state to see what is sort of the condition of their well-being. And so how did you come to become a part of that? And what happened with that process? MATT: Sure. I don't think actually I am the person who came up with a recommendation. I think that really was the committee had the foresight to say, "Look, we don't even know where our attorneys are on the spectrum. How are we doing? Are there pockets of attorneys that are doing better or worse than others? Are there other individual factors, personal factors? Where do we stand? Basically, let's get a metric at the beginning and then can use that data to make informed decisions." And then I knew some lawyers who were on the committee and they came to me and said, "Hey, can you just come talk with us about this?" And I said, "Absolutely that's right up my alley." We started having a discussion about doing a baseline assessment piece of all lawyers, which then expanded to lawyers and law students and other law professionals like paralegals and legal secretaries to get a baseline. MATT: And then the plan was to do a subsequent followup or a series of follow-ups with those same individuals. In epidemiology terms, that's called a prospective cohort study. You're getting a group of people and then following them through time, that's better than just taking a snapshot at time at different time points of just a random representative sample. It's better to have the individual people. That was the plan. That was 2019. And then the pandemic hit and everything sort of went sideways in terms of being able to contact people in research and everyone's mental health. And now that we're sort of coming back out of that, we're planning on doing our first followup of the same group and then we're actually probably going to end up using that as our new sort of baseline data element, just because so many things have changed due to the pandemic. BREE: Yeah. And just to follow up, so it was the Utah state bar that actually commissioned for you to do the research, is that right? MATT: Correct. Correct. BREE: Okay, great. CHRIS: Matt, what was the lawyer study? Explain for our listeners, what was the objective? MATT: Sure. The objective was to identify, there were a couple. The first was to try and get as representative an assessment as we can of lawyers in Utah, practicing lawyers and in a whole range of areas. We have in our, and it was just a one time survey. It was done online at baseline. We asked about the big ones. Obviously depression, anxiety, burnout, alcohol use, other substance use and abuse. But then we also wanted to ask questions about other aspects of an individual's well-being. We asked about engagement, satisfaction with life, physical activity levels, chronic pain and chronic medical conditions, family life. And we wanted our goal was to keep it short so that we can get a lot of participants. And then also really once we have that baseline, look both within the lawyer population to see if we can identify pockets of individuals, whether that's the type of law they practice or their practice setting. One of the big questions that we had was is there a difference between urban and rural lawyers? That was one. MATT: And then we also used a lot of nationally validated questions and questions that are used nationally so that we could also compare Utah lawyers to general working populations or other large groups. It wasn't just sort of an echo chamber of saying, "Oh well, within Utah lawyers, this is what we see." But really be able to say, "Okay, Utah lawyers compared with general working population other lawyers in other states, what are the differences or what are similarities?" And then ideally, and we've been able to do this highlight sort of some of the challenges statistically to say, "Okay, this random chance? Or is this actually something that in epidemiology is statistically significant and that is beyond what we would expect just by random chance?" CHRIS: And what were your response rates just in terms of again, the scientific validity is always important in your field. I'm just kind of curious on what level of engagement you had from Utah legal professionals. MATT: Absolutely. I'm going to answer that in that sort of a three stage approach. Our first way of recruiting participants was to do a stratified random sample. We got the entire list of active bar members and randomly selected 200 who are rural and 200 who were urban. Send them email invitations asking them to participate. Our participation rate from just those email invitations was surprisingly high. Traditionally, if you were doing this type of a thing, you could get it participation rates in 20 or 30% would be great. We were upwards of 68% from all of those participants. We got a lot of participants that way. We also went to bar conventions and just set up a booth. I have a team of research assistants who were armed with iPads and during breaks or before meetings started and stuff, we just asked if people would be willing to participate, if they have not participated already. It took about our survey was only about five or six minutes long. We had a fair amount of people participating that way. MATT: And then our third route was actually having entire law firms come to us and say, "We would like to know where our firm stands. And not only that, we would like to know where everyone in our firm stands, not just our attorneys." We have 13 different firms of all varying sizes, who we invited to participate. And participation rate for that, depending on the firm was between, I think our lowest was 83% and our highest was 97 and change. Great participation rate. Being a scientist I said, "Okay, is there meaningful differences between these three groups?" Is there in an epidemiological term, is there a self selection bias? Are the people who were at the conferences more likely to participate? Or the people who were in the firms more likely to participate and vice versa? Looking at it, all three groups were statistically equal on almost every metric that I assessed. Not just not statistically different but statistically equal, so interchangeable from a statistical sense. I was nicely relieved and confident that this actually is a pretty good representation of what we have going on here in Utah. CHRIS: You can see you get commissioned, you want to be able to survey the Utah lawyer community. You want to figure out why this is happening and how they can best address the issue. You get great response rates. What did you find from the study? MATT: We're still analyzing stuff. Like any good researcher you want to, one, answering one question begets gets three more. But we're looking at several different things right now. One was looking at comparisons between amounts of depression and among Utah lawyers at compared with the general working population in the United States. We're comparing with individuals who are at least employed three-quarter time in the United States, compared with our attorneys and found that our attorneys are not doing very well. We're calculating odds ratios. An odds ratio of two, for example, means that you're twice as likely to have whatever outcome if you're part of that group. For us looking at depression, the diagnosis and I'm getting a little bit into the weeds here so I apologize, but likely having a diagnosis of a major depressive disorder, our attorneys in Utah were five and a quarter times more likely to have that level of depression as compared with the general working population. BREE: Wow, that's really significant. Just to underscore that, over five times the rate of depression of the general working population, is that right? MATT: Yeah, as compared to the general working population. And that was even after controlling for different, we call them confounders. Other factors that may play a role in that. Age differences or gender differences, other chronic medical conditions, that type of stuff. BREE: Yeah. Did you dig into gender differences? Is that something you are able to talk about at this point, a difference in depressive issues between men and women? MATT: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. In our data, lawyers were about, they were more likely. In general, our lawyers were more likely to be depressed. However, women were more likely to be depressed than men, which also parallels what you see in the general working population or in any other subsets of population. And I'm actually trying to find the exact number because being a scientist, I like to give you that full number. But it was meaningful. We also had our older attorneys were less likely to be depressed compared with the older general working population, which actually is also something that you would expect. It's called the healthy worker effect. And so people who are depressed tend to go try and figure out and solve their depression. Try and get into a better situation. Because everyone's spends so much of their time working, that's one of the common things is people choose a different profession or a different subset of their profession. That healthy worker effect also suggested that what we have here probably actually is a really solid data sample from which to draw some conclusions. CHRIS: Go ahead, Bree. BREE: Well, I know that this has been written up, there was an article in the Utah Bar Journal and then there was another peer reviewed article that I had read. And how has this been received? Do you have a sense that the bar people are surprised at the rate of sort of distress among their members? MATT: I'm going to say yes and no. I think that directionally, there was not a lot of surprise. Looking at ABA report and other research that's out there, it's yes, there is increased rates of depression, anxiety, suicide, alcohol abuse. Those are really the big ones. And I think generally everyone on the committee, in the Utah bar and probably most practicing attorneys say, "Yeah, that's totally believable." I think the part that really was most moving was the magnitude of that relationship. More than five times more likely to be diagnosed with a major depressive disorder but then it gets even worse when you look at the severe group. Our metric that we use is one that's commonly used, it's called the Patient Health Questionnaire 9, it's a nine question battery. It's been well validated to be related to more than 90% accurate for diagnosis of depression and major depressive disorder. The severe people are those who are contemplating suicide or have had suicidal attempts that they're at the far end of the spectrum. Our Utah attorneys were more than 18 times more likely to be in that category as compared to the general working population. BREE: Wow. MATT: Those magnitudes of numbers, when you think about, okay, relationship between things like smoking and lung cancer, you're about two and a half times more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke. We're talking 18 times more likely to be severely depressed if you're a Utah practicing attorney as compared to the general working population. BREE: Wow. CHRIS: Matt, on the front end, did either you or the task force go in with any kind of hypothesis to begin with? Or was this more designed as a kind of compare and contrast national data with state based data? MATT: Yeah, so I definitely did have some hypotheses going into it. One thing that was really great about this relationship with the state bar and the well-being committee was, they said, "This is your domain. These are things that we're curious about but you come up with your hypotheses, you develop the questionnaire." It was completely under my purview, which I think also helped with the recruitment aspect in that it was a recruiting effort done by me through the University of Utah. We used our institutional review board. Everything is strictly confidential, even going through, even with the firms, none of the firms received any individualized data or any potentially identifiable data. The bar does not get any of that. There's some benefits to that but in terms of actual hypotheses, yes. MATT: I mentioned that there potential relationship between the urban and the rural to see if there's differences in well-being there. Looking at different types of practice, whether criminal litigator or transactional law, so on and so forth, as well as looking at the size of the firm. Whether people are solo practitioners or part of a larger firm and trying to actually take all of that into account at once. If someone is a sole practitioner in criminal law in a rural setting, is that sort of just an additive effect in terms of challenges there? Or is it compounded? Or is it sort of somewhat mitigated? Being able to gather enough data to be able to identify some of those relationships was where we were going from the onset. MATT: And then also in my previous work in terms of other working populations and their mental well-being, I knew that things like physical activity, social support, both in the workplace as well as outside of the workplace can have a very positive aspect on both prevention, as well as treatment of mental challenges, mental health challenges. Those are some of the hypotheses that I had created going into this and was able to then tailor the questionnaire to address all of those, both like I said, internal comparisons, as well as comparing with other external groups like general working population. BREE: One of the things, Matt, that we are trying to do with the podcast is to sort of spread the word about strategies, ideas, policies, et cetera, that other state well-being taskforces can pick up and run with. And so a question, just how replicable is this process? You are doing this with Utah lawyers but say there is a task force in Colorado or another state that wanted to do this. Could they pick this up and deploy the same sort of survey for their bar members? MATT: Absolutely. I think not only the same survey, similar methods but then I've also, I've had some conversations with other states and other states have different challenges too. Being able to modify this and ask some other scientifically valid questions to address some of their sort of conceptual questions or anecdotal information that they may have. But it can easily be rolled out and it's something that I think is actually a lot of fun to do. BREE: Good. CHRIS: It feels like there'd be some benefit of actually having again, some standardization across the states that allow us to kind of compare states, yet providing them the ability to be able to narrowly tailor some questions that are specific to our state. Like for instance, I live in Montana, the plight of the solo rural practitioner is something that maybe kind of critically important to look at it relative to a state like Delaware where all the lawyers are kind of more concentrated. But yet it certainly feels like there'd be some benefit there. MATT: Yep. Absolutely. I wouldn't go as far necessarily as benchmarking. But I think that being able to have similarities as well as differences pointed out to say, and one thing, another thing that I've found in doing this research is that a lot of attention is paid to the negative side of things. Depression and anxiety, what are the big risk factors there? But there's the other side of the coin about, okay, who's being really successful? What are the people who are mentally healthy? What do they have in common? And then how can we help to reinforce that? And then, so being able to look within sort of some of those subsets too, can help provide more information. But I absolutely agree, having some similarities across different states would be able to sort of say, it answers that question, how systemic is this? Is this something that's more isolated to our bar? Or is this something that's more of a systemic question across the entire United States? And then how those may have different potential solutions, both on the positive and the negative side of the fence. CHRIS: Yeah. I think this is a good time for a quick break here from one of our sponsors. I would like to kind of come back, I think maybe after the break and maybe talk about whether all the data is grim. And whether there were some nuggets that you picked out of the Utah study. And then talking a little bit more about just kind of barriers to thriving in work in law firm environments and other legal environments. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back. Speaker 4: Meet VERA, your firm's virtual ethics risk assessment guide. Developed by ALPS, VERA's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots from client intake, to calendaring, to cybersecurity and more. Speaker 5: I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you a summary of recommendations to provide course corrections if needed and to keep your firm on the right path. Speaker 4: Generous and discreet, VERA is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS to help firms like yours be their best. Visit VERA at alpsinsurance.com/vera. BREE: Welcome back, everybody. And we are here today with Professor Matt Thiese and talking about his study of the Utah bar population and also the potential of replicating that around the country. One of the things I saw, Matt, in the write up of your research that you got some information of barriers that were identified by your survey participants to thriving in their work. And I think that's really instructive for the rest of us. Could you talk a little bit about that? MATT: Sure, absolutely. In the survey we asked both, what are some things that help you thrive and enable you to be able to thrive in your work? As well as your barriers. And there were some consistent answers across all the different domains, regardless of age, gender, type of law practice, practice setting in terms of small firm, large firm, rural, urban. Challenges were actions of other attorneys at their firm or frustrations with opposing counsel. Those were two different obviously responses but talking about individual, other attorneys that they work with. Whether in an adversarial role or in a complimentary role. Others were billable hour requirements, client stress and or pressure. Just external pressure from clients and then inflexible court deadlines. Those were the big five sort of umbrella categories that prevented them from doing well or thriving in their job. CHRIS: And Matt, I think the other thing that I think is interesting about kind of going about a data driven approach, I think sometimes the fear is we get the data and then the data sits on the shelf. One of the things I love about what's happening in Utah is, the Utah state bar's well-being committee is now looking at really kind of more actionable plans to be able to kind of advance the well-being dialogue. And I know one of the things that they have you doing at this point is assessments for legal employers. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? MATT: Sure. That was sort of an organic thing that happened, that came about from this project with the state bar. The bar said, "Let's just get a sample of practicing attorneys in Utah and then go from there." Throughout that process though, we had several managing partners who came and said, "I would love my entire firm to take this and be a part of this." I was able to expand this to use firms, we have like I said, 13 different firms right now who are participating and we invited everyone in their firm to participate. Again, it went through the university so the firm doesn't get any individual information but we are providing information back in a aggregate form to be able to say, "This is where your firm stands and this is how your firm compares with other firms." And these other firms are de-identified. Your firm versus firm A, B, C and D who are comparative in size or that type of stuff, as well as the larger general population that we have participating. MATT: It's been really great. It's been well received. I think firms who are participating are sort of those firms that really want to do something better. They either have something in place and they want to assess how is this making a difference? Or they're thinking of getting something in place, and saying, "Where can we get the largest bang for our buck really?" And they're concerned about making sure that their lawyers are happier and healthier and therefore more productive, more likely to stay with the firm. And really it's a winning situation if you can identify those aspects where people in your firm need more help and then go to the evidence for what's out there to actually provide that. Does that make sense? BREE: Yeah. Yeah. Matt, you've got this background just sort of general long, wide view around occupational health. And so here you come to the specific part of the working population. You've got a little bit of data around lawyers. You're starting to hear some feedback around what's happening with legal employers. Just imagine we've got in your audience, some law firm managers, human resources staff for law firms, based on what you've learned so far do you have any advice to give them, to help them have thriving, successful lawyers? And as a result of that, a more profitable and successful firm? MATT: Right. Yes, in terms of based on what we've seen so far, there's definitely some things that can be done to improve. Taking a step back and saying, all right, I'm going to take an even bigger step back. We're generally have been focusing here on this discussion on depression, but there's a lot of other issues, burnout, anxiety. Looking at the evidence though, for those for prevention and treatment for those, there's some big things like individual therapy, medication, but there are challenges with those as well. There's cost barriers, the time for those both in terms of needed, if you're going to a therapist but then also medication takes, SSRIs, anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication takes three weeks to kick in. If you have someone who's depressed, three weeks can be an awfully long time. MATT: But some of the other treatments out there are actually really easy to implement and there's very little side effects. Two that I would highlight would be physical activity and we have data that's not published yet but found that if you're physically active meeting the standard of most days a week for at least 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity, so getting your heart rate up enough that you can't carry on a solid conversation, you have to sort of catch your breath, lawyers who were that level of physical activity, so four or five days a week, we're about a third, three times less likely we'll say it that way, three times less likely to have depression or anxiety. If they worked out six days or seven days, they were about between five times and seven times less likely to have depression and anxiety. MATT: Implementing some, and then there's all of the other benefits. Implementing some type of workout, moderate or vigorous workout activity is something that has demonstrated efficacy in other domains. And these preliminary data look like they would help. And then there's the cardiovascular benefits and all those that go along with it, as well as increased productivity after the physical activity, that's a whole other domain that we could talk about maybe at a different podcast. And then another thing is cognitive behavioral therapy and that's a treatment that sounds large and onerous but it's really just being able to approach problems differently and being able to think about things and it can be self directed or you can work with a therapist on it but it's pretty immediate in terms of results like physical activity but it's easy to do and it can help people, whether you're severely depressed, actually, if you're severely depressed, you should probably be seeking additional help beyond just cognitive behavioral therapy and physical activity but all the way to minimal or no depression. People are reporting better engagement, better focus after both physical activity and cognitive behavioral therapy. MATT: Those are two very specific. Maybe they're a little too specific for what you were going for. Other evidence out there in terms of mindfulness and meditation is somewhat mixed. Mindfulness, meditation, psychological capital, those all in general populations have been mixed efficacy but in attorneys, they may be more efficacious. CHRIS: And I'd love to kind of spend the final few minutes talking just a little bit about the replicability of what you've done in Utah in other, not just states, but either state bars, local bars, county bars, specialty bars. There are so many opportunities for us to continue to utilize survey techniques as a way to not just to engage and learn more about the constituencies that we serve. But as you know, surveys can also be great educational tools at the same time. And I just would love your perspective. If again, a lot of our listeners are members of task forces, they're advocates for well-being in their local communities, just how easy is it to kind of execute on a survey tool? Can anybody do it? Just your recommendations for the time, the cost, the structure, obviously when individuals like you have done it before, others have kind of learned on your dime, so to speak. And so I'd just love your perspective about the replicability of utilizing survey tools as part of our well-being strategy map. MATT: Absolutely. Ours was done almost exclusively online, so it's super easy to do. You can implement it. You can have actionable data in a matter of weeks. Ours was all done online and with a few exceptions, we had a couple of opportunities where individuals wanted to talk on the phone or do a paper copy. Email invitations, online data collection aspects in terms of even returning results, a lot of that has also been done online through video conferences and that type of stuff. The whole thing from soup to nuts I think is relatively easy to actually implement. MATT: One of the cautions that I do have though is making sure that it's scientific. Anyone can come up and create a questionnaire but to actually come up with a scientific question, a scientific survey that's using questions that have some validity and comparability is important. And then also your sampling technique. That's always a challenge in that when you're enrolling people, are there biases? Is there a selection bias like I mentioned earlier, where only people who are healthy enough to be participating, mentally healthy enough to be participating are participating? You therefore have a biased sample and any results from that would be either deeply discounted or practically useless. CHRIS: And are you interested in continuing to aid either institutions, entities, taskforces? I know that you've had limited work in the legal space but it sounds like you've enjoyed what you've done thus far. MATT: Yes. Short answer is absolutely yes. Can I give my email address and say reach out? CHRIS: Sure you can. MATT: Please, I would love to participate and help in any way I can, whether that's running the entire thing or anything sort of that. My email address is matt.thiese M-A-T-T dot T-H-I-E-S-E@hsc, for Health Sciences Center, .utah.edu. And I would love to help in any way that I can. Like I said, this is a career focus for me. I've done a lot of work in terms of mental well-being and psychosocial health in other domains. But I really, really enjoyed working with attorneys. I think that it's very, very important. And I think that there's a lot of opportunity here to actually do good. MATT: One of the things that you asked me before was how I fell into this. I was actually planning on going to medical school, was accepted in medical school and in talking with some of my mentors, they said, "You're great at science, you're great at epidemiology and you can actually do more good doing scientific research in epidemiology than seeing patients on a one on one basis and trying to get them to change their behavior." This is absolutely something that is my career focus and I want to help. Can I be more emphatic about it than that? CHRIS: This guy wants work. This guy wants work. MATT: No, and that's the thing, it's not necessarily work. I have a bunch of other stuff going on but in academia I have some of the ability because I'm not out, this is not a business, a profit making business for me. I obviously need to cover my time but I want to be able to help out. And so whatever. CHRIS: Well, I think it's interesting, Matt, and again, I think we should always try to end these on a high note that you've also tried to look at it in your Utah findings, what aspects of their job help them do well or improve their well-being. And I think it was, and I think these are tips for really any work environment, which is if you work in an environment in which you enjoy working with others, in which you're intellectually challenged, in which you have flexibility in your work schedule to some degree and that you know that your contributions are both recognized and valued, that that's a recipe to drive well-being higher. MATT: Absolutely. CHRIS: And those are things that anybody who sets the tone for a culture, anybody who's in HR, anybody who's in management, those are tips that go across industry. They're not unique to the legal environment but it is important in terms of just the notion of how we treat people ultimately drives whether they find their contributions and their commitment worthwhile and whether they will actually want to stay there or not. And those who don't generally then go down one path and those who do you generally have higher productivity, better results. All the reasons why corporate America has kind of I think generally leaned in on well-being as a creative to the bottom line. There's an economic element to it but also frankly, the right thing to do. MATT: Absolutely correct. All of those things that you listed really speak to engagement. And even in the data that we're seeing, you said, it generally leads to better productivity or generally leads to less turnover. I would say most of the data that's out there says it does. There's very few exceptions to that and it's just a matter of the magnitude of that relationship. Having people stay engaged and really that creativity, intellectual challenge, I think is one of the things that came up often helped and reduces, it sort of tempers the negative aspects of things and makes people more resilient and able to handle, less likely to burn out, less likely to be depressed, more likely to be productive. All of that great stuff. CHRIS: Matt, one final question, on the Utah study you've cited a couple times preliminary data. Is there a point in time in which preliminary goes to final data and something is released? MATT: Yes. The depression versus the general working population that we've talked about, those are final. We've looked at those, we're confident in those. In terms of preliminary data, we're looking at burnout and engagement. We're looking at substance abuse, alcohol abuse issues. We're looking at physical activity and then we're also doing similar things with students. The challenges with those are just being able to make sure that we're dotting all of our I's and crossing all of our T's from a scientific standpoint and making sure that we're taking everything into consideration there. And then it goes through a peer review process. We have three separate papers right now that are undergoing the peer review process and then several others that are nearly ready for that. And then dissemination, I would love to help have you guys help disseminate some of these findings and be able to continue to have a positive impact on attorney well-being. BREE: Absolutely. Matt, I'm so glad that you are on our team. Really important piece of this. Well, a wonderful 45 minutes or so with you, Matt. Thank you for spending your time today and dedicating so much of your energy and your expertise to helping us lawyers have to be more likely to thrive in our profession. And for our listeners, please join us again in the next couple of weeks, we'll be continuing our miniseries on those who are doing research and scholarship in the area of lawyer well-being. Thank you, everybody. Stay safe, be well. CHRIS: Thanks for joining us, Matt. MATT: Thank you. My pleasure.  

Transcript: CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, well-being friends and welcome to the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, Executive Vice President of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. Most of you are listeners. For those of you who are new to the podcast, our goal is pretty simple. It's to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the well-being space within the legal profession and in the process to build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. I want to introduce my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how have you been doing? BREE BUCHANAN: Wonderful, Chris. Great to be here. How are you? CHRIS: Bree, I think I heard that you had just come off some vacation doing some bicycling in my neck of the woods. Tell us a little bit more about where you went and why. BREE: Yeah. So I got to go with a group of friends out over to your neck of the woods in Montana, the Trail of the Hiawatha and the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes and got to get some cycling in, which was just really wonderful. CHRIS: Awesome, awesome. Glad to hear you get off the grid and that's such an important part. My vacation is next week where I'll be with my family on a lake, just relaxing, and we all know that, that's an important part of recharging and being our best selves. BREE: Absolutely. CHRIS: Yeah, so we are again, super excited for today's podcast. We are wrapping up a three-part series looking at the interconnection of well-being in law schools. We have had Linda Sugin from Fordham Law School, we have had Jennifer Leonard from Penn Law, and today we are so excited to welcome Janet Stearns from the Miami School of Law. Bree, I know that you have a personal relationship with Janet, a friendship. I would love it if you could introduce Janet to our listeners. BREE: Absolutely. I'm delighted that we've got Janet here today. I'll give you the official introduction to Janet, but from a personal standpoint, Janet and I have been sort of on the front lines of working in this area, gosh, Janet, I don't know, six, seven years starting back with the ABA's Commission on Lawyer's Assistance Programs. Janet has been a true leader in that space. So let me give you the full introduction, and then we'll go ahead and hear more from Janet. BREE: Janet Stearns is the Dean of Students and a lecturer in law at the University of Miami Law School. Has been there since October 1999. In 2007, she was appointed Dean of Students. Since 2011, she's regularly taught professional responsibility. Last year, she received NALSAP's CORE Four Annual Award recognizing the competencies, values and ethics of the very best law student affairs professionals, and I absolutely agree with that. She is the immediate past chair for the AALS Student Services Section, and as I know her, a member of ABA CoLAP, and not only an advocate for wellness programming in the law schools, but has also been the Chair of the Law School Committee and has led all of those efforts for, I'd say at least five years. Since she became the Dean of Students, she has been passionate about wellness initiatives there at Miami, including the Fall Wellness Week, Spring Mental Health Day, and a weekly Dean of Students constitutional walk around the campus. Finally, I'm proud to say that she won the CoLAP Meritorious Service Award in November 2020. So Janet, so glad to have you here. How are you doing today? JANET STEARNS: Well, Bree, that's such a generous introduction. So I'm blushing a little now, but I am delighted to be here with you and Chris and looking forward to chatting. BREE: Great. So Janet, because I know you, and I know how dedicated you are to this, I think that you've probably got a really good answer to this question that we ask all of our guests because we know that people that are committed to the well-being movement often have a real passion for the work. So what experiences in your life are the drivers behind your passion for being such a leader in the well-being movement in law? JANET: Well, Bree, I think I've often, for a long time been really interested in my own personal well-being. As I think back on my own experience in law school, a classmate of mine, we decided to decaffeinate together in law school. Not many people do that, but we did. We went off coffee cold turkey and really just recognized it made us less jittery and that we could actually feel better and be more present for what was happening around us. I tell students that's just one example of how we can actually use the law school experience to think about our own well-being. JANET: But I think that certainly my work here at the University of Miami has brought me into a space where I have had to work and counsel way too many students who have been struggling. Struggling with drugs and alcohol and suicide. JANET: I have spoken many times about a student of ours, Katie Corlett, who died just shortly after her graduation, really, I think about the week before the bar results came out. In a time, many of us can remember and relate to of incredible and stress, and she died of a drug overdose, and it had a huge impact on me because I had worked so hard with her to get her through law school. I had gotten to know her parents so well, and the time that we spent shortly after the overdose visiting her in the hospital and just thinking of the huge opportunity that was lost for her and for us. That has stayed with me. I often do say, as I talk to other law schools about our programming and our more institutional initiatives, we do not want to have any more Katies. BREE: Right. JANET: We want to do everything possible so that we can see our students graduate and be happy and not have any more Katies. BREE: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. That's powerful. CHRIS: Yeah. I mean, as the Dean of Students, you certainly get a window into some of those challenges. Janet, tell us a little bit about ... We're all creatures of our own experience and we all recall our own law school days ... Give us a little flavor of Miami Law. The location and the size, the focus, anything that you find particularly unique about the culture that you've worked to build at Miami Law. JANET: Okay, Chris. Well, Miami Law, we are actually in Coral Gables. We are not in Miami. But Coral Gables is a suburb of Miami, and the University of Miami Law School has typically been on the larger side of law schools. This year we're probably going to be welcoming just under 400 students, 1L new students to our law school, but we have about 1,300 students. So we have JD students, and we also have a very large population of LLM students in many different programs, but our international LLM is bringing students from all over the world with a particularly large focus on Latin America. So it is a school where we have a lot of international diversity. Miami is just a very, at its nature, multilingual community, but there is a lot of Spanish that is spoken and Portuguese and other languages. JANET: We have a lot of first-generation students, Chris, and working families, first-generation students from our community. As we know, Miami has been all over the news for various reasons. But it is certainly a very dynamic community with a lot of temptations, cultural temptations, drug, alcohol, late-night partying. Miami Beach goes around the clock. It's against that backdrop that we are trying to encourage people to really both focus on their studies and focus on their well-being. BREE: Yeah. So over the time ... You've been at Miami Law a little bit over 20 years ... What are some of the mental health and well-being issues you've seen your students face? I mean, certainly Katie that you talked about is the worst case scenario, but just from my experience, I imagine you've seen a lot of other things that don't lead up to such a tragic end. JANET: Right. Well, Bree, I do think that Miami is a community where there is a lot of opportunity to focus on well-being, the good and the bad, as I said. There are, I think a lot of stresses and temptations, but I think there also are a lot of an incredible amount of natural beauty here. Beaches and opportunities to get into the outdoors and enjoy the tropical climate, the Everglades when people take advantage of that. We really work hard to model that for our students. JANET: I think that we have gone through certainly over time, our students face a lot of challenges. I do think that being in such an active and vibrant place and such a, from my perspective, a city that never sleeps, we have to work really, really, really hard from the beginning of orientation to try to model limits. Limits on your time, learning how to say no, learning the value of sleeping, learning the value of focus. The fact is that you're not going to be at every single event or movie or social or networking opportunity. There's just too much. So I think learning how to set limits from the very beginning is actually one of the things I talk about in our orientation message. JANET: I do think another well-being issue and one we were just discussing some, it is an expensive city. There is a lot of opportunities to go out and spend a lot of money. There's a lot of variation in housing that's expensive. So we have to work very early to try to help people to understand their financial budget and how to plan for their law school years in a way that will make sense and leave them where they still can feel in control as they graduate and move into the legal profession. So financial literacy is another important aspect of well-being and one that we try to also talk to our students about from the very beginning. BREE: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up because that's not something that we really talked about. There's the six dimensions of well-being, but that financial piece of it, that financial dimension, can be such a heavy burden for the students. Sure. JANET: Right. Right. Then of course, I mean, Miami Law and the whole world has had the opportunity, I would say through this pandemic, to even talk more about well-being. Right, Bree. I know that when I was sent home in March 2020, the first thing that I brought home from my office with me was I have a framed copy of The Serenity Prayer next to my desk. BREE: Right. Wonderful. JANET: In March, there were many, many calls with deans and faculty and students, "What about this? And what about this?" I just said, "We're going to say our Serenity Prayer. We are going to try to figure out what we can control here and what we cannot and how to distinguish those things." I think actually as we model that, because our students and people around us see our own process of trying to figure those things out and yet trying to stay calm and make decisions through the pandemic, I think we've really taught some valuable lessons. BREE: I think The Serenity Prayer should be standard issue with your law school diploma. JANET: Absolutely. BREE: That would be helpful. JANET: It always does the trick for me. CHRIS: Janet, I'm curious, as you think about kind of the state of well-being in your law school, has it become more challenging? Has it improved? I mean, you have the context of kind of stability and seeing it over a longer period of time, but just curious on your reflections on at least within your school what kind of trends that you're seeing as it relates to well-being. JANET: That's such a great question, Chris. I think what's interesting if we go back, I don't know ... I think when I started to work with Bree with the CoLAP but I would say we've been involved in planning ... I probably have done a Fall Wellness Week since I first became Dean of Students in 2007. I had been working with the ABA CoLAP and the ABA Law Student Division on the Mental Health Day Initiative now for, I don't know, five, six, seven years. JANET: There was a point I think when we would announce Mental Health Day and everybody would be like, "What is that? Why?" I would say in the last few years, what I'm noticing is I have a lot of people around the country, deans of students at other schools, they're like, "When are you going to announce the Mental Health Day plans? When is it coming? What's the theme this year because we're putting it on our calendars." I think people are very, very eager to talk about this right now, Chris, at some level. Of course, then we just have to reflect on the events of the last week of the Olympics. I mean, it just feels like we are truly having a national conversation, thanks to the courage of Michael Phelps and Simone Biles and others. BREE: Absolutely. JANET: We are having a national conversation, and people are eager to have this conversation with us. So there is a level of attention and focus that can only be a good thing right now for the work that we're doing. CHRIS: Yeah, for sure. Talk to us about some of the well-being initiatives at Miami Law that you're most proud of. I mean, you talked about Fall Wellness Week. Talk to our listeners about some of the things that you have initiated and instituted there that you think are actually driving results. JANET: So I do think that the Fall Wellness Week has become a great catalyst, and we try to have a very intentional conversation ... I was actually talking with some CoLAP colleagues yesterday about this, about when. When is the most effective time to raise these issues? My view has been orientation is not always the best time. I think your students are a little bit deer in headlights and it's a little bit too early, but we have been doing ... Recently we moved the National Mental Health Day to October. Now we try to program around October 10th. So for many of us, that's about six weeks into the school year, give or take. I think people are really receptive. They're starting to feel the stress. They're starting to feel some of the anxiety and self-doubt as they're trying to work their way through, and it's a really good time to come in and try to do some positive programming. JANET: We try to both do some national programming, but many schools are also using that to do school-based programming, often in partnership with the LAP in the state, everything from healthy smoothie happy hours, constitutional walks, yoga, physical fitness, and sometimes some actual conversations with thought leaders around the value of sleep as something that actually promotes your learning or the worries of study steroids. So we have used the Fall Wellness Week, I think, to maximum effect for a lot of programming. CHRIS: Do you keep that programming broader in terms of different areas of focus or do you actually look at kind of a 1L track, a 2L track, a 3L track? I'm just kind of curious on the structure of how you do that. JANET: Well, that's a great question. I would say right now the Fall Wellness Week has been broader for everybody. CHRIS: Okay. JANET: I think that we are actually starting to have some more conversations. We have been doing some 3L specific sort of pathway to the bar exam kinds of programming. I actually think there's a lot more that we can be doing in that regard. I think the ABA Law Student Division is also interested as we think about bar success and wellness. I think that there is some 3L targeted work that we have been doing, but I think that we could be doing more around that Chris, from my own perspective. JANET: But I think that point is well taken. I do think that we find by and large that if we were to hold a program either around suicide or around study steroids, or pick your topic, depression, and we just said, "Show up for a program," law students by and large are not going to show up for that program. They don't want to walk into a room and be identified and tagged as the person who's thinking about suicide. But if you can market your program, and I think we've thought hard about this, whether it has to do more broadly with mindfulness, well-being, success in law school, happiness in the profession, I think if you can market that program, you can deliver the same content, but you can get people in the room and then get the buy-in and really get much broader participation. So I feel very strongly about that. JANET: I just also wanted to highlight that I think over this last year, we have also tried to be a lot more intentional ... I'm not sure we weren't doing it before ... But about the crossover between the struggles over racial injustice that we are all experiencing, and certainly that some of our students in various affinity groups are experiencing with well-being. Last year's Mental Health Day highlighted my colleague, Rhonda Magee, who spoke about her fabulous book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice. We then had several follow-up programs that students found really, really impactful, where we were really focusing on the impact of well-being on targeted communities of color. JANET: We've had a lot of, I think, requests for some more programming targeted with our first-generation students around well-being. I think there is a huge outcry for doing more programming of this sort as we move forward. BREE: What advice do you have for others who may be working at a law school and are listening to this? Maybe they're faculty or administration and who want to enact some of their own initiatives. Do you have some advice for them? How to get it started and how to make sure it's successful? JANET: Well, Bree, I think, as you know, because you and I have talked about this a lot, I do feel that right now the vast majority of law schools in the country are doing positive things around well-being. Many want to do more. Some of us are doing it differently. Some have more resources than others to do this kind of programming. But I think there's a huge interest, and in fact, I think a demand to have well-being programming in law schools right now and to really connect this for our law students. This is one of the things I say to students all the time, "You're coming to us not only to learn about contracts and torts, you're coming to learn how to become a future professional. Some of the skills that we can teach and model for you about your personal well-being and learning to set limits and finding balance between yourself and your work, these are some of the most important skills and probably the most important skills we can teach you in law school." BREE: I think of sort of the fancy word for that, professional identity formation. Is that? JANET: We are all talking about professional identity formation. Exactly. Exactly. And this is a critical element of this. I think that the well-being community and the professional identity community have found a great partnership and shared interest. These are things that we are working together to message, and we're messaging them in all parts of the law school. We're messaging them in clinics and in externship programs. We are messaging this in all kinds of core courses, including professional responsibility. This is all a part of our shared mission right now. CHRIS: Janet, it's great to hear that. I mean, again, with your perspective. When I think of law schools and well-being, I think of you because I think that you've been kind of at the epicenter of kind of looking at what's been going on in the law school environment. It's encouraging to hear that your sense is that the vast majority of law schools have kind of leaned in on this particular subject. I'm just curious about maybe the why. Why we find ourselves in a significantly better position today than say we did 10 years ago? JANET: Well, I think first of all, I do believe as I both talk to people at Miami Law but people around the country, in fact, Chris many of us are experiencing issues or challenges around mental health and substances with our own families, with our friends. We have faculty ... In fact, I was on the phone the other day with a faculty member and she said, "My child is in the process of being hospitalized." So I think we are actually at a point where ... I have another faculty colleague ... Fabulous, very, very smart person who lost his wife to suicide. I'm coming to the world at this point. I think this it's not a Democratic issue, it's not a Republican issue. This is an issue that affects all of our families and things that we hold near and dear to us. I think people are being a little more open about that. JANET: I think as all of the work and certainly, Bree, all of the anti-stigma work that you and others have been doing for so long, I think this is seeping in, and I think people are coming forward and saying, "This affected my family. This affected my child. This affected my brother." I think faculty are also a little more willing, and I'm not saying everybody, but to be a little more vulnerable themselves with their students. I think some of this happened during the pandemic. I think there was something very equalizing about all of us being on Zoom. BREE: That's a great point. JANET: Struggling with Zoom, and I saw some faculty members, and then I heard about it from students who said, "I'm really struggling here. I haven't been able to see my parents. I'm divorced and I haven't been able to visit my child. And this really sucks right now. So I appreciate that this is really a confusing time for all of you as students and the faculty. Where it's like, "Oh my gosh, that torts professor's a real person." JANET: I view this as some of the, I like to call it the gifts of the pandemic, but I think that there were people who became a lot more real with each other. And that includes faculty members becoming a little more real with students as well. CHRIS: That's such a great observation. I've always been prone to say that we are obviously human beings before we are a law student, a lawyer, a professor, a judge. It feels like we're kind of getting more back to some of those kinds of basic levels of empathy and kind of all on the same trajectory of just kind of trying to live our best life. JANET: Right. Absolutely. CHRIS: Let's take a quick break here. We'll hear from one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back. — Advertisement: Meet Vera, your firm's virtual ethics risk assessment guide. Developed by ALPS, Vera's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots, from client intake to calendaring to cybersecurity and more. Vera: “I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you summary recommendations to provide course corrections if needed and to keep your firm on the right path.” Generous and discreet, Vera is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS to help firms like yours be their best. Visit Vera at alpsinsurance.com/vera. — BREE: Welcome back everybody, and we're here with Dean Janet Stearns from the University of Miami School of Law. Janet, so one of the things that I really want to dig into with you because you sit at such a unique position of this nationally, and that is some of the policy initiatives that are occurring across the country to really try to change this circumstances for law students. I want to hear, and this is particularly in your spot as Chair of CoLAP's Law School Committee, could you tell us about some of the initiatives that you all are working on? In particular, I'm thinking about the whole character and fitness process, which has had such a detrimental impact on students' willingness to ask for help. And then also to dig into some of the changes you guys are seeking for the ABA standards. JANET: Well, thank you, Bree. I have to say, I think it has been a tremendous honor for me to be able to be involved with the American Bar Association CoLAP because you really feel the capacity to make change, to be in a room with people who are not only passionate about these issues, but who actually have some policy vision and the power to then act upon that vision. JANET: So we have been working through the CoLAP on several national projects that we think can really shift the conversation on health and well-being for students. As you mentioned, the first has to do with character and fitness. Why is this so important? Because in surveys that have been done and the preeminent survey by Jerry Organ, David Jaffe and Kate bender, looking at law student well-being, we learned the very scary high numbers of students who are experiencing depression, suicidality, substance use/abuse. We also learned that a very small percentage of those students were willing to come forward and ask for help from deans of students like myself. And the primary number one reason they told us they would not come ask for help is because they were afraid that they would have to disclose it on their bar application. JANET: So this became a huge cultural issue for us. How can we shift that culture so that people understand that when they need help, they actually indeed must ask for help, that we are here to help them, and that the bar character fitness doesn't become a barrier to that. So we have been working on trying to both evaluate what states are doing around the country and advocating for change, and specifically trying to either eliminate questions in the character and fitness process asking about mental health history or history of substance use disorders or narrowing those questions in time and scope so that people understand that their first duty is to take care of themselves and get help, and it will not stand in their way of ultimately being able to become a lawyer. JANET: We have had, I think we both, there has been, I think some policy conversations, we've been able to do some writing in this field, but as we know, in 2020, one of the great gifts of the pandemic was that early on the State of New York removed their questions relating to substance use mental health. Anything outside of conduct is no longer asked by New York. BREE: That was huge. JANET: That was huge. It was huge. So many people came together including great advocates in Massachusetts, which had been doing this for a long time that made possible the change in New York. Shortly after New York, I think in March, literally as we were moving into the pandemic, Michigan removed its questions. Again, thanks to a lot of great advocacy by Tish Vincent and others involved with the LAP in Michigan, the law schools in Michigan, and a month later, Indiana followed Michigan's suit just after the pandemic had started. JANET: The Chief Justice in Indiana, who I just think is one of ... My Ruth Bader Ginsburg I tell her ... Justice Rush, who really was so eloquent in recognizing the importance of this issue. The Supreme Court took very quick action under her leadership to remove the problematic character and fitness questions in Indiana. Then by the summer, New Hampshire also followed suit. So those were four states all in 2020. I feel like there's a great momentum there, Bree, and I continue to remain hopeful that we can continue to make progress in other states, particularly where we have some matching of an active law school community, an active bar well-being community, a judiciary, and we know that there are other State Supreme Court justices that are very, very enlightened on these issues, that we can work together to have more states implement reform in the character and fitness process. JANET: I feel strongly also where we can, if we can get either frequently asked questions or preambles, things that we can use as educational materials with students as they enter law school, as we talk about bar admission, so that they are very clearly told that this should not in any way keep you from accessing mental health or other counseling resources when you need it. BREE: Right. I mean, that's one of the things also is to include very explicit language in the introduction to the questions of the application process or somewhere, we want you to get help. That can be helpful too. I know that the Institute for Well-Being in Law is going to be joining in the policy efforts there too around trying to bring about state by state change on those character and fitness questions. So we're going to have a good group of advocates working on this around the country. BREE: I know another thing that CoLAP has been doing, and you've been a leader on really, and I can't imagine how many, maybe hundreds of hours that you've spent writing and working on this, Janet, but that is around the ABA standards for law schools. Can you talk a little bit about that? What you've been working on and the progress that's been made? JANET: Well, thank you, Bree, and this truly has been a labor of love. So the CoLAP Law School Committee, hand-in-hand with the ABA Law Student Division, has been seeking changes in the ABA accreditation rules to recognize the integral role of well-being in law schools, student services, and law school curriculum. As you know, all accredited schools are subject to the ABA accreditation standard. These standards are voted through the Council on Legal Education, through the ABA, and then ultimately approved by the House of Delegates. JANET: And so we have asked for several years for some language on well-being. We didn't get very far the first two years, but this year, I think again, another gift of the pandemic has been the incredible focus and importance of well-being. The Council in fact, did put out some draft language. It was not all that we wanted, but it did include a recognition that every law school needed to provide some well-being resources to its students, either directly or in collaboration with university resources, LAP resources, looking as well at financial well-being, emergency funds, and other essential resources that every law school must do. So the ABA Council recommended this language. We then had a large comment period. We are currently in the middle of a second comment period on proposed language. We hope to hear more in this month of August as to whether or not the package of proposals will be pushing forward by February to the House of Delegates. JANET: I will note that the package right now also has some other very significant changes on professional identity education in law schools, and it also has a large package of proposals that have to do with diversity and inclusion and core curricula requirements in law schools around diversity inclusion initiatives. There is a very rich package of proposed revisions to the standards. We are going to remain hopeful that these can get to the House of Delegates this year. But I think the fact that we finally have well-being in a draft proposal as an essential part of every accredited law school, that is institutional change, and I'm very proud of how far we've come with this so far. BREE: Absolutely. And Janet, if our listeners, if somebody wanted to dig in further and learn more about that, can they go to the ABA website or how could they learn more or track what's going on in that area? JANET: All of the proposed changes and indeed all of the comments that have been received are all on the website for the ABA Section on Legal Education, as well as the notices of ... There will be a meeting as we're recording this, we are in the week of the ABA Annual Meeting ... But my understanding is August 19th and 20th, the Section on Legal Education will meet again, we understand, to discuss next steps on these standards. Of course, if that is a problem, anybody is free to email me at the University of Miami. We have a large community of friends across the country who are in a very close conversation about continuing to advocate for these changes to the standards. Please join us. CHRIS: Let's talk a little bit about the future as we kind of look ahead. Obviously we've made a lot of progress through the efforts of you and other folks who are keeping a close eye on this. You talked about the fact that there's more awareness, more eagerness, more focus, but we also know that culture shifts in our profession, they don't happen overnight. I'm just kind of curious on your perspective of what's on the horizon. What things do you see in the future being done by law schools to continue to move the needle on improving the well-being of law students? Because we obviously know that you're preparing the next generation in some respects. There are general generational aspects to the improvement of the profession. So I'd love for you to break out the crystal ball, so to speak, and kind of talk about what you see kind of coming down the road as we continue to maintain an emphasis on this issue in the law school environment. JANET: Well, thank you, Chris. I'm not very good with a crystal ball, but let me try here. So I do believe, and I think at the CoLAP level, first of all, I believe that we need to work hard to make sure that not just student services folks, but faculty and administration do need to be trained on mental health first aid, which is a course, i an eight-hour course, to make sure that they have basic skills to be prepared to have conversations with people. This course, this mental health first aid course is not only for law schools, this is being done in law firms, it's being done with police, it's being done all over the country right now so that people are more equipped when they come in contact with a client or a patient or a student or a colleague or a child that they have some more basic skills to be able to triage the situation and feel prepared to understand what somebody is going through. So I do think we need to continue to push that course out, number one. JANET: I think number two, that we need to have some more institutional structure for keeping these conversations going, as you've said, Chris. I would say at the University of Miami, I have formed some great partnerships with other people at our university. I would include the people, my friends at the medical school. I think that our medical education and legal education in our student populations, there're strengths and there're weaknesses. There's a lot of overlap. So I've tried to partner closely with the medical school, our counseling center, other people at the university so we have some institutional structure for continuing a conversation. I think that's incredibly important because me, one person, I get busy and distracted by other things. But when you know that people are coming together at regular intervals to have a conversation that is empowering. That creates accountability, JANET: I think we also get a lot of accountability by working with the LAPs in our state. We just, this summer, just last month, the Florida LAP got all of the law schools in Florida together for a program. I know that these regional meetings are taking place right now in other states. That also creates a catalyst for change. Also when you're working with the State Supreme Court on the character and fitness topic. I think there is a strength in numbers when we can bring people together, whether it's under the auspices of a well-being committee or whether it's just again, a time of coming together to support one another, share, and then try to again, begin to imagine ways that we can work together to create change. BREE: Absolutely. I've always felt that in regards to these policy initiatives and the work around the well-being movement, get passionate people together sitting around a table, you have a bunch of lawyers, they're brilliant, they're creative, they're solution-focused. We can figure this out. And so Janet, thank you for being there at the head of the table in these discussions, in this work around law school. BREE: I want to thank our listeners for joining us. This is the third and the final of our miniseries on initiatives and innovations in law school space. Please join us for our research miniseries, where we'll have three episodes digging in and talking with some of the lead researchers and thought leaders in the lawyer and well-being space movement. So want to thank everybody for joining us again today. We will be back with you in the next couple of weeks with more episodes. In the meantime, be well. Take care. Thank you all.  

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, well-being friends and welcome to the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your cohost CHRIS:, Executive Vice President of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And again, most of, I think, our listeners know what our goal is but let me reiterate that we love bringing on to the podcast thought leaders in the well-being space doing meaningful work to advance the profession and to in the process build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. CHRIS: Let me introduce my cohost Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing? And how has your summer been? BREE BUCHANAN: Hey Chris, it has been wonderful. I get to be here in Eugene, Oregon so it's just beautiful and getting to do a lot of fun things. I'm really blessed with that. And I just wanted to say, Chris, you're talking about thought leaders and as regards to our guest today, Jen really is, she's not only a thought leader in this space but she's also a teacher of future thought leaders. So we're really glad that we got Jen with us today. CHRIS: Yeah. We got a great guest today. And we are in the midst right now of spending a three-part miniseries within the podcast of really looking in terms of what's going on in the law schools. We know that they are training the next generation in our profession and we know that these issues are becoming much more acutely aware in the environment. We started off our law school series with Linda Sugin from Fordham Law School and we will be followed in our next podcast by Janet Stearns who comes to us from the Miami School of Law. CHRIS: But today's about Penn Law and introducing our, we're really excited to have Jennifer Leonard join us on the podcast. Bree, will you do the honors of introducing Jen. BREE: I'd be delighted. So Jen Leonard is Penn Law's, get this title, I love this, Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the Future of the Profession Initiative. Jen's work at Penn Law focuses on developing a deep understanding of what legal professionals need to be successful in the face of constant transformation. Isn't that true? Working with a collaborative group of colleagues across the law school in the profession, Jen designs ways to educate new law students about changes in the profession and the skills they need to thrive in the future. BREE: Before assuming her current role, she served as Associate Dean for Professional Engagement and Director of the Center of Professionalism at Penn Law. And prior to that, she was Chief of Staff to the City Solicitor of Philadelphia and a Litigation Associate with a Center City law firm, and a Judicial Law Clerk. And then Jen went home when she went to work at Penn Law because she's a graduate from there in 2004 from the law school and Penn State University with high honors. Jen's also a frequent writer and speaker on the issues that include lawyer and law student well-being. So Jen, thank you for being here today and welcome. JENNIFER LEONARD: Wow. Thank you so much, Chris and Bree. I'm so excited to be here. And thank you for that lovely introduction. BREE: You bet. So Jen, one of the things we always ask our guests because it provides such interesting information and background and insight into the people that we have with us, tell us what brought you into the lawyer/law student well-being movement. The people that work in this space and really care about it, they have a passion for the work. And typically, there's something that's driving that. So tell us a little bit about that, what that means for you. JENNIFER: Yeah. First of all, I'm so excited that there is an actual movement now around attorney well-being and law student well-being. BREE: Right. JENNIFER: That's an exciting development and a recent development, which I think many law students don't fully understand because they have arrived at law school at a time when the movement is accelerating and is growing which is fantastic. JENNIFER: I have first-hand experience being a law student who really struggled with well-being issues including depression and anxiety and also some of the really common things that law students experience, imposter syndrome, not fully understanding that I wasn't expected to know how to be a skilled attorney on day one. Most attorneys, hopefully, if they've had a really great practice will retire still growing and still learning new things. And I did not understand as a very confused and disoriented OneL that I was just at the beginning of a journey and I felt very isolated and very sort of inept in the environment and that was stunning to me because I had spent my whole life just absolutely loving school from being four years old and pretending to be a teacher in my basement with my friends all the way through graduating from college, it was just the place I felt most alive and most comfortable. JENNIFER: And law school was a completely different experience. I felt very uncomfortable from day one. My involvement in the well-being movement, I would say, is sort of an accident that followed from that experience which followed me into practice and I certainly experienced many of the challenges that the research shows around depression and anxiety in private practice. When I moved over to government work, because of the constraints of resources, you're just sort of thrown into the fire and forced to grow on your own. And that was actually really helpful for me for building confidence and learning that I actually had the capacity to do amazing things if I really gave myself the time to develop and the opportunity to develop. JENNIFER: So when I came to the law school in 2013 and started counseling law students, it was sort of a revelation to me as I sat across from younger versions of myself that they were saying to me the exact same things that I was saying in my own head as a OneL. And that was the first time even 10 years after law school that it occurred to me that I was not the only person who had this experience. And I really wanted to prevent future generations of law students from making the mistake and thinking they weren't capable and not allowing themselves to live up to their potential and contribute to society in the profession. JENNIFER: So I started building some programming, co curricular programming at first, and then programming that eventually became woven into our formal curriculum after the National Task Force report came out. And so I was just thrilled to see the movement grow over time and now to have part in leading some of those initiatives at the law school. CHRIS: Jen, today we're going to talk about the work of you and your colleagues at Penn Law. Let's set the stage a little bit. Tell us about Penn Law, your location, size, focus, types of students, and give us a flavor for the type of law school that you work within. JENNIFER: Well, I have the great pleasure of working at a phenomenal law school. The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School which is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We draw students from all over the world, approximately 250 incoming first-year JDs every year from all over the country and 115 LLM students from around the world who contribute just such a diversity and complexity of perspectives to our experience that we really are a global leader in legal education. And I'm excited to work at Penn as a broader university because its founder Benjamin Franklin really focused on two elements of education that I think are critical to our success. JENNIFER: One is a real focus on interdisciplinarity and learning across different disciplines about how to solve problems and that is a lot of what my work entails, building connections with our colleagues in innovation spaces across Penn's campus. And the second element is really bringing a blend of high-minded intellectual research and academic efforts in translating that work into things that can really have impact in the real world. And so it's the perfect place to be developing innovative projects including some of our work in the well-being space and seeing how that work translates in our profession. BREE: So speaking of innovation, I just think that you have the coolest job title I've ever seen. Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the Future of the Profession Initiative. Tell us about that. How did all that come about? And tell us about that initiative. JENNIFER: Oh, thank you. I love my job. I do get to have the coolest title. And I think if I were to make a long story short, I think it's that I chirped enough about all the changes I'd love to see in legal education and in the profession that somebody finally gave me the opportunity to focus just on that. And the longer story is that our dean was really interested in thinking about all the changes happening in the legal profession and how a leading law school really has both an obligation and an opportunity to respond to that change so that our students are entering the profession prepared with the skills they need to thrive and to also lead the profession into the next phase of its existence. JENNIFER: So I had the chance to work with colleagues across the law school and then through our advisory board of alumni all across the profession to iterate and refine the vision for what ultimately became the future of the profession initiative, which I now have the great honor and privilege of leading. CHRIS: Tell me about the scope of that initiative. I'm just curious what you're looking at and what you're hoping to poke and prod around into. JENNIFER: Sure. We have three different buckets of projects that we work on. And I'm part of a day-to-day team of three people, two of my colleagues Jim Sandman who is President Emeritus of Legal Services Corporation and now's our senior consultant and Miguel Willis who is the Executive Director of Access to Justice Tech Fellows which is now formally affiliated with FPI. And Jim, Miguel, and I and our colleagues work on developing new curricular and co curricular offerings that are responsive to the changing conditions in the legal profession. So Jim teaches courses on leadership in law, Miguel and our advisory board member Claudia Johnson teaches courses on law, technology, and access to justice, I teach courses on user center design for the better delivery of legal services. JENNIFER: And so we focus on teaching students about the skills that they need to respond to future conditions. We also focus on leading conversations across the profession of leaders who are doing really interesting things in legal. And those conversations take the form of a podcast, the Law 2030 podcast, a monthly newsletter where we bring in voices not only from the legal profession but from across Penn's campus, across other fields to help us navigate change, to teach us what they're doing in their respective environments that we can draw lessons from. And then finally, we're building out projects for impact, things that we can do from the unique position of being a research university that can have real-world impact. So Jim is working on a variety of projects related to regulatory reform, finding new ways to connect people with legal systems. Jim's focused also on court simplification and form simplification so that it's easier for individuals and small businesses to access the legal profession. JENNIFER: So we teach, we lead conversations and we do it all within the goal of transforming the way we deliver legal services to our clients. CHRIS: That sounds like pretty cool work. JENNIFER: It's so much fun- BREE: I know. JENNIFER: And really, really engaging and worthwhile and so lucky to do it. BREE: I just think you must be so excited to go to work every day. JENNIFER: Totally. CHRIS: Anyone who gets to put the word future in their job description, I think that's pretty fun to be able to look out at. JENNIFER: Oh, it's so fun. CHRIS: So Jen, you've been back now at Penn Law I think in a professional capacity for about eight years. Let's talk a little bit about what you're seeing in the law school environment. Share with our listeners some of the well-being issues you've seen coming out of the student body, issues that students are facing. And how have those issues affected their law school and, in many cases, their post law school experience? JENNIFER: Yeah. So I think, again, to draw from my own experience both as a law student who struggled with these issues and also as somebody who had the chance to counsel students in a career counseling capacity early on in my time at the law school, I would say the biggest thing that I saw and see among students is the idea of imposter syndrome. When you are in an environment where you're surrounded by really talented people who come from all different backgrounds, all different educational degrees, you look around and you think, "How can I be here with all of these smart people around me?" And then you have the opportunity to engage in Socratic dialogue with learned professors and legal scholars at the top of their fields. JENNIFER: And I found it to be, and in my experience talking with first-year law students, some of them also find it to be very overwhelming. And I think that helping them adopt a mindset, a learner's mindset, that you are here because you deserve to be here is a rigorous process for admission. And our admission's office doesn't make mistakes. You should be here. And you are here at the very beginning of what will be a very long journey where you will grow a significant amount over the course of your life. So expecting yourself to understand the complexities of law in the first couple months, I think, is unrealistic. And so helping students understand that all lawyers have been in their shoes, that the people around them who seem the most confident are frequently the ones who are struggling the most and sometimes that manifests as overconfidence or projection of overconfidence which can feed into that imposter syndrome. JENNIFER: And I think just helping students adopt a growth mindset that will allow them to, I don't like to use the word fail, I like to use the word learn, learn from missteps, learn from early misunderstandings of the law, learn even in their Socratic dialogue which was particularly challenging for me. I'm introverted by nature. And I viewed everything as a judgment on me and if I wasn't doing it perfectly, that meant I wasn't capable of doing it. And so supporting students in understanding that they are in a developmental process that is rigorous and at the end will benefit them tremendously if they can adopt that learner's mindset. BREE: I just love how you framed that and that must be so incredibly helpful for the students that you talk to. I definitely dealt with imposter syndrome. I know that a lot of people have but I didn't have the language for it. Do you talk to the students about, do you name it? Do you tell them what imposter syndrome is? JENNIFER: Yeah. I would say most students now coming in are familiar with it from their undergrad work or other graduate work, which is fantastic. As you know, Bree, there was no language when we were in law school for imposter syndrome. It didn't even exist. So we're already starting at a more advanced point. And also the concept of growth mindset is something that people are learning about at a younger and younger age. My kids are in daycare and kindergarten and are already learning about growth mindset. So in 20 years, we'll be admitting people to law school who either they don't need to learn learner's mindset and they don't need to learn the importance of growth mindset. We will be much more ahead of the game. JENNIFER: Now, I think we're in this exciting chapter where we're finally opening up the conversation and naming the issues as you're saying. And students are much more comfortable, I think, than our generation was at being open about the challenges, which is really, really not only helpful for advancing the conversation but helpful for your own mental health to be engaged with other people who are experiencing the same thing. CHRIS: Talk to us about some of the well-being initiatives that make you most proud. You've obviously put a lot of time and attention into creating a culture where people's issues are respected and there's vulnerability and empathy. Talk to us about what are some of the things that you are most proud of in terms of what it does and some of the things that you've been doing. JENNIFER: It's funny, Chris, because I will talk about the thing that we've done that I'm most proud of and on behalf of my colleagues because these are really collaborative efforts across the law school, not just from FPI. But also, what I'm most excited about for the future, but I would say that I'm most proud of our leadership at our school led by our dean really embracing the recommendations of the National Task Force report and developing the opportunity to come into all of our upper level professional responsibility courses which are the only courses that are required after the first year of law school. So it's the only course where we will reach every student before they graduate outside of what is a very challenging and jampacked first year curriculum and talk to the students about these issues and talk to them about what the task force revealed, the current state of the research, some of the potential causes for the challenges we see in the legal profession, why those challenges relate to the provision of legal services. JENNIFER: One thing that I've learned in doing this programming over the years to the great credit of the students is sometimes they don't want to focus as much on these issues just for their own benefit. And even though there are great benefits to doing that, what they really want to know is what does this have to do with being a lawyer? How does this impact my lawyering and my clients? And our solution to that was really to talk to them about exactly that. How does this impact the provision of service to your clients? How can you give the best legal counsel you're capable of if you're not well? How are the ways that we can elevate our well-being? And bringing in experts, I am not a mental health expert, I have the experience of being somebody who was challenged with these issues, but we bring in voices from the mental health community who are trained professionals to talk with the students about some of the challenges that professionals face. JENNIFER: And so I have been the most proud to work with my colleague John Hollway as well to deliver those lessons and guide those discussions in our professional responsibility courses. I'll also say that I was most excited, our dean offered the opportunity to all of the faculty who teach professional responsibility in the upper levels, this is not a mandate by any stretch of the imagination, it was just a chance for them to do it if they wanted. Every single professional responsibility faculty member welcomed us in, has repeatedly welcomed us to come back, and they were really excited to see the law school doing this. So that is what I would say I'm most proud of to date, and again, with my colleagues developing this. JENNIFER: What I'm most proud of in the future is moving into the next phase of that conversation and having a more unified discussion between law schools and legal employers and law firms so that we're not having one conversation at the law school level and helping students develop responsive coping behaviors to respond to stress that work in a law school environment but maybe don't work in practice to thinking about the environments and the systems within which we practice and seeing how we can transform those environments so that it's a shared responsibility between schools and employers and individual students and lawyers to really lift all boats and be sure that we can practice at the highest level. So that is the next phase of our work and we're actively thinking about how we can do that in the best possible way. CHRIS: Yeah. There's no doubt that the work that you are doing and, again, lots of folks in law schools are doing, if we prepare them for a profession that ultimately is very different than what we just did to create those senses of what practicing law's going to be like and if it's very different there's going to be a disconnect, as you mentioned. JENNIFER: Exactly. And we want to teach them skills that they're able to deploy over their entire career, not just skills that will work for the next year or two. How can we bring in more collaborative partners from practice so that we're bridging that gap, bridging that divide more? And how are we thinking about redeveloping systems so that people can have more balance in their life and really be healthier, happier lawyers who are better serving their clients? CHRIS: Yeah. JENNIFER: It's a huge task but one that- CHRIS: It is a huge task and maybe we can come back and touch on this coming back from the break. It feels like to be able to do that, you're going to have to bring those thought leaders in the legal environments into the law school though, almost have them go through their own reflection points about how they think about culture and how they value the attorneys within the firm from a well-being perspective. JENNIFER: And I think that's where we have the real ability to do that is our convening ability and we can do that and we can also bring in our colleagues from Penn Medicine and Penn Engineering. And what are their students and professionals experiencing? And then some of our psychology partners across campus to come in and talk about the complex interplay among professional satisfaction, finance, and some of these mental health conditions that elite professionals experience and how can we work together to come up with some new solutions to the problems. And I think that a law school is the perfect place to do that. CHRIS: Yeah. JENNIFER: And I would love to involve the students because I think that they would be really interested in having the conversation as well and having some agency and some involvement in driving that change. BREE: No doubt. CHRIS: Yeah. So let's take a quick break here because, again, I think we're getting into the meat and potatoes, so to speak, of what you're working to do and why it's going to be, I think, so important in terms of the future of our professionals. Let's take a short break. JENNIFER: Sounds great.   — Advertisement: Meet Vera, your firm's virtual ethics risk assessment guide developed by ALPS. Vera's purpose is to help you uncover risk management blind spots from client intake to calendaring to cyber security and more. Vera: I require only your honest input to my short series of questions. I will offer you a summary of recommendations to provide course corrections if needed and to keep your firm on the right path.   Generous and discreet, Vera is a free and anonymous risk management guide from ALPS to help firms like yours be their best. Visit Vera at https://www.alpsinsurance.com/vera. — BREE: So welcome back, everybody. And we have with us today Jen Leonard who is one of the, I'll say, one of the leading thought leaders around well-being for law students. She is joining us today from Penn Law. And continue in the conversation, Jenn, I think what I'd really like for us to talk about now is focus in on what advice you can give to our listeners out there who are with a law school who are thinking about how to implement some programs, maybe something you've mentioned, something that they have decided they want to pursue on their own. And one of the biggest things within a large school is to get buy in from leadership and I heard you say earlier on that you do have buy in from your top leadership. How did that happen with the administration? And how did you get buy in from the faculty? JENNIFER: So amazing question. Yes. I would say the biggest driver of our success is really the leadership of our dean who is very interested in these topics and interested in supporting our students in developing into the best attorneys they can be. And I can't overstate how much that matters. Our faculty, I would say, are similarly supportive and the culture at our school is, we joke that people talk about it as a collegial culture all the time, but it really is this Quaker-based culture of collegiality and collaboration. So I feel very, very fortunate and maybe uniquely situated as compared with some of your listeners who might be trying to build these programs at other schools. JENNIFER: But what I would say is even if you don't have those conditions, I would not be discouraged. What I would do is I would be strategic. If you want to start well-being initiatives at your own law school, I would say start small and find the people who will be the cheerleaders for you who have voices that people will listen to. One group of voices that are really compelling to faculty and administrators alike are students. So if you have students coming to you who are interested in these topics, and as I said, I think students coming into law school now are so much more well-versed in these issues from their undergrad and other experiences that the movement is growing even among students. So being able to channel those voices and respond to them as an administration is really important. If you can find a faculty member who is really interested or who has had experience with students in their classes who have been challenged around some of these issues and would like to help you build a program, that's fantastic. JENNIFER: But you can build co curricular offerings, I would say that's the best way to start is to offer programs, maybe a brown bag lunch from students at lunchtime, bring in some alumni who are interested in this. I find in my experience that alumni who are practicing law and who are experiencing the stresses of practicing law are really, really interested in reaching back and supporting new law students and they're also really well-respected among the student body. And it also doesn't cost a lot of money usually to bring in an alum to have lunch with students and especially now that we do so many things on Zoom, have some of your alumni Zoom in and talk about things they wish they'd known when they were law students and how they've grown over time. As I said, it doesn't have to be expensive. But if you start small and you're willing to learn and you're willing to get feedback from students on how to improve and iterate the programming over time, then you can start building from there. CHRIS: Jen, it feels like what you're also inferring, correct me if I'm misstating it, is that you are in your effort to nurture the culture within the law school itself, there certainly is a student centric approach to that and just trying to understand where they're at, why they're there, again, how we can assist them on the journey, not just from a law knowledge perspective but also the mental approach to preparing them to become a lawyer down the road? JENNIFER: That's absolutely right. And I love that you say a student centric approach. In our sort of general innovation programming outside of well-being, we're really focused on human centered design. So if you apply that lens to the law student experience, what are we as administrators providing to our students and what is that provision of education and experience like from their perspective? And the way to do that is to really have conversations with student groups, maybe you have a student group in your building that you don't even know about that is focused on well-being. We have a wellness committee of students who are interested in these topics, so meeting with them and learning about what they would find really helpful and building support from there, I would say. Bringing the student voice in is critical though. CHRIS: Yeah. And I know, again, I graduated from a law school class that had 75 students which is significantly less than your incoming classes. And it certainly feels like the faster that you create communities of students together or feeling that you can find people that you can relate to within the law school environment, the more that you got people that just feel more comfortable, avoid the imposter syndrome, and then hopefully we're preparing them for an opportunity to prosper as they go through the law school journey. JENNIFER: That's right. And I think also one other tip could be maybe if you feel that the environment's not receptive to well-being programming or you're having trouble gaining traction, there are programs that you can create that are not explicitly well-being programs but that have the corollary benefit of creating enhanced well-being in your institution. And those programs can be about team building and collaboration and legal practice skills and how those interpersonal impact skills are really being deployed in practice. And they have the benefit of building community among the students, as my colleague John talks about it. He talks about it like fluoride in the water, that you don't really know that it's there but in the end it has the impact of building a healthier environment around you. BREE: Let's talk about getting to the nitty gritty, which is the cost of some of these programs which could be another barrier for somebody to implement. What is, I guess, the fiscal impact of the programs that you put together? And do you have any suggestions for people about that? JENNIFER: I would say that most of the programming we have done costs virtually nothing to do aside from maybe the cost of providing lunch, if you're providing lunch to your students. Having alumni come in and do a panel discussion about some of these issues, if you're at a law school that's connected with a broader university that has a counseling and psychological services group where you can have trained mental health professionals come in and have a conversation with students will cost nothing. Even the professional responsibility module we built out costs nothing to do, other than the energy investment in building the program and engaging our professors and getting their buy in. It is a lot of sweat equity that you will put into these programs but the actual cost of running them is minimal, I would say. JENNIFER: So I would say no matter what your law school's budget is, not to be deterred around having these conversations of building a community that is supportive of them. CHRIS: Bree knows that one of the, I sit in a management role at an insurance company, so we're always data geeks about trying to figure out how do we measure success. And again, the well-being space is such an interesting one in terms of how do you know that you're, so to speak, advancing the ball? How do you feel like you're making an impact in terms of, again, preparing students for the practice of law? And as you think about your work on a day-to-day basis, are there certain metrics that you look at or is it a little bit more instinctual and you just know that you're making an impact but in small and significant ways? JENNIFER: Yeah. I would say our return on investment are the qualitative reports that we have from students and alumni versus more hard data. We've certainly used research from other places to guide our efforts so some of the research that Sheldon and [Krieger 00:34:20] have done about the shift from intrinsic motivation to extrinsic motivation in the first year we fold into our conversations with students. But in terms of measuring outcomes, I think professional skill development is notoriously difficult to measure impact around but I talk with alumni who are five or six years now who seem to me to be very healthy and happy and thriving and really happy with their law school experience because of the community, and it's not because of the well-being programs in particular, but because of the community that we've been able to cultivate here and the support that we provide to our students. JENNIFER: And we take a tremendous amount of feedback and we have been careful about measuring the feedback from students in the PR modules and finding ways to pivot and iterate and adjust to student feedback. And one of the pieces of feedback that I referenced earlier or the place where we want to move next is thinking about these systems. So students are curious about how our environment's adapting to the research that people in the profession are doing around some of these challenges and how can we be a part of that as well. So it's more qualitative admittedly than quantitative but it's certainly I can feel a shift. I know that it's a different environment from when I was a student there and I can only say from the students to whom I have said, "You are not alone in this," those of us in the building have experienced this that the look of relief and sometimes surprise is really significant feedback to me. BREE: Yeah. Jen, just before we wrap up I just have to acknowledge the time we're in and the context of this podcast which is coming up on a year and a half in the pandemic. So can you talk a little bit about the impact of that on your student body and what you guys at Penn Law have done to address that? JENNIFER: So what I can talk about, Bree, is how we adapted the module that we present to the students and the professional responsibility course. We adapted it pretty significantly over the last year and a half in response to all of the things that happened in 2020, the pandemic, the dislocation, the disconnection in our communities, the social uprising around racial injustice across the globe, the political polarization that we're all experiencing. It's been a lot to process and then to sit and talk with law students about their well-being, the conversation had to be different than the conversation we were having with them in December of 2019. BREE: Absolutely. JENNIFER: Some of the adjustments that we made were bringing in more voices from our counseling and psychological services offices, particularly counselors that are trained on racial identity coming in to talk with students about the experience of being historically under represented person or group in a majority institution at a time when we're going through everything that we're going through. So we brought in that element to our conversations. JENNIFER: We also brought in junior alumni who are in practice to share some of their experiences on the ground, which was a response to student feedback that they really wanted to hear from our recent graduates about specifically some of the things that they're dealing with in practice and how they're responding to them. We talked a lot about toxic positivity. So there have been articles about the idea that telling people they should be adopting positive mindsets in the face of everything that's happening is not helpful and that it's okay right now not to feel okay. And I would say that our approach really was much more student led this year. We really wanted to hear from students how they were responding to the stressful conditions, what had been helpful to them, what were their anxieties and concerns, and then having a trained mental health professional in the room with us to respond to that, and also some people who were dealing with the issues in practice. It was a much more team-oriented approach I think to having these conversations. And I hope it was a more supportive experience for the students and gave them the opportunity to process some of the things they were dealing with. CHRIS: Jen, I want to ask maybe one more question. I have to imagine that as you've visualized where a student starts and where a student walks across the podium and receives that diploma is a journey in the law school. When you look at that journey, are you visualizing what does first year look like, what does second year look like, what does third year look like from a wellness perspective and how you're trying to nurture that as a complement to the curriculum? JENNIFER: Yeah. I think as the programming has evolved, we have definitely adjusted the programming to be more developmentally appropriate depending on the level of experience of the student. So to your point, there are very specific times during the first year of law school that are different in nature than the stressors that our second and third-year students face. So thinking about how stressful it is about a month in advance of your first set of law school exams and how are we helping students feel supported there versus when they're getting close to practice and we're having more contextualized conversations about the rigors of practice itself and some of the stressors that they face in client representation. And that was how we evolved into having a more upper level approach that is also combined with our still ongoing and fantastic professionalism program that is offered in the first year which is co curricular. JENNIFER: So we have been thoughtful about adjusting depending on where the student is. I would say another hallmark of our dean's leadership and our current approach to legal education is really taking a lifelong view of the formation of a lawyer. So you referenced the podium which is a perfect visual, Chris, for thinking about where you are at that point and what is to come and how we as a law school can continue to be your partner. And we've done alumni programming on attorney well-being that is a more advanced version of the PR module that we do and the reception to that is different because, of course, our alumni are actually in practice and have different contexts than our students have. And we have even deeper conversations with them about what it's like to be in practice and what some of the well-being challenges are there. JENNIFER: So we are definitely taking a, no pun intended, a graduated approach to the way that we talk with students about well-being. And I would also say too, I wanted to go back to the question about tips for people developing these programs in their schools. I would say too if the sense is or if you anticipate pushback being that it's too warm and fuzzy or it's diluting the rigor of the program, something to that effect. What I would say is that when I think about the way that we're supporting students, it should be a really intense physical workout. You don't want somebody who's leading a really rigorous exercise session to go easy on you because at the end you're not going to feel like you grew at all. What you do want is a coach to help you work through the really tough parts which is where the transformation happens and I think the analogy works for lawyer formation. JENNIFER: There are really, really tough parts where as a student I didn't feel that supported and I felt very alone. And I think I probably did not push through and grow in the way that I could have had I had a bit more coaching and get more support and that's how I think about the service that we're providing by implementing well-being programming along the way. CHRIS: Yeah. And I think it's interesting that the firms that are likely hiring your students are also now talking a little bit more about the wellness components associated with, in the talent acquisition process. And I'm wondering whether you're doing something similar. You're a highly-respected law school, whether your commitment to this particular issue of well-being and wellness of the student body as part of the experience is also coming into play as you think about the recruitment and the admissions process. JENNIFER: I haven't actively thought about how it would be appealing to applicants to law school. I think as a school, again, our collegial nature is our hallmark and what we think makes us a very strong community where ideally people would want to come and learn. But I think you're right in the sense that increasingly students and aspiring professionals are looking to be in environments where they can grow and learn and be tested and challenged but also supported and develop really strong connections along the way and feel great about what they're doing. And so to the extent that that is a secondary benefit, that's fantastic. I think savvy legal employers are thinking about how to better support their attorneys so that they are not losing that talent. JENNIFER: I think one of the really undesirable outcomes of our failure to pay attention to these issues for so long is the hemorrhaging of enormous amounts of talent from the profession. BREE: Absolutely. JENNIFER: And imagine what we can accomplish together if we just adjusted and had deeper conversations and develop new solutions so that we keep all that brilliant talent working to support the health of society. BREE: Wow. CHRIS: What a great way to end the podcast. I think that's exactly right and indicative, Jen, of again why we see you and your experience at Penn Law as being so much a part of, again, realizing the potential of our profession and how important it is that we focus on these particular areas. Any closing comments, Jen, before we close it out? JENNIFER: Thank you so much for having me on. And again, I really just want to give credit to the entire Penn Law community, alumni, students, colleagues, faculty, staff, administration. This is a team effort and I have the honor of being a spokesperson today but it is far from a solo mission. CHRIS: Well Jen, we certainly are very thankful and grateful for all of your contributions and, again, I think there's a lot of takeaways in your experience at Penn Law that I think can really have ... If our goal ultimately is to engineer a culture shift in the profession, it starts with individuals like you and we thank you so much for your work and your leadership. BREE: We have much to learn. JENNIFER: Thank you so much. BREE: Yeah. JENNIFER: Thank you both so much for what you do to drive this conversation and lead thoughts and conversations like this. So grateful. CHRIS: Yeah. That was Jennifer Leonard of Penn Law School. And again, we'll be back in a couple weeks with Janet Stearns of the Miami School of Law as we continue and close out our law school focus. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in a couple weeks.

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, Well-Being friends, welcome to The Path to Well-Being in Law Podcast, an initiative of The Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, Executive Vice President of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And, boy, how exciting is it that we're actually moving into the summer months? I always feel like well-being takes a natural elevated state in the summer months. We're also coming off of a really exciting Well-Being in Law week, and I'm joined by my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, I'd just love to hear your reflections on, again, a May event that's really become a foundational element in the well-being horizon, as we think about bringing people together and shining a light on well-being. What were your reflections on this year's Well-Being Week in Law? BREE BUCHANAN: Good morning. Hey, Chris. So that was just... It's such an amazing event, and it's really become a signature event for The Institute for Well-Being in Law. This is our second year to do it. We didn't necessarily have people sign up, but we were able to look at things like the analytics, the people coming to our website, all of that doubled over last year. We had so much energy and excitement around that, and many people involved. We had the actual... the whole week for the Well-Being Week in Law, every day programming. And then this year, we added the after-party, which two weeks later, we did another full week of programming around the different dimensions of well-being for the professionals in this space, the people who are tasked with law firms, with... coming up with well-being programming. That's really an area that the institute is focused on, and supporting the movement and all the people that are out there that are part of this movement. So, it was a great event. What did you think? CHRIS: Yeah, I thought was fantastic, again. One of our goals on the podcast is to build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates. I think one of the great results of the week was just, again, a mobilization an army of folks who are really interested in this particular issue. We would be remiss without recognizing one of our colleagues, Bree, Anne Bradford, and all of the work that she did to really both initiate, and has really been building some significant momentum in building this community through events like Well-Being Week in Law. BREE: Absolutely. The community and just the partnerships that she's helping us create, really valuable. CHRIS: I think the folks interested in receiving mailings and communications from the institute, I think went up to like 1,400. Again, just a testament to the number of folks who are really passionate about this issue and want to see it remain at the forefront as we look to improve the profession. So that's awesome. Let's move into our podcast today. We're, again, super excited. We've taken a little bit of a pivot. In our first 10 to 12, 15 podcasts, we really focused on some individuals in the movement. We've been moving to a little bit of a mini series format. We started with law schools, and now we're really excited to delve into the intersection of well-being and research, and research into the well-being cause. There's been, in a lot of professions, probably a lot more empirical research. We certainly are moving into that space in terms of specifically looking at lawyers, research, well-being, happiness. I know, Bree, we are super excited about our guest today, who's going to kick off our research miniseries, Larry Krieger from Florida State University. Bree, I know that you've known Larry for a lot of years, I'm going to give you the honors of introducing Larry. But we are really excited about our podcast today in the intersection of well-being and the happiness of lawyers, which is, again, something I've been really excited to get into. BREE: Right. I am delighted Larry is somebody I've looked up to and look to as such a real expert in this space ever since I started working in this area, which was 2009. So, let me just give everybody an introduction. Professor Larry Krieger is a widely-recognized expert in lawyer well-being, and particularly, I think, he's known for his study and work around What Makes Lawyers Happy? And we'll get to hear more about that. That study, in particular, was research on 6,200 lawyers, and identified the specific factors that are required for lawyer wellness and satisfaction and basically, happiness. The New York Times report article on that study was the most shared article in The Times for the following two days. So a lot of buzz about that when it came out in 2015. Larry was the founding Chair of the section on balance and legal education for the Association of American Law Schools. He was a litigator for 11 years, so he knows what it's like to be in the trenches. Part of that was Chief Trial Counsel for the Florida Controller, and he now teaches litigation skills and professionalism at the Florida State University College of Law. He is rightly-so recognized as one of the 25 teachers in the Harvard Press Book, entitled, What the Best Law Teachers Do. Finally, I got to meet Larry in person when I presented to him in 2018 at CoLAP Meritorious Service Award, which is given, really, for a lifetime distinction in the work that addresses mental health and substance abuse issues in the profession. That is a small introduction to all that Larry has done in this space. So, Larry, welcome. We're so glad you're here. I want to ask you a question of what we ask for all of our guests. We start off with asking, what brought you to the well-being movement? We have found that just about for all of our guests, and certainly for all of us who are involved in the institute, there's some sort of personal life experience, something that drives our passion for this work. So, what can you tell us about your experience? And welcome, Larry. LARRY KRIEGER: Well, first, thank you so much. It really is a pleasure and an honor to get to talk to you both, and thank you for the amazing work that you both are doing them and all the people out there. Funny story. So what brought me to it was my first wife, who... way back then, she had actually been dating Mike Love, the lead singer for the Beach Boys, when the Beach Boys learned meditation. BREE: Okay. LARRY: Remember [inaudible 00:07:27] back in the late '60s or something. So we're going back a little ways here. I've been around. So I was in law school at the time, actually, I was miserable, and we heard that this meditation teacher, Transcendental Meditation, at the time, was coming to town. And she said, "Oh, let's go." And I said [inaudible 00:07:50]. And so she dragged me in there. I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard. We walked out, she was glowing. Like, this is fabulous, thought [inaudible 00:07:59], brother. They wanted 35 bucks for you to learn this technique, I thought this is for the birds. So she learned it, and she changed within two weeks. She was a different person. BREE: Wow. LARRY: So I said, "Okay, I want to learn it, too." Then it took me months to get into it, because the teacher didn't come back for three months. So it was just really good luck. It transcended my own ignorance, honestly. And then I was unhappy in law school, and actually quit law school. It took me eight years to get through law school, which I love telling students when they're discouraged. BREE: Right. LARRY: I just didn't like it. The reason I didn't like it is everybody there was so unhappy. I had already been in the Air Force through the Vietnam War, and I was a little older and stuff going to law school, and I thought, everybody is so serious. Oh, my God. Nobody's got their leg shot off. BREE: Right. LARRY: I just kept quitting law school, because I just didn't like being around. It was so serious and negative. So yeah, that was on me. I've learned to have better boundaries. But that's how I got involved. Then when I finally became a lawyer, I noticed how unhappy the lawyers were. BREE: Right. LARRY: [inaudible 00:09:14]. Come on, guys. Even the super successful ones were just ramped up, tense, pushy, on edge all the time. Of course, by then I had been meditating for a while, and so I it was keeping me chilled out. I was prosecuting in West Palm. We had the sixth highest crime rate in the country at the time. So it's not like it was... I was dodging the bullets and avoiding the trenches, like you say. But just, do your job and then go home and have a nice life. So what got me involved was good luck, certainly not my own intelligence, and then just seeing what was going on in front of me. BREE: Right, right. Absolutely. CHRIS: Well, Larry, you've... Certainly, when you look back on your research and scholarship, it now goes back almost 20 years. I know that you've been thinking about it even longer than that. In some respects, you've been a disruptor in our space before it was even a thing. If you look back on some of your titles, I just I marvel at the fact that you saw so much of this so early, that even though the movement is where it is today, again, you were talking about a two decades ago. Some of your titles included Institutional Denial About the Dark Side of Law, and I think that was published in 2002. Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students, again, 2002. Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? 2004. What were you seeing among your students that brought you to engage in this type of research and scholarship? LARRY: Yeah, thanks. Let me just say [inaudible 00:10:55] just like me starting meditation and getting a bigger picture on life than what I had up to that point. I got lucky and got this job. I wasn't looking for a job, I had a marvelous job of chasing Ponzi schemes out of the State of Florida for the state comptroller, like Bree already mentioned. But I just got lucky and got into this job through happenstance, and it gave me time to start thinking. What I saw immediately was... I think I started this job in '91. I just passed 30 years. Yay. Had a little lunch with the dean, and it was really sweet. So it was a good ways after I had been in law school all those years, and seeing all the unhappiness there. When I got into teaching, I realized nothing has changed. Nothing. And I thought, "Okay, well, I've got some time here. I'm going to try to write about it." Actually, the first article I wrote was in '99. I'm not on tenure track, so writing all that negative stuff is a little tricky for me, but I figured, honestly, what the hell? I wouldn't mind going back to being a prosecutor or a lawyer. If they don't like me, they can just get rid of me, but I'm not going to keep my mouth shut. But the first one I wrote was in '99, and it was called What We're Not Telling Law Students - And Lawyers - That They Really Need to Know. In that article, I was just going from my experience, but I was saying we really need to research this. And then shortly after that, just, again, through happenstance, I ran into a fabulous empirical psychologist who was willing to work with me, Ken Sheldon. So, off we went. BREE: There you go. I really relate to what you're saying. I graduated from law school in 1989, and then had the opportunity, about 15 years later, to go back and lead a clinical program there, and it was the same thing. I saw students were still unhappy, stressed out, everything happened around a keg, alcohol flowed through every event. And then actually, when I got to the lawyers Assistance Program and went back to law schools talking, 10 or so years later, it was the same thing, there just hadn't been any shift. I want to talk to you a little bit. My experience with you, my first Larry Krieger encounter... When I started working at the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program in 2009, I came across your booklet that spoke to me so loudly, it was The Hidden Sources of Law School Stress, in which you openly wrote about the dark side of the law school experience, and it just rang so true for me. I was so impacted by that. Tell me what it was like during that period of time to write about these things. It's like sort of the emperor has no clothes, you were going out proclaiming. Just the same truth at the heart of the matter in the profession. How was that received? LARRY: Well, good question. That book's been a thrill for me and me. It turned out that half the law schools in the country and also in Australia and Canada, more than half of them have used the book with their students in bulk. So, that was a thrill. I'm writing a new one now. I'll explain why I decided to take a new tack. But hopefully, that'll be out at the end of the summer for fall students, if I'm lucky. The first thing I started doing before I wrote that is I started talking to clinical conferences, because I'm a clinical teacher, I teach litigation skills. And every time I would give a talk on this well-being, I never saw any other talks on it. It's so wonderful to see the movement now. When I started doing this, it was weird. But rooms would always fill up. There were so many teachers that would say, "This is so important. I wish I'd heard this when I was in law school." And I would say, "I wish I'd heard it law school." BREE: Me too. LARRY: Right. So somebody needed to start saying it. So that was really good. And then our dean of student asked me to give a talk to an early orientation group one summer here, that came pre [inaudible 00:15:49] law school, and I gave this little talk, and it really went well. What I did is I... This is where the booklet came from. I asked them, "So what are you worried about? Let's list everything you're worried about on the board, everything you're afraid of." And then we're going to shoot it all down, one at a time. So they listed it on the board, I explained why they shouldn't stress about it, and then I woke up the next morning [inaudible 00:16:14] you know that was really a lot of good things. And it all came from them, I thought I had to write this down. So I sent out a little summary to this listserv that I had started by then on humanizing legal education, and people wrote back and said, "Oh, can I use it? Can I use it? Can I use it?" And I said, "Okay, I got to put this into a publication." So I was already getting a lot of positive feedback from my community, which was the community of people who actually care about the well-being and happiness of... and sanity, really, of law students and lawyers. I've learned to focus on the people that are supportive, I just don't focus on the other people. [crosstalk 00:16:56]. BREE: Words of wisdom. CHRIS: Well, Larry, obviously, we're shifting a little bit in the podcast here to a three-part series focusing on research, and we just would really enjoy focusing now on your 2015 seminal work that really helped set the stage for the entire well-being movement. Your work, What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success Redefine Professional Success was really at the forefront. It was a large research project that you conducted with Ken Sheldon. Tell us about the survey, what inspired you to do it, who you surveyed, just setting the stage for what you ultimately found. LARRY: Sure, Thanks, Chris. That came out so well, too. I was shocked at how well... After we publish that, I had a lot of people from different journals and the press [inaudible 00:17:54] and they asked me if there are any surprises in there. Really, the main surprise was that we were right. Everything we predicted came out, and even stronger than I would have imagined. I really encourage folks who are listening to this, take a look at this study, because there's a graph in there of the results, and you can see it in a picture. It's so striking. It's on SSRN, Social Science Research Network, ssrn.com, and it's called What Makes Lawyers Happy?. But what came out of it was that success does not make lawyers happy. That's why The New York Times had such a buzz with it. BREE: Right. LARRY: We were actually able to quantify exactly what's making lawyers happy, and we were able to show, with numbers, it's not the money, it's not the partnership, the junior partners were not any happier than the senior associates in the big firms, not even a bit. Even though they were making 70% more money, and they were partners now, nothing changed. The idea came from because we started researching law students before that, and we were in some of those journals you mentioned with the institutional denial and understanding the negative effects, all that business. I wanted to be sure that what we found in law students actually was going in the direction that the studies predicted, and that lawyers were suffering from the same exact problems. So it really took seven years to get that study done, because I had to get bar associations. Five state bar associations agreed to participate and put their bar members through this survey. I got CLE credit assigned to the lawyers- BREE: Wow. LARRY: ... who were willing do it because it was a long survey. And then one of the states backed out at the last minute, a really big one. So otherwise, we'd have had 10,000 lawyers instead of 6,000, but results would have been identical. But I think they thought it's going to be too hot politically. BREE: Right. LARRY: I think they were afraid that we were going to show what we ended up showing, which is everything that the profession thinks is important, actually isn't important, other than helping clients, and everything that the profession thinks isn't important, like spending time with your family and taking care of yourself, actually is important, and those are the things that's going to make you happy. So, it took years to get that research in but, but we pulled it off. BREE: I see it was just sort of... The findings are just bombshell findings for me. I actually printed out, and I'm looking right now at that graph, and it is so incredibly demonstrative. When you're looking at what really moves the dial on subjective well-being or happiness, are things like autonomy, relatedness, internal motivation, the intrinsic values. So those are long bars on the graph. And then you get to income, class rank, making partner, Law Review, and the bars on that graph drop by like 75% or something. It is just striking visually to see this. Can you talk just briefly a little bit about this divide between the extrinsic and intrinsic values, sort of digging into the secret of happiness? LARRY: Yeah, great point. Thanks for bringing that up. I'm actually looking at it. I did a follow-up booklet to that, Hidden Sources of Law School Stress, that extended out to lawyers too, after this study came out. I have a few of those left. I'm trying not to sell them much anymore, and I'll tell you why at the end here. But it also has that chart in it. It's called The Hidden Stresses of Law School and Law Practice, because they really are hidden stresses. They're mis-assumptions. What these bars mean, is basically, that the human connections that we make, if I could put it in a nutshell, the human connections that we make are everything for the happiness of a lawyer or a judge. They are everything. What these buyers stand for is our connection to ourself, autonomy. Really, the way we measure it is integrity or authenticity. Are you a whole person? Are you true to what you say? Do you follow your own values, or are you two-faced? The negative stereotype of lawyers would be anti-autonomy and anti-integrity. So that's the number one factor, are you well-connected with yourself? And who is, in modern society? What is ourself, even? [inaudible 00:23:00]. And then the next one's obvious, relatedness to other people. Are you closely connected with other people? Not are you around them? Not, do you tell them what to do? But do you feel a close intimate connection with them? The third one and the fourth one have to do with work, do you feel competent at your work, and are you motivated to do your work because you care about it? In other words, is- BREE: Right. LARRY: ... are you connected to it? Not just, are you doing it to pay the bills, but does it give you meaning and purpose in your life? Does it give you joy? So those are the top four, and then autonomy, support, relationship to supervisor. So those are the things. They're way up there as far as predicting well-being. If you don't have those, you're not going to be happy. BREE: Right. LARRY: These numbers are so huge. And then when you get down to made partner, like I said, it's .00. It had no effect on the lawyers, at all, being on Law Review, what all the law students get the most depressed about. .00 and for the layers, it had no effect. Income is very modest, it's .19. These others are .65. BREE: I mean, you just turned it all on its head, Larry. First, when I would see these, I would think I... I would question the validity of the study, almost, because it's so striking against what we're taught and inculcated to believe. But it's a huge set of people that you surveyed, so I'm a believer. It also resonates with me. There's what we've been told, but it resonates with me because it's my lived experience. I believe it, because that's... what I experienced is true, what you found. So, anyway. LARRY: Yeah, thanks for that. If you look at scriptures since time began, in any culture, whatever, they all say the same thing. BREE: Right. LARRY: Right? BREE: Yeah. LARRY: All the music that sells tons and all the movies that are so popular, it's all about love, not money. We actually did a factor analysis. Again, I got lucky. My brother's a math genius, PhD type neuroscience person, and when he saw these results, he said, "Oh, you should do a factor analysis." I said, "What's a factor analysis?" He said, "Well, tell Ken Sheldon. He'll know." You can see I've been led by the nose all the way through my life in this. So we did a factor analysis, [inaudible 00:25:35] in a nutshell, looks at all these top factors for well-being and what my brother said, and it turned out to be true. So those are so big and so close in numbers, that it's going to turn out that they're really saying the same thing. They're not actually five different things, they're going to be one. One thing that's more fundamental. So Sheldon, it took them five minutes when I emailed him, and he said, "Yeah, he's right. There is one thing that's accounting for most of this variability in all of them." He said, "Good luck. Now you have to figure out what it is. I'm just a psychologist, you're the lawyer, because Matthew won't tell you that." Over the years, I did, I think, figure it out, and I've already explained it to you, it's the feeling of connectedness. I tried to think, what is it that makes me feel good when I tell the truth, or when I do what I think is important to me, or when I hug someone, or when I do work that matters, or when I look at a sunset and I feel joy? What is it that they all have in common? It's feeling connected to life. More or life? So I think that's the key to everything going forward, is how do we get lawyers to think bigger, make the box bigger. Because the box we grew up with, that we assumed was going to work does not work. This research shows it so clearly with numbers. We have to get outside that box and think bigger for ourselves. CHRIS: Larry, you've obviously studied this in the context of lawyers, but I just... It's hard not to think about this and say what you've learned about lawyers is really the fact that we are human beings before we are lawyers, and if we take care of ourselves and the relationship and the connectedness... In your study, you talk about what a profile of a happy lawyer is. You could probably replace that with a profile of what a happy person is, and it's going to be equally applicable. LARRY: No question. Actually, that's how we set up the study, is we had all these hypotheses based on research on "normal people", or regular people, not lawyers. That's how we had set up our studies of law students to start with, is using self-determination theory, which had never really been tested on lawyers. That's what I meant when I said, I was just surprised how well it all bore out. These numbers are enormous. Correlations with happiness for each of these factors is like two thirds of a perfect correlation. If you have any one of those five, you're way up there already. But if you're missing any one of the five, you're really missing a lot. So, yeah. Actually, toward the end of the study itself, again, on ssrn.com, I talk about how lawyers are normal people. This is exactly what we would get with normal people. I got to say, I'm a little bit proud about this study because I don't think there's another one that quantifies it like this. This was a another bold step. Once we were getting these results, I asked Ken, I said, "Sir, is there any way we can actually measure these out, not just with P values, which is a probability?" Because they were all highly significant, so they all looked the same. But to show which ones are the strongest. He said, "Yeah, there's these Pearson correlations, these standardized correlation." So he sent me some articles to read about that. And I said, "Let's do that." That's how you actually get these numbers. Because you can't really compare... Bree, you mentioned, you can't really compare how much money you make with how close you feel to your children. They're on two different scales, one's in dollars, and one is in subjective warm and fuzzy feelings. So we were able to do those comparisons and show, for example, that earning more money is a .19 correlation with happiness, whereas having integrity, what we're always pushing lawyers about, is a .66. It's three and a half times as strong. We had to do that with the mathematical conversion into standard. So he was able to do that. Like you said, Bree, I expected to get just hammered once this study came out by people saying, this is garbage, and your methodology is garbage and this and that. Haven't had a single complaint about it, I think partly because every single thing we looked at in the study... And there's probably 50 or 60 correlations in here that people will be interested in like, what about having children? What about being married or a long term relationship? What about how many vacation days you take? What about how big a city you live in? What about the rank of your law school? We were able to compare all those, and everything came out consistently. So each of the findings confirmed each of the other findings. BREE: Right. CHRIS: Larry, first of all, you should be proud of your study. Again, I think it was more, ultimately, reaffirming than anything else, what many of us suspected. So, hey, let's take time to take a quick break. We certainly want to come back after the break and talk about implications of the study, some advice that you have, and then where you're going on the research front from here. So let's take a short break, and we'll be right back. — ADVERTISEMENT: Your law firm is worth protecting, and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and find coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard, our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com. — CHRIS: Okay. Welcome back to the podcast. We have Larry Krieger here, who published a seminal study, What Makes Lawyers Happy?. Larry, I'm curious, if you had an audience of a group of big law CEOs, HR officers, based on what you've learned, what words of advice would you give to them about having and nurturing successful lawyers? Because obviously, successful lawyers are the key to a successful firm and are, I think, the foundation of, ultimately, serving society as problem solvers. What advice would you have? LARRY: It'd probably be what I'm telling you two. You're CEOs of your organization. [inaudible 00:32:42] being proud of the study. I'm really smiling here so big while I'm talking to you all, because I'm really happy that it came out the way it did. It's wonderful, because I think it's helpful for people, if they take a look at it. I've already intimated what I would want to tell people, is we have to think bigger. Look, when I went to law school, this all started for me. I guess I was somewhat instrumental in getting it going in other circles and in legal education in particular. It started for me because I came with a different perspective. I came from outside the legal perspective. I had gone to college, I'd gone into the military, I'd seen some serious life-threatening situations, and some soldiers who didn't make it that I was transporting here and there. I lived in different countries. I not only took meditation, but I actually taught meditation. So I came with an outside-the-box perspective. And then when I came to law school, I said, "Oh, this box is too small. We have to think bigger. People are not coming to law school expecting to be happy. You've got to think bigger about your life." It was like a merit badge to be so stressed and stay up and be studying and having big circles on your eyes. I don't even want to be around this. This is just bad thinking. The more powerful you are, the more you know what it takes to be happy, usually. Now, that may not be true in our political system anymore. Those people are not happy, I don't care what party you're in. But as you become more successful, you should be becoming more happy. If you're not happy, you're not successful. There are great quotes from great philosophers that happiness is the highest form of success, and that has to be true. So first of all, I would tell CEOs, and I also tell law students the same thing, the highest form of success you can have is to really be deeply, consistently happy. If something sad happens, be sad, be in touch with your feelings. Everything you're doing, you went to law school, why? To become happy. You're making money. Why? To make you happy. You got married. Why? So you'd be happy. You had children. Why? Right? You're going to retire. Why? You'll be happier. Everything is for that, but we put it aside and get lost in the details. BREE: I want to ask you about your current research, and we'll make sure we have time to talk about that. It sounds like you're doing a bit of a pivot in your focus. Tell us about that. LARRY: I think is that the research is so helpful, it will challenge people. Because they may think, "Oh, my gosh, I've spent all my time doing this, and now I need to shift." You just need to make an internal shift, keep doing what you're doing, because you're good at it, but stop thinking that winning or being the greatest is going to make you happy. Just keep doing it because you're good at it and you're competent at it, and you can help people. That will make you happy. So it's this connectedness to self, to others, and to purpose that shows up in the study as being so strong for making people happy. If you don't have it, you're simply not going to be happy. That's what these numbers mean. So once we get there and we accept that, then I started thinking, "Well, how can I really teach my litigation students? Because they're stressed out, they're trying to learn this high pressure stuff, and they're going to lose lots of cases, just like I did. And I need to get them ready for that." So I started thinking, "Well, what's the most important connection that we could have?" And it comes right from that factor analysis, it's really our connection to life. Our connection to life. When we first got this research, and then the analysis, I thought, "Well, what's the difference between me feeling well-connected to you and caring about you guys, and the difference with me making lots of money and feeling well-connected to my money?" Why isn't that so satisfying? The answer is, there's no life in it. There's no life in it. I mentioned this to my minister, my little church I go to, and he told me this great quote from Thomas Merton, that love is an intensification of life. Love is an intensification of life, a wholeness. I looked it up. And I realized, yeah, that's what's making these lawyers happy. They're connecting with their own self, which is life, they're connecting with the life of other people that they care about. So life is connecting to life and reverberating back and forth. In my slideshows, in my PowerPoints, I use an image of a power cord that's plugging in at both ends, and you see electricity going. That's our life. So the more you plug into life and connect to it, the happier you're going to be. So that's one big piece of it. I'm trying to actually get Ken to do another study with me on spirituality and religion, showing that people who feel connected to whatever they believe, might be God or a higher authority, or this or that, if they feel connected and close to it, they're happier people than if they feel a fear of it, or like it's judgmental and this and that. So far I haven't got him there, but I will. I'll keep after him. But I think there's another area of science now that's so important for lawyers, which is the old power of positive thinking from the 1950s, Norman Vincent Peale. But it's turning out to be scientifically really true. Epigenetics, neuroscience, neurobiology, biochemistry. There's a huge body of science now that when you think positively, you feel good, and when you think negatively or you have a negative belief, you feel bad. You can think of the optimism and pessimism research. Same thing. Optimist is just somebody with a mindset that everything is good, even if it sucks. "I got a flat tire. Well, that sucks, but I'll go have a cup of coffee. I got AAA. I'm lucky, I'll call AAA. I'll call and tell them I'm going to be late," and they're fine. Whereas a pessimist has the same flat tire, but has a different mindset and decides now life sucks. Not just this sucks, but life sucks, I suck, and it's never going to get better. BREE: Right. LARRY: So it's the exact same flat tire, it's the exact same client that got convicted of a DUI or got custody, whatever it is, but people frame it in different ways. The way they frame it makes about a 2,000-point difference in your biochemistry. 2,000 different chemicals in your brain and your body, depending on if you have a positive thought or a negative thought. And then that structures how you feel, how you work, how much inflammation you have, whether you're depressed, whether you age, or stay young, and whether you get the raise and the promotion or not, because people actually like being around you, and so forth. So really pushing that now, that people, we need to basically... We have two big things we need to do. First of all, we need to locate our life, and we need to connect to it. Of course, this is a lot of mindfulness and meditation stuff. But that first research shows how important it is to find life in what you're doing. If it doesn't have life, don't do it. [inaudible 00:41:01]. And then both inside and outside. And then the second thing is manage your thoughts proactively. We're so smart, but we have a tendency to think negatively. [inaudible 00:41:16] pessimistic way of thinking what can go wrong? BREE: Right. LARRY: So I'm really coming around, and I'm going to write a paper on this, it's coming pretty soon, about, first of all, work-life balance, real quick. I'll spend just a minute on each of these, because I know we're getting close on our time. Work-life balance is great. I don't think it's worked. The reason it hasn't worked is because nobody's finding life. We're saying we shouldn't be working all the time, let's have more life, but nobody really understands what life is. It's not going out on the golf course and getting aggravated. BREE: Wow. LARRY: It's not spending lots of time drinking. That's not life. It's like, you have to find your life, and then you have to express it to other people, and you have to find it in them, and let them express it to you. So it really involves going deeper inside taking care of your health, and being mindful and finding life. So I've been teaching law students and others, taking just simple meditation practices to do that. And then the second key thing is manage your thoughts proactively. The other sort of talisman we have besides work-life balance that I think is not working well is stress management. Stress management is way better than stress mismanagement, or unmanagement. But stress management, as a talisman, presumes we're going to be stressed. Why do we have to be stressed? To me, that's dumb thinking. You've got to think bigger than that. I actually just did a survey, it was just a random one, no IRB approval, but it's not going to be published, just to prove the point. I want Ken to research this with me, as well. I sampled a bunch of law students, one, two and three hours, just asking them, what did you think law school would be like? That's all. Give me one word. What did you think law school would be like before you started, and what do you think law practice will be like now? One or two words. So they had no bias [inaudible 00:43:34]. 70% of them said stress, burnout, anxiety. That's the mindset, even coming into law school. BREE: Right. LARRY: What this new research says, if that's what you expect, that is what you'll get. In other words, when you get a big assignment, now it's all about, I'm so stressed. I was telling my wife this morning, and then I'll close here, I'm going to get to talk to Bree and Chris today, and hopefully, some lawyers. I could be all stressed about this. I have so much work to do, I don't have time [inaudible 00:44:06]. Or I can say, this is a wonderful opportunity. It's going to be the same talk, either way. What you think it's going to be determines those 1,000 positive or 1,000 negative chemicals flushing through your body and your brain for the rest of the day. So we have to learn to be positive about it, and so we got to get rid of stress management. I would call it thought management, belief management. Just stop looking at the hours of stress. One other quick note. We do have a study that's going to probably be published in about six months, we're just submitting it in the next week or so, that shows that it's not actually the long hours that's making lawyers unhappy. It's not the long hours, it's the wrong work. People who like their work, they work more hours, they actually enjoy it. And the people don't like their work, when they... they're just as unhappy whether they're working long hours or not. So, we need to shift our focus on to find life inside yourself, embrace it, be grateful for it, connect to others, share your life, and think bigger, expect to be happy. Don't expect to be stressed. Because if you expect to be happy and start every day like that, you're going to be happy. Is garbage going to come up? Sure. People come to you because you're a lawyer, they have problems, if you're in that practice. Well, okay. So, let's help them with their problems as much as we can, and then let's go home happy. If we didn't fix them, it wasn't our problem, it was their problem. So we have to have that boundary there and appreciate ourselves. BREE: Larry, thank you so much. It's such a joy to hear you speak, and your point of view when you're thinking about these things. Again, going back to... really just confirms, I think, what I know and what we all know in our gut, in our heart about what makes life worth living. So thank you for that. It's a bit revolutionary, and we need you right now, we need thought leaders like you, and so I'm really excited to hear and read your studies that are coming out. I commend everybody, and I'm going to... We'll make sure that there's a link in the transcript of our podcast. But do take a look at the study, What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success. Again, it is really the work that kicked the current well-being movement off, and launched many other research projects that came from that. I've always thought that it is not... I think our listeners can hear that you are not ego-based, you're humble man. So there was not a lot of promotion of this study. I've really felt passionate about... In kicking off this series on research in this area, we had to start with you, because you are the Godfather of this area, Larry. So thank you so much, and we will be back in the next couple of weeks with other researchers to shed light on, what is the cutting edge thinking in this area? Chris, thank you too, for being here today, and take care everyone. We'll talk to you very soon. CHRIS: Thank you.  

Chris Newbold: Hello, wellbeing friends, and welcome to the Path to Wellbeing in Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Wellbeing in Law. I'm your cohost, Chris Newbold, executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. You listeners know that our goal is pretty simple. We want to bring you thought leaders doing meaningful work in the wellbeing space within the profession, and in the process, build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. I'm always pleased to introduce my cohost, Bree Buchanan, and I know Bree has been working hard as the inaugural president of the Institute for Wellbeing in Law. Bree, let's spend a couple minutes before we introduce our guest, kind of talking about the Institute because exciting things are happening. Bree Buchanan: They really are, and hello to you, Chris, and to all of our listeners. It is such an exciting time. The National Taskforce on Lawyer Wellbeing, we had such a success with a report. We had 32 multi-stakeholder taskforces out of the states all around the country join the movement, and we realized, really, time was right for us to create our own nonprofit, and we did that in December of 2020, and it's just been an amazing ride already. Everything is just, I guess, it's spring, it's blooming. We have been raising money in a way that makes us really confident that this is, again, the right thing at the right time, and we're going to be able to do great things. By the time that you are listening to this, we will have, I expect, just celebrated our second annual wellbeing week in law which is always chalk full of amazing activities, with something happening every day of the week to celebrate the different dimensions of wellbeing. Bree Buchanan: This year, we are having, and I bet it's probably just going on about now, the third week of may, an after party, which we spend a whole week providing educational support and inspiration for all the wellbeing directors at the many legal employers and law firms which is another part of the movement that's transpiring as we grow, so, really exciting. Our website's been updated. We're going to start accepting members, both individual and organizational, this summer, so we're growing and we're growing fast and it's a really exciting time. I am so privileged to be able to sit at the board president and acting executive director, and will be even more delighted when we hire our permanent executive director. Yeah, good things are happening. Chris Newbold: Yeah, again, like you said, it's been a great ride. Momentum is building. It certainly feels like there's a sense of optimism, and again, the institute's ability to be a facilitator and a dot connector of all the different wellbeing activities happening across the profession is just going to be so important to making sure that this issue remains front and center, and again, if the big time goal is to create a culture shift, it certainly starts with an entity that can focus on this day in, day out. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely. Our tag line which we just adopted is, the Institute for Wellbeing in Law, leading the legal profession to greater wellbeing. That really kind of sums up what we're hoping and planning to do. Chris Newbold: Yeah, awesome. Today, let's delve a little bit more into another, I think, area of the wellbeing discussion that is a really important one, and that's the intersection of wellbeing and the role of law schools. We know that so much of how our profession evolves depends on the manner in which we attract and train lawyers coming into the profession which makes the conversation around American legal education so important. Our guest today, he's a good one. He's one who's been deemed a legal rebel by the ABA Journal. He's been known to be unafraid of taking on the institutional gatekeepers of the legal profession. We know that we're talking with a thought leader and some may say a disruptor in the legal space. Bree Buchanan: I love it. Chris Newbold: We welcome Kyle McEntee to the podcast. Bree, would you be so kind to introduce Kyle to our podcast listeners? Bree Buchanan: I absolutely would, and in preparing for this, Chris and I had a great conversation with Kyle, and I can just tell from that hour that we spent on the phone that he is really a preeminent thought leader in this space, and so I encourage everybody to listen closely and get a glimpse into the future and where we're going around the lawyer wellbeing movement in law schools. Kyle told me he's a hater of long introductions, so I'll keep it quick and you'll get to know him over the course of the time that we're here together. Bree Buchanan: Kyle McEntee is the executive director of Law School Transparency, a nonprofit organization he co-founded in 2009 while he was in law school. Kyle, let me ask you the question that we like to always start off with, is what got you into the wellbeing movement? Inevitably, everyone that I've talked to that has a real passion around this work, they have something in their life that has motivated them, so what motivates you to get up and do this hard work every day? Kyle McEntee: First of all, Chris and Bree, thank you so much for having me and thank you for getting it started with me blushing. Again, I am not a fan of those intros. I am on the periphery of this wellbeing movement and someone who wants to be more involved. I think that's where I would start by saying, and as I thought about this question, because I did get this question a bit ahead of time, I came up with three reasons, I think, upon reflection, about why this matters to me. Kyle McEntee: The first is the cost of becoming a lawyer. This relates to the founding of my organization, Law School Transparency, but I currently have, hopefully for not too much longer because of loan forgiveness, a lot of student debt, and this is a really stressful thing for anyone, but especially a new lawyer and especially someone who's trying to start an organization which I've spent the last 10 years since I graduated law school in startup mode. It weighs on you. Bree Buchanan: Sure. Kyle McEntee: The second is these cultural expectations we have related to work and work/life balance. It's something I've struggled with. It's something I've seen my friends struggle with, both in law school, before law school, after law school, and it's that expected work ethic that I think is really troubling and something that needs to be dismantled, which is a decades if not centuries long process. The third thing is really trying to listen to people who study these issues and then my hope that I can use my position of privilege to cause positive change. I know that there's a problem. I don't fully understand them, outside of myself and my friends and my family, but by listening and knowing that I do have a position of influence that can be used for that greater good, it makes me want to help. Chris Newbold: Yeah, interesting. Let's spend a couple minutes talking about Law School Transparency and the organization that you lead. I think it started while you were in law school. What were the motivations behind the project and, ultimately, how did it get started? Kyle McEntee: It actually started before law school. The organization itself we founded during my 1L summer, but before law school, I was seeking job statistics during the application process. I knew that I wanted to go to law school, but I didn't really know much about being a lawyer, and so I started to investigate what that looked like, and what kind of jobs people from various schools got, because I knew that there was some element of where you go to school matters. I didn't understand it as well as I needed to, and so, upon investigating it, I struggled to find information. Kyle McEntee: I ended up at the admitted students weekend for Vanderbilt where I ultimately attended, and at Vanderbilt they provided this list of where all graduates from the class of 2007 went to work. I thought this list was amazing. I started to talk with my co-founder, Patrick Lynch, who was currently a 1L at Vanderbilt at the time, so just for timeline purposes, this is, roughly, March, April of 2008, and we said, "We should try to get other schools to provide this information." We started to look into it, and what we discovered, publicized, and ultimately addressed, was that there was widespread deceptive employment statistics published by law schools and blessed by the ABA. Kyle McEntee: For example, law schools would say, "98% of our graduates are employed," but that figure counted a barista at Starbucks the same as an associate at a large firm, and the schools did not disclose this. Now, of course, they are now prohibited from doing that, and there is a lot more detailed employment data available, but it was this thirst for information and then a recognition that someone needed to stand up and demand change that caused me and Patrick Lynch, my co-founder, to say, "Hey, let's do this." Chris Newbold: Yeah, that's a pretty gutsy project for somebody just coming into law school and holding the powers that be to a different position. I'm curious how the organization has been received by the legal education world. Kyle McEntee: In the beginning, it was made a little a bit easier by the fact that we were two law students at Vanderbilt. No one really thought we were jealous or experiencing some kind of sour grapes. We were pretty quickly pegged as two students doing something good, and that was really helpful, but pretty quickly, that attitude evolved, because we were making, I don't want to say demands, because we were not in a position to make demands, but we were making arguments that law schools were acting unethically, that the ABA was turning away from this and not doing as much as they should be, and so we were met with a lot of animosity, to say the least, and a lot of excuses from schools. Kyle McEntee: When we said, "Schools should be disclosing more data," they said, "Oh, well, it would violate our students' privacy," and that was just a nonsense argument. Bree Buchanan: Yeah. Kyle McEntee: I'm sorry. I hope you all can't hear the blowers and the lawnmowers outside. Chris Newbold: I haven't heard it at all, so we're good. Bree Buchanan: No. Kyle McEntee: All right, good. Chris Newbold: Kyle, just for our listeners, if you had to characterize the mission of Law School Transparency, as obviously it's evolved from maybe a single issue to a much broader mission, can you share that with us? Kyle McEntee: Yeah. Our mission actually really hasn't changed from the beginning. It is to make entry to the legal profession more transparent, affordable and fair. We always viewed transparency on employment outcomes and salary outcomes as a really important foundation for our work, as opposed to the end itself, because we knew that once law schools were required to share higher quality information, that students would make more informed decisions which would likely affect the price of legal education as well as the number of people who are wanting to go. Kyle McEntee: That ended up being pretty accurate. I would say we got pretty lucky on that front. We had a lot of factors going for us, but overall, the mission, it stayed pretty true to that throughout the time and law schools just keep giving us things to do. Bree Buchanan: No doubt, no doubt. I remember when that reporting came out about, basically, the law schools are misleading their applicants, and that was really explosive. Of course, I had never heard of LST at the time, but I remember thinking, "Boy, they are courageous, to say the least, to take that on." I think that you guys made a pretty big splash there at the very beginning. That's wonderful. Kyle McEntee: It's funny, because it didn't really feel courageous at the time, and that's because I don't think we really contemplated the risk we were taking, and ultimately, we felt that, and I still feel it today where I will walk into a room and I definitely feel the air go out of it at times, but at the time we were just saying, there's a problem and someone should fix it. Bree Buchanan: Right, right, absolutely. As you move forward, you started preparing your law school reports. Could you talk about that, and what you're measuring in those? Kyle McEntee: Yeah. The LST reports, these are our law school reports, lstreports.com. These are tools for pre-law students trying to decide both whether and where to go to law school. We're on the 5th generation of this site at this point. It started out with us taking the current employment information and helping people understand what it means and what it doesn't mean. A lot of it at that time was saying, "Okay, see this type line number? It says 98% employed. Here's actually what goes into it and why you shouldn't look at this as your ticket to financial security," and with the salaries we would say, "See this median salary of $160,000? Well, it actually reflects about 5% of the class in some instances, and here's why." Kyle McEntee: Over time, as we forced information ... I'm sorry, it's getting really loud, here. Bree Buchanan: Why don't we kind of consider this a break. Speaker 4: Your law firm is worth protecting, and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and find coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com. Chris Newbold: We're back with Kyle McEntee, the executive director of Law School Transparency, a little minor interruption as the leaf blowers blew into Kyle's backyard. We are officially back. Kyle, we were talking about the law school reports and what you're measuring. I think, what's really important is that you provide this information to the future prospects of legal education free of charge. Talk about how many folks visit your sites and how important that work has been at impacting the legal education world. Kyle McEntee: Yeah. I'll start in reverse order and say, I think it's made a really big impact because, as I was talking about before, it started with explaining what was wrong with the current information, the then current, and over time, we have been able to force out new information. Law schools now voluntarily disclose a substantial amount of employment data and salary data that they previously weren't, and now the ABA requires that schools publish a lot of data, and then the ABA publishes those same data in spreadsheet form which makes it really easy to get it in my database. Kyle McEntee: What we're ultimately measuring, though, is employment outcomes, admissions likelihood, costs, bar exam outcomes, and we're taking, I think, over a million data points and organizing it into something that's relatively easy to use for pre-law students and their advisors. The goal here is helping them make informed decisions which goes to whether you go to school at all, which school to choose, how much to pay, and all that's built on, where should I even apply, can I get in, who should I be trying to negotiate with, what does negotiation even look like when you're negotiating salaries. Kyle McEntee: This information has, I think, done a pretty good job at transforming at least part of the market. That said, we do have tens of thousands of pre-law students every year on the site, but they tend to be people who are considering the top performing schools, and they tend to be later in the process when they're making the decision about where to go, as opposed to earlier in the process when they're deciding where to apply. If you apply to the wrong schools based on your career goals, that's not as helpful as it would be if you use this information earlier in the process so that while you were making choices among schools it made sense for you. Kyle McEntee: Because one of the things we've really learned through all this increased transparency is that law schools are very local or even regional and that the number of national schools, it's maybe 10, maybe 15, but past that, you really should be looking at a school where you want to work. That, I think, has been an attitudinal shift that we've been able to see among pre-law students. That said, there's still a lot to do on that front, because US News remains the elephant in the room for people who are deciding where to apply, where to attend. Bree Buchanan: Yeah. Kyle, can you talk a little bit about the US News and World Report ranking of law schools? That, from my view, causes so many problems for students, and I guess, just in a misleading way, when they're trying to make these vital decisions. Could you talk a little bit about those reports and how, in some ways, they're not really very helpful? Kyle McEntee: Yeah. I'll use stronger language. Bree Buchanan: Go right ahead. Kyle McEntee: They are enormously damaging to both pre-law students as they're trying to decide whether and where to apply to law school, but also to law schools. They stifle innovation. They cause schools to allocate their resources in all kinds of nonsensical ways, and it makes it very difficult for schools to have a real commitment to equity, to diversity, to innovation, to affordability, all these things that there's pretty wide consensus on, that law schools don't do that well. Law schools are not doing a good job on equity. Law schools are not doing a great job on affordability. They're not doing a good job on evaluating students for the competencies that they need to be successful lawyers, and US News is the constant elephant in the room. Kyle McEntee: It's difficult to make any decision internally at a law school without someone, somewhere, thinking, "How will this affect my ranking," because it affects all stakeholders. Bree Buchanan: Absolutely, yeah. Kyle McEntee: It's a terrible situation. Bree Buchanan: Yeah, I went back and taught at University of Texas School of Law for four years in a clinical program, and I saw that up close when I was really starting to watch the administration and how the school operated. The chasing of those rankings, that is just the most important thing, not just the most important metric, and it really does distort things to a great degree, so, wonderful that you're shedding some light on that. Chris Newbold: Kyle, are you surprised that that tool has maintained its stranglehold on law school perception? Kyle McEntee: No, I'm not. I think rankings serve a useful purpose to humans. We look for shortcuts, and I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. In this case, it is, but it's difficult to organize a lot of different data points and then figure out what to do with it. In other words, it's hard to turn data into information. US News, through its simplicity of an ordinal ranking that says one is better than two, two is better than 30, really helps people feel confidence in their choice. The problem is when the methodology is unsound and the weightings are irrational and the schools you're comparing with one another don't deserve to be compared to each other. Kyle McEntee: It's really not that surprising that people want to find a tool that can do this and tell you that one school's better than the other, and then, against the backdrop of a profession that is obsessed with prestige at every point, whether it's where you go to law school, how you do in law school, whether you're on Law Review, what your class rank is, then, once you're out in practice, are you on the fancy lists, and then at the big law firms, are you a Vault 100 firm, are you a Vault 20 firm, are you a Vault 5 firm, or what are your profits per partner and what does this mean or what's my bonus and how does my bonus compare to the person across the whole or the firm across town or the firm across the country. Kyle McEntee: It's enormously damaging to people. I think that because of that, it's really not that surprising that a ranking that reinforces that hierarchy, that hierarchy that so many lawyers are looking for, keeps its power, and that's what makes dealing with it and mitigating its influence such a challenge. Bree Buchanan: Sure, and there's an idea, too, of listening to that word prestige and chasing that prestige, and what research has shown, yes, that is what pervades the legal profession as an overarching goal for so many, but research has showed that that is not what brings us happiness, a sense of wellbeing or satisfaction in our life. There's great research from Professor Larry Krieger that really delves into that quite a bit. Let me shift a little bit to around the topic of wellbeing, for law students and lawyers, young lawyers in particular. Can you make the connection between what the issues that you're dealing with there with law schools and transparency, and law student wellbeing? Kyle McEntee: Yeah. I think there's two main intersections here. There's probably more, but there's two I will talk about. One is the cost of legal education, and law school's not affordable, and so what we're doing is trying to figure out, what are the structural impediments to more affordability. The second goes to inclusivity, and when people don't feel included in a community, they're less likely to be happy and satisfied. We think that there's actually a huge amount of overlap in those structural impediments to legal education being more affordable, to legal education between more inclusive, more equitable, and ultimately, producing more diversity with people who actually feel like they belong, because it's not enough to just say, "We're meeting a quota for the number of women graduating from law school, or the number of people of color graduating from law school." Kyle McEntee: As a profession, we need to be welcoming to everyone and make everyone feel like they belong, because otherwise we are going to fail on our primary charge of upholding the promise of the rule of law. Bree Buchanan: Right. Chris Newbold: Kyle, if you had to give a grade to the American legal education system when it comes to the pursuit of diversity and equity and inclusion in our law school classes, this is a little off the cuff question, but I think it's important because I do agree with you that so much of wellbeing is associated with a feeling of belonging and being there, and so I'm curious on just your perception of the reality of how you see it. Kyle McEntee: I think I'm going to resist. I will give an answer, but the reason I'm going to resist, is that I'm often a critic of systems of measurement that lack validity, notable US News, and any grade I would give would lack validity because I don't exactly what I'd be measuring, how I'd be measuring it, and how to make it mean something. That said, there are a lot of opportunities right now for law schools to do better on all of these fronts, but they are very often restricted by the elephant in the room, US News. I know I keep coming back to them, and they are not always the answer to things but I do think that by mitigating some of that influence, we can make a lot of inroads on the issues that matter to a lot of people, namely, educational quality, diversity, affordability. Chris Newbold: Yeah. Let me ask you this. Law School Transparency, do you have ambitions, or are you already moving into the ranking space? If we know that the other ranking system might be looking at the wrong things that actually people most intently care about, part of that would be to provide an alternative to what's already established out there, and I'm just kind of curious on your thoughts and your vision related to that. Kyle McEntee: Yeah. We have been in this space for a little while with the LST reports, and we do have plans to expand into another space, and I'll get into that in a second, but the LST reports as a whole, we're trying to help people figure out whether and where to go to law school, and then which school to choose. We do this by providing data about schools, but also helping people navigate which schools to choose among, namely where to apply, and then once you're down to the schools you've been accepted to, which schools to actually choose. We've paid attention to why people like rankings. They like the quick sort. They like the shortcut, and so, we have focused on what data can we use to introduce students to our information. Kyle McEntee: We use a formation of the gold standard job which is long term, full time jobs that require bar passage, and we put this into something called an employment score, and then that employment score is the primary sorting mechanism that we provide to students that lets them see, relatively, which schools perform better or worse, and then from there we introduce them to the many layers of information that they can use to make informed choices. Kyle McEntee: It's not a direct competitor to an ordinal ranking system because we don't provide one, two, three, four, five rankings, but it is an alternative tool that students are using and students are saying, "You should use this instead of the rankings, because it actually provides you a better means of coming to an informed choice that you'll be satisfied with." Bree Buchanan: Kyle, is that on your website? Kyle McEntee: Yeah, the LST reports as a whole is designed around all these questions, and people use it collectively as a tool instead of US News, again, not as many people as necessary to actually have the larger impact that we're hoping for, but we've made a really good start on it. Bree Buchanan: Wonderful. What is your web address, just so we have it? Kyle McEntee: We have a few web addresses. Lawschooltransparency.com is the main organizational website and all of our resources are linked from there, but then the LST reports, which is those law school reports, the profiles, the comparison pages, we've got a tool that helps organize which schools to apply to and attend and all that kind of stuff, that's lstreports.com. Our new website for this upcoming project that will, likewise, try to take some of the oomph out of US News will be lstindex.com. Bree Buchanan: What is that? Kyle McEntee: It's unnamed at this point, but we're tentatively calling it the LST Index and certification, but it is an alternative measurement system that will reward and validate the efforts that schools make in the themes of transparency, affordability, access, and educational quality. The way it works is it's essentially lead certification for law schools. It'll use a point based system and we're currently in the process of developing metrics. We'll probably end up with 50 different metrics that measure the things that we think and the profession thinks and legal educators think actually matter. The goal here is to credit schools for the good things that they're doing and actually create a market for it, so that way they will compete on it, students will use it, and we can actually incentivize the kind of change that we believe needs to happen and that US News currently stifles. Chris Newbold: All right, let's transition and talk a little bit about what's on the horizon for you and Law School Transparency. I know you've been in the midst of crafting a vision 2025, and can you tell us a little bit about that project and where you feel like the important nudges are for our legal education system on the horizon? Kyle McEntee: Yeah, absolutely. Our vision overall is to help a legal education that provides a more diverse profession and is more affordable to enter. We identified two structural impediments to this. One is that the ABA standards both under and overregulate. That is, there are too many prescriptive standards that tell schools how they have to do things, and then there are two few standards that actually protect consumers. That's especially related to learning outcomes and assessments. We are working with the ABA to try to get them to rethink their standards from the ground up. Namely, we want to see them throw out a bunch of standards and enhance some of their current standards, again, particularly related to educational quality. Kyle McEntee: The second main impediment is the one we've been talking about most of this episode so far, which is, US News. Law schools face a system of incentives that just isn't working very well, and so we are looking at how we can upset the balance of incentives. That is a handful of things we're working on, two of which we've already talked about, the LST reports and the LST Index, but also looking at working with US News to further refine their methodology and to work with US News voters to refine how they make their choices about how they grade schools. Kyle McEntee: It's kind of a, if you can't beat them, join them, attitude, but we think that if we can make some marginal improvements to the rankings, we can make some marginal improvements to law school behavior while we simultaneously create a new system of incentives through the LST Index and provide a lot of consumer information that's actionable to pre-law students and their advisors on the LST reports. Bree Buchanan: Wow. Wow, that's amazing. Let me ask you, if there are some law students who are listening to this, or prospective law students who are listening to this, what advice would you tell them or give them about picking a law school other than to read your reports? Kyle McEntee: They need to think carefully about what they want out of a law school, and especially focused on the kind of jobs that they want access to. I know that's kind of a tall order for a graduating senior or even someone who's just one or two years out of law school. People shouldn't think that they have to decide what kind of law they want to practice beforehand, but it is important to think about, to the extent you're able to. If, for example, and we see this pretty often, someone will choose a school that is very expensive, let's say, they'll end up borrowing $300,000 to attend, but they want to be a family lawyer, but they think that they need to go to the number 10 school in the country because they got in, even if they have to pay at or near full price, when really, if they want to be a family lawyer, they would have been better off going to a school that they can get into and not pay any tuition or pay very little tuition, or find a living circumstance where they don't have as high a cost of living that they have to borrow for during law school. Kyle McEntee: That's one of the consequences, is if you think as clearly as possibly about what you want to do, it'll open up a number of schools to you that you may not have otherwise considered. Bree Buchanan: Sure. What about anyone who is a law student now who is not satisfied with their experience? You get in the school and look around and see, "This is not meeting my needs." Is the only answer for them to transfer? What do you do with that? I just want to say, a comment in regards to tying this to wellbeing, when I was the director of the Lawyers Assistance Program, I fielded so many calls from distressed lawyers who you could tell after talking to them for about two minutes, there was just a terrible fit between them and the law or them and the area of practice they've chosen, and when you have that mismatch between internal goals and what you're actually finding yourself in, it has a devastating effect on your overall wellbeing. I've seen a lot of depression, anxiety, and substance misuse come out of that situation. What would you say to somebody who's found themselves in a place where it's not a good match? Kyle McEntee: That it's okay to stop. I enjoy law school a lot but I had a number of people that I knew that made that choice, but at Vanderbilt and at other schools. They just said, "You know what, this isn't for me." That's okay. It doesn't make you a quitter. It makes you someone who is taking control of their happiness and their career and their career satisfaction. It's not something to do on a whim but it is something to do in consultation with a therapist or other lawyers or someone from a lawyer wellness program. It should be a conversation that you have and you shouldn't be afraid of having. Chris Newbold: Yeah, and I think it's so challenging. I think, Bree, what you were referencing is this notion of, I like to call them, expectations gap between what you thought it would be like versus what it is like, and then at that point, I'm a first generation lawyer and at some point a couple years into my legal career, your parents are really proud of you that you're the first lawyer in the family and those types of things. There's those pressures, and then you add on top the student loan debt, Kyle, which you've articulated is so consequential in the equation that I can understand and empathize where a lot of our young lawyers then feel like they're kind of in a box and either you lack the mental fortitude to stop, as you suggest, and then kind of feel like you got to keep going, or even practice in areas that are not aligned with your own values because you just need the salary to be able to justify what you just paid out to secure a law education. Chris Newbold: This is the greatest fear that I have in terms of students coming into the profession is just this notion of an expectations gap which is becoming more challenging and seeing more people leave the profession but leave it in a way that leaves a negative connotation for whether they would even advise their own children to go to law school, ultimately. Bree Buchanan: Yeah, and so, Kyle, what would you then say to the rest of us? We've been talking about prospective law students, law students. Why should the rest of the legal profession care, and what would you say to the lawyers that are already out there? What advice or encouragement would you give to them, particularly the legal employers? Kyle McEntee: If we're talking legal employers, I think this goes to one of the original points I made about what brought me to this wellbeing movement, which is, these cultural expectations related to work and work/life balance. So much of this is driven by the employers, and that's driven by not defining and clearly delineating boundaries with clients, and the expectations of clients then make it through to the employer who then makes it through to the person who's hired, the new hires, and then, rinse and repeat into perpetuity. Kyle McEntee: We need to disrupt that cycle in order to really have an impact, and that's a really tall order because it's not just a law problem. This is a US problem, one that is shared around the world but probably worse here than anywhere else, close to worse here than anywhere else. I think, for employers, they need to think, not about Band-Aids, but about what kind of structural changes they can make and that they can participate in. Chris Newbold: Kyle, as we think about wellbeing, again, bringing it back to the law student experience, I think one of the things that there is a potential partnership between you and the Institute is a stronger ability for us to be able to recognize law schools that actually emphasize wellbeing as part of their curriculum. It feels like a lot of the work that you do, and again, you're tackling big picture, systemic issues, obviously, one of the things that we're trying to appreciate is things like reducing stigma in the law student experience, and really understanding how we can recognize schools that prioritize wellbeing as part of their curriculum, and obviously, that then trains lawyers to know that it's okay to come out and say when thins are occurring to you or it feels like you can go to your senior partner. Chris Newbold: As you think about the law school experience for students in schools, I'm wondering about your thoughts on how we can better provide, again, more information to consumers about what type of experience they'll have and the commitment of the school to the law students' wellbeing. Kyle McEntee: Yeah. I think there's so much to do together on this. Going back to the Index, what we're doing there is developing metrics, so I'm asking people to imagine the headline that they would like to read about some problem. If we acknowledge that being in law school is a huge problem, we'd say, "Okay, what's one headline that would make us feel like we've done something important?" It might be that, off the cuff here, law schools acknowledge or teach ... I'm struggling on this. I'm trying to think of a formulation of something related to your stigma point. Whatever that headline might be, then we would develop a metric that would measure progress towards that. Kyle McEntee: I think that looking at what law schools do and figuring out, what is it that we can measure and cause schools to do and to change, that will really be a way of creating a market around wellbeing, which is kind of a weird way to approach it. It's something you want to just come from inside, but through our analysis, we don't think that's going to work. We think it requires creating a system of incentives and then enforcing that system. Bree Buchanan: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, there is so much work to be done here, and Kyle, thank you so much for being with us today. It was obvious to us, just after a few minutes talking to you that you really are a thought leader in this space and tremendous courage. As you've talked about this and thinking about that you are finishing up your first year of law school and you start to take on this project, and it must have felt like David and Goliath, and you've continued to fight this good fight and I know that you continue to do so. We're so impressed with your work, and I really want us to continue to ally ourselves together and see what we can continue to do, to transform the legal profession so that it really meets the needs of everybody involved. Kyle, thank you for being here. Bree Buchanan: Chris, it's been another great 45 minutes with you, and we will have more podcasts coming online with thought leaders in the lawyer wellbeing movement, and hope that everybody can join us. Take care, be well. Chris Newbold: Thanks, Bree. Thanks, Kyle. Kyle McEntee: Thank you.

Paula Davis JD, MAPP, is the Founder and CEO of the Stress & Resilience Institute, a training and consulting firm that partners with organizations to help them reduce burnout and build resilience at the team, leader, and organizational level. Paula left her law practice after seven years and earned a master’s degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. As part of her post-graduate training, Paula was selected to be part of the University of Pennsylvania faculty teaching and training resilience skills to soldiers as part of the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program. The Penn team trained resilience skills to more than 40,000 soldiers and their family members. In addition to her work with the military, she has worked with thousands of professionals, leaders, and teams in many industries, including many of the world's largest law firms. Her expertise has been featured in and on The New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, and in many other publications. Paula is also a contributor to Forbes, Fast Company and Psychology Today. Paula is a two-time recipient of the distinguished teaching award from the Medical College of Wisconsin. You can learn more about her work and get additional burnout prevention and resilience resources by visiting her website here. Transcript:  CHRIS NEWBOLD:             Hello friends and wellbeing advocates. Welcome to The Path to Wellbeing In Law Podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Wellbeing in Law. I'm your cohost, CHRIS, executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And most of our listeners know that our goal here is fairly simple. We want to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the space of wellbeing within the legal profession, and in the process, build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the professions. I'm thrilled today to be joined by my cohost, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you today? BREE BUCHANAN:           I'm doing great, Chris. CHRIS:                                   Good. Good, good. Well, today we're really excited. We have I think a really engaging conversation on tap with one of the nation's foremost experts in reducing burnout and building resiliency. Paula Davis is the founder and CEO of The Stress and Resilience Institute. And her appearance here on the pod is really nicely choreographed with the upcoming release of her new book, Beating Burnout at Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Wellbeing and Resilience. Bree, would you be so kind as to introduce Paula to our listeners? BREE:                                     I'd be delighted. So Paula Davis, as Chris said, is the founder and CEO of The Stress and Resilience Institute, which is a training and consulting firm that partners with organizations to help them reduce burnout and build resilience at the team, leader, and organizational level. Paula left her law practice after seven years and earned a master's degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Can't wait to hear more about that. And as part of her postgraduate training, Paula was selected to be part of the U Penn's faculty, teaching and training resilience skills to 40,000 soldiers and their families as part of the Army's comprehensive soldier and family fitness program, which sounds fascinating to me. She truly is an expert in this arena. She's been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, and is a two time recipient of the distinguished Teaching Award from the Medical College of Wisconsin. So Paula, welcome, welcome. We're so glad that you're here. PAULA DAVIS:                   Oh, thank you so much, Bree and Chris. I'm so looking forward to this discussion today. BREE:                                     And we're going to start you off with a question that we ask all of our guests, and I think it's really fascinating to hear a little bit of a backstory of what brings you to the wellbeing movement. As we've interviewed wonderful people over the past several months, we've definitely found that folks have something that has a story there that drives their passion for the work, and we'd love to hear about yours. PAULA:                                 Yes. So the simple answer is that I burned out during what became the last year of my law practice. I practiced in total for seven years, and really going into the sixth year of my practice, was just noticing that I wasn't kind of in love with my practice the way that I had been. I was disengaging in certain ways. I just wasn't as connected to things as I had been. And I just didn't feel like I was managing my stress in the same way. I didn't know what burnout was. If you had told me there was a word called burnout, I may have cobbled together some sort of definition of it, but I certainly didn't have an appreciation for the nuances of what that was.            And really, over the span of about a year's time, kind of started on one end of the spectrum of burnout, where I'd show up to work just 10 minutes later. And it's like, "Monday, I don't want to go in." And so everything became a little bit more effortful. And as that progressed, it became really very much a feeling of exhaustion that I couldn't shake, feeling very cynical, especially toward my clients, so outwardly very professional, but a lot of inward eye rolling going on with: Do we have to have this conversation? Can you figure this out yourself? You're not going to listen to my advice anyway, so why are we having this conversation, kind of mentality, to really at the worst part of it, experiencing panic attacks on a very regular basis, and then being in the emergency room twice because of the stress. I had stomach aches that were so bad that I couldn't physically move, and so I had to go to the hospital for that. So really, seeing kind of that whole span of not so great stuff, took a few wrong turns, but eventually decided that I wanted to go back and get a master's degree in applied positive psychology, thinking that learning the science of wellbeing and learning the science of resilience and what have you, would provide me with the ability to teach other busy professionals, other lawyers, how not to end up in the position that I ended up in. BREE:                                     Right, right. CHRIS:                                   Paula, can you tell us? I'm really curious about again, the notion of you kind of finding yourself, I'll characterize it as unhappy in the profession. And kind of what then took you to ... I hear these great things about this MAPP program at the University of Pennsylvania. Right? Seems like this secret society of awesome people who want to kind of re engineer things in a very positive way, again, a master's of applied positive psychology. What took you there? And then how did that ultimately lead to your development of the Stress and Resilience Institute? PAULA:                                 It took me a long time to find the program. I didn't just happen to go, "Wow, there's this thing called positive psychology, and it's at The University of Pennsylvania." When I was thinking about re-crafting my career when I was burning out, I actually, I loved to bake, so I thought I was going to be a pastry chef. So I had applied to The French Culinary Institute in New York City and was accepted, and was going to go to pastry school, and had the opportunity before I went to do a little bit of a week long kind of externship at a swanky restaurant in San Francisco near where my brother used to live, and hated every minute of it. And it was at that point where I took a step back and thought, "I need to be a little bit more intentional now about what I really want to do post legal profession career." And I ended up hiring a coach who had just finished the positive psychology program that we're talking about. And I said, "There's positive psychology, what is that?" Because my undergrad is in psychology, and I've been fascinated with that area of science. Sorry. I'm hearing a lot of echo. That hasn't happened before. BREE:                                     Let's take a break here and figure that out. A wonderful thing is we have the ability to edit, so we could just fix the problem and then pick it up with the question that Chris asked. PAULA:                                 Sure. CHRIS:                                   Paula, can you tell us about the MAPP program? And obviously, it sounds like you've studied psychology in your undergrad, and I had never heard of a master's of applied positive psychology. It looks to be at the University of Pennsylvania. What led you there? And how did that ultimately kind of transition you into The Stress and Resilience Institute. PAULA:                                 I hadn't heard of it either, and it was absolutely fascinating to me. I was less than intentional in terms of figuring out my next step after my law career, and thought that I was going to go to pastry school because I loved to bake. And so it was again just sort of this random thing that I thought would be a fun thing to do. And I actually went so far as to do a week long internship at a restaurant near where my brother lived in San Francisco and immediately knew it was not the thing that I wanted to do, which was really frustrating because I thought I had figured it all out. I thought I had figured out my escape from law. And it turned out that it was the wrong direction. So what I ended up doing was hiring a coach to help me sort of be more intentional with the next steps in my career. And she had actually just finished the positive psychology, this MAPP program at Penn. And she was telling me about it, and I said, "There's a positive psychology program, what is this?" Because as you mentioned, my undergrad is in psychology, and I've always loved the science of it. But when I finished my undergrad, there wasn't this sort of program yet, nor a named science of positive psychology, and I did not want to go and get an advanced degree in any other aspect of psychology, which is what led me to law school. And so I just started to dig into it, and everything about it just really intrigued me. And because I had wanted to get some sort of formal degree in the science of being able to help busy professionals not burn out, and deal with their stress, and all of that, it just seemed to make the most sense for me, and just really was something that I connected to. And even when I started at the program, I don't know, there was nothing very specific about positive psychology generally that made me go, "I'm going to Penn to learn about this particular aspect of positive psychology." It was really just showing up and sort of being open to what the science was and how I could apply it. And when we got to the components and the sections and the research on resilience, it just really connected with me. It connected with me in a lot of different ways. And I thought it was something, A, that I could've used, and B, that I could teach other people. And the professors and the folks at Penn are really world renowned experts in this area of science. And so once I dug into resilience, it's a passion of mine that has never left. And how this helped to form my institute is that when I finished the program at Penn, the United States Army had actually been putting together a train the trainer resilience program with Penn for their senior non-commissioned officers and officers, just to help them deal with the mental health challenges they were experiencing with all of the deployments and the high op tempo that was going on at the time. And so I had a change to be part of the training team, apply and be accepted to be part of the training team for that program. And what I thought was going to be maybe one or two trainings here and there turned into almost, certainly my post graduate work, but almost every month for three and a half years, either going back to Penn, or traveling around the world to different Army bases to help teach this resilience program. And so it's really where I started to learn how to teach other people these skills and what that meant, and what that looked like. And so certainly, helped to form a very strong foundation for the institute. BREE:                                     Wow. So Paula, let's kind of dig into the subject matter here. Can you tell us about resilience? What is it? And in particular, how do we as lawyers cultivate that? PAULA:                                 Yes. So there are a lot of different definitions of resilience floating around, but the two common themes that most definitions have are one, it's your ability to navigate stress and adversity and challenge and change and failure and setback, so I always punctuate that because that's the thing that makes resilience different from grit, or mindfulness, or wellbeing generally. And those terms are often conflated. So if we're talking about resilience, we're talking very much about our ability to deal with that cluster of things like challenge, change, adversity, setback, failure. But it's also, and a lot of people come up with the phrase like bouncing back, it's also very much though about bouncing forward. So the second big thing with what resilience is, is taking the lessons and the meaning and cultivating that from the challenges and the change and the setback and the failure to apply that to future challenges going forward. So there's very much a positive adaptation to resilience. So it's the navigating through, but then it's also that bouncing forward aspect, so both of those things are important components of resilience. And the important thing to know is that it's not built in any one specific way. So the person who taught me all of these skills would say resilience is like a stew, so there's lots of different ingredients that go into it, and my stew is going to look different than your stew and somebody else's, but that it's really a cluster of skills that help us develop things like self awareness, that helps us develop things like mental strength, so that we can look at and think about problems in a very flexible and accurate way. It helps to remind us that connections and other people really matter, and relationships are central. It helps us, and this is really, it can be difficult but really important for lawyers that when you're going through a challenge, it's important to be realistic about what you're seeing with whatever the obstacle is. But it's also then harnessing a positive aspect to it too. So people who have high levels are resilience are good at harnessing positive emotions and optimism and hope and things like that, so that's a very important part of the equation. And then also, this whole notion of just building your stress awareness. So it's hard to be resilient, it's hard to pivot, it's hard to adapt when you're in the middle of a significant challenge if your tank is consistently empty. And so drawing in on ... So stress awareness principles become important. So I have taken kind of all of those muscles or competencies and distilled them down into three really big pathways, which are building mental strength, prioritizing wellbeing, and then fostering strong connections. So there's a lot of different pieces under each of those components, but those are kind of the three big central pathways that I like to have people focus on when we talk about building it. CHRIS:                                   Interesting. Paula, I'm curious. As you reflect on the state of the legal profession, what kind of grade would you give the profession itself when it comes to resilience? PAULA:                                 That's a great question, but a tough one to answer. CHRIS:                                   It is. PAULA:                                 I will tell you, generally, just looking back at least over 2020, I've been surprised at their level of resilience, and I would say at least at the organizational level, that I have seen. I think that a lot of firms kind of did what they had to do, and pivoted and adapted in ways, and more quickly than I would have expected them to. So I think from an organizational level, I was pretty impressed. I still think that there's more that we can do on an individual level, definitely from a leader and teams perspective, to start to prioritize that skillset kind of a little bit further down the road. BREE:                                     Paula, one more question before we take a break. And when I was a director of a lawyer's assistance program, I spoke to so many callers who were extremely distressed and pretty quickly could get down to the matter that they were not a good fit basically for the legal profession. They were very unhappy, and the things you have to do to be a lawyer wasn't a good fit for them. And as a result, they were just really suffering in a lot of distress, and burnout was just one of the problems that they have. You got to a difficult time in your profession and decided to make a switch to pursue a new path. What advice do you have for anybody who may be listening, who's facing that point? And do you have to leave the profession? What if you really don't want to or can't leave the profession? PAULA:                                 So I would say I'm very much the exception rather than the rule. And so if you're listening and you're thinking, "Wow, I think I might be where she was," I would say a couple of things. I would say, one, say something to somebody. So whether it is a family member, whether it is a partner, associate, or a colleague at work, whether it is a mental health professional, whether it's your physician. And actually, using the word burned out, and what you feel you need in terms of recovery. Right? Are you looking for a sabbatical? Are you just looking for support in a conversation? But to actually say something about it. I kept it in way too long, and that made my burnout go on a lot longer than it needed to. And then if you feel like you really don't want to continue on within the profession, just really taking the time, and for me, it was working with a coach. And so I oftentimes do this work, especially after workshops with lawyers, who we have this kind of conversation. And so it's about exploring all options. It's making sure they understand kind of what goes into that process. It's being very intentional about: What do you want your next step to be? Because we might feel like it's not law, but then we're like, "I don't know what I want to do." And so that's not the time to actually leave and do something different, so it's really starting to kind of crystallize and be very intentional about what you think that next thing is, so those would be the two big pieces that I would say. BREE:                                     Sure, thanks. And Paula, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And then when we come back, we want to delve into listening to you talk about some of the strategies that people can take on to boost the resilience, to deal with burnout, and to talk about your new book. PAULA:                                 Yay. Thanks. BREE:                                     Sure. — Advertisement:                          Your law firm is worth protecting, and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and find coverage all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsinsurance.com. — CHRIS:                                   All right. We're excited to welcome PAULA to the podcast. Paula, obviously, we want to spend some time talking about your upcoming book release. March 16th is the big day, very exciting, as we look forward. It's called Beating Burnout at Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Wellbeing and Resilience. One of the things I wanted to ask is just describe for us the target audience for the book. Is it directed at individuals? Is it directed at employees? And certainly, you're kind of looking at it through I think a different lens that I think is going to kind of add to the science and perspective in this area around burnout. PAULA:                                 Yes. I am looking at it through a different lens. And I think it's a really important lens. So in the book, individuals will absolutely find strategies that they can use to alleviate burnout. But the point of the book and the conversation that I really want to spark with it is that, that's a good starting point. So many programs in this space are focused on individuals and giving individual strategies to help deal with a problem that is actually a very complex systems based issue. And so I also hope, and a big target audience for me would be leaders and anybody who works in a team, so especially leaders of teams, and even organizations themselves, who want to actually take a step back and look at this issue in a bit of a different way because the research is very clear. Both the empirical research and my own research, and anecdotal and coaching and teaching and training, that the individual pieces help, and they're only going to get you so far though, until we start to really draw in the rest of the system to deal with the issue. BREE:                                     So Paula, let's talk a little bit about just sort of definition-ally, the, if that's a word, burnout. How does it affect people? How do they recognize it? And then so that's sort of looking at it from an individual perspective. And then how does burnout affect the employers? PAULA:                                 Yes. So I define burnout as the manifestation of chronic workplace stress, and trying to be very intentional with that. And so the word chronic is important, so we all have bad days, busy weeks, we feel exhausted, especially these days. That doesn't necessarily mean burnout. So the word chronic is important. We usually don't just wake up on day and say, "Oh, I'm burned out." It's something that's been happening over a period of time. And the workplace word is very important also, in that we've become really loose and imprecise with how we use burnout. So we might just have a bad day, and we are like, "Oh, my gosh. I'm so burned out," or you're just tired after a really long week, and you say, "Oh, man. I'm so burned out." And so we've lost kind of the nuance of what that word means. And so we know that stress exists on a spectrum and burnout exists on a spectrum. And you know you're getting closer to burnout when you start to see this combination of chronic exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy, so this lost impact, like, "Why bother? Who cares? What am I doing at work? I'm not connected to it. I feel disengaged." So the closer you get to being able to say, "Yeah, I'm experiencing those three things over time, and it's pretty consistent," then you know you've probably traveled over into something that looks a little bit more like burnout. But what's really important is that's oftentimes where the conversation stops. We stop at sort of that symptom level, and then we don't go deeper into actually examining what the causes of burnout are. And that's when we start to get into some of the leader, teams, system based aspects of the issue. CHRIS:                                   Are they typical common themes when it comes to the causes that you've seen in your research? And obviously, you ... I think the book does a really interesting ... You definitely use real world stories to be able to kind of illustrate your points, whether it's working with the Mayo Clinic, or the US Army, or Trivago. Right? I'm just kind of curious on what your real life examples, how that plays into kind of the causes that allow teams, cultures, organizations, to ultimately thrive. PAULA:                                 Yeah. So the basic thing for people to think about if you want sort of a formula about what causes burnout, it's an imbalance between your job demands and your job resources, so it's having too many of the demands, which are things that take consistent effort and energy about your work, and too few of the resources, which are the motivational and energy giving aspects of your work. And everybody's formula is going to look different. So just because you have more job demands than resources doesn't necessarily mean that you will burn out. You might have some really great resources that are really important, like team and leader support, or you have a lot of autonomy in your work. And that's really fortifying and protecting you from burning out. But the research really points to kind of six, there's more than this, but six especially important kind of core job demands that organizations need to be paying attention to because these are big ones. If we aren't getting enough dose of these, this can be problematic. And so it is lack of autonomy, so not feeling like we have a choice, or a say, in how our day unfolds, our projects that we can take on. Do we have decision making discretion, especially when it impacts our work? High workload, this is a real tough one because in my own research, this is probably the number one driver that I see, the number one demand that's pushing a lot of people toward the path of burnout, but it's not easily solved, and so this is a hard one. But it's an important one to pay attention to, so high work load, lack of support from your leadership or colleagues, unfairness. So if you are in an environment where there's a lack of transparency, there's arbitrary decision making, favoritism happening, that's a big one, values disconnect. So I know that I need certain things from work, and my work environment is either giving it to me or not giving it to me, so that's what that means. And then a lack of recognition. And I would say in my own research, this oftentimes tends to be the number two driver for a lot of people. And it's not just they don't hear thank you enough, which is part of it. But a lot of people will tell me that it is, I feel like I'm doing work at a certain level, but I don't have a title that matches that. I hear that from a lot of lawyers in corporate legal departments, where they expected a VP title, or some extension of that, and they don't have it. And so that's a frustration. And then that is wearing, and they're not pulled into meetings and decisions that they know they would be capable of being part of. And so I would say that's probably, like I said, a number two problem that I see. But those are really the ones that leaders and teams and organizations need to be paying attention to. CHRIS:                                   And we hear a lot about kind of the qualities of highly effective leaders. I would guess that you would advance the theory that identifying those imbalances between demands and resources is probably oftentimes an overlooked element. That's a precursor to then really preventing and realizing the efficiency and the output of teams and organizations, and a lack of that either reflects the lack of empathy of lack of understanding about how burnout ultimately occurs. PAULA:                                 100%. And one thing I like to tell leaders too is that there's a fantastic assessment tool, you can measure those six. So you can actually, and this is how I know, when I tell you number one is probably workload and number two is lack of recognition from my own work, because I've given that assessment. It's the Areas of Work Life Survey, which is a fantastic tool to help leaders. And then I can have a very specific conversation with them and say, "Look, you have a lack of recognition problem." And if I'm able to do some coaching with the team on the backend of, or after a workshop, I can start to distill that into very specific themes that I can, in a broad way, send back to the leader and say, "Look, here's kind of what I'm seeing in terms of what's going on with the team." And now we can have a very targeted conversation about how to address that and how to move forward. So it helps that there's a way to kind of formally dig into this a little bit because then you can have a much, much different conversation because it makes no sense for me to be talking about unfairness, or lack of autonomy. Those things aren't problems or issues for your team. CHRIS:                                   And for our listeners, is there a sponsoring entities of that Areas of Work Life Survey for them too? PAULA:                                 It's a proprietary instrument, but you can buy licenses for it at mindgarden, M-I-N-D, garden.com. CHRIS:                                   Okay. BREE:                                     And so Paula, we can't ignore the context in which we find ourselves right now. We're recording this in March of 2021. How has the pandemic increased burnout among workers and lawyers? PAULA:                                 So I think from a purely anecdotal standpoint, I would say it has definitely increased for many people. And a lot of the ... I take a little bit of a measured approach when I see the headlines about burnout is rampant right now and things like that because a lot of where that's coming from are not empirically based studies, but simply informal survey measures and tools of people, which are completely fine. But when I start to see reports that there's 80% of people feel burned out in this particular profession or organization, I tend to take that with a little bit of a grain of salt because what is probably being measured is maybe something a little bit more like stress, or stress focus, than actual burnout. But I would certainly say from what I have heard from folks that the rates are elevated and people are certainly feeling this, especially folks who are parents and who are trying to manage those homeschooling and the working and trying to get work done. And all of a sudden, our days are now extended, and we don't have boundaries and things like that. So I mean, it'd be hard to say that things are or have stayed the same. I think they're absolutely, the rates are higher. CHRIS:                                   And Paula, I'm curious, you said something about kind of the interconnectedness of stress and burnout, actually probably being two separate and independent things. One may lead to the other. But can you provide some greater context to that? PAULA:                                 Yeah. So I always tell people to kind of think about all burnout is stress, but not all stress is burnout. So we deal with stressful things on a very regular basis. We deal with big stressors, we deal with our daily episodic, just traffic hassles and kid stuff, and just general type of stressful events. But stress exists on a spectrum, and most of us handle stressful events just fine, and we have our tools that we use and things that we do, and everything is fine. And it's sort of like I had mentioned before, like when you start to leave kind of like, "I can figure this out, and I'm doing good," and to into more of that, "Gosh, I'm chronically exhausted. People are really bugging me. And I'm starting to kind of unplug or disengage from what I'm doing that you've kind of gone into more of a burnout realm." CHRIS:                                   All right. And if you characterized yourself in a position where you feel like you're approaching burnout, what can you do about it? Right? And what advice do you have for law firm partners who kind of think about productivity issues? And I'm just kind of curious on: What's a pathway for folks when they kind of reach that realization? What can they do about it? PAULA:                                 So again, so I there's kind of two aspects to that question. In part, it's kind of the right question, but also, the better question is: How does the system need to react in order to make sure that positive cultures are developed so that people are less likely to burn out? So that's really the question that we should be looking at. But I don't want to ignore that there certainly are things that we can do. They're probably not what people intuitively think though, so it's not about wellness apps and yoga and things like that, which are completely wonderful stress management tools. But if you're burning out, it's deeper than that. It's about needing to take a step back, and I call it understanding your wiring. So a lot of lawyers, a lot of high need for achievement professionals, we say yes to everything, we're not good at asking for help. We have very narrow definitions of success, and we make comparisons based on that. And we tend to over rely on achievement to feel worthy. And so I talk about in the book: What can individuals do to prevent burnout if they're feeling like that, or kind of going in that direction? And it's a lot of that deeper wiring examining stuff. Right? It's understanding counterproductive thinking. Am I catastrophizing a lot? Because it's a very wearing style of thinking. Am I overthinking a lot? And do I need to deal with that? One of the pieces that I talk about in the book is understanding your icebergs or your rules, which are your core values and beliefs about how you think the world should operate. So a lot of lawyers carry with them very powerful beliefs about clients come first in all circumstances. If I can't do something myself, if I can't do it right myself, then I shouldn't do it at all. I have to be perfect, or there's no other standard. And so we have to understand how rigid those beliefs and values are and how they are causing us to maybe not deal with stress in the right way. They impact our leadership abilities. They impact our ability to kind of form good relationships. And so it's that deeper level kind of conversation that needs to be had for individuals to really start to kind of turn the tide when it comes to burnout, but that's of course in the context of the system stuff that we've talked about. BREE:                                     Right. I'm really curious about, in your book, you talk about the value of teams, about building wellbeing and resilience. Can you talk about why that is so particularly potent in dealing with these issues? PAULA:                                 Yeah. No, I love, I've just become so excited about kind of this teams intersection over the last handful of years for a whole host of reasons, in part because I think in the legal profession, we do a lot of work in teams, but we don't think that way. We don't talk in terms of teams' language. And so there's a lot of things that we can leverage about the value of teams that I think we aren't doing right now. But where I initially kind of came up with that idea is I was thinking to myself after reading all of this research, it's like, wow, if the individual approach isn't the answer, but I can't walk into a firm and say, "You have to change your organizational culture," because that's never going to happen either. It was sort of like: What is the doable kind of middle ground? What is the entry point into the system where I can really affect change at the team level collectively, with leaders, and with individual contributors? And so the teams models made the most sense to me for a lot of reasons, and teams are really individual little mini systems. They're little mini cultures. And so every leader has the opportunity, and every person who's part of a team has the opportunity to influence their little culture in some way. And so for me, it was if I can get these little mini systems and little mini cultures kind of using some of these small strategies and techniques, that will help the team, which will have a ripple effect kind of throughout the organization is my hope. So most people do their work in teams, teamwork is the way of work these days. And so there was just a lot of benefit to that entry point for me. CHRIS:                                   It's also interesting I think on the teams side of things that again, when you're part of a group of individuals that have identified and committed to a core set of values, then you can ... Then cultural acceleration can occur. Right? PAULA:                                 Yeah. CHRIS:                                   And then accountability kind of comes into the picture a little bit more deliberately as opposed to kind of everybody being on their own, either departmental, or the practice area, specific type cultures that kind of allows you to again, rally around something that can be more universal. And I think you're a big proponent of I think a holistic approach rather than a more siloed approach. PAULA:                                 Yes, 100%. And one of the things that most people say when I was doing in person workshops, I had a chance for people to really, for lawyers to really sit down and talk about their job demands and their job resources, almost universally, one of the most potent job resources that lawyers would cite in terms of what's keeping me here, what I love about my work, is other people on their team, their colleagues. Many of them would say if it wasn't for this particular person, or these three people, I would have a really hard time in this environment, or I would've left five years ago. So recognizing that and becoming better I think at relying on other people within the team, in a whole host of ways, I think can be very fortifying for people. CHRIS:                                   And so much, it feels like so much of our quest on the wellbeing front is ... We had Steve Wall from Morgan Lewis on the last podcast. And he spoke so eloquently about the way that just a common set of individuals as part of a team can engineer a culture shift on wellbeing, and it certainly feels like our ability to more effectively work through the team structure, whether it's an executive committee, partnership, group, or whatever it is, certainly seems like maybe a potential catalyst for us when we think about wellbeing success. PAULA:                                 Oh, huge, it's 100%. And I mean, really, over the last couple of years in earnest especially, I've really ... I mean, that's been part of how my work has shifted. And it's been very interesting to see the wellbeing movement, how it looked in 2010 when I finished my master's in positive psychology to what it's doing today has just been phenomenal. And where I've tried to start to steer the conversation at least in my own little sphere with my work, is toward this teams and leaders and sort of system based, kind of I call it 2.0 conversation. Whether you're talking about resilience and needing to apply resilience frameworks at a team level or a leader level, in addition to all of the individual piece. But from a burnout standpoint too, the burnout conversation I think is going to necessitate a 2.0 conversation because we just know so specifically that it can't be cured with just the individual approach alone. So I'm excited about that. BREE:                                     That's so important. And Paula, as we round out our time together, tell us. Where can we get your book? PAULA:                                 Yes. So I will send folks to beatburnoutnow.com. So that will take you to my book page on my website, where you will be able to find the Amazon link and a whole host of other spots to pre order or buy my book, so beatburnoutnow.com. CHRIS:                                   And fair to say, Paula, that you also work actively with organizations around the country, around the world, as they look to build more effective teams and reduce burnout and build resiliency. PAULA:                                 Yes. This is a lot, this is most of what I'm doing these days. And this is where I want to continue the direction and the focus. So nothing gets me more excited than getting in and working with a team and talking to a team, and starting to figure out some of these pieces about what's working well. And what are areas that we can improve? CHRIS:                                   Well, good. Paula, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I know that your work has broader applicability than just solely the legal professional, but certainly with your career pivot in the middle, I think the theories and the systemic approach certainly apply just as effectively to law firms and any entity within the legal space. We're talking more organizational shifts, right? And it doesn't necessarily, again, it applies I think across the board to the legal profession. So congratulations, first of all, on your book. We're excited to be able to get it and promote it to our wellbeing community. And we thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. PAULA:                                 Thank you so much, Chris and Bree. I really enjoyed this conversation. BREE:                                     Thanks, Paula. CHRIS:                                   Awesome. And we'll be back in a couple weeks with another guest from within the wellbeing movement. And one of the things I love about the podcast is again, the ability to bring on just different types of people. And Paula's one of the first that not necessarily focusing right now on the legal space, but again, the principles of what she's advocating for apply on a more holistic, whatever organization you're at. So we'll continue to look to bring a diversity of perspective to our podcast guests. Thanks again, Paula, for joining us. And we'll see you in a couple weeks. PAULA:                                 Thanks. CHRIS:                                   Thanks for listening.

For years, lawyers have struggled with issues like depression, anxiety, and substance abuse at a rate higher than the general population. The women discuss how, historically, there’s been a hands-off approach by the profession to addressing these issues, but that this is changing in some big ways. We hear from a national expert, Bree Buchanan, who is leading a movement toward recognizing the many benefits of assisting lawyers, law students, and judges with mental health and substance abuse issues and the high cost of turning a blind eye. Plus, the justices share thoughts on promoting civility. Episode Resources: The Path To Lawyer Well-Being The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns Among American Attorneys Stress and Resiliency in the U.S. Judiciary Where Are We on the Path to Law Student Well-Being?  

CHRIS NEWBOLD:                Hello, friends and well-being advocates. Welcome to the Path to Well-Being In Law podcast, an initiative of the Institute for Well-Being In Law. I'm your co-host Chris Newbold, Executive Vice President of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And as you know, our goal is to introduce you to thought leaders doing meaningful work in the space of well-being within the legal profession, and in the process build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the profession. I'm thrilled to be joined by my co-host Bree Buchanan, and I'm proud to announce that as well, and I'll give Bree a chance to weigh in here, but I also wanted to announce that Bree has transitioned from the co-chair of the national taskforce for lawyer wellbeing, to the first president of the Institute for Well-Being In Law, which is a natural Baton pass from the national task force to the Institute. She's such a great organizer and we are in really good hands with her at the helm. So Bree, welcome. BREE BUCHANAN:           Thank you Chris. When you said that, I think my heart skipped a beat. CHRIS:                 You didn't know I was going there, but I felt like that's newsworthy. And I want to make sure that that folks know that Bree is continuing in leadership. And as we launched the Institute for Well-Being In Law, she'll be such a great leader for us. And today I'm very excited to welcome to the podcast, I'd characterize him as a quiet yet influential well-being advocate, Steve Wall of Morgan Lewis, and a conversation about reducing stigmas within the law firm culture and how to overcome individual battles with disorders while maintaining a successful practice. Bree, I'm going to pass it to you to introduce Steve, and Steve, welcome to the podcast. STEVE WALL:                          Thank you very much, Chris. Great to be here. BREE:                Wonderful. Well, as an introduction, Steve Wall is an award-winning attorney and a managing partner for Morgan Lewis & Bockius, which is truly a global firm. And we were just talking to Steve before we got started and learned that there are 2100 attorneys as part of Morgan Lewis in 31 office around the world. So truly, truly global. And it's one of the top firms in the world in regards to the number of lawyers. As managing partners, Steve is responsible for the global firm's practices, industry initiatives, lateral partner recruitment, and strategic business planning. And he's also, as if that's not enough to do, he's also a senior partner in its labor and employment practice. So Steve, thank you so much for being here. We're so thrilled to have you. STEVE:                          I'm very grateful for the opportunity. Thank you, Bree. BREE:                So Chris, I'll let you get us started here. CHRIS:  Yeah. So Steve, I think one of the things that we customarily do with our guests is just talk to you about what brought you into the well-being space. And normally most of us have some type of a personal perspective that catapulted this issue to the forefront for us. And so we just love it, to start with your personal story and how you found yourself where you are today and some of the challenges that you may have faced as you built a very successful law practice at Morgan Lewis. STEVE:                        Yeah. Thanks Chris. For me it's very simple. I came into the well-being community because of my own addiction to alcohol, which impacted me from the time I was a teenager until 11 years ago when I came into recovery, and I've been in recovery ever since. For me, alcoholism has been a major part of my life as it has impacted my entire family. Both of my parents were active alcoholics until the time they passed, as were many of my grandparents and relatives. Unfortunately, two of my brothers died of this disease. And so I count myself as extremely fortunate and very grateful that I was able to find recovery at a later point in my life than I wish I had, but at least I did. And as such, I believe there is much to give back to those who helped make my recovery possible. And as you mentioned earlier, to eliminate to the extent possible, humanly possible, the stigma that surrounds mental health challenges and addiction. BREE:               Absolutely. That is such an issue. And I'll tell you, I just jumped a little bit when you said 11 years ago. I shared my recovery story in our first podcast, but it was 11 years ago that I got into recovery, also for an alcohol use disorder. And I too wished I had not waited until I was 45 years old to make that change in my life. But it is just amazing the gifts that have come from those 11 years of sobriety. D you have the same experience? STEVE:                Absolutely. It's great to know that we're siblings in recovery Bree. Because those 11 years seem to have gone by very, very quickly. But my life has changed immensely. I was what you would call the classic functional alcoholic. And while my disease continued to worsen and the personal consequences of being an addict continued to take their toll, at the same time, I was continuing my career as a big law firm associate, a big law firm partner, a big law firm leader, and literally separated my personality between the addict side of me, which was the true side of me, and then the professional side of me, which is what I wanted you to see. And as we all know when it all crashes, that separation goes away. BREE:                Yeah. And so painful. It's like you are speaking my story to that separation. And so people wonder, it's like, "Well, how can you have such an issue with alcohol and yet you seem to be just hitting all the buttons at work?" And it's hard to understand. Let me ask you, just digging a little bit deeper, what got you into recovery 11 years ago? If you don't mind my asking. STEVE:                         Sure. I realized in my thirties that my alcohol use disorder was causing problems. It was causing problems in my personal relationships. It was causing potential problems in my professional life because I would engage in behaviors around drinking which today certainly would not be acceptable. Back in the 1980s, work hard party hard had a different meaning to it than it does now. And so I, I made the mistake that so many of us that have large egos and who believe that we can control everything about our surroundings, I made the mistake in believing that I could control my drinking. And so that started about a decade long attempt to control my drinking, which had positive consequences, because a lot of the negative things around my drinking mitigated, and I wasn't doing the stupid things and putting myself in stupid positions that I had been before. But then as we know the disease of addiction progresses and it doesn't get better. And so I then found myself falling back into the types of behaviors, the lying, the hiding, the making up excuses as to why I was late or not available for professional and personal matters. And that led to about a 10 year descent into a dark state. All of the things that happen to individuals around addiction. BREE:                Right. STEVE:                          My physical health started to worsen, my ability to have strong personal relationships with people was being cracked. My professional life was at risk because of circumstances I would put myself in. And it all came down to a Sunday morning breakfast in a diner where across the table from me was my boss at the time who was then the chair of the firm and my wife. Who had gotten together, and both said, "Enough." That my attempt to divide my life between my professional life and my personal life had now ended with a two by four to my head. And I had a simple choice, which was to do something about it and to seek help for the first time in my life, or to let both parts of my life leave because that was the choice that they gave me. BREE:                I ran into that same two by four, and it is a painful wake up call for sure. And so I, why we're asking you about these things, Steve, of course, I'm sure you know the point of this is to try to, for us to share our stories. So something resonates with one of our listeners who may be starting to think there's an issue, or they're worried about somebody else and bring that light on. Just another question, you said that you started to develop some awareness that you were having this dual life and issues with the alcohol in your thirties, but then there was this 10 year period that you just knew you needed to hide it, or borough it, keep people from knowing the extent of the problem. That's certainly something that I experienced. What was going through your mind during that period of time that kept you from taking the step to get help and start getting some relief and get better? STEVE:                          Yeah, great question. And it ultimately has to do with who I thought I was as a person. And I believe that in this way, I have a lot in common with many, many attorneys. Now, we are trained to be problem solvers. We are trained to be analytical. We are cheered and given great reward for the success we have in solving other people's problems. And as a result, we developed this false persona that there is no issue that we are incapable of solving ourselves. And the single biggest factor that kept me from recognizing the depth of my addiction and getting into recovery sooner, was my inability to recognize that I could not do this myself and I had to seek help. BREE:                Yeah. STEVE:                          And when it finally became evident that if I did not seek help, I was going to lose everything that was dear to me personally and professionally, for the first time in my life, 11 years ago, I sought help. And when I sought that help, I was honest about what was going on with me, as opposed to trying to project an image of somebody who had it all together and had everything under control. And if there was one thing different I could do in my life, it would be to have that moment of grace which I had 11 years ago about the necessity of reaching out to others for help when you're dealing with mental health issues. BREE:                Yeah. I think of one word that, that can answer that question for me. And it comes down to ego of you just sort of devolve everything down into what's keeping you from being honest, keeping you from asking for help. Which is, asking for help is not something we lawyers do very well. Chris, let you jump in here a little bit. CHRIS:                     Yeah. Steve, I was going to ask, do you feel like you find yourself where you are today without that boss-wife conversation? STEVE:                          Probably not. I have worked enough in recovery with other alcoholics and addicts to know that everybody's bottom is different. Sometimes the bottom is because you get caught up in the legal system through DUIs or other criminal activity, and that's often a wake up call. And I certainly could have seen myself headed in that direction if I had continued to use. Sometimes it's health. The doctor basically says, as he said to my father, before my father drank himself to death at the age of 55, "If you don't stop drinking you are going to die." And sometimes that brings people into the rooms of recovery. But for me, it was the recognition that my efforts to keep my professional life distinct from my personal life has now failed, and that they were talking to one another and both were going away if I did not get honest with both and deal with the mental health challenges that I had. So for me personally, that was the wake up call. And I'm grateful for it. I've expressed to both of those individuals how grateful I am. I wasn't particularly grateful that Sunday morning in the diner, but since that time, I've developed a sense of gratitude and understanding of how hard it was for the two of them, neither of which have addiction issues and found it impossible to believe that the person that they loved and had worked with for decades could not control this problem of drinking. CHRIS:                   Yeah. And I think one of the things that's... We talk a lot in the well-being movement about the desire for a culture shift. And I've always been of the belief that it takes individuals like yourself who actually have a thumb on the pulse of culture within law firms that could really be the catalyst for us to significantly move forward. Right? If your boss hadn't come and sat you down, this could be a very different ending. And Steve, I'm curious on your just reflections. I think I'm right in saying that you've spent your entire career at Morgan Lewis, right? So you've seen the firm grow up if you will. And just your general impressions of how much culture has shifted per se, in terms of, again, the ability for folks to have more honest conversations about things that are affecting them, particularly in their health happiness, which we know ultimately affects productivity as well. STEVE:                          Chris, great questions. Because I joined Morgan first as a summer associate after my second year of law school at Cornell Law School. And I then joined Morgan Lewis after I graduated, and then worked for a year on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals as a clerk, and then came back to Morgan Lewis. And so, my entire adult life, my entire professional life has been with this same institution. And there has been massive change, which is not unique to Morgan Lewis, but it's a change that, over the course of the last 11 years, I've been privileged to quicken and hopefully bring to the point where we can become an example of positive mental health awareness and practices within professional law firms. The differences are many, but I would say that the key ones are, I grew up in an environment where everyone honored working really hard, really intensely, personal problems were just that, they were personal problems. If you were going through marital issues or relationship issues, you just had to deal with them. If you were going through mental health issues, well, suck it up, because that's not what our clients pay us for. Our clients pay us to work hard, solve their problems, appear indestructible in what we do. And I look back now over my time at the firm in the eighties and the nineties, and I see victims of that culture. I see people who I know, if we had been the firm that we are today, we could have helped those people. They might still be here. They might still be alive, as opposed to having found themselves in situations where they could not extricate themselves from the horror of descent into bad mental health. And I've seen many careers and marriages and personal lives destroyed by addiction over the course of the last 30 years. So the work hard-party hard culture really needs to be put aside forever, because it just makes no sense. And the stigma, and you put it Bree, ego, the belief that we as lawyers are indestructible and that nothing should bother us, that's not what people pay us for. That cultural problem has to go away too, because it just isn't true. We're just like everybody else. In fact, the intensity of our profession makes it more likely, as all of you know, from the great studies done by Patrick Krill, the intensity of our profession makes it more likely that we will suffer from mental health than many, many other professions and many, many other jobs that people have in our economy. BREE:                Absolutely. So well put. And Steve, I just want to dig a little bit more into your story, because I think that there is further lessons for people that might be listening. When I finally had that two by four to the head and decided to do something, for me, I waited too long and I ended up losing my marriage and losing my job. So I went to the other side of what you wanted to avoid. But man, when it got my attention, I threw myself into every single thing that I could think of to get better. What was part of your recovery? What helped you? STEVE:                          Yeah. There was a series of things. It started with, I knew, but more importantly, I knew but couldn't articulate it, but wife and my boss knew that I had to take a break from the practice of law and from my service as managing partner to care for myself. I didn't know what it meant to care for myself. I was always physically active. I always ran and worked out and try to keep myself in physical state, primarily, so I could continue to work hard. But I never understood what it meant to care for oneself as opposed to taking care of everybody else's problems. And so I went to rehab for 30 days, and it was at the time, in the beginning, the absolute scariest thing I'd ever done. I thought my life was over. I thought my job was gone. I thought my marriage was leaving while I was away. I didn't know how to focus on what was really going on with me. I had never dealt with the fact that I grew up in an alcoholic household. I never dealt with the sense of abandonment, of being the oldest of five children and feeling responsible for everybody because my parents were not capable because of their own illness to deal with the things that they had to deal with. So that stint in rehab helped me immensely to be able to focus on that. But what I learned in rehab was, it would have been a complete wasted effort if I didn't make recovery, the single most important thing in my life going forward. And that didn't mean that I had to leave my job or change my personal relationships. What it meant was that I had to put through the prism of my recovery, every single thing that I did from that point forward. And for the most part, I haven't been perfect. But for the most part over the last 11 years, that's exactly what I've done. There was a six month period of time where I did not travel for work. I didn't feel safe traveling. There was a, for two years, I saw a recovery coach, an addiction therapist, at least two times a week, if not more, so that I would stay grounded on what was important, My recovery. I became a member of a 12-step program, still I'm today. I did a lot of service in that 12-step program and still do today. And all of those things were designed to keep me focused on that single most important thing, which was my recovery. Because without my recovery, every single thing that's important to me would then be gone. And the mistake I had made in the 30 years prior was thinking that the other things were the most important and that I can deal with this alcohol thing if I just had time. If I didn't have to work so hard, I wouldn't have to drink. If I didn't have to deal with relationship issues, I wouldn't have to drink. BREE:                Right. STEVE:                          And what I learned was, if I don't drink, all of those things get better over time. CHRIS:                    Did you consider leaving the practice of law? Or was the aspiration to get back there, but just as a different person, so to speak? STEVE:                          I was confronted with that possibility by my therapist, multiple therapists, by my wife, by my boss. I was confronted with, "Is it going to be better for you to leave the firm and do something else?" I didn't want to, there was huge fear associated with that. And where I ended up was, that I didn't have to. Because the things I talked about earlier, things such as putting my 12 step meetings in my work calendar so that my assistant and everyone else knew when I was not available. Telling all of the partners with whom I worked and telling clients with whom I worked, that I had gone to rehab, that I was in recovery, and that I did not drink any longer. Those are the things that allowed me to continue to practice law. Because that divide between my professional life and my personal life, that the lying, the hiding, the projection of somebody who I wasn't, that all had to end. And thankfully it did end. So the clients I spoke to about my addiction, about my time off in rehab, about the fact that I couldn't travel to see them, they were incredibly receptive. And their reception and their understanding allowed me to continue to do what I do. And as time went on, I began to help them. As time went on, a number of clients and colleagues who have come to me because of addiction issues that they're facing either themselves or with family members or with friends, or with colleagues, has allowed me to give back in a way that they gave to me early on in my recovery. And that's made it... In fact, now to me, it's inconceivable to me that I would leave my position until I retire, because I now know I can do so much good by being an example of a senior partner at a global law firm who's in recovery. And by being that good example, hopefully give others the hope that they too can deal with the issue and recover. And whether they're the spouse of an addict or the colleague of an addict or an addict themselves, I now know that I can give hope to those people because they see me, who I am today, different than who I was a lot of years ago. Hmm. CHRIS:              This is a good time, I think, for our first break. But let me be the first Steve, to thank you for sharing your story. There's a vulnerability that has allowed you to share your experience in a way that I'm sure resonates with many listeners out there. And again, your willingness then to both share that in a raw account and then be willing to give back and identify and help others in similar situations. That's what we need within the profession. The ability for us to step back, reflect, but then re-engage for the betterment of our profession and how it serves society. And we certainly appreciate your willingness to come onto the podcast and share your individual story. BREE:                 Yes, absolutely. CHRIS:              Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about Morgan Lewis and some advice Steve has for law firm leaders as we continue to advance the well-being movement. — ADVERTISEMENT:                           Your law firm is worth protecting, and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and bind coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard, our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com. — BREE:                All right, welcome back everybody. And we have, again with us today, Steve Wall, who is managing partner at one of the largest global firms on the planet, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, and have been having a really amazing, honest, deep conversation about recovery. We really want to sort of switch gears a little bit, and let's start talking about the legal system in general and what's going on in the shifts around well-being. So I know some of the things that I know about Morgan Lewis is that your firm was one of the original signatories of the ABA's Well-Being Pledge for legal employers. I know, and we're delighted to say Morgan Lewis is a founding champion, a supporter of our Institute, the Institute for Well-Being In Law. Could you talk a little bit about some of the things that Morgan Lewis has done specifically around programming for well-being? And just different initiatives in structural changes? STEVE:                          Yeah. That I think you know there's so much more that we can do at Morgan Lewis and that law firms can do generally, but I'm very proud of what we've done under the leadership of our current chair, Jami McKeon, over the last six years. We were one of the original signatories to the ABA Pledge and proud to be that. We have had mandatory training of all of our lawyers on mental health issues within the profession. We have encouraged our human resources team, our practice leadership team, our senior partners across the firm to be very active with much empathy when it comes to mental health issues across the firm. We are committed to eliminating the stigma that comes with mental health. I often, Bree, as you can understand, I often analogize it to diabetes. If I had a partner or an associate who is suffering from diabetes, and as a result had to be quite disciplined about his or her diet and needed to ensure that they were able to eat and ingest food and nutrients on a regular basis, I would bend over backwards as a leader of the firm to ensure that that individual had what he or she needed in order to stay healthy as a diabetic. And we should be doing the exact same thing with mental health. We should recognize it as an illness that is no one's fault. There is no good or bad about a person who suffers from mental health. They are not evil. They are not weak. They are not bad people. They are sick people who need our help. And the more we can do to eliminate that stigma, the more we will allow people to come forward and ask for the help that so many of them so desperately need. So that cultural shift has been a huge shift within our firm, but we also see it in some of the ways in which we act. Morgan Lewis has a very special relationship with Caron treatment centers, which is one of the country's most well-known and best addiction treatment facilities in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. We have made arrangements for many, many of our lawyers to seek treatment there. We have helped the organization financially. We have invited some of their treatment personnel to speak to our lawyers. We've made clear that if someone needs assistance, they're going to do it with our help, not behind our back, because we want to know. Other things we've done, I mentioned the training. But we've had a special relationship with one of your colleagues, Patrick Krill, who has personally met with the entire leadership of the firm, our advisory board and our management committee, which are the top leadership groups within our firm. Had a two hour presentation by Patrick Krill a couple of years ago, in which he helped us understand the types of things that we needed to do to set a culture that was conducive to strong mental health. And we have recognized we have a very liberal leave of absence policy that does not distinguish between leaves of absence for mental health and leaves of absence for physical disabilities, which we all understand. If someone needs to have surgery on their back, we understand why they can't be available to work. Well, the same is true for someone who needs to take time off to go to rehab, to go to counseling to seek psychological assistance. It's no different than that person who had back surgery and who we recognize, explicitly, needs time off before they can come back to work. BREE:                One of the things I think is just indicative of the commitment, I believe Morgan Lewis was one of the very first to create a position within the firm. You have a Director of Well-Being, and that just speaks volumes as well. STEVE:                          Yes. And Krista Larson is that director of well-being and she is fantastic. And we focus, not just on the problems associated with mental health, but we focus on mitigating mental health. So as we speak right now, some of the things that we've done with pandemic is, we started several years ago and Krista joined us. We started what we call ML Well, and ML Well is an initiative involving hundreds of our attorneys and many of our staff in which they design get togethers, they design concepts, they design webinars. And we've used that base during the pandemic to really drive opportunities for people to come together. So it might be virtual cooking classes, virtual meditation classes, virtual yoga, opportunities for families and children to come together. All of that is part of ML Well. So ML Well drives a lot of positive behavior that helps us relieve the anxiety and the pressure of our jobs. The fact that we have yoga programs several times a week, that attorneys and staff can join virtually, as opposed to encouraging them to join a happy hour or just take a drink, that's the big change. I remember as a young lawyer really enjoying Thursday afternoon happy hours because it was a chance to get away from my desk. It was a chance to meet up with colleagues. And the fact that drinking was involved was just, that's just the way it was. We don't need to do just that anymore. We still that because the majority of our lawyers have no issue with alcohol and use it socially, and they should, but for those who worry about that, or do have issues, or want to refrain from engaging in that activity, we have numerous other ways to relieve stress, to engage with your colleagues, to get to know people other than working across the table or computer from them on the client work that we do. CHRIS:                    Steve, one of the things that we are actively working on in terms of our national movement is how to most effectively measure success. And I'm curious as you think about Morgan Lewis's investment in well-being, how do you know that the commitment that you're making is having the desired outcomes, right? Obviously you invested in Krista's position with a sense that there would be, either a return on investment, or the culture shift. And I'm just curious as you think about that, how do you know that you've succeeded or that you're moving the ball forward? STEVE:                          Well, the individual examples that I'm aware of, the individual lives that we've helped better, are enough for me. I know though, for every individual person that I have been involved with or am aware of, there are many, many more who simply see that example and have sought help themselves. I'm constantly amazed even with my openness about my recovery, I'm constantly amazed at how partners and associates will come up to me, who I've known for years, and will tell me how proud they are of the firm, that they've been in recovery themselves for five, 10, 15, 25 years. And I never knew that. I never was aware that those individuals existed. And now they're willing to come forward and acknowledge it. And by acknowledging it, they're changing the culture. But there have been many, many individuals who I know would not be at the firm today, and may in fact be dead if it weren't for the opportunities and the reach out and the positive reinforcement that our firm has given those individuals. By sponsoring them to go for help, by working with them on post rehabilitation, changes in their work life, by telling them that it's okay. It's okay that you're, for example, living in a halfway house while still serving as a partner at the firm. It's okay if you have to take off every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon to go see your therapist and still be a successful associate at the firm. Those are the things that we're doing openly for those people. And then you know in any organization, people see those things. And when they see that those things are okay, it gives them a license to take care of themselves better. So I don't need to see statistics because I know that the dozen or more individuals that I've personally been involved with have reaped great benefits for dozens more who see the change in the lives of those individuals at the firm. CHRIS:             Yeah. I love that. I also imagine that you're utilizing that in some respects in your talent acquisition of the new lawyers coming into the firms from law schools. Yeah. It certainly feels like work-life balance is becoming more prominent in terms of the next generation. And your commitment, I'm guessing, is part of one of those strategies that allows you to recruit the best and the brightest into the firm. STEVE:                          You're absolutely correct. We still hire the majority of our people through the traditional summer program. I'll be at remote in 2020 and likely remote in 2021. But prior to that, we changed up completely the social events around our summer program. I ran the summer program for three years when I was a junior partner, I know the pressure that a summer program that's heavy on drinking events puts on people who don't like to, or can't drink. I know intuitively that we lost Helen, who decided not to join us because the work hard party hard culture was not for them. Well, that doesn't exist anymore. We don't sponsor those activities anymore. We don't allow those activities anymore. The activities we have now around the summer program, around our new attorney orientation, around our partner orientation, around our partner meeting, the activities are more healthy. They include opportunities to have a social drink with a colleague, but they don't include open bar for hours at a time. They don't include, the only opportunity to engage socially is to hang out at a bar, at a hotel, in a hotel lobby. They include things like mountain bike riding in Arizona, and kayaking, and having a celebrity chef come in to teach us how to cook. They include the types of things that have the exact same impact on allowing you to take a break, socialize with your colleagues, relieve anxiety. They allow you to do all that without the unhealthy behavior that sometimes comes with a drinking event. BREE:                And also to have fun. Those things that you're talking about sound like tremendous fun. Steve, just a final question, it's of two parts. Do you have some closing words of advice for new lawyers who are coming on who want to be both successful and well? And do you have any words of advice for the more senior lawyers who might see this movement as a bit beyond their experience in law or perhaps even irrelevant? What do you have to say to those folks? STEVE:                          Yeah, I do Bree. And I'm in no special position other than my own experience. And there are two things that I would change in my life if I could at this point. One, adopt and find healthy habits to relieve the stress and pressure of our very intense profession. Do something that you love to do. Whether it's physical exercise, reading, music, volunteering, giving back to others, do something that makes you feel good. There's always, always room and time to take care of yourself. No one expects you to work yourself to death, which is the direction that so many of our lawyers, whether addicts or not, find themselves in. So adopt a healthy lifestyle that allows you to both be a successful professional in an intense profession, but to keep yourself well. The second point is, do not allow the historic stigma around mental health from stopping you from doing the right thing. And I don't direct that to people who suffer mental health challenges themselves, I'm directing that to healthy people who see unhealthy behaviors in other people, but because of the stigma around mental health challenges, stay quiet. They're embarrassed for the person, they're embarrassed for themselves. They don't know what to do. And if all of us who live a healthy lifestyle and who are managing well mental health challenges, called out and reached out to those who we see suffering, we will be able to help people sooner, more effectively, and avoid so many of the horrible things that we know happened in our profession and other professions. Even to this day, even myself, as much as I know, I have to check myself when I find myself thinking about staying quiet when I see somebody acting in a way that I know is indicative of a mental health issue. I wouldn't do that. If I saw someone clutching their chest and suffering from a heart attack, I would leap to their aid and shout for help. But when it comes to mental health, even I sometimes have to check myself and say, "Why aren't you helping? Why aren't you being proactive?" And all of us should be as proactive with mental health challenges as we are with physical health challenges that we see in our colleagues. CHRIS:                   Steve that's awesome advice, and obviously I think an appropriate recipe for, again, what practice leaders, managing partners. I still remain convinced that that real systemic change within our profession will occur in the individual law firm culture. And if it doesn't change there, it's going to take a long time to get there, but it can certainly be accelerated by the steps of individuals like you, who bring that perspective about balance, reducing stigma. Certainly, we're so grateful for what you do. Again, it's the like, I could call you a silent hero, right? Because I think that you are the tectonic plates beneath the surface that I think ultimately need to occur for us to accelerate well-being in the profession. So we are just very thankful for you joining us on the podcast, sharing your story, alluding to the great work that Morgan Lewis is doing in this space. And thanks so much for joining us. BREE:                Thank you. STEVE:                          Very grateful for the opportunity. Thank you both. CHRIS:                   All right. So we will be back in a couple of weeks, and our next guest on the podcast will be Paula Davis. She's the founder and CEO of The Stress and Resilience Institute, and perfect timing for her as she'll be coming on to preview her upcoming book release. Her book is entitled Beating Burnout At Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-Being and Resilience. So we look forward to our next episode and welcoming Paula to the pod. Thanks again Steve. Thanks Bree. And be well advocates out there and continue to march forward as we work to improve our profession. Thanks for joining us.

Transcript: CHRIS NEWBOLD:                Hello, and welcome to the Institute for Well-Being in Law podcast series, the Path to Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And as you know, our goal here is to introduce you to thought leaders doing incredible work in the space of lawyer well-being within the legal profession, and in the process, build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within our profession. Once again, I'm joined by my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, how are you doing today?BREE BUCHANAN:                 I'm doing great, Chris. Great to be here.CHRIS:                Good. We're heading into the winter. I know our forecasted high tomorrow is supposed to be one degree. It's going to be quite cold, so bundle up. I know that one of our guests here is from the Chicago-land area. I'm presuming it's going to be cold there as well, so...JEFF BUNN:                            Oh, yes.CHRIS:                Yeah. Yeah. Well, good. Hey, today, we're going to shift our conversation a bit to the issue of information sharing and education in the well-being space. And we have an exciting event coming up on the calendar. We're very excited to be joined by a couple of friends in the well-being space, David Jacobs of the Wellbeing Work Alliance, and Jeff Bunn, who does similar work with the Alliance and also is known nationally as The Mindful Law Guy. I'm going to pass it to Bree to introduce our guests.BREE:              Absolutely. Thanks, Chris. So we have the two organizers of the National Conference on Lawyer Well-Being. So please, everybody, mark your calendars. That is a co-production between the Wellbeing Work Alliance and the Institute for Well-Being in Law. So we've got the Institute here represented by me and Chris. And then the Wellbeing Work Alliance, we have with us today David Jacobs and Jeff Bunn. They both have been lawyers for a good long while, but one has been on the UK side, and Jeff is here in the United States. David, in the UK, has been running the Legal Training Consultancy. Jeff, in the Chicago area in the United States, has run the Mindful Law Coaching. And they have come together to create the Wellbeing Work Alliance.                                            And pretty recently, they approached the Institute to see let's collaborate on this and put on a show, and that's exactly what we're going to do. So guys, I want to ask you, you have to sort of go through what we do with all of our guests. This is not hazing, but it is a tradition. We ask our guests what it is that has brought you to the well-being movement in the legal profession, and we found there's almost always an interesting story behind that. So let me just ask David, what brought you to this space and what drives your passion for this work?DAVID JACOBS:                   Well, it's actually quite a sad story, so you might want to have a handkerchief or two close by. What happened to me 12 years ago, 12 years ago last month, I contracted a bug, which is necrotizing fasciitis, which is basically described by the media as a flesh-eating bug. It's not quite right, but it will do. I entered what we call here A&E, which is Accident and Emergency, at the local hospital. And I was basically let down by the medical people. They didn't know what they were dealing with. They didn't follow up on recommendations from consultants. They didn't watch and analyze the blood tests. So from the morning, I was left until midnight before they took me down to the operating theater to find that my arm, which had been giving me severe pain, was a complete mess, so much so that they couldn't save it.And over the next couple of days, I was taken down several days, several times to surgery. And eventually on that Friday, they amputated my left arm up to the shoulder to save my life. And at one time, I was given a 5% chance of pulling through. And my brother-in-law, who was a consultant, not at that hospital, told the family to prepare for the worst. But obviously, I did pull through. I was in hospital for nine weeks. I was in an induced coma for 10 days, intensive care for 14 days. And it became obvious, as I became better, that this was down to the clinical negligence of the doctors.I got through this without any psychological help, and they told me that I would return to work within 14 months, one month for every day in intensive care. And I thought to myself, "No, it's not. That's not going to happen." And I actually got back to work in about nine weeks after leaving hospital. And I was treated... I was working as a consultant in the training field then, and my return to work was celebrated like I was a heroic soldier coming back from winning a battle. And I was treated, as I said, like a hero. And that was nice at the time. But I began to think that if this had been a mental problem, if I'd had a breakdown, then I was 100% convinced that my treatment would have been completely different. People would have questioned my ability to do the job. And probably, I might have done as well.But one thing led to another, and I got involved in hypnosis and mindfulness and meditation and things like that. And within some years, lawyers and not just that, everybody in the city of London who was working in a high-pressure job, it was a status thing. They'd work for 24 hours non-stop. And then what happened is that somebody... A young person was working in, I think it was a bank, and they basically worked too long. And I don't know what the circumstances were, but they died. It was at that sort of stage that the mentality seemed to change. And I was fascinated in this because when it had been a sort of macho thing, people became more caring. And my interest in this whole area of well-being shot up because I felt that there was a synergy here between doing something good and also something that was commercial, had commercial potential. So that's basically what happened. That takes us up to the establishment of the Wellbeing Work Alliance.JEFF:                          That's quite a story, David. My story, guys, is a lot less dramatic and perhaps a bit more serendipitous. I practiced for most of my professional life in the city of Chicago, Cook County, where there are plenty of sharp elbows. And as I was growing up as a young lawyer, it was very much... The attitude was very much if it's too hot in the kitchen, then get out. Just go do something. This is the world that I grew up in in practicing. That's just the way it was, or so I thought.Wind the tape forward several decades. I was walking the dog, slipped on some ice, tore my meniscus. I used to be a big-time runner. That's how I dealt with the stresses and anxieties of the practice. And after I tore my meniscus, I got scoped. I couldn't run anymore. So as a kind of low-impact, no-impact alternative to running, I got into yoga. I found a class in the Chicago Board of Trade Building, and I started going there. They had classes there at lunch.And through the course of yoga, I developed a new kind of awareness. And I took note of not only my body, but also my mind. The guy who owned that studio, who was a former trader himself, turned me onto meditation and suggested to me that this was something that I ought to pursue because I probably would enjoy it. And it took me a couple months, but I went on retreat. And you know what? He was right. So for several years after that, I thought initially, even though these practices, yoga and meditation and mindfulness, were helping me a lot, I thought it was just me. And then I came to be of the mind that actually the men and women who practice in Cook County could also benefit. And I found myself thinking benefit by, I should say, a greater awareness of... It started off, my focus was mindfulness and meditation. That kind of grew into a larger concern about just well-being.And then through the fantastic work of your predecessor organization, The National Task Force for Lawyer Well-Being, I came to learn a lot more. And I thought, "You know what? I need to become... I've kind of done the law thing. I need to become more of an advocate and share some of my insights and my concerns with others." And that's what kind of got me into the well-being space.CHRIS:               Excellent. Well, we, first of all, appreciate all of your work and dedication. Obviously, these stories are all unique and give us different pathways and perspectives into kind of why people find themselves looking for how we can make for a better profession. I'd love to transition and hear from both of you about what you're up to right now. I know we'll talk about the conference in a quick minute. But David, you're associated with the Wellbeing Work Alliance. What, in fact, is that? And give us some perspective on what the mission of that is and what you're trying to do.DAVID:                     Yeah, sure. I mean, basically, we're involved in the delivery of education, information, training, and advice on well-being for lawyers. Our work so far has primarily been in relation to the creation of two hugely successful conferences. I mean, there is no other way of describing it, and I'm not sort of exaggerating. We held one national conference in the UK two years ago, which was face to face. And then we ran another online one. And I think, in fact, the online one was better. There was some sort of feeling... Well, the important thing about it, and I hope this will take place in the one that we're doing in the U.S., that people are sharing their stories, their backstories. It was very, very moving to sit there and listen to people, watch them explaining about the problems that they've had in the past and how they'd overcome them. And that's a very, very powerful message.In terms of what we're doing at the moment, we are in discussions with a number of people with regards to in-house work. In other words, going into law firms and talking to them about how we can help them in their mission to achieve well-being for their members of staff, and also to make the commercial case for well-being. I think that's an important point to get over, that it's a win-win situation, because it has a great effect on the bottom line, on profitability, on staff retention, on a whole load of things. We're also running another conference in the UK, the third national conference in the UK, and that's going to be on June the 17th. Whether that'll be live or not, I suspect it won't, but that isn't an issue. And we'll run that again. It's a four-day conference.CHRIS:                Yep. And Jeff, if we could just have you kind of provide us some perspective of where you're at. I know that you've been a leader in the mindfulness space, and I know that you're doing a lot of now coaching and consulting. Give us some perspective on kind of what you're up to.JEFF:                            Yeah, well, that's... Thanks for asking, Chris. That really has been my focus. What I had found myself before I decided to stop practicing law, I found myself thinking a lot about different things. Mindfulness and meditation were inevitably parts of those things, but I never got to finish my thoughts. I was always interrupted by work. You have to take care of clients. You have a brief you've got to file. You have a call you have to make and prepare for, or what have you, which is what got me of a mind to start the Mindful Law Coaching and Consulting Group. The purpose of that organization is to help lawyers, both small individual lawyers or firms, design and implement appropriate well-being programs as part of their business platform.Just anecdotally, it's a little bit off topic, but the way I met David was through LinkedIn, which is my kind of social medium of choice. And I saw an ad, advert for the second annual conference, well-being conference, that he referenced just a moment ago. And I thought, "Wow! We need to do something like that here." The National Task Force had done a tremendous job of kind of creating a little bit of momentum there, but I wanted to take it a little bit further. So that got me... I fired off a comment along the lines of, "Gee, we need to do something like what you're doing in the UK here in the U.S." And reached out to me. We talked a little bit and got to know each other and then decided, "You know what? Let's do this." We do need to further the work that the National Task Force had begun, try and create a broader awareness, if you will, of well-being, and try to encourage as many people as you, or more people really, than you and your group already had. And that's kind of what got us going.BREE:               Yeah. It really seems like it's sort of the right idea at the right time and building on past successes that y'all have had in the previous conferences. So let's talk a little bit about the nitty-gritty of the National Conference on Lawyer Well-Being on April the 7th. Tell us who is your intended audience? Who should participate in this?JEFF:                            David, you want to take a crack at that, or shall I?DAVID:                    You have a go, I think.JEFF:                           Well, for starters, it's honestly going to be lawyers. I mean, that's what I know. The practice of law is what I've done my entire adult life. I think the same is true of David. And the pressures of that profession, which are not unique necessarily to the profession of law, but I think maybe the ways in which those pressures manifest themselves may be unique. But having said that, that's the world that I know. It's a world that David knows. The concept, the broader concept of well-being fits so nicely into, I think, the business view of what the practice of law is all about.One of the things that had occurred to me that I think I mentioned to David a good long while ago, is it took the longest time, it was probably 10 to 15 years, for people to finally figure out that physical fitness is important and impacts their performance. It impacts them personally. It also impacts their performance, I think, professionally. So finally, it seems that most everyone understands the value of physical fitness.My concern, particularly for lawyers, was what about mental or emotional fitness? That's part of the bigger picture as well. And the attention that we pay to physical fitness, while it serves perhaps different goals and manifests itself perhaps in different ways, it's really no different than mental or emotional fitness. So I think bringing those two together, the physical and the mental part, is really important. So audience-wise, I got a little bit away from what you had asked me. Audience-wise, my target really is lawyers, individual lawyers and law firms, which are businesses that are obviously comprised of individual lawyers.BREE:             Right. I know in conversations we've had, you're also doing some interesting thing with the pricing structure for registration, and so some things to encourage academics, people in law school and, I think, law students. Talk a little bit about that. Who are the other people you are encouraging to attend?JEFF:                          David, do you want to again? I'll keep talking, man. [crosstalk 00:19:38].DAVID:                 Oh, okay. No, the other thing I was going to mention is that if this is going to be anything like the profile of those who were attending the UK conferences, there'll be a split between lawyers, HR people, and training people. And in terms of the speakers that we've got, that replicates that sort of issue. We've got directors of well-being, directors of coaching and well-being, people like that who are speaking, as well as the people who have a more legal background. But certainly, out of the four people who are speaking from the UK, one is a practicing barrister, a QC, one is an ex-employment lawyer who now runs a well-being consultancy. The other one is another ex-employment lawyer, who is now full-time on the well-being front. So that's the sort of profile of the speakers. And as I was saying to begin with, I suspect that there will be a split between lawyers and HR people plus some trading people as well.JEFF:                            Well, David, let me just jump on that and speak to the concern that I heard Bree raise, which is we do care a lot about law students. They are, after all, the future of the profession. We care a lot about law academics, the men and women who are teaching those law students and have an opportunity to perhaps supplement some of the substantive legal issues that they're teaching with self-care issues. So one of the things that we were thinking of in terms of this particular conference is, if you will, it's almost kind of subsidizing law students or law academics through subscriptions that may come from lawyers or law firms.And one of the things that... David, I think, came up with the idea originally, which I think is marvelous, is let's support the people that are not yet earning the same kind of salary that practicing lawyers are. Let's support the law academics. Let's support the students. Let's give the law firms or lawyers an opportunity to subsidize or supplement some of those men and women so that they too can hear the wisdom of a lot of our speakers and hopefully, in their own way, in their own time, translate the notion of well-being, the importance of well-being into the profession in the future.CHRIS:               The content that you could bring to a well-being conferences is vast, right?JEFF:                             Yes.CHRIS:             And I'm curious about how you've thought about structuring the conference in a way that can, again, play to multiple different audiences, but then kind of unify all attendees around some basic themes. So tell us about how you thought about the structure of the conference.DAVID:                    Shall I do this one?JEFF:                           Go for it, David. Please.DAVID:                  Yeah, okay. Well, our feeling is that the morning should be focusing on the issues relating to individual people, and the afternoon should be focusing on the issues that could help specifically law firms deal with the issues. And we've got a range of things, from understanding anxiety, to the what and why of well-being for lawyers and why mental health matters for lawyers, to the critical issues of things like putting it all into practice. I mean, I don't believe that well-being should ever be a ticking-the-boxes thing. I think it should be done either with a good heart and with the intention of making it work, or it shouldn't be done at all. There's no half measures here.And what we're trying to get, trying to do is to cover the issues in the morning, as I said, for the individual lawyers, and in the afternoon, look at how we can solve the problems. And we're going to offer people the opportunity to go to the morning or the afternoon or to attend both. And as the thing will be recorded, plenty of people will be able to see it after the event. Certainly, my experience in the UK is that this approach works. And out of the people that book, 75% will attend on the day and roughly 25% will listen to it afterwards, because what with lockdown as an issue, people may not have the time to spend the whole day at a conference. So they may want to watch bits in the morning. They may come back and watch bits in the afternoon and watch all of the rest on a recorded basis. It gives people the maximum flexibility.BREE:                Yeah. I really love how you can sort of customize it to your schedule, which is great. And I also really appreciate, I think of it as sort of a progressive idea, of the subsidizing law students and law professors so they can attend. I haven't seen that before. So that's really great. So guys, if somebody wants to register or find out more about this, what should they do? Where can they go?DAVID:                  Well, at the moment on the website, there's a waiting list, which some people have joined. And over the next week, we will be rolling out the final version of this. So people will be able to book directly from that website, and that should be within... Well, that will be within the next week.CHRIS:            Yeah. And that will probably be well... So active registration will be open by the time that this podcast ultimately posts, right? So it's fair to say that by late February, registration will be open?JEFF:                             Oh, yeah.DAVID:                   Oh, yeah. No, before that, it'll be... I mean, the target day is next Tuesday, and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't comply with that.CHRIS:                Okay. What other things do you want to relay to our listeners about the conference, the themes, the speakers? Any other things that you think are important for listeners to appreciate as they decide whether this is a... Certainly, I'll play an active role, I think, in the conference. I know Bree's planning. There'll be a keynote, I think, in between the two modules, and we're excited for that. So any other things that you'd like to relay to listeners about the upcoming conference?JEFF:                            Well, I'd like to just jump on one thing. Reinforce, I guess, is probably a better word, way of putting it. One thing that David had mentioned, I think the idea behind, as I conceive the conference, is to elevate the conversation or the awareness surrounding well-being to a point where well-being or a well-being program is not just something that's nice to have. It's something that you need to have, you being the law firms, which kind of gets to the question, I think, Chris, that you had posed before.The audience is vast, of course. And I know that the National Task Force did a tremendous job in its report of divvying up its broader message into the various stakeholder groups. It's a lot that was accomplished in the report. It's probably more... Our, I think, determination was, it's more than one conference can or ought to even attempt to address.So there are certain groups, such as, say, judges or bar associations or law schools or what have you, there are a number of different stakeholder groups that would probably implement well-being in a slightly different way or for a slightly different purpose. That said, the breadth of those groups and the ability to address the kind of interests and the issues or the methodologies or the metrics is so diverse that it's... I think the determination was, let's keep it relatively limited in scope. And hopefully, if the work of the Institute continues and the issue continues to take root in the profession, there will be other opportunities in the future, and perhaps those other stakeholder groups can be addressed then. But the goal is, as I'm sure is true for the Institute as well, is to make the idea of well-being a pillar of the foundation, not just something that's nice to have. It's something that we really need to address.CHRIS:                  Well, good. Well, first of all, thank you for your work. I mean, I know that the Institute for Well-Being in Law, one of our missions is to continue to be active on the education front. But it's a big tent, as we've said, and we need folks like you, David, and you, Jeff, to be leaders in developing content. Content is so important, particularly given the pandemic. Content is king right now. So your ability to bring valued content to the well-being community is both appreciated, and we're very much excited to be working with you on this particular project.BREE:             Absolutely, and we're looking forward to being a part of it too. It'll be great.JEFF:                      Yeah, yes. Yeah.DAVID:            Thank you.JEFF:                         Both Bree and Chris, by the way, will be prominent parts of the program, so thanks to both of you.BREE:             You're welcome.DAVID:                   Absolutely.BREE:               It's our pleasure.CHRIS:            And I think it's safe to say, Bree, that we'll also have links on the lawyerwellbeing.net webpage for the conference.BREE:         Absolutely.CHRIS:              So that will be also a very fast way for our listeners to be able to access registration information for the conference. And I did want to take a quick additional plug for, coming up in early May, Well-Being Week in Law is fast approaching, May 3rd to the 7th. And another great education-based week led by important folks in the well-being space, Anne Bradford and others, and we're excited for that. So we've got a couple of big events coming up in the well-being space, both with this April 7th conference and Well-Being Week in Law in early May. Bree, any closing thoughts?BREE:            No, it's an exciting time to be doing this work.CHRIS:              Excellent. Well, again, thank you. Thank you, David. Thank you, Jeff. And we again thank you for your leadership in developing the conference, and consider us a friend and an active promoter as we continue to move forward.JEFF:                       Yay!DAVID:                   Thanks very much. That's great.BREE:                Thank you, guys.CHRIS:                All right. Thank you.JEFF:                          Thanks. 

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, and welcome to the National Taskforce on Lawyer Wellbeing Podcast Series, the Path to Wellbeing in Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, Executive Vice President of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. As you know, our goal here on the podcast is simple, to introduce you to interesting leaders doing incredible work in the space of wellbeing within the legal profession. In the process, build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates, intent on creating a culture shift within our profession.CHRIS: Once again, I'm joined by my friend, Bree Buchanan. Bree, we're 10 episodes into the podcast. They said it couldn't, it would never happen, but we are here, what a milestone. I'm curious what your impressions have been thus far within the podcast experience.BREE BUCHANAN: Yeah, hello, everybody. I think it's been great. One of the things I've enjoyed so much is being able to really get to know and dive with some of these people who are really leaders in the wellbeing space, and get to know them a little bit more. We get to interact with them by Zoom or email, but this is a really unique opportunity, so it's been great. I can't believe we already have 10 episodes in the can, so to speak. Time flies, so this has been great.CHRIS: It has, and like you, I like the fact that we get to have more in depth conversations with what I would call the movers and shakers of the wellbeing movement. It really allows us to delve into some issues a little bit deeper than we could probably do through CLEs or some other forums.CHRIS: So, well let's shift to our topic today. We shift the conversation a bit to one of the foundational bedrocks of the wellbeing movement, and that's our lawyers assistance programs. We're very excited to welcome our friend and fellow taskforce on lawyer wellbeing member, Terry Harrell, who resides in the Hoosier state of Indiana. Bree, I'm going to pass the baton to you because you've known Terry for a considerable amount of time and have worked with her on a variety of different issues. So if you could introduce Terry, we'll get the conversation started.BREE:I would love to. Terry occupies a very special place in my life because she was really the person who was responsible for getting me into this. I'll say a little bit more about that in just a minute, but Terry Harrow is a lawyer and a licensed therapist. She's been the Executive Director of the Indiana Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program, might refer to it as JLAP, for 20 years, following a decade of work in the mental health field.BREE:Terry is the past Chair of the ABA's commission on Lawyers' Assistance Program. She served in that role from 2014 to 27, and then at some point near the end of that, she snookered me into taking the reigns for the next three years. So yeah, she was really instrumental in getting me and she was, you are, Terry, the person who got me into this. So thank you.TERRY HARRELL: You're welcome, Bree. I do remember with the taskforce saying, "You've got to come do this, you have to come to this meeting. We're going to form this national taskforce."BREE:That's right.TERRY:I'm wondering whether you'd kill me later or thank me.BREE:Yeah, well here's the thank you. So as Terry became a leader in this space, that was certainly recognized in the ABA President at that time, appointed. It was Hillary Bass out of Florida, appointed Terry to lead the working group to advance wellbeing in the legal profession, which was an all-star group of people who were responsible for launching the ABA's Employer Wellbeing Pledge two years ago, which has been wildly successful. We have now about 200 signatories of some of the largest legal employers on the planet. Terry continues to be very involved in that. She's been a key partner within the national taskforce since its inception back in 2016.BREE:So, Terry, what did I miss? Welcome to the program.TERRY:You did a wonderful job, thank you, Bree. Happy to be here and I need to tell both you, I hadn't realized you'd done 10 already. I was aware of your podcast but I'm impressed, I'm impressed.BREE:So Terry I'm going to start off by asking you the question that we ask everybody is, what brought you to the lawyer wellbeing movement? What experiences in your life are behind your passion in this work? We found that people who really get involved and in the center of the circle of what we're doing, tend to have some real passion that's driving what they do. So, what's yours?TERRY:Yeah, that question makes you think back and I think it started young because my dad was a lawyer. I remember running with my dad and one of his partners in high school, I loved doing that. Of course we called it jogging, I won't tell you how old I am, but that gives it away. We'd go jogging and they would talk about how that helped them to stay more focused at work and improve their mood. As a child of a lawyer, I can testify that evenings when better when my dad went, stopped by the YMCA on his way home and exercised first before he came home. He was a trial lawyer, I think that I learned early that transition from work to home can be really helpful.TERRY:Then in high school, I had a friend who died by suicide, and then the father of a good friend also died by suicide. So I think that sparked my interest in mental health and my decision to major in psychology in undergrad. But then I went to law school, and actually, I loved law school. I'm probably a geek, there aren't many people who will say that but I made really good friends, I enjoyed it. Went to work in big law where I saw both some examples of probably good wellbeing practices and then some very bad practices, but I also learned that for me that work was not where my passion was. I learned what a burden it is to try and work that hard about something that you're not really passionate about.TERRY:Bree, I know you understand this, because you and I have spent our Christmas break working on policies before. You have spent I know, breaks working on tax documents and you only do that if you really, really care about what you're working on. To do that about something that isn't terribly meaningful to you is torture, to me at least.TERRY:So then I went back, after I worked in law for a couple of years, went back, got my MSW, worked in mental health in a variety of positions which was great. Loved it, but then I heard about this Lawyer Assistance Program and I thought, wow, I'd always wondered if I would get back to my legal roots somehow. Started working at the Lawyer Assistance Program, absolutely loved it. First as the Clinical Director, then as the... I became the Executive Director. Then it was really through the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, that I started thinking more broadly about lawyer wellbeing. At the LAP we were already thinking, and we can talk more later, but we were thinking about ways to talk about prevention with lawyers a little bit. Didn't have a lot of capacity and bandwidth to do that. But it was really through the commission that I started thinking about structures, the fishbowl in which we are swimming, as opposed to just dealing with each individual lawyer himself or herself, if that makes sense.BREE:Absolutely, yeah. At some point you want to go, get tired of pulling people out of the stream and you want to go upstream and stop what the real problem is, yeah.TERRY:Yeah, exactly, exactly.CHRIS: Terry, many people attribute the start of the wellbeing movement around the report that the National Taskforce released back in, surprisingly, 2016. The 44 recommendations and that, but we all know that the forerunner to that was the work of the Lawyer Assistance Programs. So I was hoping that you could give our listeners some perspective of just that history of the Lawyer Assistance Programs and how wellbeing has played a role and what you do. While it's probably taken on a more prominent role of late, but still being a centerpiece of what ultimately the programs were designed to do.TERRY:Yeah, I would love to do that. Begins to make me feel like I'm an old timer, but when you've been doing it for 20 years that happens, I guess.TERRY:Yeah, the LAP idea of lawyers helping lawyers, which is originally what we called a lot of the LAPs. Lawyers helping lawyers has been around for many decades, at least since the '70s. I believe much earlier than that, but it was a very informal, just volunteer, and it was mostly lawyers in recovery from addictions trying to help other lawyers who were struggling with addictions, and primarily alcohol, that's what they were. But then in the '80s, staff programs starting popping up, people started realizing, this could be a lot more helpful if there was a phone number, one phone number to call, one person who is the point person because it was hit and miss with the volunteer network on who found them and who didn't find them.TERRY:So states around the country started creating Lawyer Assistance Programs where they'd have an office with a phone number and a person assigned there. At that time, the ABA formed a commission, it was called the Commission on Impaired Lawyers. Tells you how far we've come. It was about helping impaired lawyers. It was very basic and the primary goal was to help states create a formal program to do this work. I forget exactly when, somewhere in the '80s I believe or early '90s, we changed it to the Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, which I think is a much better name. I don't know exactly the timing, but by 1997 when Indiana created our program, the stronger programs all over the country were what we called broad brushed, in that they dealt with mental health issues, including substance use issues but much broader. I think the earlier programs probably did assist a few lawyers with mental health problems, but that's not what they were known for.TERRY:Over the '90s I would say, and early 2000, almost I think all of the LAPs today are broad brushed, in that they will help lawyers with almost any problem that they come against, not just substance abuse problems but that myth still persists today. Even though Indiana, for an example, we've been a broad brushed program since 1997 and yet I will go out and speak and some lawyer will walk up to me and say, "Wow, I wish last year I'd known that you dealt with problems other than alcohol because Wilma Flintstone was grieving her husband's death and we thought she was really depressed, but because we know she didn't drink, we never thought to call the Lawyer Assistance Program." So that kills me and I want to get that word out there. I'm sure Bree has heard those stories as well.BREE:Absolutely, yeah.TERRY:So the LAP was doing our work, helping lawyers that were either brought to our attention or came to us voluntarily wanting help. All along, I kept thinking, we should also be doing some more prevention work. I'd like to offer some lawyer's running group or do some more education, get some more education out there. I couldn't believe how many years I've been doing JLAP 101 presentations.TERRY:One of our state bar presidents said, "Terry, what if we create a wellness committee at the state bar, will that upset the LAP? Would we be taking your turf?" I said, "Absolutely not. You can help us because you can do more of those proactive things, like have healthy eating seminar for lawyers or sponsor 5Ks and do some more of that front end work than what the LAP has the bandwidth to do." We work together very closely. I mean, I was a Co-Chair that first year, I'm back being Chair again, Co-Chair again this year. In fact, the way it works is the wellness committee supports a 5K run but you know who's there at 6:30 in the morning to organize the whole thing? It's always staff from the Lawyer Assistance Program. So we really worked hand-in-hand and we're still having discussions about, how do we work together to be able to do more and not duplicate efforts and not cause each other any hard but actually do more? Because there's certainly lots more work to do, tons more work.BREE:Yeah, and Terry, I'm interested in... because you've been so central in this space and know all the players and people. Particularly since the report has come out, what do you see in the area of, I think of it as prevention work, but a lot of times it comes under the heading of wellbeing or wellness. What are some of the things that you're seeing that the LAPs are doing now?TERRY:I think we're offering, we're increasing the breadth of our programming, which is good. We're focusing our marketing efforts, if you will, on those things. I know in our LAP, we found that our care for the caregivers support group is one of the more popular groups, that and our grief group have been more popular. They've helped people to understand that there are certain issues that may impact everyone or at least any one of us can encounter. By being part of some of these wellness efforts with the state bar, I think people started to perceive us more as wellbeing people and it's a good thing to be seen hanging out with those people, as opposed to in the past when they saw us as the alcohol police. They really didn't want to be seen with us, or I'd walk into a cocktail party and someone would put his drink behind his back. It's like, we're not the alcohol police, we're all about wellbeing. I think that has started to come through, and it's helped with collaborations.TERRY:With the report coming out with these very specific recommendations, I was able to talk to the state bar and the LAP and the state bar put on a symposium for legal employers talking specifically about the recommendations for legal employers and what they can do to improve wellbeing. That was fabulous, actually, we had wonderful speakers from a lot of the law firms and corporate council groups around the state. That was just great. We're still getting our normal referrals, and of course those remain confidential, but we're doing so much more that doesn't have to be confidential, like offering yoga and offering a mindfulness session, that I think we're more visible to. We're not this mysterious hidden group any longer.TERRY:With more emphasis on wellbeing and the taskforce report coming out, and the pledge from the ABA. Even my own supreme court decided to create a wellbeing committee specifically for supreme court employees. So we're a 250-person group ourselves, so we've added that. So I mean, I just think raising the visibility and the emphasis on wellbeing has had incredible results for us.CHRIS:Terry, as you think about... I mean I'm not as familiar with the Lawyer Assistance Programs, although being on the malpractice prevention side, we certainly have partnered with... I mean, we work a lot in rural states, so we were aware of certain states that still did not have a Lawyer Assistance Program. My sense is now that I think all 50 states actually have one. Not knowing when you started with the Indiana program, I would just love to hear your perspective on where we were then versus where we are now from an evolution perspective. You got to be pretty excited because this feels like there's a lot more with the innovations going on in the wellbeing side, I like to always think of the Lawyer Assistance Programs as, you guys are the heroes in the trenches every day. I think that there's a great appreciation for the work that you do but it's been a lot of work to get to the point where the issue has become back on the front burner as a national topic of discussion.TERRY:Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I mean even when we created our program in '97, there was still a lot of states that did not have a program at all. Now, there were a lot that did. Indiana is rarely first, but we're rarely last. There were also states that only served lawyers, they didn't serve law students, they didn't serve judges. So I'll make a plug for my state, I was very proud of my state that they looked around and said, "Looks like the better programs serve law students, lawyers and judges, the entire legal community, and they're broad brushed." We made that decision but it took a while, into the 2000s I'd say. Now we're at the point where I think almost every state... let me phrase it this way. I think every state has a Lawyer Assistance Program, some are more robust than others. There's a fair number that still have only one employee and there might be one that's still voluntary, but there's definitely someone we could get a hold of at every state that is concerned with Lawyers' Assistance. So we've come so, so far.TERRY:I remember in the day when it was hard. I mean, we knocked on doors to get... we wanted to get our message out at various lawyer conferences, and we really had to work at that. Today, everyone wants a wellbeing program at their conference, whether it's prosecutors or defenders or trial attorneys, judges, everyone wants a wellbeing program. So now, I mean I talk to my staff about we may have to start to get selective because we're doing so many presentations throughout the year that we've got to make sure we have time to take care of our clients as well. That's the most important part of what a LAP does, but it's a great problem to have to work at. I think a lot of that credit goes to the wellbeing movement, that it's on people's radar. So organizations that I wasn't even aware of who never thought to contact are now contacting us.BREE:That's great.TERRY:That's huge.BREE:Yeah, that is.CHRIS: Yeah, and let's take a quick break because one of the things I'd love to come back and talk about is just how the demand has evolved over time, because I've got to think with COVID and other things, the demand was already high but we're at an even more interesting place with the pandemic.CHRIS: So, let's hear from one of our sponsors, take a quick break, and we'll be back.—Advertisement: Your law firm is worth protecting and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and find coverage all in about 20 minutes.Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com.—BREE:Welcome back, everybody. We are so honored today to have Terry Harrell, who is really a leader, the leader, one of the leaders in the Lawyers' Assistance Program world. She has worked at every level of that experience. Terry has been the Executive Director of the Indiana JLAP for the past 20 years, so brings a wealth of experience.BREE:So I'm guessing, Terry, that you have a finger on the pulse of how things are going with the LAPs during COVID? The level of demand and how they're meeting and what they're seeing. I mean, early on in the pandemic, what I knew in talking to the LAP programs is that they felt that people were hesitating to call. The demand went down at first, but I don't think that's the case now. What are you seeing?TERRY:I think you're right on spot, Bree. I think when... My experience, and I think I heard this echoed correct with the other LAPs is that last spring, calls dropped off. I think two reasons. One, all the law students got sent home from law school. We couldn't do our onsite support groups for law students any longer or meeting one-on-one with law students. Those calls, I mean they went dead silent. We heard nothing from the law students for months.TERRY:But the lawyers and judges also dropped off. I don't know, my thinking is, and this is just Terry Harrell speaking. I think the lawyers and judges were busy trying to help others, trying to help their firm or their court staff deal with what was going on at work, trying to help their families, trying to help their communities figure out what had to happen. As usual, as lawyers will do, they put themselves last and they just sucked it up and did the work they had to do because as the pandemic continued, and I think this is true for all the LAPs, I know it's true for us, the calls began to come back. Lawyers and judges are calling us, we're starting to have our normal calls again, as well as, it's funny, the COVID stress calls don't come in directly. Someone will call me, concerned about another person, say, another lawyer in the firm.TERRY:Then next thing I know, we're talking. Well, how is this isolation and the pandemic, how's that affecting you? Next thing I'm talking to that lawyer about their stressors. To where we've all noticed, they come in sideways because lawyers as usual, are busy trying to help other people, but they're getting to us now. I'm really pleased with that, that our normals are back up to normal.TERRY:What I would say, I hate to say there's a bright spot in a pandemic because there's nothing good about this pandemic, but one of the things, I guess a silver lining of a bad experience, has been our support groups. We had before pandemic, we had, I don't know, eight maybe support groups going around the state, but if you lived in a smaller community, there wasn't one close to you. We just couldn't justify having support groups in some of those communities that had few lawyers in them. Even if you go into Indianapolis, to get to the downtown support group, if you work on the north side to get done with your work day and drive 45 minutes to downtown Indianapolis for a support group wasn't real. Then 45 minutes home, wasn't realistic.TERRY:So when the pandemic hit, we moved everything to Zoom. We talked about it but we'd never done it. We just did it because we didn't have any choice. It's been great because we've been able to include people from more rural areas. It no longer matters geographically and so people have come to groups that normally wouldn't have. They've been much more effective than I would've guessed.TERRY:We also added a group, that just called our Connection Group. So everyone who is practicing law or going to law school or serving as a judge during the pandemic is eligible. We're all eligible, it's just to connect with other members of the legal community. It's robust and people get on there and talk about the challenges that they're facing. They also laugh as most support groups, they also laugh and have a good time.TERRY:So I think when it's over, we'll go back to having some in person, I mean because doggone it, sometimes there's nothing like a hug or an arm on your shoulder, but I think we'll continue with the Zoom support group meetings because they are more effective than I ever would've guessed. It allows us to get to those people in rural communities. I mean, this may be something, Chris, for those states like North Dakota and Montana, where you just don't have big populations of lawyers. If they can do things by Zoom, I have been shocked at how well that has gone.CHRIS:Yeah, I think you raise a good point, because I think that in some ways the legal profession is now more connected because of the necessity of having to utilize technology to connect with one another. One of the things that I've seen in the bar association world is that fairly significant rise in participation in CLE program. Obviously that all went virtual, but they're seeing, particularly in rural states, record numbers of people sitting in on getting their CLEs and connecting in an entirely different way. So that's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out from a support perspective in the longterm, but like you said, I'd be rather optimistic that we feel like people are not as far away even though we're physically not together. There's connection points that we can certainly rely on as we move forward.TERRY:Absolutely.BREE:Terry, I know the... and just to emphasize and reemphasize this as those in the LAP world always do, that everything is confidential about the calls, 100%. But of course abiding by confidentiality, can you talk about maybe any trends that you have seen in the kind of calls that you're getting? I mean since they've started to pick back up, do you see more extreme situations? Have the type of calls changed, or just going back to what they were before?TERRY:I would say it's really, it's amazing but I think they're going back to the mix we had before, which has tended to be more heavy on mental health recently than addiction, which is interesting. Although, sometimes we find out there's also an addiction issue there, of course, but it's in the same mix of lawyer with dementia, demeanor issues, depression, alcohol. We have had two... again, thinking about confidentiality, I have to think what I saw but we've had two pretty dramatic relapse situations and I don't know if those were due to COVID or not. It's too new but they were two people that we thought had a really solid recovery. So I will be over time I'm sure, we'll figure some of that out and see if that played into it or it was just the course of addiction itself.BREE:Sure.TERRY:But yeah, I haven't seen a big change in the type of calls we get, other than it's almost like the pandemic is just one more layer. It's one more stressor on top of everything else.CHRIS:Terry, I'm curious that the pandemic I think for a lot of people has been an opportunity to reflect on their current state of life. I'm just curious particularly with your social work background, just your perspective on... people are evaluating all parts of their family and their professional life, their relationships, and how that ultimately... I'm sure there will be books and book written post pandemic about the impacts of that as a reflection point. We're just curious on your perspective of lawyers in particular and as they had to work from home and not be as connected. I've heard some lawyers say, "I really never want to go back to an office again." So I'm just curious on that, on your perspective on that.TERRY:Yeah, I mean like you say, it'll be years before we know the total impact, but I definitely think it has caused people to think about, what do I really need to do? Do I need to be going this hard? Do I need to travel that much? Maybe I want to take a job where I can, if my employers let me continue to stay at home, maybe I'll quit that job and find a job that allows me to work from home. I'm aware of at least one retirement that was, not caused by the pandemic, but hastened by having that time to reflect on what's really important in life. The lawyer decided, you know what? I was going to wait two more years but why? Why am I doing that? I want to spend this time with my family, I'm going to go ahead and retire. So I think there'll be changes in workplace policies, and I don't know how that will all fold out.TERRY:Yeah, and I think there'll be some career changes because I think there will be some people who have decided what's most important to them, that there may be some shuffling around. People may make some career decisions because they've had time to sit with themselves and decide what's really meaningful and what works for them, instead of just jumping into the daily grind thoughtlessly every day. I think we'll see some changes.CHRIS:Yeah, and employers may need to adapt as well. Again, I think it's going to be very interesting to see that if nothing else, the work-life balance has been called into question. As we think about wellbeing as wanting people to feel like they've made a good decision in are professionally satisfied in the practice of law. Having a pandemic in the midst of a career has an opportunity for you to rethink your position in that world.TERRY:It really does. I mean, there's some dramatic instances. I've heard of lawyers who went into the courtroom and the judge said, "I won't let you go forward unless you take your mask off," where they thought it was... something like that can make you think, well, is this really worth risking my life to do big things? Then maybe employers will change. It's turned out there's some people who are very rigid about, I want you at your desk working 8:30 to 4:30 or whatever, very rigid hours. They may have learned that actually if you tell people, "This is the work you need to get done but you can be flexible about when you do it," and it still gets done, that may open up some possibilities for people. Yeah, it will be very interesting to see what happens.CHRIS:Terry, you've been very involved in the work to create systemic change in the legal profession, both as it relates to wellbeing and both in Indiana and on the national front. Could you talk with us about some of the projects that you're currently involved with? Again, both at home and on a national level?TERRY:I would love to. Bree mentioned earlier that Hillary Bass created the working group to advance wellbeing in the legal profession, but that was a working group that was sunset a couple years ago, but one of the major initiatives of that group was the ABA Wellbeing Pledge. That pledge was meant to continue and to continue to be there to encourage and support employers to make changes in the workplace to benefit lawyer wellbeing. So CoLAP took that under their umbrella and created a wellbeing committee at CoLAP, which I'm still involved in.TERRY:I'm particularly involved in our subcommittee that's working on that pledge. We have, I don't have a current number, it's approximately 200 people have signed the pledge. That's a very rough number, but more people are signing on. We're starting to get feedback on what the legal employers are doing. I want to stop, it's easy to say firm, we mean legal employers. This is for anyone who employs lawyers in their workplace, whether it's a government agency, law school, law firm, in-house council. It's broad, broader than just law firms, I want to be clear about that.TERRY:We've seen some big changes, we have seen law firms are updating their policies to be respectful of mental health and encourage people to get the help they need when they need it. I've seen law firms hire wellbeing directors and I've seen them go a different way and hire an actual in-house therapist to be available to their staff. There's just been explosion of wellbeing activities and programs in the law school, that go on and on about that. Now, I do think most of those are aimed at the students, which is great, but I think we need to circle back and remind the law schools that they also employ a whole lot of lawyers on staff and make sure that those wellbeing initiatives are also including their own employees, because I'm not sure it's been interpreted that way at the law schools.TERRY:Legal employers are doing things to reduce the emphasis on alcohol, either by having events that are not built around alcohol or by having more options available or limiting the amount of alcohol served. I think there's still a lot of thought going into how to do that by the legal employers. All legal employers are offering some sort of wellbeing training, whether that's learning about mindfulness, financial wellness, nutrition, learning about your Lawyer Assistance Program and your EAP. A fair number are offering some fitness coaching kind of alternatives, there's a lot of creative work being done. I know Bree's been following some of those signatories as well. She's also on that wellbeing committee. It's fun to see and I just can't wait to see what else comes out of those initiatives with the legal employers.TERRY:I'm going to talk about the policy committee briefly, but did you all have anything you wanted to say about the pledge? I know Bree, you've been really involved in that as well.BREE:No, but I think that it really is beginning to change the way things are done. It also, we're creating opportunities for these pledge signatories to come together and share information and strategies. So it's a great project and one that's just getting started.TERRY:Right, in fact I should mention, in March we're going to have a virtual event for those law firm signatories. So if anybody's thinking about joining, I would suggest you join before March so you can take part in the March virtual, of course, event.TERRY:I'm also on the ABA policy committee today, and that group is looking at the taskforce recommendations, particularly ones on what the regulators should do, because the taskforce report asked that regulators take action to communicate that lawyer wellbeing is a priority. I think that means getting it into written policies and rules so that it's there for the long term, not just something we talk about at one CLE and move on. So policy committees looking at the model rules of professional responsibility, with an eye on how can we emphasize wellbeing as an aspect of competence. I'm not going to go into more detail on that yet because I think there's a lot of moving parts there, but I hope that we will be able to make some change in the model rules that institutionalizes wellbeing so it doesn't go away. So that law professors can talk about it in their professional responsibility classes, so that CLE ethics can tie to it. I think there'll be all sorts of benefits to institutionalizing the idea in the model rules. We're watching other policies where there's an opportunity to add that in.BREE:Yep, so foundational. [crosstalk 00:35:23] about what's going on in Indiana. You guys have taken the lead in some initiatives. The character and fitness questions.TERRY:Yeah, in terms of systemic change, I think this is a really important one. For those who don't know, most bar examiners historically ask... years ago, they asked a really intrusive question about, have you ever been diagnosed with or treated for a variety of mental health conditions? I think the question had been narrowed by most states but it was still there. CoLAP has continued to push and I've not been directly involved in those efforts, but to tell states that the question needs to come off the bar application. It's okay to ask about misconduct or behavior that's concerning or problems with performance, but it's inappropriate to ask whether someone has a diagnosis or has sought treatment for something.TERRY:We went to our Chief Justice, I guess it was six months ago now maybe. Once we explained it to her, she said, "You're absolutely right, we should not be asking that question, period. Let's take it off starting today. Let's just remove it." We even had had a few applications come in and she said, "Just strike it from the few applications that have come in. We are not using that question anymore-BREE:Wow.TERRY:... starting today," which was fabulous.BREE:I didn't know that, that's great, Terry.TERRY:She did it, because we thought we'd have to wait until the next round because it had still been on the application. She's like, "No, we'll just mark it out on this one and then take it off the next one and we're done with that question right now." That was fabulous, and we're not the first state. I know New York for sure has done that. I think there's a couple others that I can't recall, but I'm hoping that the snowball is rolling and that more and more... because that's something that sends a message to law students, it sends a message to lawyers, that getting treatment is a good thing. That's a positive thing, not a weakness. It's so important.BREE:So essential before they join the legal profession. So Terry, this the capstone question. So, are you ready?TERRY:Okay.BREE:So pull out your crystal ball and tell us, I think you're one of the best people I the country to talk about this. What does the Lawyers' Assistance Program of the future look like? I mean, what would be ideal? Then talk about it if you can, what it takes to get there.TERRY:Well what's in my head is more of a picture, it may not have the details in it yet, maybe you two can help me flesh it out, but one of our volunteers for years has always said that her vision for JLAP, for our LAP, is that it's a coffee shop. It's this friendly, open coffee shop where lawyers can stop in, get a cup of coffee, connect to others, talk over their challenges. There's no stigma to coming in, it's a very welcoming and encouraging place. I really think that idea, that is the LAP's role, it's helping lawyers to connect, whether it's to a volunteer, another lawyer, a support group, or to professional treatment of some kind, or just reconnect with themselves. That's the key, I think, underlying LAPs.TERRY:Wellbeing is very individual, so it's maybe the LAPs are helping all lawyers to stay on track with their own wellbeing, whatever that means. Thriving and performing at their highest level. I can envision, what is LAPs, every lawyer did an annual checkup just like you do with your primary doctor?BREE:Great.TERRY:Let's pause, push the pause button, sit down with someone from LAP and just say, "Am I taking care of myself? Am I thriving, or am I merely getting by, or am I really sinking here?" Wouldn't that be great, to just pause once a year and meet with somebody and have that discussion? That would obviously probably take a few more staff, so maybe a little more funding, but that's my big vision.BREE:Great, and in the report, one of the recommendations under that, the LAP section, was to make sure that there adequate funding for the programs to be able to meet the need. A part of that need, it's the calls and it's also be able to get out and do all of this public education that is now being requested. We've seen some successes in that around the country, particularly we had the podcast from Virginia and how they got an increase in funding that, I don't know, tripled?CHRIS:Yes.BREE:What they were able to do and able to hire full-time professional staff, and that's really made all the difference. So there's always that piece too.TERRY:There really is. Two things about that. I need to give a shout out to my Supreme Court for supporting us, fully supporting us with funding, helping us with staff, but also during the pandemic with laptops and speaker or headsets and cameras and all that's necessary to do our work. The other piece is, yes, you have to have a LAP that's well funded because we have people that are out doing these presentations, which you can't just walk away in the middle of a presentation. We have calls coming in and we also have these crisis situations that come in where suddenly one or two staff people may have to just take off and go deal with a crisis situation. Whoever's left has to pick up whatever they were supposed to do that day. So the funding is a tricky... funding and staffing is a sticky, interesting issue.BREE:Yeah, absolutely.CHRIS:I think it's interesting, Terry, that first of all, I love your coffee shop analogy because I do think that we're ultimately trying to create a space that's a very welcoming space. I know how much you have been emboldened in your mission because of the support of your Supreme Court. I almost think of the judiciary as being the baristas in those coffee shops because if they are offering us a wide menu of options and also helping with the systemic change and being supportive, I think so much of what we've been able to achieve in the wellbeing movement has been because of the support of the judiciary. Most notably the state Supreme Courts.TERRY:Absolutely.CHRIS:... and the development of the taskforces. We struck a nerve with a group of individuals who, let's be honest, are the leaders in our profession. The more that they're sitting at the table in that coffee shop as our baristas, I think the more effective we will ultimately be, not just in the success of the Lawyer Assistance Programs but in engineering this culture shift that ultimately is our longterm goal.TERRY:That's absolutely right. We've had such good support institutionally from our court and from our Chief Justice. We also have two of our justices are actually JLAP volunteers. One justice in particular, he goes around and will speak with us and say flat out, "It is okay not to be okay. It happens to everyone from time to time, it is okay to ask for help. We don't expect perfection from you, we expect excellence and that means taking care of yourself." It's fabulous when lawyers here that from that level, that kind of leadership.BREE:What a great message, yeah.TERRY:It is, truly is.CHRIS:Well, this has been... this again, Terry, you are one of the pioneers in our space here, working in the trenches. You've been so giving of your time, talent, resources, expertise. We're thrilled to have you in our midst, we're thrilled to have you on the podcast. We just can't say enough.CHRIS:Bree and I both served on the ABA working group and the amount of work product that came out of that group under your leadership in that short period of time was really impressive.TERRY:Well, thank you to the two of you for taking that ball and then running with it. It's been fabulous and I'm really excited to see where we go in the future with the wellbeing.CHRIS:Awesome, Bree, any closing thoughts?BREE:Just to echo what you've said, Chris. We are so appreciative, Terry. It's great to spend some time with you.CHRIS:All right, so we will be back in a couple weeks with our next podcast. A lot of great things, I think, on the horizon, in the wellbeing movement. Bree and I think, as we think about the long term sustainability of our movement, there's some real exciting things happening. A considerable amount of outreach and conferences on the horizon. So there's just a lot of good stuff happening out there, both at the state level and the national level. So we certainly hope to be a part of being able to promote those things that are on the horizon because it just feels like more and more things are cropping up on the calendar and that's good for ultimately where we're trying to take it.CHRIS:So, for everyone out there, be good, be safe, be well. We will see you on the next podcast. Thanks for joining us. 

Paul L. Reiber was appointed to the Vermont Supreme Court as an Associate Justice in October 2003 and Chief Justice in December 2004. In 2010 he served as Chair of the Vermont Commission on Judicial Operations resulting in historic legislation that unified the state court system. He now Chairs the Vermont Justice Reinvestment II Working Group, and Co-Chairs the Chief Justice Task Force for Children and the Vermont Commission on Well-Being of the Legal Profession. He is the immediate past president of the Conference of Chief Justices, 2018-2019 Chairman of the Board of the National Center for State Courts, and involved in several other efforts devoted to access to justice and the rule of law. He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the American Law Institute and active in his local chapter of the American Inns of Court. Transcript: CHRIS NEWBOLD:               Hello and welcome to episode nine of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being podcast series, the path to well-being in law. I'm your co-host Chris Newbold, executive vice president of AlPS Malpractice Insurance and as you know, our goal here is simple, to introduce you to interesting leaders doing awesome work in the space of lawyer well-being and in the process build a nurture of national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the legal profession. Once again, I'm joined by my friend, Bree Buchanan. How are you today, Bree?BREE BUCHANAN:I'm doing great. Hello, everyone.CHRIS:               Awesome, and today we're going to continue our march around the states and many of the states have really taken charge in the well-being movement, engaging in initiatives, commitments and success and we've previously on the podcast talked to leaders in Virginia, in Massachusetts, in Utah and today we turn our attention to the Green Mountain State, otherwise known as Vermont and we're very excited to welcome our friend and fellow National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being member, Chief Justice Paul Reiber to the podcast. Bree, would you be so kind to introduce Chief Justice Reiber to our audience?BREE:             I would be delighted to do so and it's a real honor. The chief, you can imagine, very distinguished individual, but as you will hear over the course of this podcast, a really delightful human being and that wasn't in the bio, so I just had to add that, so I'm going to give you [crosstalk 00:01:41]-CHIEF JUSTICE PAUL REIBER:             Thank you. That's very nice.BREE:        ... The official bio. Paul Reiber was appointed to the Vermont Supreme Court as an associate justice in October of 2003 and a year later as a chief justice in 2004. In 2010, he served as chair of the Vermont Commission on Judicial Operations, resulting in historic legislation that unified the state court system. He now chairs the Vermont Justice Reinvestment II Working Group and co-chairs the Chief Justice Task Force for Children and the Vermont Commission on Well-Being of the Legal Profession and we'll hear more about that in a few minutes.He most impressively, I think, there's many impressive things, but he is immediate past president of the Conference of Chief Justices. He is the 2018-2019 chairman of the board of the National Center for State Courts and involved in several other efforts devoted to access to justice and the rule of law, which includes his sitting on the board effectively at the National Task Force. He is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, the American Law Institute and active in his local chapter of the American Inns of Court. Chief Reiber, welcome to our podcast. We're so delighted to have you here today.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:             Thank you so much, Bree and Chris. Thank you, it's a pleasure to join you here.BREE:              And, a question we ask, we've sort of a tradition here of asking each of our guests at the very beginning about their... What is behind their passion for the lawyer well-being movement? What brought you to this work? Because you and I have been working on this together for, I'd say, three years and I know that you are very passionate about this, so if you could talk a little bit about what brings you to this work.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:             Well, it's a good question and I'm glad you asked it. I was not a trial judge before I came to the Supreme Court. So, I was appointed directly out of private practice and I was a trial lawyer in private practice and I think as is not uncommon among members of the bar who engage in the same kind of practice. As I told the Vermont Bar Association when I spoke to them the first time about this subject a few years ago, I said, "All of us have got challenges in our lives, but in particular those of us who practice law and those of us who go to court, many of us suffer from anxiety and depression and substance abuse."And I said, "And, I have checked off all of those boxes." So, I had a very personal real world interest in this and was excited when a report came out several years ago, which presented to the Conference of Chief Justices at our annual meeting in Philadelphia and a resolution was passed there and I came home back to Vermont and we immediately started to address it.CHRIS:             It's interesting that I think you came back and I think that your first probably act was to begin a dialogue about developing a commission on the well-being of the legal profession there in Vermont.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:         That's right.CHRIS:               Talk to us about how that got started, what your role was [crosstalk 00:05:30].CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: Right, all of us have got close friends that we collaborate with and brainstorm with on different issues and a good friend of mine who was on the trial bench at the time and has now joined me on the Supreme Court is Bill Cohen and Bill and I had practiced together. He also was a trial lawyer. We were in the same firm, had offices down the hall from each other, shared cases, tried cases together. Good friends, have known each other for a long time and I brought it to Bill and I'll tell you who else, Teri Corsones, who was then and is now the executive director of the Vermont Bar Association, and another great guy both of you may know, Mike Kennedy who is our bar council here in Vermont and really is a terrific contributor in many, many ways to the well-being of the profession and the four of us sat down together that fall and I want to say it was the fall of 2017, but I'm not exactly sure. It was right after the report the National Report issued-BREE:          Right, that was fall of 2017.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:             Okay, and we met two or three times. One of the things that I thought was very important, we all thought was important, was not only that we get a project started, but that we make sure that we had the full and unequivocal support of the entire Vermont Supreme Court, my colleagues on the court. And so, we outlined a program that we wanted to pursue. Essentially, by forming a commission that simply mirrored exactly the outline that was provided in the National Report. We did that, we put it in writing, presented it to my colleagues on the court. They were enthusiastic and supporting it and the court eventually issued, and I don't mean this to suggest there was a delay, but the court issued what we call a charge and designation, which is an administrative document that reflected on the need for this effort to be undertaken, reflected on the fact the National Report had issued, recited the resolution that the joint conferences of chief justices and court administrators had passed earlier that year in Philadelphia as I said.And then, concluded that an effort need to be made here in Vermont to evaluate this concern that we all shared about mental health, substance abuse among members of the bar. And so, we began that process with a commission that was formed under the charge and designation the entire court signed off on.Bree Buchanan:               And, Chief, that charge and designation, by the way, is on the National Task Force's website lawyerwellbeing.net.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: Oh good.BREE:              We've actually offered that up to other states at times who are trying to figure out how to get it started in their own state, how their own Supreme Court have the authority, I guess, to move forward. And so, it's been a useful document and a sample for other courts.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: Well, I'm glad to hear that, Bree. I wasn't aware of that. One of the things I thought was very important was that we put a timetable on the effort. And so, we called for the commission that we formed to report back to the court I think it was within 12 months, by the end of 2018 with specific recommendations and in fact, we can discuss this down the road as well, but we have renewed that charge and designation by the way as a result of the fact that the first charge expired on its own terms.CHRIS:                 There's a couple of things, Chief, that I just love about what happened. First of all, Vermont, I'm guessing it's a lot like Montana where these smaller bars, it's just very easy to know lots of people, right?CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:         Yeah.CHRIS:             And, to bring people to the table because you really did jump out in front of the movement, so to speak, in terms of... The report was released, but that was a call to action that you answered and we needed states like you to answer that call. That was such an important part of the growth of the well-being movement because you guys just kind of took the baton and ran.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:           You know, Chris, there's sobering... Not meaning to make a pun, sobering things that are going on that really are very important for us to pay attention to. There's suicides, there are lawyers who are suffering from depression, anxiety, substance abuse. There was a front page... This is one of the things that motivated me by the way. In the front page article, you both may remember, in the business section of the Sunday New York Times about that time, about the summer of 2017-BREE:             Absolutely, yeah.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:   Profiled a young father very, very successful lawyer in California who had two homes, as I remember it, including a home in, I think Nevada or one of the Western states, but lived in California, a very successful guy with a young family, two young kids and committed suicide. This is really a problem. I'll tell you something, you say we got out in front of it. It's not exactly you suggest that. Between the time that my court issued its charge and designation and the day I gave a speech to the bar in March of 2018 about the importance of this problem, we lost two lawyers in this state, two lawyers in this small state.This is a problem that we cannot allow to languish. We have to bring attention to it, we have to bring our best efforts to trying to make sure that people understand this is something that has to be addressed.BREE:            And unfortunately, there are so many people when I get up and speak and talk to people in the audience about the issue of suicide, there are so many people, if you've been in the profession for very long at all, you know someone or know of someone-CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:             That's right.BREE:            And, the only silver lining to that situation is that it has spurred a lot of changes in the profession.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: Bree, the first time you and I met was when telephoned you on your honeymoon, if you don't mind me bringing this up, I hope you-BREE:            You called me in New Zealand.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: In New Zealand. I got your number and you said, "Who is this guy trying to get a hold of me?" And, I was on a panel, I think with Shaheed maybe down in Miami at the University of Miami Law School.BREE:            Judge David Shaheed.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: Great guy, great, great guy and Jaffe was there was well.BREE:              David Jaffe.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: David Jaffe, our friend from American University Law School and we were there talking about this problem to a group, a very broad cross section of people by the way, and I remember telling them that our profession has changed, it has changed, it already has changed, and of course, we need to continue on this trend, but when I started practicing law back in the 70s and I mentioned this, lawyers I know, including myself by the way, would mark a trip to a court in another city 60 miles away, let's say Burlington, Vermont, by the number of beers that you would consume on the trip.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: All right? So, we would say, "Oh, I've got to go to court." Now, I'm not suggesting that we'd necessarily drink before the hearing, although many lawyers did, believe me, but it was the trip home. "I've got to go to court in Burlington this week, that's a two beer trip," somebody would say. This was very commonplace in my state and alcohol... There was a bar in my home of Rutland, Vermont called the Carriage Room and I'll bet there's a story similar in many, many other locations around the country. Lawyers would try a case down the street and go to the Carriage Room and wait for the jury's verdict and the clerk of the court knew where to find you.You call the Carriage Room if you want to find Paul Reiber because that's where he's hanging out drinking with his buddies. That's the way it worked. So let me say, I gave up drinking many years ago because of the finally recognizing the problem. It was beginning to dominate my life. We had two kids in high school, I was drinking wine with dinner every night. My wife doesn't drink, she never has. It was not right and I felt like I was letting my family down and I gave it up and I'm pleased to say that, but this was very, very common among the trial bar in my state and I suspect that's not a unique story.CHRIS:                 Chief, let's talk a little bit about the state action plan. So, you brought the constituencies, the stakeholders together, you guys got to work. I love the notion and I love the recommendation that you're making to others who embark on this to set it up in a time frame basis [crosstalk 00:17:07]-CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:           Right.CHRIS:               [crosstalk 00:17:07] let the clock start ticking in terms of what we needed to do, yet you really came out, and again, we're going to publish this in conjunction with the podcast on the National Task Force site, but your state action plan is really a phenomenal roadmap for recommendations and opportunities to advance well-being. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what you're most proud of that's come out of that process on the state action plan front.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: Well, I'll tell you, to be honest, what I'm most proud of are the number of lawyers who have stepped forward to contribute to this effort. We had, as you know, Chris, several different committees that we formed, again, following the outline of the National Report, so we had a law school committee that was chaired by the dean of... We have one law school in Vermont, great guy named Tom McHenry. He's the dean and he chaired that committee. We had a lawyers committee that actually was co-chaired by an attorney from Burlington who essentially represented the large firm sector of the state and then a woman from the Northeast Kingdom part of Vermont who represented, if you will, the small firm segment of the state.We had a regulators committee, we had a judges committee that my friend Bill Cohen chaired. These are people who... And, they each had, by the way, several volunteer lawyers and with the dean's situation, students and faculty, who stepped forward to participate in the effort, and the thing I'm most proud of is the fact that all of these people put themselves out, spoke publicly about the importance of this and brought their perspective on moving the ball forward with regard to addressing the real needs that I think the attorneys have and the judges by the way. I don't mean to leave judges out. I think the bench is a very important part of this and the student body, the students as well, law students as well.BREE:        Absolutely, and what I've seen just across in states is where the people who come to the table to work on this project find it so fulfilling. Lawyers care about the legal profession and one another, and so to be able to take affirmative action and step forward and do something about a problem that we all see, maybe not on ourselves, but over the course of our career and actually take some positive action. I'm wondering, out of the state action plan... That's the name on the document that came out from your work.Some of the states have like a report and yours actually has a state action plan. Can you talk about some of the pieces in that action plan, the recommendations that you made that stick out?CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: Yeah, absolutely. The recommendations included, and these are things that we've actually done as well through the court's interventions, we amended the comments to rule 1.1 of the Vermont rules of professional conduct to acknowledge that maintaining a lawyer's well-being is an important aspect of maintaining competence in the practice of law. We amended the mandatory continuing legal education rules to require at least one credit hour per reporting period of attorney wellness programming.We promulgated rule changes to create a bar assistance program within Vermont's professional responsibility program, those are changes that actually we just adopted and will take effect in, I think it's February 1 and I think importantly as well, we extended, as I alluded to earlier, the commission and commission's charge and designation and called upon the commission to annually review the progress of the state action plan and to report back to the Supreme Court on its progress, something that the first annual report under the renewed charge and designation issued just earlier this year in June.So, that the focus is to attempt to bring life to the work in a way that acknowledges that there is no off/on switch to fixing this. It's not a matter that you simply... What we're talking about are problems in the human condition. These are behavioral problems, problems that need to be addressed through a thoughtful, respectful, empathetic means that help people along and bring them to a better understanding of their situation and feeling better about where they are and in particular about the practice of law.CHRIS:               I think the thing that's really exciting about what you have done there in Vermont is obviously, you took the National Report and used that as a template to build state-based, engaged lawyers around the committees. Again, for all our audience, this is about a 100-page report and it's chock full of... In each of the committee areas, the judges committee, the bar association, the regulators, the law school, legal employers. I know you've made some progress on the lawyer's assistance program front [crosstalk 00:23:53]. Again, I play the small role from the professional liability carrier.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: You sure did. You did and thank you for that.CHRIS:               And, it's really interesting because I think each one of those committees have both identified and begun to enact recommendations. There's five to 10 recommendations in each area, so if you're looking for ideas about what Vermont's done. Again, Vermont's a smaller state, obviously less than I think 5,000 lawyers and so-CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: That's right.CHRIS:                This is a really interesting template for a lot of other rural states out there that I think face similar issues in terms of either geographic distance or just demographics of the profession and I think our office was a little bit different when you get to the smaller bar size.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:           And, the bar size does make a difference, the office size. We have a lot of sole practitioners in the state, small firm profiles in the state, and this is a problem that crosses all boundaries, large firms, small firm, and people have taken... The evidence is that people are taking this seriously and really I think putting effort into addressing the needs that we've got.CHRIS:               Excellent. This is I think a good time for us to take a break. Let's hear from one of our sponsors. This is an awesome conversation and I just love what's going on in Vermont, and so we'll be back right after the break.—Advertisement: Your law firm is worth protecting, and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and buying coverage all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard, our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com.—BREE:            Welcome back, everybody. This is Bree Buchanan and we have our guest today Chief Justice Paul Reiber of the Vermont Supreme Court and we're having a wonderful, very candid conversation here today. And so, Chief, we've heard about the process of developing the state action plan for Vermont and it's been about two years, I believe, since that was published, coming up on... I think the date on it is December 31st, 2018.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:             Right.BREE:              What has been the trajectory of the well-being movement in Vermont since its publication?CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: Well, one of the things I'd like to do is sing the praises of the Vermont Bar Association. Teri Corsones, and the leadership, the board, the president, these folks have been extremely instrumental in keeping the news of the need for lawyers to address this alive. We are seeing it's a little bit difficult to put your finger on it given the virus and the fact that face-to-face meetings have suspended for the last several months, but the bar association had their regular meetings and we have an independent bar association by the way. It is not connected to the court. It's not within the court, but they have specifically identified wellness seminars for everyone of their meetings that they're offering, which is terrific.In addition to that, Mike Kennedy, terrific Mike Kennedy and Teri Corsones in the VBA are publishing regularly in the Bar Association Journal a story about a lawyer in Vermont who... I forget the title of it, but it's basically about how to maintain balance in your life, how to... They profile an attorney who has a great road running program that they follow and profile that. Somebody else who is very involved in art in a way that, it's a project that helps them maintain balance in their life.This is I think very, very important to keeping this issue fresh in people's minds and in addition to this, Mike tells me that some of the larger firms actually are bringing him in to speak to their lawyers during the noon hour. Again, this was before the pandemic, to provide them with ideas and incentive for maintaining balance in their lives. So, I'm very, very pleased about the work of the bar in this respect and I give credit to the folks that are really carrying the heavy load on it.CHRIS:               It sounds like there's been a real commitment on behalf of, again, all the players involved to just keep this issue front and center because it's, again, if we don't tackle it, nobody's going to tackle it because it's the life, that's the profession that we're currently in and there's certainly room for improvement there.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:           Well, years ago I met with a great trial lawyer out in Salt Lake City about reforming the civil rules in my state, something that they had done in Utah and were very successful with and I had this lawyer's name who spearheaded the project and I had lunch with him and I said to him, "Francis, tell me, how can I do this back home in Vermont?" He said, "What you need is a guy like me." Because he was the one who really pushed it through. He was a trial lawyer and he headed the thing up.Well, I would tell you that I've got people like Teri Corsones and Michael Kennedy who writes a blog the two of you may be aware of, which is really excellent and frequently addresses wellness issues. Mike is just a champion in this regard, so we have real heroes in this respect and I think this is one of the keys to making this work is to find people who are willing and have a genuine interest in committing to addressing this problem.CHRIS:                 Well, let's not negate your role from the head of the judiciary. Again, I think I'm making an observation I think is true, which is when we have seen judiciary engagement on well-being, the wheels of progress and the wheels of success and creativity and initiatives has really flourished. So, I'd love for you to just talk about, again, your role from the chief justice perspective and then I know how much this issue has also caught hold as something that's being discussed amongst the Conference of Chief Justices.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:           It is, yeah.CHRIS:             Which is really, I think, impressive in terms of your... As leaders of our profession, you're contemplating and appreciating just how important this is to the health and well-being of our profession and out ability to serve society.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:           I think it actually is remarkable how the interest... This has sparked an interest for reform if you want, in this area in terms of some of the rule changes that I've mentioned that we've made here and simply embracing the need to bring the problems to the forefront and talk about it and get people's attention on it, it has, across the country. I see colleagues, chiefs in other states, one after another who have formed these commissions. I'd like to remember, as a matter of fact in that regard, my friend Ralph Gants who passed away suddenly about a month ago, was a chief justice of the SJC in Massachusets.BREE:              Right.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:    Ralph had started, before he died, and I attended his memorial virtually actually, but of course that was put on by Northeaster University Law School, a really wonderful tribute to him, but he had started a project just like this. We had talked about it. As a matter of fact, he and I were on a panel at a New England Bar Association meeting a few years ago, along with Paul Suttell from Rhode Island and we all talked to the members of the New England Bar about this and the interest that we all shared in promoting this in our respective states and Ralph had done great work in this regard in bringing it forward with the Massachusetts Bar, but I see it... Hawaii, Mark Recktenwald is the chief out there.Mark has started a project. He and I talked about that. It is really taking hold across the country and I think it is a recognition of the need for sea change from those days I mentioned. Back in the 70s when I started practicing law, and the trips, the court, and I think everybody is recognizing that this is a moment that we need to change our perspective and I'm really pleased to see it.BREE:              It's really encouraging and it makes you feel like it's the right idea at the right time the way it has taken off and-CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:           Isn't that true?BREE:            Yeah, and on the homepage of our website, the lawyerwellbeing.net, if you scroll down, there's an interactive map where you can see all the states that are taking this on and it's just such a delight every time we can go in and highlight another state where a Supreme Court or a state bar has taken this one and done a multi-stakeholder initiative and I think there's 32 or 33 states, so-CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:  That's terrific.BREE:            Absolutely. Chief, before we go, I don't want to pass up all the opportunity to ask you about just any lessons learned in this process. Any lessons learned that you can pass on to other states, maybe other Supreme Court justices or just people, state bar leaders that are thinking they want to start their own well-being task force or something similar? What would you share with them?CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER: You know, Bree, I think picking up on what I said a few moments ago, I think a key to getting it started is identifying two or three people in your jurisdiction who are thoughtful in this direction and interested in this direction and begin to put together the seeds of a project like ours and then build it and build it in a way that it has the force and the authority of the Supreme Court, something I would imagine is available in every jurisdiction once they have attention brought to the issue.I think the people, and identifying the right people is extremely important, but the other thing I would say is don't wait. You can't wait. There are people who are dealing with these problems, they need help. We need to be in the forefront of helping them. We are in a profession that has susceptibility, great susceptibility to these issues and as leaders, we need to tackle those issues. So, don't wait, identify the key people who can help get the project off the ground and then engage your court to support the effort into the outset.CHRIS:               One final question that I would ask you is, as we think about where this movement goes, I live in the business world and we're always talking about what our key success indicators are and how do you think about the well-being movement in the health and the vibrancy of our profession? I'm just kind of curious to your perspective on, how do we measure success in terms of getting to a point that we feel better than obviously we are today in knowing that there's a long road ahead of us, but how do we measure success?CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:           You saved the toughest question for the last, Chris. That's not fair. How do we measure success? Huh? That's a tough question.CHRIS:             It's a little off-script [crosstalk 00:38:13]-CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:             No, no, no, no, that's all right. I don't mean that. That's a tough chore. I think part of what we do is we make sure that we're accountable for the work that we start. I don't like the idea of just starting a project like this and letting it mature on its own schedule, on its own timetable and then not having some accountability back to an authority like the Supreme Court. It doesn't have to be I suppose, but I think that the court and the justices can play a very important role in that regard.So, accountability and putting people on a time I think are very, very important in terms of trying to find success, but measuring success, boy, I don't know what the answer to that is. I have a feeling that there is success in this regard just because of the work the two of you have done and obviously the success that you're having in bringing this word out to the profession, but data, I don't know. I don't know how you would do that.I think the problem is, I mentioned, it's part of the human condition and it is something that we all struggle with in a fashion in our own personal lives and it's not something, like I said before, that you just can turn the switch on and off. So, I think it's a very important problem that we have in front of us and we have to keep talking about it.CHRIS:           For sure.BREE:            Absolutely.CHRIS: Well, thank you so much, Chief Justice Paul Reiber of the Vermont Supreme Court. You've been a leader in our movement and I know that you just brought an idea home and I got things rolling, but these are the small steps that lead to the big steps that lead to a ripple effect that ultimately allowed Vermont to go out front and start to pave the way to a pathway toward a recognition that to be a good lawyer you have to be a healthy lawyer and that ultimately our ability as a profession to be able to deliver to society is premised on perhaps speaking about the way that we attack the profession in just a little bit of a different way.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:           Well, thank you both for what you're doing.BREE:              Thank you.CHIEF JUSTICE REIBER:             Much appreciated.CHRIS:               Absolutely. All right, so we will be back in a couple of weeks with another well-being guest and until then, stay well out there. I know we're in the midst of the pandemic and I know we are at a point now around the country where numbers are as high as they've ever been, which again, I think creates more challenges when it comes to both the administration of justice, but also the health and well-being of lawyers and probably time for us to bring in a couple of guests to actually talk specifically about how COVID has impacted the well-being of lawyers, so stay tuned for that on the horizon and until then, be well. Thanks for joining us.BREE:            Thank you. 

Martha Knudson, J.D., MAPP is the Executive Director of the Utah State Bar’s Well-Being Committee for the Legal Profession working with Utah’s judges, lawyers, and law students to enhance engagement, performance, resilience, and overall well-being. As part of her role, she also advises researchers at the University of Utah conducting empirical research of lawyers and law students in the western United States. Prior to working in the well-being field, Martha practiced law for almost 18 years. She earned her law degree in 1999, graduating magna cum laude. After passing the bar Martha became a litigator in private law-firm practice where she rose to the rank of shareholder. She later became General Counsel of a leading real estate management company where she was provided legal over-site on all aspects of the company’s national operations, advised leadership, and worked with the messy reality of keeping a business and its people thriving. In 2015, Martha earned a master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology from The University of Pennsylvania where she has since served as an Assistant Instructor to the graduate program. Martha also works with private clients and regularly speaks and publishes articles on well-being in the law. She recently contributed a chapter in the book The Best Lawyer You Can Be: A Guide to Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Wellness. Transcript:CHRIS NEWBOLD:                Hello, and welcome to episode eight of The National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing Podcast Series, The Path to Wellbeing in Law. I'm your cohost, Chris Newbold, the executive vice president of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And our goal here is simple, to introduce you to cool people doing awesome work in the space of lawyer wellbeing, and in the process, build and nurture a national network of wellbeing advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the legal profession. I'm joined today by my friend and fellow co-chair of The National Taskforce, Bree Buchanan. Bree, welcome.BREE BUCHANAN:               Thanks, Chris. Good to be here.CHRIS:                Yeah. And today, we're going to continue an evolution that we've done over the last two podcasts, which is kind of a march around the states. We started in Virginia. We spent some time with Heidi Alexander in Massachusetts, and we really do kind of feel like the states are really kind of getting out front, testing new wellbeing initiatives and commitment, making investments in wellbeing in terms of the health of their members and the health of the profession. And as we know, movements generally are driven by things that happen at the grassroots level. And so today, we're going to kind of continue that. And a few states have jumped out front. One of them is the state of Utah. And we're very excited to have us joined today by Martha Knudson, who is the executive director of the Utah State Bar's Wellbeing Committee for the Legal Profession. And Martha is the byproduct of some work that's happened in Utah, and we're really excited about some of the things happening in Utah and excited to welcome Martha to the podcast. So Bree, would you be so kind to introduce Martha?BREE:               Absolutely. And Martha, just welcome. We're so delighted to have you. So Martha Knudson, prior to working in the wellbeing field, she practiced law for 18 years. She was a litigator in a private law firm practice. She was also general council of a leading real estate management company. And then, of course, I imagine there's a story here, hopefully we'll hear it, in 2015, Martha's career took a turn and she pursued ... Well, she earned at that point in time, a master's degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. And she now regularly speaks and publishes articles on wellbeing in the law, as well as the great work that she's doing at the Utah bar. So welcome, Martha.I wanted to ... We always ask our guests a question at the very beginning. And it's about what brought you to the wellbeing movement, what experiences in your life are really drivers behind what I know is that you have a passion for this work.MARTHA KNUDSON:            That is a great question. And as you so deftly noticed, there is a story. I was attracted to the wellbeing in law movement for very personal reasons. Because I really suffered from burnout, depression, and anxiety that got kind of manifested when I was in private practice, about the third year of practice at my firm. I remember just suddenly not being happy. Life had no color. I felt like I was going to grow old and die behind my desk, but I kept putting my head down and working and working because I wanted to excel in the profession. I wanted to learn how to be a litigator. I wanted to make partner, and I did all those things. Right?But it wasn't like ... I always thought, "I'll be happy when." But by the time I got to 10 years into my practice, I was miserable, burnt out, all the rest, and so I walked away from my partnership, and thought I was just washing my hands of it. I really figured that I could either do well as a lawyer, or be happy in my life. So retirement didn't last long. I got talked out of it to go work for a great company as their general counsel. And as I made the decision to do so, I thought, "I want to do this differently. I want to see if I can do well at work and as an attorney, and be well in my life."So I went out and I started doing research. So all good research is me-search. So I came across, as I'm looking. How can you thrive in your career in your life? So I found the science of positive psychology, which is really the science of optimal human performance and thriving. And I learned about focusing on strengths and protective factors, and how to work better with my emotions and cognitive processes, and all the different things that science tells us goes into increased wellbeing. And I learned that doing well, or being well in your life, really drives doing well [inaudible 00:05:31]. Yeah. I'd be making a false choice.So that is what led me back to school, so ended up going and getting my master's degree while still working full-time and remodeling my house. So that actually probably was not the best wellbeing choice, little overloaded there. But yeah, and as I came out, I made the decision to step back from the practice in favor of serving the profession.BREE:            Yeah. I just want to echo some things that you said earlier that really popped out to me when you talked about being in the practice, and you said, "Life had no color." And that's just a great phrase, really. When I was with the lawyer's assistance program in Texas for about a decade, and I heard that, and I could just envision that as when I had so many people call, they were just really unhappy in their lives and unhappy in their practice. And it was manifesting as depression, or anxiety, or et cetera. Yeah, I just wanted to kind of capture that a little bit.CHRIS:                Yeah. And Martha, what a bold move. Right? I mean, most people don't have that willpower to be able to say, "I've climbed the mountain. I'm at the partnership level," but then to really kind of look inside and say, "But am I really, truly satisfied in where I'm at?"MARTHA:            Well, thank you. It felt like a lifesaver for me at the time. But I know I had lots of colleagues that ... Well, it was interesting. I had some that were scratching their heads. But I had others, I had partners that came into my office and said, "I will deny this if you ever use my name, but I wish I could do what you're doing. Go. Run free. Be free." And that was interesting to me to hear that from people that they were envious of the decision that I was making. And it's too bad because it doesn't need to be that way. And the more that I've learned about the science of wellbeing and performance and the rest, and the more I interact with attorneys on this end, it really doesn't need to be that way. The law is an incredible profession, and we all deserve, and frankly, society deserves for lawyers to be doing well.BREE:          Well said.CHRIS:                 Well, let's talk a little bit about Utah. Right? And I'm curious, and I have a little bit of experience with Utah because I was actually on your task force, although not as probably actively involved as I should have been, but which oftentimes happens. But obviously, the Utah Supreme Court, you have a couple of great leaders in Justice Paige Peterson and your former bar president, Dickson Burton. And you guys get going, and you launched this task force. Talk about that process and how that came together, how long the task force worked, and how you finished that phase of where that phase took you, and where we are now.MARTHA:              Great. Well, so it really was the brainchild of Chief Justice Matthew Durrant. And this came as a result of the incredible task force report that you folks were a big part of. So Justice Durrant and Justice Peterson, they just dove into that report, and they answered the call that was made to states, bar associations, courts, et cetera, to take a look at lawyer wellbeing. And so they brought in Dickson Burton, who was an incredible leader, and they formed this task force. And it was really important to Justice Peterson and Dickson Burton to have thought leaders on this task force, thought leaders in firms, in law schools, in small practice, solo practice, across the courts, different judges, and to also have different experts be a part of this because they wanted to put something out that people would notice and listen to.And so I was fortunate enough to be on this task force because of the combination of my experience practicing law and my positive psychology expertise. So we sat down together about once a month for I think it was nine or 10 months, and we really used that national task force report as a blueprint for how to operate. And we followed along with the recommendations that were in that task force report, which was beautiful not to have to reinvent the wheel. And we came up with different recommendations for the various stakeholders in the Utah legal profession, for example, the courts, lawyers, law students in law schools, the bar, regulators, et cetera.And one of the primary recommendations that the task force made, and this was near and dear to my heart, was to have a baseline assessment done using scientific measures by the science guys to figure out where Utah sits. We have that national study, which was so instrumental in galvanizing this movement. But does Utah look just like that? Are we the same? Are we different? Are we better in some areas, worse in others? And we also wanted to try to drill down to see. Are there pockets of different types of practice, or age, or whatever, or rural versus urban, where lawyers are doing better, or lawyers are doing worse? So we can get some clues on where we should be focusing our efforts.So we are working with the University of Utah School of Medicine, an occupational epidemiologist named Dr. Matthew Thiese. And he came in and we worked together to put a survey out. So that is, so the recommendations and the beginning of this lawyer study kind of started at the same time. And in the midst of all this, the decision was made to convert the task force to a permanent standing committee under the Utah State Bar's umbrella. And the purpose of the task ... Excuse me. The purpose of the committee is to carry out the recommendations of the task force. And so that is where we are now, is we are working on those recommendations and the study is ... We have results back on the baseline study, and we are still analyzing data and working forward on that as well.BREE:            I had heard about the study that you were doing, and really excited about it and the implications that it can have for other states as well. Do you have a sense of when it's going to be completed or the data will be available?MARTHA:            Yes. I actually can give you some of the data now. So we continue to pull in more data using the same survey. But the preliminary data was made available at the beginning of 2020. And I'll tell you a little bit about that. And then we continue to collect data as we go along, and the study will morph. But the preliminary data that we are seeing is there's some good and there's some troubling. Let's start with the positive. Right? So we are seeing actually, there are areas that lawyers in Utah are doing really well. About 46% of us have a moderate or high level of job satisfaction, which is awesome. And there's things that lawyers have answered when we've asked, dug in on why that is. Lawyers in Utah that say they are satisfied with their job, they really enjoy collaborating and working with others. They like that connection piece, which we know from the science, how important that is to motivation and wellbeing and performance.They like intellectual challenge. Those folks enjoy knowing that their contributions matter, that they have a sense of meaning and purpose in their work. And all those things are really great to find that out because we're seeing that those are areas that are right for us to go and see if we can create more of that for more of the population.BREE:            Absolutely. Yeah.MARTHA:          So those are the positives. There were some really troubling results though that we found. So as we did this research, we were really mindful about how we set it up because we used a lot of different measures. But one measure in particular that we used is called the PHQ-9, and it's a measure that is used a ton. There's really reliable, valid, and it measures depressive symptoms or likelihood to have clinical depression and also measures suicide, or your suicidal ideation and those kinds of things because that's something that we've been concerned about because of what we've seen nationally and also anecdotal evidence. And we also chose that measure because there is a national data collection set that comes out every couple years called the NHANES. And we wanted to be able to compare what our population here in Utah, the Utah lawyers, look like compared to people in the national general working population. How do we compare?So what we found is that lawyers in Utah are five times more likely to experience depressive symptoms than the general working population. About 44.4% of responding lawyers reported feelings of depression. And from our data, we are seeing that it indicates about 15% have a serious depressive disorder, and that is really troubling.BREE:        That is. And so Martha, let me ask just real quick. When you talk about comparing lawyers with the working population, is that just all workers in the population? Or is that lawyers?MARTHA:            That's all workers in the population.BREE:          Okay. Okay.MARTHA:        Yeah. So we want to see: If you're a lawyer, rather than just generally employed individual, does that increase your risk of developing some of the occupational hazards that we too often see in our profession? And so along those lines, I'll give you two more numbers, and then but I think there's a lot more encouraging that's coming out. But we're seeing about 48.7% of the Utah lawyers responding are reporting some level of burnout. And burnout I think is something a lot of us can relate to on some level. And it's very common, can happen to anybody in any job. But it is a risk factor for developing some of these other more serious problems that we see.BREE:          And Martha, just real quick. Is that 48.7 burnout, percent of burnout, I assume that's pre COVID. Right?MARTHA:              Yes. Yes. This is all pre COVID data. The data that we collected is pre COVID that's going into these numbers that I'm telling you. And then we'll see. I'm curious as we move forward with continuing data collection, if we see an uptick in some of these, both positive or negative. Right? Because it could be that we see some positive things come out of that as well. But one last number that I'd like to just share with you because it is really guiding a lot of our work here in Utah and I think it's something that nationally we all should be paying attention to.So there is a question in that NHANES measure that we talked about that asks: How often do you have thoughts of being better off dead or of hurting yourself? And what we have found is that lawyers in Utah are 8.5 times more likely to report thoughts of being better off dead or hurting yourself than compared to the general working population, and that is very sobering.BREE:        That is. Let me real quick, because I think people will be listening, and they're trying to compare thinking about their state compared to what you're talking about. How many lawyers in Utah? What size is the bar?MARTHA:          We have a little shy of 10,000 that are active.BREE:              Okay. Yeah. That's helpful.CHRIS:                And your survey sample size ended up being generally what?MARTHA:            Our survey sample size was about 700, so we had a statistically significant number. And we sampled from across geography, age, gender, all the things. So we have a really good sample that is very reliable.CHRIS:              Yeah.BREE:          That report, has that been written up, reduced to writing, and is that available anywhere?MARTHA:          So the preliminary numbers that I talked about today, they are available. They came out in an article to the Utah State Bar. They're available on our wellbeing website, which is wellbeing.utahbar.org, under data on Utah lawyers. And then there are, we're drilling down even further into the data on a lot of the other measures we're looking at. And we've got some articles that are out for publication right now, and so those are not available yet, but they should be available hopefully within the next few months. [crosstalk 00:20:30]. And I'm happy to answer questions to anybody that's interested. Or I could connect them with our researcher. I know Dr. Thiese has been speaking with several other states about using the same survey we developed, and all of us working together on this.BREE:              Great. Right. So for people who are listening, if you scroll down if you can see this online, in the transcript, we'll have links that Martha was just talking about if people want to be able to access that.CHRIS:                 Yeah. Martha, first of all, I want to commend again the leadership there because I think, I mean, obviously, we're an evidence-based profession. Right? And I think that probably goes to kind of one of the things that you were thinking about, which is we need to be able to document the issue as it relates to Utah lawyers to then kind of know where we're at and where we need to get to. I'm curious how much you needed to spend for the survey because I know one of the things that I oftentimes recommend to state task forces is some type of a survey apparatus. Sometimes it's more of the informal, unscientific method, which is still important because you're still doing a lot of education through the survey tool itself. You went a much more kind of academic scientifically based method, so I'm just kind of wondering what type of resources you invested to be able to produce that.MARTHA:            Well, we pulled a rabbit out of a hat a little bit here. And the bar originally, and the courts were thinking of hiring a survey company. And myself and a couple other members of the task force really lobbied against that because we wanted to have that evidence-based scientific survey, so we could know that what we were asking, we were getting correct, reliable answers. So then we can measure again to see if we moved the needle, all those things. And we were fortunate enough to have connection to Dr. Thiese, and he comes at it from the population standpoint instead of an individual, looking at what's going on in the population.And we talked to Matt, and he was willing to pitch in and do this for us for a very reasonable sum. At the time, I believe we paid him less than 15 grand to do this. And I'll tell you, he has put in so much time and effort and resources above and beyond that amount, that it's been phenomenal. And I know he's very willing to work with other states on this and to help them out and do what he can with the resources that they have. But also, we're out right now in the community talking to other organizations, working on getting grants because what we'd like to do with this research is expand it far beyond Utah and start doing some interventional studies where we get in and you tweak something to see if it changes.And Dr. Thiese and his partners are out there right now trying to find grant money so we can do this. So support of anyone listening that would like to be involved in this is invited.CHRIS:Yeah. Very interesting. And I'm curious whether the scope at all addressed any of the corresponding causation issues. Or was there any movement into that area in terms of just the overall scope of the survey?MARTHA:              Yes. The data that's come out thus far has been very focused on what we're finding with some of these outcomes, I guess, if that's the right way to say it. But we also, we could've had a huge, long survey. And I was like, "Let's add this, and let's add this," and using all my positive psychology background. But we decided, we pinpointed a few areas to look at, to see if we could get some clues. Right?So one of the areas that we are looking at, and did look at with the survey, is social support, and the perceptions that people have that they are supported, belong in their organizations, in the community, in their lives outside of work. So social support is something that is incredibly important, and we are doing the analysis right now to see correlations between perceived social support and where you sit on some of these other measures. So we looked at that, we looked at work engagement. We looked at how often people are moving, on the physical movement piece of that. I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff. It's been a while since I've looked at the survey.But yeah, we are definitely trying to look at the causation piece, and that's something we will continue to dig into because this survey, we see it as a real starting point because that's what we want to do, is get to the causation. Right? We want to see what's going on and why this is happening. So this gives us a place to really drill down. For example, if you see one area of practice, like family law, and if we see that folks in family law tend to be having a harder time with some of these wellbeing measures than others. What are they doing differently? So we can go back and work with some of these same study participants. The University of Utah can. This is all confidential. Right? I don't know who said what, and nor should I know, nor should the bar know. And they won't. But to see what clues we can get, so then we can start build out some ... To find out the cause, and then build out interventions.CHRIS:Yeah. Awesome. It's interesting having kind of looked at this issue and monitored obviously over the last several years that the growth of the scientific approach in our space is something that is a real opportunity for us. And I think we're all thankful that both you and Utah in general is kind of jumping out in front because I think that documenting the issues and understanding causation, that's going to allow us to ultimately to be more surgical in our approach on what levers we need to pull to improve the overall wellbeing of the profession, which obviously then leads to a better legal system in general.MARTHA:              Right. One thing I didn't mention that I'd love to just throw out there for all the listeners is the focus that Utah is moving toward on organizations. As part of our study, we have enrolled, oh gosh, I can't remember the exact number, but I think it's nine, between nine and 12 law firms to participate in the survey as an organization. So we can start to suss out: Why is one organization doing better than another? So we can see some clues there because organization and culture has such an incredible impact on wellbeing. We talk about wellbeing a lot as individual things that we all can do, and they're very important. Right?But the fish bowl that we swim in is just as, if not more so, important to our wellbeing. So the more we can see what our culture is like, what our organizations are doing that help our wellbeing, and that could cut against it, I think the more we can really get to the bottom of what's happening to cause some of these problems. And what are people doing that are lending ... What are organizations doing that are helping lawyers to thrive?CHRIS:              Yeah. Well, let's take a break here. I'd like to come back, Martha, and talk more about just kind of where you're at in your day to day, what you're hoping to accomplish as you kind of think about the various pathways that you've selected to pursue. And then obviously, words of wisdom that you have for other states who are embarking either on this journey or embarking on the journey, so let's take a quick break and we'll be back.—  Advertisement:                       Your law firm is worth protecting and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and find coverage all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com.— BREE:          Welcome back, everybody. We've got with us today, Martha Knudson, who is the director of the Utah Bar's Wellbeing Committee for the Legal Profession. And we've been talking about some really interesting data that's coming out of the survey that they're doing. But Martha, I wanted to hear. What else is the committee working on right now?MARTHA:            Well, there's a lot. Let's see if I can give you some broad areas that we have been working on and seeing some success. One area that Utah has really done well with is communicating that wellbeing is important. And we're doing so using several mediums. We regularly have wellbeing related articles in our bar journal. At every CLE conference that we have, there is a track that is discussing different wellbeing related areas, so we're seeing that. We've got social media that is posting. We are using our monthly e-bulletin and putting out little wellbeing bites and news on that area. So we're really promoting and getting out and talking about the importance of wellbeing. And we're seeing that branch to beyond the wellbeing committee into other committees that are starting to take up the same push with the importance of wellbeing.We're also working on increasing education and teaching people about what are the protective factors to some of the things that we're seeing. And also, many of us don't ever experience those things. But how can we go from where we are to even doing better? How can we really thrive in the practice of law? And it was recently after COVID hit, we did a three part resilience series for lawyers, and had an overwhelming response. I was amazed. We had over 500 people on every session that we offered.BREE:      That's amazing.MARTHA:       Yeah, that was super encouraging to see lawyers talking about that, so we're doing those things. We're working on stigma reduction. We are really pushing awareness of resources available. How do you get access to them? Gosh, what else? I could go on and on. We're working on amending some of the rules of professionalism to expand the definition to allow for more programming in that area. And that is something is very supported within the MCLE board and the rest, and that's pending.BREE:              That's great. That's such an important piece.MARTHA:            Yeah. The law schools are doing awesome things. Both law schools have dedicated counselors for the students, so we're really seeing a push. But right now, so much of it has to do with education, getting people to recognize or understand. What is wellbeing? Why does it matter? And how do we start? And we put together a couple of phase one best practices for organizations and individuals to give people that place to start.CHRIS:            Yeah. One of the things that we talk a lot about on the podcast and encourage our guests to opine on is: What are ultimately the drivers of the culture shift that we're trying to engineer? And it sounds like in Utah, you've put a lot of your marbles into the education space. The more that we can make people aware, the more that we can build a set of practitioners and others associated with the legal professional that are aware of the realities of our profession, that's going to go a long way in terms of ultimately having us think through just a different lens than we do today.MARTHA:           Right, right. And I think in Utah, we put our eggs in, let's see, probably three broad baskets. I might add one as I speak, but we'll see. So one would be research. Where are we? So we know where we are and where we're going. We talked about that. The other one is education. What is wellbeing? And why should you care? Even if you don't care about people being happen, even though it's the right thing to do, you should care because it makes you a better lawyer. And better lawyers can pack the bottom line. Right? Organizations, your lawyers are your assets, so that.And number three, resources, providing ... What are the things that people can build within themselves and within their organizations? Which is part of education. Right? What can you do to actually start to move the needle? Where do you start? So those are probably the big three that we have focused on first. And within those, there's just so much stuff going on. But yeah, that's really where we're starting because if you want to ... Culture change is hard. Right? It is very hard to turn the Titanic. Well, I guess that's probably not. I shouldn't say Titanic. It's really hard to turn a really large ship. Lawyers are not the Titanic. That was probably a bad use of example.But culture is hard to change, and it takes education. It takes leaders being willing to stand up and talk about why wellbeing is important, and then walk the talk. This is COVID and the coronavirus is actually something I think, one of the silver linings is that I think that is going to drive a culture change because it's been speeding up the process of getting our profession to recognize that wellbeing is bound up with everything that we do as a lawyer. Our wellbeing is vital to our ability to practice well and do so sustainably. And so where it was even eight months ago, we're starting to see the conversation get bigger and bigger. But it's also easily put by leaders and a lot of organizations kind of pushed aside, or pushed off to HR or something, that just HR deals with.And now we have this situation where work is disrupted, and things have gone a little bit bonkers. And you have law firm leaders that are recognizing they have to care about the wellbeing of their people if they want this workforce to be sustainable. And so I think that is going to drive culture change in a really positive way.CHRIS:             Those are interesting insights. I think we've all spent time in our shelter in place positions, and just had a lot of time to reflect. Right? What is it that we want? And what is our position? What is our family? What is our firm? I'm really kind of thinking about those big picture issues that I think you're right, that the pandemic has been a very interesting time I think, and potentially a real disruptive force for the betterment on the wellbeing front.MARTHA:            Agreed.CHRIS:              Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about, Martha, your role. You're the executive director. I presume that you're working full-time. But talk to me about just kind of your commitment because we do need folks who play the point guard position and can kind of lead the symphony, if you will. And I'm just kind of curious on you and your role with the Utah State Bar.MARTHA:             Yeah. My role with the Utah State Bar looks a little different I think than my counterparts. There's the few of us out there. So I actually am not a full-time employee of the bar. I contract with the bar for about 10 hours of my time a week to focus on wellbeing efforts and to take the recommendations of the task force and now the committee and move them forward. And this is really, this position was really the brainchild of Justice Paige Peterson, who she thought, "We have all these great ideas, and we have all these folks on the committee and in the court and the bar, who really care about wellbeing." But unless you have somebody that's paid for it, it's really difficult to make that the top priority. Right?So that's my relationship with the bar, so I do that work. And then I do other things as well. But yeah, that's how it's worked out. And it's really been interesting to me how much we can get done with that amount of time. [crosstalk 00:38:42].CHRIS:              I think there's oftentimes, we kind of feel like, boy, if we can't have a full-time person, we're just not going to be able to make a difference. And I think that you're proving in Utah that in fact, with very limited resources and a limited allocation of a state bar, a state supreme court, you can actually make a huge difference with something that's far less significant than what we're seeing in states like Virginia and Massachusetts, where you're actually seeing kind of lawyer assessments on bar dues. Right?MARTHA:            Right.CHRIS:        That there's some real opportunity out there for smaller states, let's call it states less than 25,000 lawyers to really invest in wellbeing, but to do it in kind of innovative and contract labor-based ways.MARTHA:           Right, right. Yeah. I think that it would be absolutely wonderful to have access to more resources. And we'll see where that all goes, not just in Utah, but in other states. But I think if you want to get your state moving forward with wellbeing, you certainly need to have a group of thought leaders in the community that people listen to, so you need a group of those folks. And then if you can have somebody that is dedicated [inaudible 00:40:05] with their time, paid, to moving initiatives forward, I think that makes a huge difference. And I would say it's very important to have an attorney do that if at all possible.The benefit that I have with my position, and I'm certainly not super unique in this, I guess I am to some extent, but that I have ... I practiced law for 18 years. I know what it's like to be a law firm partner. I know what it's like to be general council and run cases and try cases and do all the things. So I know what it's like. And then I also have the positive psychology expertise side of it. So you don't have to have necessarily that expertise. But I think to have someone that has experience as an attorney take this forward is something that does make a difference. But it is definitely something that states can do on a limited budget.BREE:            And so Martha, I'm just really, one of the things we like to ask is: What are the secrets to your success, your state's success so far? And one common theme, which I definitely see in Utah is that you have strong leadership from the Supreme Court in getting this started. Are there other secrets to your success that you want to share that you haven't already?MARTHA:         Well, yeah, you're right on the strong leadership. Having folks that are visible in the community and that walk the talk is a definite benefit. Right? That's a secret to our success. I think the science side of it, really look at evidence based decisions is something that is valuable. Another secret to the success that we've been seeing, I think is a willingness of those same leaders that we discussed being able to be vulnerable and authentic about why their wellbeing matters and what they do to take care of it.And we've had a push, and this is part of the anti stigma campaign too, we've had several of our leaders that are on the committee and otherwise, stand up. And of course, we've had some that are in recovery and have said, "Hey, look. This is my path. This is what happened to me. This is what I do now to stay on track." And then we have others though that say, and well respected in the community, that we've had panels and that have stood up to say, "Look. This is how I take care of my mental health." The old stereotypical law firm male partner, I go to therapy every couple weeks. I schedule time to do this. I schedule time with my friends. I make sure I do this. And so we have those leaders that people are like, "Well, that guy can do this. I can do this." So I think that is huge.BREE:              It is.MARTHA:            And also, I have to give a shout out to the culture of the Utah Bar. Folks here tend to be pretty helpful and care about each other, so that has been a secret to our success, is just that we have that culture.BREE:            On the flip side, are there any things I guess that you've learned the hard way that you'd want to warn other folks about trying to follow in Utah's footsteps?MARTHA:            Yes. One of the big ones that I keep seeming to have to learn and tell myself and our committee, we have to tell ourselves, is you can't eat the elephant all at once. It is small steps. Right? One step at a time. And celebrate small wins, and recognize that, hey, look where we were five years ago compared to now. So one small step at a time and recognize that this is a marathon, not a sprint because it's easy for me to get in my head and start thinking, "Oh, we should already have this all done by now," which is crazy talk, but that is ... So you can end up getting in that bucket.Another lesson that I have learned the hard way through a lot of different experiences, but I've tried to use that lesson now, is the more you can make small shifts in things that are already happening, meet people where they are, and make small shifts. For example, we want to get the message out about wellbeing. And so I thought, "Some states have done a whole new wellbeing newsletter, all these things," and that's wonderful. But we don't have the budget or the bandwidth to build that up. So how can I use what's already there to start pushing that message out? So that is a big lesson.And also, another thing that I've had to keep reminding myself, and I think I said this, meet people where they are. So in the world that I have become immersed in with wellbeing, both working with the University of Pennsylvania positive psychology program, being on the wellbeing committee, talking to all you folks nationally, is you start to forget that there's a lot of folks that still need ... They don't know what we're talking about with wellbeing. They need to understand the basics again, and again, and again, and again, and again. So that's you can't just say it once and then jump to the next five things.BREE:              They don't see the world through our eyes.MARTHA:            Exactly. Exactly. You've got to meet people where they are.CHRIS:                Heidi, one ... Sorry. Martha, one final question. Optimistic or concern about what lies ahead on the wellbeing front?MARTHA:            Optimistic. I'm optimistic. I think that we're waking up as a profession. And silver lining of coronavirus I think is helping that. And I'll give you a little story maybe that would highlight this. When I was a young lawyer, nobody talked about this stuff. And I think that's probably pretty common. It was definitely not unique to my organization. And if anything, if somebody struggled, the answer was, oh, they can't cut it. Right? I don't hear that anymore. I am very optimistic about that. People are talking about it. They are talking about not just the preventative proactive stuff, but they're talking about their own struggles. And so that is making me super optimistic.look what's happening nationally with the organization that you two have been so instrumental in putting forward. We have research that we're learning more, so I'm optimistic.CHRIS:                Well, excellent. Well, Martha, we so appreciate you coming on the podcast. Your presence and the Utah State Bar's commitment to wellbeing is in fact one of those small wins that adds up to kind of where we're trying to get to in this long marathon. But it certainly is exciting to know that we're in good hands as our leader, as you lead in Utah. Right? And I think again, we need to be thinking about ways that we can firmly have people at the grassroots level around the country who are just focused and excited about this particular issue because the bigger our army gets, I think the more success we ultimately will have.MARTHA:           Agreed. Agreed.CHRIS:Yeah. All right, Bree. Any final closing comments?BREE:            That's it. Thank you, Martha, so much for being with us today. Exciting stuff.MARTHA:           Well, thank you for having me. I love what you all are doing nationally. Keep it coming.CHRIS:          When I heard your kind of notions of research and education and resources, it made me really think about a lot of those early discussions at the national task force level, so it's nice to know that we're aligned I think in understanding what the drivers are to this movement and ultimately where we're going.MARTHA:          Right, right. Agreed.CHRIS:            Good stuff. Thanks. Thanks, Martha, and we'll be back in a couple weeks. And until then, be well. Thanks for joining us.MARTHA:       Thank you. 

Heidi experienced her first migraine and drank a lot while in law school. She also had her first panic attack the morning before she sat for the bar. Sound familiar? This week on the Path to Well-Being in Law podcast, Bree and Chris continue their mission to highlight people doing important work in the space of lawyer well-being by welcoming Heidi Alexander. As the first Director of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Standing Advisory Committee on Professionalism, and Director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers Practice Management Program, Heidi can make a better case than anyone for why management of a successful practice is directly tied to the wellbeing of the lawyers running that practice.Transcript:CHRIS NEWBOLD:                Hello and welcome to episode seven of the National Taskforce on Lawyer Well-Being podcast series, The Path to Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host Chris Newbold, Executive Vice President of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And our goal here is simple, to introduce you to cool people doing awesome work in the space of lawyer well-being, and in the process, build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the legal profession. I'm joined today by my friend and my fellow co-chair of the National Task Force, Bree Buchanan, Bree-BREE BUCHANAN:              Yeah, hello, everyone.CHRIS:                And today, we continue our march around the states who are leading the charge, I think in well-being, initiatives, commitment, and success. And as we all know, movements generally are driven by those at the grassroots level, living the day to day trying new ideas. In other words, serving as laboratories of new ideas. And in any movement, we need a few leaders to jump out front and that's exactly what we have seen out of our friends in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Across the country we've seen a swelling of task forces, workgroups, roundtables, and there are lessons to be learned from what's going on in states like Massachusetts and in their roadmap. And we're so excited today to welcome Heidi Alexander to the podcast. Heidi is Massachusetts' first director of Supreme Judicial Court, standing committee on Lawyer Well-Being. And Bree would you be so kind to introduce Heidi to our listeners?BREE:               Absolutely. And this is such a wonderful bio here Heidi. I just love it and would love to have been you. Heidi was formerly the deputy director of lawyers concern for lawyers in Massachusetts, and lead the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program. She is the author of Evernote as a Law Practice Tool. Past co-chair of ABA TECHSHOW, and founder of the ABA's Women of Legal Technology Initiative. She's a native Minnesotan, former collegiate ice hockey goaltender for the Amherst College Women's Ice Hockey Team, love it. CrossFit coach and power lifter, and most important of all, the mother of three young girls. So Heidi, thanks so much for being here with us today. And listen[crosstalk 00:02:34]HEIDI S. ALEXANDER:             Thanks for having me.BREE:                    Yeah, yeah. One of the things that we always ask our guests is just a little bit about what drives your passion and really wanting to hear from everyone what has brought you into the well-being movement? What experience in your life is the driver behind your passion for this one?HEIDI:     Yeah, thank you well, again, thank you again for having me on here. And I love it when someone calls me cool, because my kids certainly don't think so. And my wife certainly doesn't think. So I'm in a cool zone here. I appreciate it. I'm happy to talk about what brought me to this movement. I pursued somewhat of an alternative legal career path. I was that that kid who went to law school because I wanted to change the world. Super ambitious, driven. Didn't really think much about my own well-being other than exercise. I was a competitive athlete in college. But other than that, I wasn't really that aware. So I went to law school, a little bit older, because I worked and I started off as a clerk for a justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court, which, of course was a fantastic experience.And then moved back to Boston and worked as a litigation associate doing plaintiffs side employment loss, a lot of discrimination, lots of civil rights work. So it's kind of where I thought I should be, but I hated litigation. It was not for me, and I left. And I actually got to a point where I thought, hey, maybe I'll even start an organic farm. I was a little bit lost. Because I had just been so focused on, this is what I want to do. This is where I want to be and all of a sudden when it just wasn't working out, that was tough. So I ended up by... I actually wrote a business plan to start a farm and then apprenticed on a farm and said, oh, this isn't for me either. But all that time, I got really involved in the bar associations and ended up pursuing an interest of mine.Which was more along the lines of the management of the practice, and really focused on marketing and technology. And I started to consult with some firms. And so that's actually what led me to Lawyers Concern for Lawyers in Massachusetts. Because Lawyers Concerns for Lawyers actually has a program, which is a Law Office Management Assistance Program. So it's actually part of our state's lawyer assistance program where their practice advisors that consult with primarily solo and small firms on the business of law. And one of the things I realized when I was in that position, was that the two services, the clinical services, the focus on well-being, and the management of the practice, were intertwined.There's such a connection, right? Between the personal and the professional. And so I got much more interested in the well-being work, and then I shifted to this position that I'm currently in working for the court really focused on well-being. But in addition to the commitment that I have, that I've always had to working, or doing public service work, I do have some life experiences that have drawn me here to. And so for those listening, that some of this may ring true for you, when I was in law school, I actually got my first migraine with an aura. And it's a pretty scary experience.You see a bright light, and it's almost like you think you're having a stroke. And so that was pretty scary. I drank a lot in law school to deal with stress. I had my first panic attack before I sat for the Massachusetts and New York Bars. And then had a lot of anxiety when I was in practice. And so it wasn't really until then, did I really start to focus on my own well-being and kind of what that meant. So I do feel like I come from this, from a lot of different angles and perspectives.BREE:               Absolutely. I really identified a lot with what some of the things that you were saying. Yeah, yeah. And I remember having a lot of the same difficulties early in law school, and you just sort of persist, and then do the things that you think you're supposed to do, and you're told to do and it doesn't fit, and then you move on to finding something else. And so it sounds like you've got a really great balance and full life right now. That's wonderful.Heidi S. Alexan...:            I do. I do. Yeah.CHRIS:             Let's talk about your state. So the Supreme Judicial Court launches this standing committee on lawyer well-being and I'm just curious on how does that happen? Right? Who were the players? How did things start to form? Obviously, you're a result of that work. So give us the background on how the well-being committee launched their Massachusetts?Heidi S. Alexan...:            Yeah. So this was really a collaborative effort, I think, by many of the leaders here and the pioneers in Massachusetts, including leaders in our court, leaders from our state's lawyer systems program, folks in law firms, public agencies, bar associations, and other organizations. But I think it was really our late Chief Justice, Ralph Gantz, who was responsible for making this a reality. The chief justice who actually just passed away very suddenly, almost maybe a few weeks ago now, he was really dedicated to this work. And he was a huge advocate and proponent of the SJC steering committee. And so the steering committee was the first committee that formed and then transition to a permanent standing committee. And again, I mean, the Chief Justice, he was a leader in so many ways. This wasn't his only focus. So his death is a huge loss for the entire community here.CHRIS:             Do you know what drove his personal passion for this issue?HEIDI:            Yeah, that's actually an interesting question. And I actually don't think I could answer that question. I mean, he was the sort of guy that just was a really compassionate person, a really thoughtful person, someone who was always looking out for others, potentially to the detriment of himself. I mean, he was someone who was so driven. And I just can't imagine the stress that he had been under, especially starting in March with the pandemic. SO I think he comes at it from a number of different ways. Because he was also very, very, very much committed to racial injustices as well. Which I'll definitely would like to talk about later. There's such a tie to well-being there. So, yeah, I think he was just a fantastic person all around.CHRIS:               Yeah, I think I've shared with you, Heidi, that one of in my five years working on this, his quote, that I think he shared is one of my favorites in the well-being space. And it basically says, 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. I just think that, that really encapsulates just what we're trying to do here and how it's all intertwined in terms of the well-being and functioning of the legal system, and how dependent it is on us to be thinking about those participants within the system and their particular health to drive the success of the system.HEIDI:           Yeah, I mean, he really was someone who is very wise and very good with his words.CHRIS:                Yeah. So what have been some of the obviously, you kind of had a interim committee now you have a standing committee. So what have been some of the outcomes of the process and where do we now find ourselves today?HEIDI:             Sure, sure. So we had this steering committee, which formed in 2018, and it met from 2018 to 2019, which was led by retired SJC Justice Margot Botsford, who also is another just tremendous leader and inspiration for this work. And so under her lead, they convened a number of subcommittees over the course of the year. And each of those subcommittees represented a different sector. And each wrote a report. And so upon review of the reports, a series of recommendations resulted. And so that steering committee then compiled its formal recommendations, and the reports from each of the subcommittees and into this 150 page report, which was then released in July of 2019. And so they didn't really want to stop there because the thought was, well, we have this great report, right? With all these recommendations. Now, what do we do?And so, in the report, one of the recommendations was to create a permanent standing committee. And so that happened in January of 2020. And a bunch of new members were added there. So they weren't necessarily the people who had worked on the steering committee report, they were new folks. And then in order to help guide implementation of the recommendations, that's when I was then hired as the one full time director of the committee in March about a day before the pandemic. So, but with my roots really in the lawyer assistance world, it made for a really easy transition. So that's sort of where we got to, and then I'm happy to later on tell you all the wonderful things we are working on.CHRIS:                Yeah.BREE:               Yeah. And so Heidi, I'm just wondering, there was just this really clear and tight regression of the work there in Massachusetts. How did that happen? I mean, I'm thinking about for this podcast, hoping that people can take away the success stories of some of our guests and think about how they can implement in the state. And so what do you see as the key components to getting you to this point? To getting that permanent steering committee? Did you see that to come together to make that [crosstalk 00:14:38] secret sauce?HEIDI:              Well, I mean, I do think that it was essential to have the Chief Justice and the court behind these efforts. And also in particular now, so we have justice Margot Botsford, who's the retired justice. She led this steering committee, and now is one of the co-chairs of the standing committee. And so she's very well known. She has fantastic ideas. So she's kind of a major player here. And so I think that that's really helpful. But I also think we have a number of different leaders that we are connected to who have really bought in and are passionate. And so I think it's really helpful to have people who represent all these different legal sectors. In particular, our committee, so our committee is comprised of people at public agencies.We have the number two person at the attorney general's office. We have a dean of, or the dean I should say, of Boston University Law School. We've got a medical advisor, we have someone from Greater Boston Legal Services. And then we have advisors on our committee, who are regulators and also the executive director of our State's Lawyer Assistance Program. So I think it's definitely helpful to have the buy in of those leaders. And then each of those people then sort of have their own, what we call kitchen cabinets. And so we have our tentacles everywhere. So I think one of the important pieces, and it's something that we work on is extending our reach, creating this awareness. And the more we can do that, kind of bring on those people and continue to extend the reach, I think that's really helpful to get that buy in.BREE:               Wonderful. Absolutely. And I'm just curious, real quick. One of the key players in some of the states or the state bar associations and did... Do you have them at the table in Massachusetts?HEIDI:          Yeah, absolutely. So we are a state, we do not have a mandatory bar. So we have, actually, I think we now have 3, I guess 33 bar associations by my last count. And one of them is the Massachusetts Bar Association, which is a huge Bar Association. Represents people from all there all over Massachusetts, and also the Boston Bar Association, which it typically represents a lot of the larger firms. But our other co-chair. So we have Margot Botsford. But we also have Denise Murphy, who is our other co-chair, who is the current president of the Massachusetts Bar Association.BREE:               Wow.[crosstalk 00:18:01]HEIDI:            So yeah. And her whole focus this year, with the Bar Association is well-being. So our work is so intertwined. And I really think that, for us, the bar associations are extremely important to our efforts, because they help us extend that reach. And there's a lot of work we can do with them, and help them and support them. And so we've actually started, we had our first bar leader meeting about a week ago, and we're going to have those on a regular basis. And we're talking about potentially figuring out some sort of mechanism to make sure they get our updates, and talk about ways we can collaborate. So we really want to make sure that we're supporting them, and we are working very, very closely with them.CHRIS:                And Heidi, does that extend to the totality of bar associations in your state? The specialty bars? County bars? Obviously, your state bars is a large and effective one. I'm just wondering about the scope of that kind of organizing effort.HEIDI:            Yes, absolutely. We think that's really important. Particularly, we've been doing a lot of work with our affinity bars, which are the bars that represent our diverse attorneys in Massachusetts. So we are very well connected to them. And then we have a lot of county bars that represent a lot of our lawyers across Massachusetts in different geographical areas, many of them solo and small firms. And a lot of the county bars don't have staff and they're volunteers. So they're volunteers who are doing all the work. So the more support that we can provide to them, I think that the more they can do. So we're talking about doing bench bar conferences, and mentorship programs, and loan assistance programs, lots of different ways in which we can work with them.CHRIS:             Excellent. Let's take us in to our first our break. And I do want to remind listeners that one of the things that we'll do in conjunction with Heidi's podcast is also post their steering committee report, obviously, 150 pages with the various sector subcommittee reports. And one of our goals in the podcast is to share this information through others who either may be along on a similar journey, or starting their journey, right? And so there should be information that will come along with the podcast for quick reference to their report there. So let's take a break.ADVERTISEMENT:                          Your law firm is worth protecting. And so is your time. Alex has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates and find coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com.BREE:               All right. Welcome back, everybody. And we have Heidi Alexander, who is the Director of the Massachusetts Well-Being Committee. And I'm sure that I did not get that name exactly right. But tell us what you guys are working on now. What are some of the really big items?Heidi S. Alexan...:            Yeah, sure. I'm happy to. And don't worry about the title. That's not actually not very important. I mean I think this is where things really become exciting, in my mind, because we have this 150 page report with many, many recommendations to implement. And a lot of the recommendations would really lead to a change in the legal culture. I mean, we have recommendations in there from our large firms subcommittee, that suggests a cap on billable hours.BREE:               Wow, none of these? Yeah?HEIDI:            I mean, none of these recommendations are easy, right? They're there not easy. And then you add the pandemic, and you add long standing inequalities that we have to address. And it becomes very complicated. And so when I first moved into this position, what we had to do was really take a step back and kind of reprioritize and figure out where could we realistically make progress? And be most effective? And these are the categories that I would say we are prioritizing. One is that of changing and influencing culture. And that is going to be something we will continue to kind of chip away at through these recommendations.Number two is increasing awareness and reducing stigma, which I know lots of people right across the nation are trying to do. Number three, increasing diversity, equity and inclusion, which we know is extremely important for well-being, particularly as a diverse attorney and feeling a sense of belonging in the profession.And also the ability to adequately represent clients. And we have a big problem here in Massachusetts, where attorneys don't necessarily look like the people they represent, and the judges making the decision don't look like the people, the litigants, right? And that causes a lot, a lot of problems. And I'm happy to definitely talk more about that. But the fourth is, in terms of the big picture, is improving life and career satisfaction and reducing burnout. And then the fifth is increasing civility. And we know that, we've seen sort of across the nation, there's decline in instability. And so we think that that is extremely important in terms of increasing well-being. So those are the big picture items, which are being held over our head. Yeah.CHRIS:                And those pillars, do you then... Have you developed working groups underneath that? what's your strategy in terms of an execution strategy?HEIDI:            Yeah. So we have, like I talked about, these kitchen cabinets. Each person on our committee has a kitchen cabinet. And sometimes we use that kitchen cabinet as sort of an advisory group. Sometimes they're working on something specific. So for example, we have a law school subcommittee. And the law school subcommittee is comprised of faculty, and administrators, and law students from each one of our law schools here in Massachusetts. And what they are working on specifically right now is a toolkit for Massachusetts law schools, a well-being toolkit. And this will be for law students, faculty, and administrators. And some of the issues they're going to address will be, how do you access mental health services? What sort of programs can you provide? How should faculty be attuned to well-being issues?And how can they integrate that into every single one of their courses? How do you address cultural competency? So they're doing a lot. And I think part of what I think is going to be so great about that is, if we can do it the right way, if we can take that toolkit and disseminate it to all these law schools and actually have them implement this, I think it's going to go a long way in terms of a long way in terms of making some real cultural changes in the law schools. Because we do have a lot of folks representing, again, representing all these different law schools.BREE:              That's amazing. And I just want to say Heidi how do you get that? we want to be able to post it on the task force's website and try to [crosstalk 00:27:27]HEIDI:            Of course yeah.BREE:               [crosstalk 00:27:30] wonderful. And that's just one, I'm sure of many projects that you're working on. Are there any others that you wanted to highlight?HEIDI:             And I want to say too, that they are using the national task force law school toolkit. Using aspects of that. So that has also been very helpful to them. Yeah, we have a lot of different projects that fit into the big picture categories. And I'll mention some of them that I think folks might be interested in. Our report talks a lot about the importance of mentorship, and that the impact on well-being. And so we've actually launched a bunch of mentorship programs. We just finished a pilot out in the western part of the state. And it was an interesting sort of unique mentorship model where we actually use software, a software program to connect mentors to mentees. And it was almost like a dating app, where the mentees got to sort of look at the bios of their potential mentors, and they got to select they, could say I'm interested in this person, I'm interested in this person.And they got to meet with multiple mentors. So they kind of got a variety of perspectives. And what we learned from them is that it wasn't a lot of substantive conversation. It was actually about like, how do you manage practice, how do you manage the caseload? How do you deal with adversaries? It was more issues related to well-being really than the substance of practice. So that's one of them. We also just launched a pilot loan Assistance Program, because we know that student loans create a huge amount of stress for attorneys. And so we created this program to work with an organization to provide education, coaching and resources. And so we actually have over 200 attorneys signed up for this pilot, which [crosstalk 00:29:57]BREE:            Wow how amazing.HEIDI:            And so we'll see. We will survey them after they finish it and see, did this have an impact on their stress. And we're also looking at how to create more accessible and affordable health care and benefits. So those are some of them. In terms of diversity, equity and inclusion, like I said, that's a big focus for us. A couple things that we're doing is we're actually changing some rules on SJC rule, to add a requirement to our bar registration process to collect demographic data, demographic data on our attorneys.We've never done this before. We don't know the makeup of the Massachusetts bar, we have no idea what it looks like. And so this is actually going to be required so that we can have a better understanding of the demographics of our bar and where are we falling short? Right? And then we can do things like what we recently did was held town halls with our affinity bars, again, who represent the diverse attorneys in Massachusetts and hear from them, and hear about their lived experiences, which by the way, were extremely, extremely distressing.BREE:             I'm sure. Must have been really powerful.HEIDI:             Yeah, yeah. There were sort of time and again, I mean, we heard over and over about the experiences, particularly in the courts, the treatment of diverse attorneys, people of color who would walk in and be confused with the defendant. Assumed that this person was the defendant, they'd have their bar card scrutinized as they walked through the door. And you can imagine what that does right? To someone's well-being? Their confidence, right? When that's happening to them right before they have to get up and argue in court, it takes a toll. So that's going to be a big part of our work, we're likely actually going to be hiring a consultant who's going to help us put together a strategic plan focused on increasing the diversity of our profession and helping us to better support our diverse attorneys.BREE:              And I wanted to... Follow up. One question on that. What I've heard also implicit in all of this, you guys are doing so much. I hear money. I hear funding behind that. So where do you guys get your funding to be able to pay your salary? And hire consultants do all of these things? Which I think for a lot of task forces would be just sort of really dreams.HEIDI:             Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do wish that everyone was in the same situation as we are for sure. I think we are very, very fortunate. So mainly everything is funded through our bar assessments. So the fees that attorneys pay to be licensed here. We have a lot of attorneys in our state. So we have probably somewhere around 70,000 X active attorneys in our state, and they all pay. So basically, essentially, they are paying for this. So that is where it's coming to and the fact that we have the support of the SJC, again is essential because they're the ones who make the rules and can say, who gets what.BREE:                Yeah, just a follow... More follow up on that. In Virginia, they have the legislature imposed a specific dedicated assessment on basically membership dues that can transform the lawyers assistance program there. So do you guys is this just a specific line item on people's bar dues? Or is it allocated?HEIDI:           Yeah.BREE:              Okay.HEIDI:             Yup. It's a specific line item. So we actually don't have to go to the legislature. And the only reason we I think we'd have to legislators to increase the amount of funding but there are enough funds that we collect right now to actually make this possible. So we haven't had to increase bar dues.BREE:              Okay. Sorry to get in the weeds there, but that's when[crosstalk 00:34:48]HEIDI:             It's important.[crosstalk 00:34:50]CHRIS:                Yeah, no, it's a really important question because it certainly feels like Bree as we've teasing out and themes that we're seeing across states that are being extraordinarily successful in working on this issue. If there's not fuel to ignite the discussion and some resources available, I mean, we certainly can see instances where having a Heidi on the ground. We can see how one person can make a real significant difference in the both the leadership, and the orchestration of the activities. Right? And so certainly I know, other states are probably listening in on this, and maybe again, as Heidi, you said, maybe not in as fortunate of a position. And so that becomes I think, a major thing for us to be able to guide folks on, which is why having some dedicated resources to this can make such a huge difference.HEIDI:          Well I also think, and this is something that we've been trying to do as well, is to utilize, for example, some of the resources from the large firms, right? We have a bunch of large firms here. There, many of them have really fantastic, well-being programs that they're running. But are there ways in which we can help harness those resources, and maybe use them, for folks who don't have those resources? One of the things we've put together as we launched this local lawyer well-being network. And it started, was in our recommendations as a priority for the law firms to actually have this network of people who could talk about best practices, and share resources. But there was more interest.So we kind of opened it up to everyone. And we have people who are now involved who are sole solo practitioners, or small firms, who are in academia, who are in public agencies. And what we're trying to figure out is, is there some way that we could use the resources of the large firms almost in like this sort of pro bono charitable effort? Right? To help other people. Could maybe this the public agencies or the solo folks utilize some of the well-being resources that these firms have created? And so that's just something that we're... it's just sort of percolating at this moment, but maybe applicable to other folks and kind of thinking about how to access resources.CHRIS:                Yeah. Heidi, can I ask on the... It sounds like you had these kitchen cabinets, right? That really were formed around sectors that ultimately guided the recommendations within the steering committee report. Sounds like a couple of those sectors, were law schools and law firms. Can you share with us the other sectors that took shape in your state? Because again, a lot of states that do have task forces are kind of thinking about how they structure their work. And it sounds like you have progressed well, based upon the strategy that you've employed.HEIDI:             Yeah, so you're you're quizzing me now. Let's see if I can get them all. Yeah, so initially, for our steering committee, so we had public agencies, which would include district attorneys, they would include our committee for public counsel services, which are really our public defenders. We had our legal services. We had solo and small firms as a group, we had large firms as a group. We had in-house counsel. We also had, let's see, we already said what we said law school. What am I missing here? We also had individual bar associations. I talked about the Massachusetts Bar Association and the Boston Bar Association.We actually had each of them wrote their own reports, too. So they were players. And I do think that one particular voice or voices that were missing from the steering committee, subcommittees were our affinity bars. So we did not have a report from our women's bar association, or our mass black lawyers, or our South Asian attorneys. And I think that would have been really helpful. So if people are thinking about that, that's a perspective I would definitely add. I'm probably missing a group but I just can't think of it right now.CHRIS:             No, worries. A couple more questions as we close out the podcast. I'm curious on as we think about well-being, I think one of the things that's oftentimes hard for us to kind of put our hands around is how we measure success. Right? And I'm just curious as you're clearly working on five pillars, you're going to be moving forward multiple initiatives. I'm curious Heidi, on your perspective of, how do you know when we've crossed certain thresholds toward either improvement? Or are there waystations out there that you can visualize, that give you the confidence that we are making a difference?HEIDI:            That is a fantastic question. And it is something that we think about all the time. And I think about it, particularly in my household, because actually, my wife is a physician and researcher, and her focus is on implementation science and evaluation. So we talk about this all the time. What is the most effective way to evaluate? And so what we're doing right now is we're hoping to embark on this sort of bigger study of lawyer well-being in Massachusetts to somewhat create a baseline. But I think a lot of these efforts they're going to have to continue, they're going to have to adapt and change. And we're probably never going to get to the point of where we say, oh, we're done, everyone's great, everyone's fantastic, right? They're going to be different issues that arise.And so I think in terms of our individual programs that we have, and our pilot programs that we're running, we're going to evaluate those specific programs and see how they impact the well-being. Like, when I talked about this Loan Assistance Program. We will do a survey at the end of that, and we and we will try to measure whether the program had any impact, right? On the stress. And so if we can show that in the short term, and then maybe then take that to sort of a broader scale, and then again, evaluate that later on. It may be looking at these things, in sort of little pieces, but also keeping track of keeping our pulse on changes, sort of over the course of a number of years.Like are we seeing any differences in other changes in terms of substance use? And addiction? What are the different issues that are arising? So, I think we sort of use that, I mean, it's evaluation in some ways, but in other ways, it's also to figure out where we have to focus our efforts, right? Collect the data, and then make these data driven decisions about what programs we're going to have, and then just keep moving along and keep adapting to the changes. So that's sort of a long, non answer to your question. Because I don't think that there's one... I don't know exactly what the right way is to do that, but those are some of the ideas we have.CHRIS:               Good, good. Well, let me ask you to just as a final question. Obviously, a lot of our listeners are at different points of the journey. Lessons learned. What are some of the things that you've learned the hard way? Some of the any advice or recommendations that you would make to others out there as they think about igniting change and culture shifts in their respective states?HEIDI:            Yeah, I mean, like I said, said before, I think it's really helpful to have the buy in of as many people and definitely influential people in your state as possible. I do think that initially, when I started working on this, I was sort of a deer in headlights thinking about, how do we tackle this major culture shift that we would like to happen? And what I learned was having these big picture goals were good. And I think they help us focus our efforts. But we have to really work on the concrete and tangible actions, where we can also demonstrate milestones like we've done this program, it's done X, Y, and Z. It's helped people in this way, right? It's impossible to tackle every issue right away. And so a lot of what we've done is prioritize our efforts. And we have looked at attorneys who are really struggling, especially during this time.So a lot of the solo and small, firm attorneys. While we know that the large law firms need a massive culture change, and there's a lot of work to be done. Like I said before, there's a lot of great well being efforts that are already happening there. And so sometimes you have to step back and say, okay, let them do their thing, let them do their work, where we're really needed is over here. And I think there's a lot of things that we can do, I guess for the larger firms, like create these networks, and that sort of thing. But I don't really feel like there's a one size fits all model for them. So it's a little bit more difficult. But I do think kind of focusing in, you're not going to be able to tackle it all at once. It's a  incremental process.CHRIS:                Yeah, there's no doubt that big goals ultimately need to be broken down into small steps. And obviously, the creation of your role is a small success in our bigger picture story of well-being across the country. Heidi, again, I want to thank you for your time, your expertise. Interesting route to getting to where you are today, but as we all know, you are now a mover and shaker in our well-being movement. I would consider you a thought leader, we need folks who are thinking about this on the day to day and let's be honest, we need more Heidi Alexander's out there in the field, advancing this at the state level. So I thank you fo your time, your commitment, I'm sure that if others have questions of you, that you'd be willing to feel those questions. And we'll include Heidi's contact information associated with the podcast and on the National Task Force website, as well. Bree, any parting remarks?BREE:               Just Heidi, I'm so impressed with all that you're doing, and the energy, and the broad perspective that you're bringing to this and just really in being able to persist and get things done. It's so impressive. And thank you for all that you're doing.HEIDI:           Yeah-[crosstalk 00:48:01]BREE:             Yeah thanks again.HEIDI:           Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate this. And I've been an avid listener of the podcast so you've had some just phenomenal guests on here. I feel like I'm not not worthy of this, but I do appreciate and I so appreciate all your work. So thank you.CHRIS:     [inaudible 00:48:20] And to our listeners we'll be back in a couple of weeks. We'll have on the podcast, Martha Knudson, who's spearheading well being efforts in the state of Utah, right? So we've went through from Virginia, to Massachusetts, will pick up with Utah. And again, some really interesting things happening at the state level that we're excited to share with our listeners. But for now.

Chris Newbold:                Hello and welcome to episode six of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being Podcast Series, “The Path to Well-Being in Law.” I'm your cohost Chris Newbold of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And our goal here is simple, to introduce you to cool people doing awesome work in the space of lawyer well-being, and in the process build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates intent on creating a culture shift within the legal profession.                                         I'm joined today by my friend and fellow co-chair of the National Task Force Bree Buchanan. Bree, welcome.Bree Buchanan:              Absolutely. Welcome everybody. Glad you're here joining us today.Chris Newbold:                Good. And today we're going to start a move down into the states, and I think our first five or six speakers have really been driven more by some of the national outlook and some of the research that's been done into the lawyer well-being space. And as we know, movements generally are driven by those at the grassroots level who live it day-to-day, who are trying new ideas. In other words, serving as laboratories of democracy or laboratories of new ideas. And in any movement, you need a few leaders, a few examples to jump out in front. And that's exactly what we've seen out of our friends in the Commonwealth of Virginia.                                           Across the country we've seen a swelling of task forces, work groups, round tables coming out of state bars and state supreme courts, and there are some lessons to be learned from the Virginia experience and their roadmap. And there are no two better guests than our duo today, Margaret Ogden who's the wellness coordinator for the Virginia Supreme Court and Tim Carroll who's executive director of the Virginia Judges and Lawyers' Assistance Program.                                           Bree, would you be so kind as to introduce our guests?Bree Buchanan:              Absolutely. Great. Just so excited. Margaret and Tim, thank you for joining us today. What's going on in Virginia really is a shining light for the rest of the states across the country. So we're delighted to have you as the first group of state national task force people on our show.                                           So Margaret Ogden, as Chris said, she's the wellness coordinator in the Office of the Executive Secretary, the Supreme Court of Virginia, which is one of the new positions that's being created by the Lawyer Well-Being Movement. And we have a few other states that are doing that as well. A lawyer by training, Margaret began her career in the Roanoke City Commonwealth Attorney's Office prosecuting criminal cases and then went on to defend criminal cases throughout the Roanoke and New River Valleys.                                           Prior to joining her job where she currently is now, I think this is so interesting, Margaret, you served as the staff attorney for the Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Fairness. What an interesting position.                                           And then Tim has probably one of the most unusual backgrounds I have seen for a Lawyers' Assistance Program director, and it's been brilliant. I met Tim five, six years ago, and immediately identified him as somebody who has a special kind of knowledge that he brings to the Lawyer Assistance Program that has really enabled them to just take off with the program they have in Virginia.                                           So he's the executive director of the JLAP there. He grew up in Virginia, and then joined the US Air Force after high school. And after 28 years of service and assignments around the world, he retired at Anchorage, Alaska where he became the chief executive officer of a fisheries related business. Fish and lawyers, I don't know. I'm sure you've made a connection there at some point.                                           In 2014, he returned to Virginia and assumed his current role in 2015. Mr. Carroll has an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Alaska and a masters degree in business administration from Virginia Commonwealth University.                                           So Margaret and Tim, welcome. We are so glad you're here. Chris and I always start off our program asking our guests a question about what brought you into this space? Because we really have seen the people that do so much of the work have a passion for it. And so we're really curious about what drives that passion.                                           So Margaret, what brought you to the Well-Being Movement? What experience in your life is a driver behind your passion for this work?Margaret Ogden:            That is a wonderful question, and thank you so much, Bree, for having us just as a preliminary matter. And thank you for that introduction. As you touched on, my last position was a policy position working for the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. And I got very interested in how court policy shapes not just the practice of law but access to justice, a court user experience, and really the lived promise of equal justice under law and how court policy, which might seem on its face kind of neutral and bland, can have a huge impact on that.                                           So the Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission is kind of cool because they appoint from all three branches of state government to look at racial, ethnic, and other marginalized people who may have bias against them in our court system and how policy can be used to combat that. It's a great organization, and it works out of a Supreme Court report from Pennsylvania from 2005.                                           And so when here, the Virginia Supreme Court had put out a report on wellness in our legal profession, I just think it's a fascinating institutional response to seeing how the regulation of our profession, how court and bar policy impacts those people who are actively involved in it. And the wellness of lawyers is so important.                                           I don't mean to only talk about policy. I have what I call a recreational interest in mental health and well-being. I was first diagnosed with anxiety when I was in law school, and working with cognitive behavioral therapy, medication, diet, exercise, creative outlets, I've managed to kind of handle that to varying quality within my law school and early professional career. So I love to talk about this with my friends. This is something that I've been very open with and I think young people... I still consider myself young people. I'm still a young lawyer by the Virginia State Bar's definition of that.                                           So I think that we're seeing a culture shift that is just happening with age in terms of talking about mental health and substance use. I'm also the granddaughter of two alcoholics, so I'm very lucky that I have... I don't mean to say I'm lucky that I have this that runs in my family because certainly these are major issues that face our profession. But I'm lucky that I was raised with an awareness of them. So that when I started to experience these issues within my own life, I could seek expert help because they're really not things that you can deal with on your own, especially if you're in a profession of public trust, like the law. And so that's why selfishly I'm very interested in this.                                           And being a Virginia lawyer, seeing our courts write about this with the level of product that came out of these court reports, the level of thought, research, really data-driven best practices that have been generated, for me it's the perfect intersection of policy wonk and anxiety brain.Bree Buchanan:              That's great. That's great, Margaret. Thank you for sharing that about your life. We really appreciate adding to the story.                                           So Tim, what brings you to the Well-Being Movement and to the LAP, the Lawyers' Assistance Program world? What drives your passion to this work? Because I know you have a passion for it.Tim Carroll:                      Well, first off, Bree, I want to thank you and Chris for inviting us to join in this. And I can't tell you what a joy it is to work with Margaret as we carry this mission forward. We really do have a great team here in Virginia, and I'm very proud of the team and the great work that's happening here.                                           As you said, my path to a lawyer assistance program was a little bit unorthodox if you will. When I came back to Virginia, I was basically retired and I wasn't looking for a job anywhere. And this opportunity crossed my path, and I saw the middle name. So Virginia, the program used to be called Lawyers Helping Lawyers. And somebody put this in front of me, and I thought, "Lawyers Helping Lawyers, what do I know about that? What do I know about the law? What do I know about lawyers?" And as we talked, I got really focused on the middle name of that organization, and that was helping. And I'm at a place in my life where I want to help others, and this is certainly a place to do that.                                           What really drove me towards the wellness, basically harkens back to my Air Force career. When I first joined the Air Force and I won't date myself anymore to say it was in the post-Vietnam era. The Air Force was really in a state of flux from post-Vietnam. And what I saw around me were a lot of people who were drinking, a lot of people who were smoking. I'd go to the chow hall and see the really, quite honestly, not the most healthy food choices that were available. And a good number of my friends who were still involved in drug use while in active duty. I saw a lot of my friends who were falling victim to those vices, and really I lost a few friends as a result of those things.                                           Over the course of my career, the Air Force really transformed itself and really moved more into a well-being and a wellness posture with smoking cessation, deglamorizing alcohol, really taking a hard stand on the drug use, and really transforming the chow halls to basically have a wider variety of healthy choices than unhealthy choices. We saw fitness centers having a newfound focus on the equipment and the programs that were being offered. And I saw a institution, the United States Air Force go from that post-Vietnam era to a wellness era, and that really effected the readiness of the Force, which we needed, as you know for the conflicts that we had in the '90s and beyond. So I saw a massive worldwide institution like the United States Air Force that could make that change in culture and transforming itself.                                           So when I joined the Lawyers Helping Lawyers organization, I saw us as a larger reactive organization. We would kind of play Bop-It. Someone would come to us for help, and we would help them. But we weren't really doing a tremendous amount of outreach and really trying to change why people were coming to us because we were so small. When I joined, I started part-time, had a full-time counselor. And with a staff of 1.5, all's we could do was be reactive. And I saw the proactive side was one that we'd have to embrace the well-being. And I was thrilled when I heard that the ABA was undertaking the National Task Force on Well-Being because I really saw that as an opportunity to transform the culture of the legal profession.                                           And to say that I'm passionate about it would be an understatement. I've lost friends to suicide. I've lost friends to poor eating habits. I've lost friends who were drinking and ultimately cost them their lives. For a profession as critical as the law, something as critical as what we have right here, it wasn't a large leap for me to get passionate about helping our lawyers, our judges, our law students, the entire legal profession in any way that I can.                                           So I'm honored to be here. I'm just a little piece of the puzzle, but that's really how I got here.Chris Newbold:                Yeah, great, Tim. But an important piece of the puzzle. Tim and I have had conversations. My father was career Air Force. So again, I think there are some examples out there for shifts in cultures that need to be studied and evaluated as we think about our path forward in the legal profession.                                           But let's turn our attention to Virginia, and I am a firm believer that leadership really starts at the top. And we've been really I think blessed in Virginia with folks who have seen the need for this issue to come to the forefront. Bree and I, as original kind of members of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, it was your Chief Justice Don Lemons who really brought the judicial powerhouse I think to the discussion. And I know the reason that we have Margaret in the positions that we do is because some folks I think in Virginia saw a need and then started to develop a plan, bring together the right parties.                                           So Margaret, maybe if you could kind of walk us through how did the Virginia Supreme Court ultimately find its way into launching the Well-Being Committee, and how did that ultimately came some revenue opportunities that created the infrastructure necessary to flow down to the things of the world and other programs in the state? So I'd just love for our listeners to hear about the journey of how Virginia got to where it is today.Margaret Ogdan:            Yeah, of course. And I'm kind of late to the party in this journey because I started in my position on October 25th of 2019, and I will keep that date in my mind forever because five months later our whole profession changed. But we need to back track it up because I am the culmination of many people's efforts, far smarter minds than me, and far larger levers of power needed to be pulled before we even get there. So what you have, as you mentioned, our Chief Justice Donald Lemons sitting on the National Task Force seeing these numbers coming out of these national studies. And I can't thank you all enough for highlighting not just the statistical data but this call to action that goes down to the states. We have some very preliminary data. We want more data, and we also recognize that this might look different in different states. This might look different in different practice areas. Let us empower states to go out and investigate how their state is regulating the profession and what can be done to shift the culture within these laboratories of democracy.                                           So that call was heated in Virginia, and Justice William Mims headed up the Virginia State Supreme Court Committee for Lawyer Well-Being. And that committee drew not just from the judiciary, although all levels are represented there. In fact, a court of appeals, which is our intermediate court of limited jurisdiction. We have the circuit courts, which are our higher level trial courts, and then the general district courts, which traffic, misdemeanors, preliminary hearings. We're recognizing that all of those court actors are facing different occupational risk and seeing different pieces of really lawyer unwellness.                                           So all of those folks we have the law schools. There are eight in Virginia, and all eight of the deans participated in the first law school summit that came out of this report. So it was a ground swell effort amongst academia. And then you also have the regulators, the state bar, ethics council, the disciplinary board coming to bring their expertise to the table and talk about the way the rules of professional conduct and our ethical obligations are playing out with lawyer empowerment.                                           And then finally, you have the private sector attorneys. This incredible organization of folks from bar organization, from employers, representing small firms, large firms, that are all kind of doing their own wellness thing before this even started. They're doing this at a volunteer level. They're taking this on on their own because they've seen these problems. The statistics didn't really come as a shock to people.                                           I think if anything, just anecdotally, we're waiting for the other shoe to drop for people to get more comfortable talking about these problems, and the numbers will probably go up as we destigmatize more of these conversations. But that means that more people will get help, and Virginia did a great job of bringing all these stakeholders together to put out a report that focuses on real tangible recommendations. Things that can be done that signals to the profession that this is a priority and that it's not a burden that you need to add to your already busy life to take care of yourself. That this is a foundation upon which your professionalism and your ethics are based. So much to the point that it's now been added as a comment to Rule 1.1 in our Rules of Professional Conduct that governs competency, that lawyers need to have the physical, emotional, and mental competency to practice law.                                           To see all of these different stakeholders really grasp onto this, and say, "Yes, we think this is important. Yes, we can make changes to our rules and our policies. We're going to hold up the mirror of self reflection. We don't like what we see, and rather than go to despair, we will be called to action." Because here's the other thing, it then required going in front of the General Assembly to get a state bar's due assessment to every active member of the Virginia State Bar. It's $30 a year. It started to be assessed in July 2019, and just because of the way our state government is structured, that required an act of the General Assembly.                                           To me, I love all branches of state government equally. But if someone says, "Margaret, you have to go to the General Assembly and get us money," that's the worst hill to try to climb. But if anything, that shows you how much belief there was in Lawyers Helping Lawyers because that is where the bulk of that funding was dedicated to go. It wasn't just, "Oh, we're going to assess a fund, and who knows what will happen." No. There was a really roadmap in this report that said, "Lawyers Helping Lawyers has been doing this forward since 1984. We believe in them because they're using evidence-based best practices. They have volunteers throughout the Commonwealth who have gone through these issues that have turned their careers around, and all they need is the money to expand." If they build it, they will come. To the point where you convince the General Assembly to do that, I think really shows a strong momentum.                                           And I'm also biased in favor of this because that also funded my position. So if we have Lawyers Helping Lawyers existing as a separate nonprofit, it's not part of the court system. And that's important because confidentiality is prime with these issues. We want people to be comfortable calling up Tim and they know they don't get me. But also it's important that the court bring the weight of its institutional gravitas to say, "Hey, go seek help. Let's destigmatize help seeking behavior. Seek it proactively."                                           So I'm excited to be living in the court and talking about institutional policies, talking education outreach. We've been putting out a bunch of CLEs. Our virtual judicial conferences now have a wellness component. I say virtual. They were virtual this year. Hopefully that will not continue into the future. But more of this kind of generalized health and wellness from an institutional level is what this ground swell of specific recommendations worked up to build.Tim Carroll:                      Margaret, remind me when the report... I'm pretty certain that you were the first state to produce a comprehensive report on well-being, right?Margaret Ogdan:            One of the early ones. I don't want to step on any toes. I know Utah and Vermont put out early ones too.Bree Buchanan:              You guys were first.Margaret Ogden:            Yeah.Bree Buchanan:              Take it. Take it. It's yours.Tim Carroll:                      Remind me of the date there because a lot of our listeners will be tuning in from other state task forces, and I want them to kind of understand. What is so unique I think about what Virginia has done is there's a lot of reports that come out of study and saying, "We need to do this. We need to do that." Really what everyone in Virginia should be so proud of is the fact that you took words and you translated it into action. And oftentimes it doesn't happen with task forces and so forth. Sometimes it's you write, author a report, and you maybe check off some low hanging fruit. But you guys have really systemically changed the playing field of this particular issue as it relates to Virginia.                                           So the report comes out in 2018. You got to think that the most substantive impacts of the reports were... And you already mentioned it. Rule change to the rules of professional conduct, that includes well-being, and a comment to the duty of competence, right?Margaret Ogden:            Mm-hmm (affirmative).Tim Carroll:                      You basically set in play, and we know generally, and Bree and Tim can speak to this firsthand, that lawyer assistance programs around the country are generally underfunded. ALPS is a malpractice carrier we give a good chunk of money to, what was formally Virginia Lawyers Helping Lawyers. But across the country, there's just not enough fuel in the tank for Lawyers' Assistance Programs to have enough impact and really take on not just the safety net but also the big picture realm of well-being. So explain for our audience then, report comes out in 2018. Justice Mims, who is really an unsung hero in all of this, but even Justice Mims, the Virginia State Bar and its leadership, and Lynn Heath produced an occupational risk report that's really critical as well. Kind of talk us through when did the money discussion start? When does it pass the General Assembly? And what ultimately does it do to transform the revenue side that enables us now to do so much more?Margaret Ogden:            I think you're exactly right. I mentioned Justice Mims briefly as the head of this committee, but I want to sing about this hero because I really do think that not only is he just an excellent human being, he's someone with an incredibly nuanced understanding of our Virginia state government. He is one of the few people in the history of our Commonwealth who's held highest positions at the top of each of our branches of government. He served in our state house. He was the Attorney General. So this man understands what it takes to create a culture shift within state government. And I don't know when exactly it goes to the General Assembly. I am still back in Pennsylvania in 2018. But in enough time to get the first bar dues funding assessed in July of 2019 on our annual state bar assessment. And part of this is also very good timing with the Client Protection Fund. That had been doing very well, and so those dues were lowered, which I think makes it more palatable to slightly increase and establish this fund entirely.                                           And then finally, there's this other piece that I want to touch on too is the Virginia Law Foundation and Virginia CLEs contributions because this all works much better when well-being is recognized as a key part of lawyer education, and in Virginia, we have mandatory continuing legal education. And that CLE board was very quick to change their... Well, amend an opinion, Opinion 19, to make it more clear that well-being programming should be approved for CLE credit. And the Virginia Law Foundation, Virginia CLE is one of our largest state providers. They signed on to say, "Hey, we're going to provide a well-being library that we're going to replenish every year online, and we're going to offer two of these free to every lawyer, judge, and law school student in the Commonwealth every year."                                           To me, that shows not just the funding coming from attorneys and going through the General Assembly, but also stakeholders saying, "We're going to be sure that attorneys see the value for their funds hopefully so that it is an easier sell to everyone who is in the bar to take this on collectively." Look, you're getting something out of this even if you yourself are not going to seek the services of Lawyers Helping Lawyers.Bree Buchanan:              So let's bring Tim in on this, and Tim, I was listening to Margaret's earlier answer about what all the work and support for the Lawyers' Assistance Program there in Virginia and with my ears of a former LAP director, and it must be so wonderful to work as an ally with somebody who so gets what an LAP is about.                                           So Tim, what I wanted to ask you is talk about this process of what happened in Virginia from the Lawyers' Assistance Program perspective. How did this come about and how did you all fit into this process?Tim Carroll:                      Yeah. So after the ABA Hazelden Betty Ford, after that survey came out, that was really the call to action. I know the ABA responded to that with the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being. But we didn't sit on our haunches here in Virginia. We said, "What can we do about that?" And we took the numbers out of that survey and overlaid it on Virginia. With our population, we could assume that if the ABA Hazelden study was accurate, that we have upwards of 12,000 attorneys in Virginia who are operating from some level of impairment. And when you can use that as a talking point, you really get people's attention.                                           I'll just insert real quick, thanks to ALPS back in 2014, the College of William and Mary Law School did a survey of Virginia attorneys. And while it wasn't peer reviewed and it wasn't published, I've seen it. And I can tell you that the numbers track very closely in Virginia to what the national report said.Bree Buchanan:              Wow.Tim Carroll:                      So I can speak with confidence so that we have upwards of 12,000 who for one reason or another are operating from some level of impairment. And we looked at what we were doing, what was the LAP doing? And we had on average about 100 new clients a year with our staff of 1.5 and one counselor. That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. So of course we went with our hat in hand and asked for more money so we could get some more staff. Dollars are tight. You can't expect everybody to just open up their coffers. So we built a business plan based on best practices that we saw around the country with other LAPs, based on what we saw the needs of Virginia being. We didn't put a dollar figure on it until after we had built the plan, and then we said, "What would something like this cost?" Because we wanted to be a best practice lawyer assistance program.                                           We took that to the state bar. We took that to the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association. We took it to the Law Foundation. We pretty much paraded that all over anybody who would listen, and everybody said, "Yeah, that looks really good. That's really nice, but there's not a pathway for funding for that." So when Chief Justice Lemons came back from the National Task Force and he challenged or tasked Justice Mims to head up the committee in Virginia, that committee was... I hope you'll be able to provide a link to the report. It's a profession at risk. It'll outline who all was on that, but take my word for it, it was the key stakeholders in the legal profession around the Commonwealth of Virginia. Some real movers and shakers.                                           The very first briefing that that committee got, after Chief Justice Lemons tasked them, was our business plan. That was the first thing they heard. And gave us the opportunity to pitch the need, to pitch the studies that had been done, and what we proposed to do about it. So that committee really took off with the challenge from the chief to study the National Task Force report and look at ways to implement that in Virginia. And they were armed with our business plan sitting on the side.                                           So it was very fortuitous timing for us, but if you also look at the composition of that committee, there are several former and active board members from the Lawyers' Assistance Program who served on that committee as well. So they knew what they were talking about. They knew the issues at hand and were very obviously, very well-versed in the legal profession of Virginia to be able to make the recommendations that they did.                                           So to say that we were on the sidelines would be wrong. To say that we were in there with our sleeves rolled up would be correct, and that was only because Chief Justice Lemons and Justice Mims invited us to play an active role in that committee. I didn't serve on the committee, but I was an advisor to each one of the subgroups of that committee. They could reach out. We could give them our two cents. We could help guide them through their discussions. And we weren't doing that with a parochial view towards the Lawyers' Assistance Program. We did it with a parochial view towards what's best for the legal profession in Virginia.Chris Newbold:                Yeah. Well, this is a good probably break point here because I think it kind of sets the tone for revenue source in hand, action plan in hand, and kind of where things come with Margaret coming onboard. Let's take a quick break, and we'll come back and hear the rest of the Virginia story.Advertisement:               Your law firm is worth protecting and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and buy coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com.Chris Newbold:                All right. Welcome back. And we are talking about Virginia and some of the trailblazing work that Virginia has done on lawyer well-being. Margaret, let's shift the conversation back to you. So the assessments made on Virginia lawyers and that generally, roughly creates about $1 million in revenue annually. I'd be curious as the first wellness coordinator for the Commonwealth, what do you work on? How do you think about your day? And ultimately, what's the game plan? What do you hope to achieve as you think about the allocation of those resources relative to making a difference?Margaret Ogden:            Right. It's smart to think about it in terms of allocation of funds. We have the Lawyers' Assistance Program, formerly Lawyers Helping Lawyers, getting the bulk of that funding allocation every year to expand their staffing. And this doesn't just allow them to provide direct services. It also allows them to really beef up these education and outreach efforts, and that's where my position comes in. Because we recognize that even though impairment is a very large problem in our profession, statistically the majority of lawyers will not themselves become impaired over the course of their career. But we can all do a little better. Even if we are not at the level of relying on substances to get through our day to the detriment of our clients, because of the unique occupational stressors of our profession, we are at greater risk for things like burnout, and that means we need to kind of take on more protective habits on our daily basis to ensure that we're meeting these higher standards.                                           And I think that's where my position comes in is looking at education and outreach on more general health and well-being. I love the Six Areas of Well-Being from the National Task Force report. That's a really great way for me to talk about it to attorneys because I think past workplace well-being efforts kind of have all focused on step challenges or weight loss, really physical fitness, and that can be isolating for a lot of people, particularly attorneys and particularly with an aging population. So I want to be sure that we're talking about wellness holistically, and we're talking about it on an institutional level.                                           I think of Tim and Jim and Barbara and Angeline and Janet, the staff over at the Virginian Judges Lawyers' Assistance Program, five people now, as really having the individuals covered. And I think of my role as the institutions and the stakeholders. Making sure that the associate deans of all of the law schools are talking to each other every month about trends in well-being among their students and what programs are working. This is my favorite monthly conference call, and I just sent out the agenda before this. So I'm very excited about talking. We talk every month, me and the associate deans of the law schools about what they're seeing.                                           In terms of coordinating judicial response, so my position very smartly I think was housed in the Office of the Executive Secretary of the Supreme Court. In Pennsylvania, our version of that was called the Administrative Office of the Courts. Think of it as the administrative arm. So HR lives there, court IT. And thinking that wellness is so pervasive that it needs to be part of our administrative function I think is very forward looking.Bree Buchanan:              Absolutely brilliant.Margaret Ogdan:            Yeah. Specifically I'm within our educational services department, and that's the group that puts on our yearly judicial conferences for all of our judges and then a bunch of other groups that the court has some education responsibilities for, like clerks, magistrates, other court personnel. And this is really exciting because having wellness on the judicial conference agenda blows my mind. When we were going to initially be in-person this year, I had an entire Wednesday afternoon of wellness activities. Justice Mims was going to be leading a jogging group. This was really fun to plan activities for the judges because they don't have necessarily the same strict CLE requirements that lawyers do, but showing them that wellness can be something they can incorporate into their conferences, that they take it on almost like a perk. And that it's led by their colleagues, not only does that help us just in terms of budgeting, we're not bringing in really expensive outside experts. But I think things are more exciting when you see your buddies doing them.                                           So we were able to transition that virtually, have a booklet made, and still do a couple Zoom sessions. And it's having the funding and the staffing in place before the pandemic I think was super key because it's much easier to adapt when you already have a person who's working in that space.                                           So law students, judges, and then of course lawyers, they make up the bulk of my outreach efforts, and the court is never going to be entirely taking over continuing education for lawyers. Thank goodness. No, I would never be able to do that on my own. But working with the folks who are doing that. So the Conference of Local and Specialty Bar Associations, presenting to them, and enabling and empowering our local and affiliation bars to incorporate wellness education into their programs. Working with CLE providers to... Especially when we do virtual programming, take into account some well-being. Not back-to-back-to-back in front of a screen, acknowledge Zoom fatigue, build in spaces for people to walk around and get moving.                                           So every day is a little different, which is fun because I am serving a few different audiences, and we are talking about organizational and institutional response to support healthy habits.Bree Buchanan:              Margaret, I love how you're able to come in because you've got that position there, and you're thinking about this obviously every day, and are able to put so much energy in it. And the conference, I looked at the agenda, I read the booklet. It was really impressive and that you have... This is so key, you have this very visible support from the top of the legal profession in the Commonwealth, and that's so key. You guys are so blessed to have that.                                           Tim, I wanted to ask you, what can you share with others, anybody who's working on this, and especially the Lawyer's Assistance Programs, if they want to start some sort of statewide, multi-stakeholder committee, commission, task force, what advice would you give to them?Tim Carroll:                      Yeah, that's a great question. I've actually talked with some of the other directors who have called and asked, "How did you do that?" And I really had to think about, but I didn't have to think very far because it was such a upfront activity that we were involved in. I guess the key to the LAPs is really to accept that for people to trust you, they have to know you. They're not just going to pick up a phone and call 1(800)LAP. They could call 1(800)ADDICTION CENTER. They could call wherever they want, but they have to know us if they're going to trust us. They have to trust that we are competent in what we do. They have to trust that we will hold their confidentiality. And they have to trust that we can help. So that's really the cornerstone of the LAP.                                           We built our business plan from that cornerstone. How do we get out, and how do we get known enough to be trusted? The first step is to have a plan. No one is going to throw money at the LAP if the LAP doesn't demonstrate what they're going to do with it. So the very first step is to build a plan, build a business plan, build a plan. The second step is to engage the stakeholders at every level. At the top, the middle, the grassroots, wherever it is, engage all of the stakeholders so that they buy into that plan. And then of course, have a champion. Our champion was Chief Justice Lemons. I'm going to say our co-champion was Justice Mims. Having those two at the very top of the profession in Virginia looking out for the LAP and looking for how could they make the biggest difference to the entire legal profession and seeing that we were ready to do it, that was really the key to our success.                                           So just basically to summarize it. If you want to do what Virginia do, build a plan, engage the stakeholders, and... Excuse me. Build a plan, engage the stakeholders, and make sure you have a champion somewhere, preferably at the top.Chris Newbold:                Can you spend just a minute on your program has really been transformed through the additional funding. So I want to give our listeners some insight into when you have a... I don't even know how much more revenue you had from before, but obviously you had a plan. Where are you at in your plan, and how has this fuel from Margaret's office and the State's Supreme Court done to transform your program?Tim Carroll:                      Yeah. If we're going to hire people, we have to have money. We have volunteers. Let me get that out there first. The foundation of our program is volunteers. We have not been successful since 1984 up to 2019 without our volunteers. You can't do it with a staff of one; you can't do it with a staff of 1.5. So the way we've transformed what we do includes the volunteers. That piece is constant. It has never changed. What we've done though, volunteers have full-time jobs most often. As any nonprofit has found, getting the time from a volunteer. They're willing to do it, but sometimes they just don't have the time.                                           So what we did was established a... If you're familiar with the geography of Virginia, there's Northern Virginia, which is sometimes referred to as another country. There's Southwest Virginia that really is another country. And if you're going to work in Southwest Virginia, you've got to understand the culture, you've got to understand the geography, you've got to understand what it means to be a lawyer or a judge in Southwest Virginia. When we say Southwest, and if you want to pull out a map and look, that's not Roanoke. Get that clear. It's farther out.                                           So we hired a licensed professional counselor with the moneys that we were given. That I said when I came onboard, the very first dollar that I would spend would be on somebody in Southwest Virginia. So we got Angeline out...Chris Newbold:                Oh, looks like we might have lost Tim. Margaret, you aware of kind of the three areas around Virginia [crosstalk 00:46:14]-Margaret Ogden:            Oh yeah. Definitely. And this is actually kind of a little fun story on my first week of work, I went to far Southwest Virginia. And I say far Southwest because I started my practice in Roanoke, and I made the mistake of saying Roanoke was Southwest Virginia. And the folks out in Grundy, at Appalachian School of Law quickly corrected me because that's another three hours past Roanoke. Virginia is enormous, and Angeline is very cool. She's out there in Rural Retreat. She's from that area. So she's been working very closely with Appalachian, the law school there and also just with serving the population of attorneys there. Because of the nature of the geography, the population is really under resourced area when it comes to mental health and substance use. So I think just having a presence there of someone who is from there and understands that area has been immensely helpful for cultivating that relationship, not just with the law school but with the bar and with the courts there as well.Chris Newbold:                So sounds like the strategy that Tim's organization is employing is more licensed professionals closer to the ground with broader geographic focus on-Margaret Ogden:            Exactly. And having folks who are there who are building those connections with these stakeholders who are already in place. So we have our eight law schools around the Commonwealth. They're great and not just for their education but for their alumni networks and for their educational programming that they send out with their law students.                                           The other piece is bar associations locally and then building relationships with treatment providers locally too. Making sure that mental health professionals are comfortable treating lawyers so that there's this really strong referral network. A lot of people have started calling JLAP not to be in a longterm, monitored, formal relationship. I get to see these numbers in the aggregate every month as part of our reporting. I never see any individual clients of JLAP. This is the great thing about them remaining a separate, independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit. But they are very transparent in their aggregate numbers, so we can see that people call them all the time to just ask, "Hey, I need a therapist in my area who will work with me as an attorney," or, "I need a marriage counselor," or, "Do you have the number for rehab place for my kid?" It doesn't need to always been an intense relationship. JLAP is there for whatever struggle a legal professional is having where they are, and they're developing those local relationships so that they can give people resources in those locations.Chris Newbold:                Excellent. Again, Virginia is such a cool story, right? And it looks like Tim is joining us back for hopefully the final question here. Tim, we successfully passed the baton onto Margaret. We're still rolling. She did great. Let me just ask you one final question, which is you guys are now a year, year and a half, two years into your plan and starting to probably really see results. And I'm sure there have been stumbling blocks and some things that have really surprised you. Just would be curious on lessons learned either the hard way or lessons that you think that are worthwhile for our listeners to hear in terms of things that have been really successful.Tim Carroll:                      Well, I'll piggyback. Don't let your power fail and take your internet with it. Sorry, my apologize for that. I think the lessons that we've learned are to get all of the stakeholders engaged. Really Margaret has been an amazing, amazing addition to our team. From day one, Margaret came down and talked to us about what she viewed her role was, about how we could work together. We do have that clear line of separation in terms of the client load, but we do have an incredible collaboration in terms of outreach, in terms of getting the word out, in terms of being present and support around the Commonwealth. I guess I didn't have a vote in Margaret being in that position, but whoever did hit the gold mine. So if there is a lesson to be learned, make sure that you hire the right person to be your wellness coordinator at the very top.                                           Make sure that you've got constant communication with your stakeholders. The various bar associations, the top level bar associations, the local bar associations continually engage with them to make sure that you're carrying the same message and that you're supporting the needs of their constituency is. I think that those are the most critical things to the success that we have.                                           Of course, our amazing team that I hope Margaret was able to talk about. We just have an amazing group of people. It's a joy to work with and top to bottom, all of the bar associations, the court, state bar, this is just a perfect world here in Virginia.Chris Newbold:                Feels a little bit like a symphony with Margaret as the conductor and when every piece comes together, you can really make some pretty sweet music.Tim Carroll:                      Absolutely, absolutely.Chris Newbold:                Yeah. Well, again, thank you both so much for joining us on the podcast. I'm sure there are listeners who might be interested in contacting you. With your permission, I think we'd like to include your contact information when we post the podcast so the people can contact you directly and hear firsthand the stories. And we certainly will be keeping our eyes on your successes as we continue to move forward because again, we need states like yours to be leaders up front and to be able to kind of demonstrate the type of change that can occur. As somebody who watches Virginia lawyers quite closely, me on the malpractice side, I know that there's a lot of pride in the legal profession in Virginia. And I think that that probably also speaks to why this has become an issue that folks have been about to rally around. There's just a high quality of lawyering that goes on in Virginia, and I think the focus on well-being is a natural compliment.Margaret Ogden:            Oh yeah. Lawyers from Virginia started our country. I'm always proud to be a Virginia lawyer, and I'm also always proud to talk to lawyers from other states and Commonwealths about what we're doing. And also, we'll talk about failures too. The important part of this conversation is honesty and vulnerability. So please share our information, and we will Zoom into courtrooms around our fair country.Bree Buchanan:              Thank you, Margaret.Tim Carroll:                      I would say just unlike my last two jobs, we do not have trade secrets. We are willing to share anything that we have with anyone at anytime. So yes, spread our contact information out. We're at the other end of the phone or the other end of the email. We can help anybody. We're here to be a partner.Chris Newbold:                Excellent. Well, again, thank you both for joining us today. We'll be back with the podcast in a couple weeks. Until then, be well. 

Chris Newbold:               Hello and welcome to episode five of our podcast series, The Path to Well-Being in Law, an initiative of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold of ALPS Malpractice Insurance and our goal here is simple. To introduce you to cool people doing awesome work in the space of lawyer well-being and in the process, build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates content on creating a culture shift within the legal profession. I'm joined by my incredible tag team partner, Bree Buchanan. Bree, welcome.Bree Buchanan:             Thanks. How are you?Chris Newbold:               Good. Today, we're going to turn to a critical element of the well-being picture and that's judicial well-being. So often when we think about well-being, we think about it through the lens of practicing lawyers under the guise of lawyer well-being. But today we're going to look at the judge side of the equation and we have a recognized leader in our space and a fellow member of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, Judge David Shaheed of Indiana. Bree, would you be so kind to introduce our guest?Bree Buchanan:             Absolutely, I'd be delighted and I'm truly honored. Judge Shaheed is such a wonderful person that I've gotten to know over the past six or seven years, and he's a delight to work with. So, let me introduce everybody to him. Judge Shaheed is a judge in the Marion Superior Court, Civil 1. He came into that position in August of 2007. Prior to that, Judge Shaheed preceded over the Drug Treatment Diversion Court and Re-entry Court. He served on the Court Alcohol and Drug Programs Advisory Committee and was former chair of the Problem-Solving Courts Committee for the Judicial Conference of Indiana. In addition to serving on the Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program in Indiana, he's a former member of the ABA's Commission on Lawyer's Assistance Programs and former co-chair of the Judicial Assistance Initiative for CoLAP. Judge Shaheed, welcome, we're so glad you're with us.Judge  David S.:              Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here.Chris Newbold:               Yeah. Judge Shaheed, I think one of things we love to do with our guests is just an introductory question which is what brought you into the well-being movement? Were there experiences in your life or other drivers that led you to have a passion for this kind of work?Judge  David S.:              Yes. Well, I think, for most people, at least in my community, there's always been somebody in the broader community not in my immediate family that's struggled with issues of depression, sometimes with substance use problems. So, I knew first hand how difficult that could make life for a person. The human dimension to the story. And so when I became a judge and was assigned to a criminal court and then I also had the opportunity to work with a drug treatment diversion court and then later was able to start a re-entry court of ex-offenders. It was a way to take life's personal experiences and build on those personal experiences to hopefully change the lives of people that I came in contact with in the courts.Bree Buchanan:             Terrific. Judge Shaheed, we heard in our last couple episodes from the author of the lawyer research study, Patrick Krill and then we heard from the author of the law student research study, David Jaffe. Now, we're rounding out the third leg of the three legged stool and hearing from you about the critical research that's been done in a sphere around judicial stress and resilience and you've been at the center of that national research project. So, could you tell us a little bit about that?Judge  David S.:              Yes. Well, that research associated with the National Task Force as most people may remember had a number of recommendations and one of those recommendations is that there be a survey of judges, especially with respect to stress, the effects of stress and also with respect to resiliency. There had been a survey with prospective law students. There had also been a survey done with respect to lawyers. It was one of the key recommendations especially with the judiciary, that there be a survey of judges dealing [inaudible 00:04:54] and also resiliency.Bree Buchanan:              So, what was the purpose of the research? What did you all set out to find?Judge  David S.:               Well, the purpose of the research was to actually get involved with judges and try to determine the sources of stress, the effects of that stress and then also to have a positive part, not just talk about the things that were going wrong and the things that were difficult, but also to get feedback from judges as to techniques or tools that they were using to work to try to deal with that stress. We know that when people are stressed out, when people are suffering from difficulties related to their work, sometimes there are unhealthy habits that take hold. And so since wellness is an important [topic 00:05:58] across all professions and the legal profession is also a part of that, the resiliency part with respect to what judges are doing in a positive way to deal with wellness and to deal with stress in a positive way.Bree Buchanan:           And there was a coalition of groups. Who all was involved in getting that project together because it was a big one?Judge  David S.:               Yes. It was a big project and probably the principal researcher, the person that I listen to the most, the expert was Professor Swenson. He is with the St. Scholastica College in Minnesota and also another minister of contact was Joan Bibelhausen, who is the Executive Director of the Lawyers Concern for Lawyers program in Minnesota. Yourself as representative of CoLAP during that period of time, and then also Katheryn Yetter, who is with the National Judicial College. There're perhaps premier organization associated with the education of judges. They put on many programs for judges throughout the year. And they had the role associated with having the judges that participate in their programs to respond to the survey so that we had good results. There are over 18,000 judges across the country, and we were fortunate to have over a 1000 judges in fact, 1034 judges participate in our survey.Bree Buchanan:              Wow. That is great.Chris Newbold:                Wow. Yeah, that's a great response.Judge  David S.:               Yes, very good.Chris Newbold:                Very good. Yeah. I'm curious what some of your key findings were and from your perspective, were there anything surprised you in the findings?Judge  David S.:              Well, the resiliency activities and interests, those were probably something that I hadn't really suspected when we initially thought about the survey, it's obvious you wanted to quantify as best as possible the sources of stress. So the ranking of the sources of stress [inaudible 00:08:47] and then also the effects of stress, there were about 34 effects of stress that were listed. But then there were also about 13 activities or interest including meditation, walking, exercises that judge were relying upon to effectively deal with stress in a positive way.Bree Buchanan:              And judge, I've read the research and I helped out on that some, and the thing that struck me was it seemed that judges overall compared to lawyers generally were fairing a little bit better than lawyers. But was there anything in the research that caused alarm?Judge  David S.:               Yes. Two things. It was not [inaudible 00:09:46] percentage, but 2.2%, and the figures sticks out in my mind because you have to remember there were over a 100 participants in the survey, but of that number 2.2% had [inaudible 00:10:03] aside. In other words, the stresses of the job were so significant that they had actually considered suicide. So to me, that was a big concern. A then also we all know about the availability of alcohol in our society. And so about 9.5% of the judges, especially in 2019 identified problematic drinking as one of the effects of stress.                                          And actually the 9.5 is a little higher than what is found in the general community of people over the age of 25, because it's around 6%. It's a little higher for lawyers, but the 9.5 is still problematic when you consider the stresses of the job and that some of our colleagues in the judiciary are using alcohol to cope with the stresses of their work.Bree Buchanan:             Right. And that is concerning. Absolutely. I remember another thing that was found out of the research was that there was data gathered of what judges were doing to improve their resiliency and what they wanted to know more about. And we looked at that gap there and where there was a big gap between what they were doing and what they wanted to do. We're thinking about honing in on that. Can you talk about a couple of those practices or things that judges wanted to do more?Judge  David S.:              Yeah. Well, one of the troubling and I'll just mention two, for a new judge because becoming a judge in the US especially a trial judge, I'll just speak of that in most states involves an election of some type. And so it's not like in Europe where they have a track or where you are a solicitor or whether you are on the ban, but in the US, the judge typically comes from the lawyer ranks. And so there's no real training to become a judge. So that's a concern especially for new judges, because they feel ill-equipped for the task of being a judge. They don't really feel that there is the proper support to help them be successful, and judges work in a silo. And so [inaudible 00:12:53] in a practice group law office, there's always a senior associate or partner that you may be able to go to. So you're on your own with respect to that.But another aspect that we have found to be helpful is the judicial round tables. There's an excellent report out of Texas about the success of the round tables. They started for the most part in New York because they've had a lot of success with round tables, but the round tables are just an opportunity for judges to get together and talk about the work that they do, not so much in terms of cases and case law and statutes and procedures, but mainly about the work itself and how you cope with that work, how you deal with that work. So that's an important part of the discussion as well.Bree Buchanan:              Absolutely. And just one more thing. When will the study be published? When can we expect to see that?Judge  David S.:               Yeah. The study is going to be published in the ABA Professional Lawyer, and we're in the process now of ABA review, I think for many who are aware and familiar with the American Bar Association, it's quite a bureaucratic institution. And so we're in the process of, they're completing their review but we're hoping to have it published in The Professional Lawyer of the ABA by the end of the year.Chris Newbold:                Got you. And one of the things I think is interesting particularly for any of our non-lawyer listeners is just how all the different types of judges that are out there. I mean, when you really think about the breadth of the judiciary, I mean, you've got municipal judges and justice [crosstalk 00:15:01]. You got district court judges, you got appeals judges, you got specialty court judges. And so I'm just curious on your perspective of whether there are... My sense is that there are certain types of positions on the bench that are more prone to the stress and the interaction with clients.Obviously, the higher you go up on the appellate side, probably the less interaction you have with real people. And so I'm just curious on whether the findings of the report or your personal experience tend to steer toward your judicial well-being being more of a challenge in certain parts of the judiciary.Judge  David S.:               One of the concerns, and it's talked about in the literature, and it's also found in the research is secondary trauma, or post-traumatic stress disorder and we tend to associate that with combat situations and our service people who are in military situations, but trauma can be experienced in a variety of ways. We know that there is trauma that the children experience. If they're in a household where there is domestic violence, that's a trauma. If they see violence in the family, that's trauma. So that kind of drama and trauma that is seen in the family situation, sometimes bubbles into the courts in cases of abuse or neglect. And there are judges that have to look at the probable cause, they have to look at reports with respect to how children are being mistreated and abused and cumulatively, seeing that kind of information on a daily basis, a daily diet of abuse and neglect takes a toll on the individual.Also, we're familiar with criminal courts where there are absolutely horrific events that take place. They cause the loss of life or the injury to people or the assault of individuals. And again, judges have to hear that information, sometimes have to see a horrific scenes that are part of the evidence associated with the death of a person. And so that's just part of the job. And so a stale, a daily diet of that kind of information eventually takes its toll on a human being. Takes a toll on a person. So one or two things happen, a person sometimes becomes numb to what they're seeing, so they become somewhat detached. In other words, the daily diet of that kind of information just numbs and individuals. So they see it, but then they block it out.And that's not good because then they become almost robotic in terms of doing the technical parts of the job. But to those who are a part of that court system with that kind of judge, they notice that there's something missing and that's not a good thing. So one of the other parts or one of the other aspects that is causes problems for the judiciary is burnout, because after so long, a daily diet or that kind of information causes one to just burn out. And so they start pulling away from the job and jobs satisfaction goes down and many of them are just looking for an exit or a way to get out of that kind of a court.I can recall recently elections in my county where I heard stories about one judge who was really suffering from burnout in a criminal court, basically just started continuing cases because he knew that he was going to be leaving the court at the end of the year. So there became about a six month backlog of cases that got continued. And so for those individuals who were trying to have their cases resolved, they basically suffered because the judge was burned out. So those are just a couple of ways that it manifests itself when judges are overwhelmed by the ugly side or the ugly aspects of their job.Chris Newbold:                Yeah. And it seems like such an interesting challenge both on the front end, because you're elevated out of the lawyer ranks. You're elevated to the bench and there's got to be a shock to the system at that point of just, "What am I doing?" You're trying to figure this out. There's all these new emotions that are coming your way. We know there are schools that try to help judges adapt to that, but there's really emotions there. And then as you said on back end of their career you suffer the burnout side of things where this means you figure it out, you start to then go down and put down the road of just, "This is just being tough." And it's such an interesting as you think about it from a... I'm at an age right now and soon approaching 50 that a lot of my friends are elevating to the bench. And a lot of times you elevate to the bench and you go under an island a little bit. Right? And-Judge  David S.:              Right. Yeah. And that's another aspect you've really touched on is the isolation because we're collegial people. One of the things that has been pointed out by the pandemic is that in many places in the world, people have become familiar with the idea of quarantine. And we have learned most of us, at least that that's not really a comfortable idea to just isolate yourself. And we've been told as much as possible, we should isolate ourselves. And my age group pretty much the mantra. For anybody over 60 isolate yourself, don't be in contact. And so it's a little unnatural because we like to be in community, we like to be able to interact with people.So one of the downsides of becoming a judge is the isolation, because the collegial aspect of life when you're in a practice group or when you're with a law firm, or when you're with any kind of legal work in an organization, you can ask for advice, you can just kind of bounce ideas off people, sometimes about cases that you have, but when you become a judge and you have your own caseload that you're responsible for, it's not like you can go to another judge and say, "Hey, look, I've had this case, what do you think I should do?" Because for the most part, they have their own case load and so you don't want to seem weak and not up to the job. So you basically go to your office or on the bench, you try to figure it out as best you can, but it is an isolating proposition.And so that takes a toll as well. And it's not like you can go home and share the details of your troublesome caseload with your family. So it's a rather lonely job. And then when you have to make monumental decisions, life-changing decisions about people, typically those are made by yourself. It's not like you take a committee vote, you have to make the decision and then you have to live with the decision, both with respect to appeal but also with respect to the emotional toll that it takes on yourself. And then thinking about the consequences of your decision on the lives of other people. So it's a weight that doesn't go away, and it's a weight that is unlike a lot of other professions, especially in the legal profession.Chris Newbold:                It certainly feels like a heavyweight of a job from an emotional perspective, a lot of weight on those shoulders-Judge  David S.:               Yes it is.Chris Newbold:                There’s obviously glory in the role, but real world, real family ramifications in both the decisions and the contemplation. Let's take a quick break here and hear from our friends at ALPS. And I'd like to come back on the conversation and talk about why the judicial system should to be paying close attention, not just to the judiciary totality of the profession more generally.Bree Buchanan:              Welcome back everybody. We're here with Judge David Shaheed, who is a member of the National Task Force and a member of the Judiciary. And he's talking to us about wellbeing among the judiciary in the United States. And Judge Shaheed, I think particularly with the task force report, we're really starting this well-being movement across the country. And a piece of that is for the judiciary. Could you talk a little bit about why the judicial system should be paying attention to wellbeing? What happens when wellbeing is not really addressed?Judge  David S.:               Well, the role of the courts in our life in America is one of the most important roles that there are. I mean, just the number of TV shows that focus on judges in terms of reality shows and then also drama that involve the courts. There's always been a fascination with the courts. And the rule of law in a very serious sense, is probably one of the hallmarks or most significant aspects of our democracy. And so most people don't spend their lives in course. We have professionals of course, lawyers and judges and so forth, but the average person may not ever get to a court, but if they come to a court that is going to be an experience that they seldom forget. And so the interaction that they have with the judge is going to mark them and influence what they think about the courts and the rule of law in America.So we want everybody to be at their best. When we go to a doctor's appointment, we want the doctor to be at their best and any kind of interaction that we have, we want the person that we're interacting with at their best. And since judges are making life-changing decisions, the wellness of those judges is an essential concern for all of us. And we know that if judges are well, their decisions reflect that. A part of the study has shown that with research that depending upon the time of day that judges make decisions, they're more positive in the early parts of the session and they trail off toward the end.But we want to have judges at their best during that entire process because that forms what the average citizen thinks about our courts, and about our judiciary, and about this principle of justice of being fair to everyone that comes before the courts. And so the rule of law and the administration of justice through the courts is one of the hallmarks of our democracy and that's the reason why it should be of concern that we have judges who are well and healthy on the bench.Bree Buchanan:              Wow. That's a great answer. I've never heard it put so clearly in such dramatic terms.  That's great. And now of course, we're in the midst of a pandemic. We're hitting the sixth month of this. And you're still presiding over cases in court. What is it like right now in the judicial system to try and carry on justice during a pandemic?Judge  David S.:               Yes. Well, since late February, early March everybody's life all over the world has changed and the courts and judges are not immune to that. For a period of time, basically from March, maybe until mid-May, there were basically only emergency court hearings and definitely not hearings where people were coming to court. In many cities, in many communities, the courts have been for the most part closed, and they're gradually starting to open up. And so just like we're on a Zoom call for this podcast, the courts have been using Zoom primarily at least in Indiana as the primary mechanism to have non-emergency hearings. So that has been a tremendous change because two quick points about this for judges.The second source of stress for judges is heavy dockets. So when you consider that for two and a half months or most, there were no court activities at all. There's a backlog that has developed in the criminal courts and civil courts all throughout the court system. And so I can tell you right now, the judges are stressing of how are they going to get that backlog work down. So that's one concern for judges and that adds to stress. The other part is that judges like routine, all of us like routine. And so within a short period of time, all of us as judges have had to become familiar with the technology of operating a court for the most part electronically.In most states there is e-Filing, which helps somewhat but for the most part judges have had to adapt and the staffs have had to adapt to the technology associated with conducting a hearing remotely. Where the judge is in one place, maybe in one location in one state, and then the parties may be in other states at least in other locations and still the business of the court has to get done. So this adjustment causes additional stress because we know how to do things the way we did them in 2019, but the reality is the way we operated as judges in 2019 is not the same way we're operating as judges toward the end of 2020. So those kinds of adjustments are additional stressors as they say, but that's the reality of the work that we're doing.Chris Newbold:                Yeah. Change, change, change, change, right?Judge  David S.:               Yes, absolutely.Chris Newbold:                I mean, backlogs and new technologies and new ways of operating a courtroom. I am curious Judge Shaheed, as you think about the courtroom, I think your answer was so eloquent I think on the role of the judge, you also preside over the totality of the courtroom and that includes the attorneys that are before you ultimately are officers of the court. I'm curious on your perspective with respect to them and what you generally see in the courtroom. When you see hints of attorneys who are before you who might be struggling in terms of [inaudible 00:33:40] situation, we've even seen essences of alcoholism in courts and strange behavior. I'm just curious on your perspective on the interplay between your role on the bench and then those officers of the court and what role you have in terms of both identifying challenges and then being part of the solution.Judge  David S.:               Well, I can remember over the Drug Court in Marion County, an incident where a lawyer who showed up for a hearing had cocaine drop out of his pocket before he was able to get into the court room. So that part was easy because he ended up getting arrested right there in court before the court session started. But sometimes you see impairments. A judge wants to have a fair trial in particular, if you're over a criminal court you have to be concerned about the defendant having a fair trial because from two respects, you want to have a fair trial because you don't want to have an appeal based upon the lawyer representing the defendant not being affected, but also from the standpoint of fundamental fairness. You want to make sure that as much as possible there's an equal playing field and both sides or both parties are being properly represented.So it does create a problem and an immediate problem with respect to how you get through that hearing, but then there's other ethical problem for you as to what you do when you witness signs of impairment. Fortunately, in all states there are lawyers assistance programs. And so those lawyers' assistance programs are a vital asset to the legal community, because if you see a sign of impairment or something that doesn't look exactly right, and many times lawyers you've seen them over not only months, but over years. And so you can call the Lawyers Assistance Program, mention what you have observed and then the Lawyers Assistance Program can reach out to that lawyer or sometimes a judge and to volunteers, I've done it myself just check on the person and say that you're just there to see or to ask them if everything was okay.And again that's when the real benefits of Lawyers Assistance Programs so that judges or any other professional can alert the Lawyers Assistance Program in their state that there may be an impairment or there may be some other issue that is interfering with that legal professionals' performance of their professional duties.Chris Newbold:                We should note that Judge Shaheed is an active leader in the Indiana Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program. And thank you for your contributions there, because I think your perspective is particularly important. Now, let's maybe wrap it up with one final question Judge Shaheed, which is overall, are you optimistic are you pessimistic about judge resiliency and then the ability to cope with the stressors of the bench obviously with the pandemic going on right now? What have you seen, what do you think we are now and where do you think we're going?Judge  David S.:               Well, let me give a formal plug for the article that's going to come out this year, Stress and Resiliency in the US Judiciary. That represents, I think a milestone or a high watermark with respect to information that will guide in particular those judges who are presiding judges over their courts or those judges who are administrators for the judges in their district or circuit so that they have concrete information from which they can tailor programs to assist the judges. Without the data, it's hard to have a justification to have a wellness program for the benefit of judges in district, for example.But with this report coming out, once it becomes public, then those presiding judges, those chief judges of those districts can say, "Now I have information that can guide me to start around table for judges on a monthly or quarterly basis or to have programs on wellness." So it gives judges and the judiciary the tools and information necessary to help promote and support the wellness of judges across the country.Bree Buchanan:              Wonderful. So well said.Chris Newbold:                It is. When that report obviously is published, we'll make sure to include that on our website @lawyerwellbeing.net because I think that that is... Again, a really important part of the equation that we talked about lawyer wellbeing, but it really is more of a holistic look at wellbeing in the law more generally and we certainly thank you for your contributions, your leadership, your perspective. It certainly feels like awareness is a big part of the game right now for more judges and with awareness brings vulnerability support amongst each other, and those all seem to put us more in a sense of we're trending in the right direction than the wrong direction.Judge  David S.:               Yes, yes. Well, trending is very important. We've learned with social media and depending in the right direction with respect to wellness for lawyers, the legal profession, and also judges.Chris Newbold:                Yeah. Well said, and again, thank you Judge Shaheed.Judge  David S.:               Yeah, absolutely.Bree Buchanan:              Thanks so much.Chris Newbold:                This was a great conversation again, I think sometimes we don't step back and take a look at the role of judges and just... Again, what tough jobs those are, what important jobs they are for again, of the underpinnings of a well-functioning democracy, but they don't come without emotional and stress and real problems that affect real people. And so we appreciate your perspective and bringing it on the podcast today.Judge  David S.:               Well, thank you so much for launching this podcast. I know it's going to be a big help to the legal profession. And so it's not a small step, it's a significant step and we just need to have the need to support it as best we can and years from now, people will look back on this moment and say they can remember when Chris and Bree started this. So you'll be in the hall of fame on national wellness.Chris Newbold:                That's right.  Well, again, thank you so much-Judge  David S.:               Sure, absolutely.Chris Newbold:                in a couple of weeks where we start to look at... I always think of states as laboratories of democracy and one of the states that has been really doing some incredible work is the Commonwealth of Virginia. And we're going to have a couple of the leaders of Virginia come in and talk about some of the great work that's happening there on wellbeing. And so stay tuned for that. Thanks, Judge Shaheed.Judge  David S.:               All right. Thank you. Thanks to both of you.Chris Newbold:                All right. Take care.Bree Buchanan:              Thank you. Good bye.Judge  David S.:               All right.

In this episode of the new podcast, Path to Well-Being in Law, co-hosts Chris Newbold and Bree Buchanan enjoy lively conversations with lawyer well-being pioneer David Jaffe.  David gives essential insight into how the well-being movement took hold in the legal profession and discuss ways in which its culture may finally be shifting. He also discusses the research study he co-authored regarding law students and how that data has informed significant shifts in how law schools are addressing the well-being of their students.Transcript:CHRIS NEWBOLD:Welcome to Episode Four of The Path to Lawyer Well-Being in Law, a podcast series, a production of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being with technical support coming from our friends at ALPS. Our goal is simple, to introduce you to cool people doing awesome work in the space of lawyer well-being, and to shine the light on the many great things happening around the country. I'm joined today by my fantastic co-host, Bree Buchanan.BREE BUCHANAN:Hi everybody, thanks Chris. Good to be here with you today.CHRIS NEWBOLD:Yeah, and today we're going to dive into an area of lawyer well-being that I think is both fascinating, because it's kind of where a lot of the cultural elements of lawyer well-being originate. We're going to talk about law schools and the work that's being done in law schools. We are very excited to have with us a real visionary in terms of thinking about law school culture as it relates to lawyer well-being. Bree, I'm going to have you introduce our guest, David Jaffe.BREE BUCHANAN:Sure, and thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity to do that because David Jaffe is one of the favorite people that I know, and so I'm delighted to have him here. David's day job, he's the Associate Dean of Student Affairs at the American University Washington College of Law in D.C., and I know David from the many years that he spent on the ABA's Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs and has been a leader with that group around issues related to law students and looking at reform for law schools across the country around how they address students who are struggling with mental health issues or substance use problems, and just general well-being. He was awarded CoLAP's Meritorious Service Award a few years ago. Near and dear to our hearts is that David was the author, the lead author, the author, on the law school section of the National Task Force Report. So he's been in this space with us from the very, very beginning.So David, welcome. I'm so glad you're here with us today.DAVID JAFFE:Thank you, thank you Bree and Chris, thank you so much for having me today.BREE BUCHANAN:Yeah. And you know one of the questions that we ask everybody that's on the podcast, because I think it's helpful to just have the human side of this is, David, what brought you to the lawyer well-being movement? It's so clear that you have a driving passion for this work. What drives it?DAVID JAFFE:It's a great question actually, something I've been thinking about a lot. I think I bring it back to two elements from my own, my personal childhood and background, one of them which I've not shared a lot. When I was 15 years old I actually came across one of my siblings who was attempting to commit suicide, or at least thought he was at a very young age. He was 16 months younger than me, and had taken a mixture of pills in an effort to join, not through suicide but a cry for help to join one of my other siblings in a private rehab school in another state. I happened to be the one at home who found him, found him in enough time. He was taken care of and ultimately did end up at this school, and he's now okay, thank you. But I think it's really something that at that age had to have stuck with me.There's also a history of depression in my family. It goes very deep to my grandmother, with whom I was very close, and my father and a couple of other relatives. So it's something that I've been sensitive in my personal life, and then through extrapolation. I look at these 100s of law students who we take in at our law school and across the country every year, and just wonder with all the myriad issues that they have facing them even prior to school, and then exacerbated by everything that they have in transitioning to law school, what they must be going through. And I think that's just been a lot of what's driven my desire to be available to reach out when possible and try to be some resource of assistance.BREE BUCHANAN:And they're so lucky to have you, David, to have somebody in that role who really gets it and is really compassionate and feels for what they're going through, and it's evident in hearing you talk and the work that you do.CHRIS NEWBOLD:Yeah. David, remind me how many years you've been involved in higher education and in particular the law school setting.DAVID JAFFE:Sure. So I graduated from the Washington College of Law, where I'm presently employed, in 1993. I spent a total of three years in different positions with the school, four actually, and in 1997 I interviewed successfully for the Dean of Students job. I was the second Dean of Students that the law school had, was relatively young to have the title of Dean although it's never been something that I've made a lot of in my title, but more importantly it was giving me the opportunity to work with students more on the, just on a one-on-one level. So I think I had a LinkedIn reminder today that 27 years of service with the law school.CHRIS NEWBOLD:That's definitely got to have provided you the context and the perspective to see obviously a lot of different changes in the law school setting over that duration of period of time.DAVID JAFFE:Absolutely. Absolutely. I think we, I'm sure we'll talk more about this, but I think that we've seen an evolution of sorts, and unfortunately and fortunately in the same breath, around mental health and well-being. I think it's one that's really only taken hold probably the last five, maybe no more than seven years. But again, to the good, I think law schools generally are trending in the right direction in that regard.CHRIS NEWBOLD:That's exciting to hear. Let's go back a little bit and let's talk about the Suffering in Silence study. Obviously that was a precursor to the Path to Lawyer Well-Being report, and lay the evidence based challenges that I think we're both seeing in the profession in one respect but in the law schools specifically in that particular study. I'd just be curious on why did you do the study, and how did it come about?DAVID JAFFE:Sure. I got lucky to a large degree. I had been thinking a lot about the fact that we did not have a lot of data around the issues that those of us who've worked on the front lines with students perceived to be the case, around well-being, mental health, substance use, help seeking behaviors, things of that nature. I don't remember who it was but somebody put me in touch with a fellow traveler, Jerry Organ, who's a law professor at St. Thomas and somebody who does a lot of work around data for the American Bar Association. Jerry and I were introduced via email from a third party, and funny enough I think we spent about two years, maybe longer, working together towards building the survey and the idea without ever having met each other in person. I think it was some conference subsequent that we finally had a chance to meet and exchange hugs and catch up.Jerry was interested in the same thing I was. We believe anecdotally that there's significant issues around law student well-being. We don't have the data. The only survey that had been out at that time was in AALS, Association of American Law School survey dating back to 1993, so it's actually the time that I had graduated law school. That survey was limited to some degree. It hadn't really addressed prescription drugs. It hadn't looked at help seeking behaviors as well. So we wanted to have information. For me the discussion was always the important part, but data's important, particularly for individuals who may not believe that the issues are actually ripe or actually out there, and so we wanted to have the backing and then be able to use that as a foundation to say, "Okay, now what do we do?"So the survey came about in 2014. We surveyed 15 law schools, 3500 students, had just over 3,000 responses, and the numbers by and large confirmed a lot of what those who were working already with students noticed to be the case, that there was more drinking than anybody would, if not have anticipated, anybody wanted to see in law students. Use of prescription drugs without a prescription in more significant numbers than anybody would have hoped for. Positive screening for depression, around anxiety, particularly around anxiety fairly significant numbers. I think we screened 37% positive for anxiety.Then again in the same breath that although a significant number of the students who responded to the survey, over 80%, indicated that they would seek a health professional if they felt they had an issue around alcohol or drug use or mental health, only 4% had indicated actually having seen somebody and those [inaudible], the numbers just don't match up. It wouldn't make sense if you were acknowledging in one breath the significant numbers that students were drinking and binge drinking and using drugs and everything else yet not getting help for it.And that had just turned us quickly to some of the other numbers, which were around the help seeking behavior, that between, depending on whether you were looking at substance use or mental health, between 40 to 50% of the respondents said that they felt that they were more likely to get admitted to the bar if they kept their problem hidden. So [inaudible] when you take all these numbers together that they're acknowledging in one breath that they probably needed help based upon their use in different areas, but that they weren't getting the help and the presumption is that they weren't getting the help because they were afraid they were either going to have a job implication or that their character and fitness were going to impede them and they were not going to be admitted to the jurisdiction that they sought to get admitted to after three or four years of hard study and tuition payments and everything else.BREE BUCHANAN:Absolutely, and you know I shared in that first episode about, I started having emerging mental health issues in my first year of law school, and I can remember, I mean no way would I have ever gone to anybody and asked for help.DAVID JAFFE:Yeah. Right.BREE BUCHANAN:I really felt like I had to completely put out this image of being on top of everything and couldn't show any chink in the armor, so to speak. I got the opportunity to go back to that same law school and teach a clinical program 20 years later and I'll tell you, it's the same attitudes. Not much had changed at that time, but hopefully some things are changing now. [crosstalk]DAVID JAFFE:It's hard, Bree. It's really, you think about these individuals and regardless of the law school where you're working or assisting students, these students were skimmed from the top of undergrads or even if they were out for a few years, the top colleges from across the country. They all want to be competitive, oftentimes with themselves, sometimes with the sacrifice of classmates, which is another challenge. But they also, as a general rule, those students tend to be type A. They feel they've got everything under control and they can handle everything, and this whole notion of, a stigma of needing to have things under control really, really gets in the way of these students seeking help.CHRIS NEWBOLD:David, the study came out in 2016, right? So we're four years removed from the study. Do you have a sense of how things have shifted with law students since the study was done? Do you have a general feeling for if we're doing better, are we worse, are we about the same? What do your instincts tell you?DAVID JAFFE:It's a great question. I'll start with a tease. Jerry and I are fortunate to have received a grant opportunity, and we're going to be updating that survey. We're surveying again next spring, in 2021, and so we're going to have yet another opportunity to really see the hard numbers and see if we've made some significant changes or potentially slid back since that survey and that time. What I would suggest, and although I'm very proud of the survey and a lot of the results from it, I don't want to give all of the credit to that. I think that Jerry and I should also mention Kate Bender from the Dave Nee Foundation who co-wrote the article with us after the survey came out, or the results of the survey came out.I think that the law schools have been trending, maybe in part from results of the survey but just in part from being more aware of the importance of the issues, have been trending towards being more proactive than we have been. I had used the number five, seven years prior to this conversation, and what I mean by that is that we were at a time where, orientation for example, we would be told by senior administrators informally or formally that the last thing we should be talking about are issues around mental health and stress and anxiety. We're welcoming an entering class, and then boom they're going to get hit right between the eyes with this notion that it's going to be a really, really different experience, and next thing you know we're scaring them away to another school, as if we were the only law school that had an issue around these challenges.That conversation has given way towards issues or conversations around well-being, around meditation and mindfulness and yoga and other outlets and seeking help when needed, as really being front and center orientations at I would say a good many law schools around the country. So we're not only not afraid of it anymore, but rather than being in this kind of reactive posture where we wait for a student to come and either be referred by a faculty member or just realize that they're desperately sinking and really come to somebody for help at the last minute, we're doing more proactive outreach. We're saying from the beginning in the orientation, in the materials, through reminders of mindfulness meditation sessions or yoga sessions or whatever else it is, that we understand that students are going through these issues and we want to try to head them off, and then of course also be there should despite our best efforts some of the issues continue to make the work and the challenges difficult for our students.CHRIS NEWBOLD:I'm curious how you, to the extent possible, how do you measure success of what you've been doing relative to how you want to create an evolving culture in the law school that obviously prepares them for maybe greater vulnerability and greater willingness to let faculty know when they're in those challenging spots, or perhaps fostering a more collaborative and maybe less of a competitive environment?DAVID JAFFE:It's a great question. I think it's one thing that we, I would say for myself in our student affairs office, we probably struggle with a little bit. Metrics seem to be coming more and more important for schools, the ability to report outcomes of what they're doing in various ways. One way one can do it is to, how many students are dropping in your office, how many students are you meeting with one on one? In theory around well-being you could mark it by the number of students who are coming to a meditation session. But it's tricky, because you can argue two sides. If fewer students are coming to your office for help, then you could suggest that or imply that the work that you've done in orientation are causing students to, in a good way, to maybe seek help maybe with family or private counseling or things like that or maybe doing meditation on their own, and they're actually taking better care of themselves.On the other hand, if numbers are increasing of students coming in to you, you could also argue that you've gotten word out about it, that you are a positive resource without judgment, without question, and so the students have found the credibility in your office and the comfort level and they're coming to you maybe at a time that they would be afraid, you know the Dean of Students has a job to report me to a character and fitness and to the bar, and so if I go and get help I might just be putting my death sentence out there for admission to the bar later on. So the short answer, I don't have an ideal one, Chris. I think, I simply feel that if one keeps beating the drum of the context and the conversation around this just being important and doing what you need to for yourself when you can, and seeking help when you feel like this is getting out of control, you've just got to trust that the students are responding to you and are getting help when they need, either with you or again through other individuals.BREE BUCHANAN:David, I know during your tenure as a leader of the law school committee of CoLAP, there was a study published by Jordana Confino that really looked at what was going on with law schools across the country and adopting well-being initiatives, and this was written within the last couple of years. Can you share some of the most promising practices or things that impressed you that are going on right now across the country that we might entice some of the law schools to adopt?DAVID JAFFE:Sure. Jordana's article was terrific, and as you said it did kind of follow a survey that several individuals had worked on in just trying to get a sense of ... Some of it was following our survey, but again some of it was just a general sense of we know you as law schools are doing better work or looking to increase your efforts in regard to what is working, what is not working. I would say if I wanted to tease out one, and forgive me, I don't recall if the numbers were as solid on this as I'd like to see them, but I actually think our faculty, faculty across the board, law faculty across the board that is, have the perhaps best opportunity to have a positive input and a positive effect on our students around these issues.What I mean by that is that despite those of us as Dean of Students who like to kind of wear this badge of honor of being on the front line with law students, we're technically not. We do get to see the law students at orientation, at least for those Deans of Students who run orientation. In my case I'm one of them. But once school gets started the students are really, they're beholden to their classes and their faculty and vice versa. One of the parts of the article that had come out was, again, I think it was, there were definitely examples of faculty leading the way but I think it was more of a suggestion that we do a deeper dive in that regard.Our faculty are held in such esteem by their students, particularly the entering students who are kind of seeing them for the first time and learning from them in these various subject areas. The opportunity for the faculty to, what's the phrase, to step away from the sage on the stage and just kind of be an assistant on the side. Not to stop doing what they're doing in teaching, but to take a minute in class, every now and then, even starting classes, with a very brief breathing exercise, but also taking a break every couple of weeks and acknowledging, "I know that you're hitting a peak point of the semester right now, that you're doing your legal writing class and that you're taking a midterm and this and that." Checking with the students. "Are you doing okay?" Reminding them that they've accomplished so much just by getting to law school, and reminding them that they have very much the right to be where they are and that they're going to graduate and not going to be- [inaudible]BREE BUCHANAN:Oh dear.DAVID JAFFE:Having a dog bark in support of that, I will take 100% of the time. [inaudible] So I think that's one of the big areas. I know that Jordana's survey had also pointed out that a lot of the wellness programming again are areas, depending on your school and what's working best for you, was definitely another area where we were seeing wellness committees that invited students in to discuss what was going to work best and then giving way to these meditation sessions or yoga sessions or running clubs or just giving an opportunity for students to gather together to talk, and ideally to kind of give way to more open conversation about how they could be supporting each other.BREE BUCHANAN:One of the things that's really golden is if you have a faculty member who will actually share his or her experience, maybe with depression or anxiety over the course of their career.DAVID JAFFE:100%.BREE BUCHANAN:That does so much to bring down the stigma that's around this and just makes it okay for people to start talking about it. When you can talk about it, then you can ask for help for it, and that's so critical.DAVID JAFFE:That's right. And we all have it, and that's the thing. And I try to share with students and say, occasionally I'll share the stories that I shared here in the podcast and go into a little more depth, but I'll also say, these things don't change. Some of our students are older and married, but you graduate from law school, you get married, you're dealing with raising a family, with a spouse or a significant other, buying a house, jobs and things like that. The stressors continue, so it's may be peaking to a degree in law school for students but they don't go away, and so the real question is, what do we do about getting help while we can, while we're in a support network where others can be helping us so that we can come out the other side and be as healthy as we can.BREE BUCHANAN:So David, you've been really central to some policy initiatives that have the potential to make real change in this area, and I want you to have the chance to talk about this. One of them is around the character and fitness questions that states ask law students and has such a chilling effect on law students' willingness to ask for help. Tell us about what your work is in that area.DAVID JAFFE:Sure. I [inaudible] an incredible component to the issue, and chilling effect is exactly the right phrase, Bree. There's again a much deeper dive. For those who are interested I would just encourage them to either reach out to any of us or to look up, Louisiana, I think they probably list it as Consent Decree in 2014, but basically there was a determination back in 2014 that a number, well that the State of Louisiana in that case was using their questions on their character and fitness portion of the bar application that were invasive and violative of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, that they were asking questions that could not or should not be asked. And so a decision was made to force through the decree to soften those questions, but if the determination was that they were being made only in that state because the suit was there and not federal and not across the board.Some other states indeed who were already well addressing mental health questions or not having them at all. A couple of other states saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to make some changes. But there are still a decent number of states, four or five or six that would be described as extremely invasive, and then maybe scaling down to another 10 or 12, maybe even 15 or so. And these are states that are just asking questions that most typically is kind of the, did you ever? I mean they're asking questions about a student's health and background that really don't have a place in the current reflection of the character or the fitness of that applicant to study law. There may be issues that occurred that were well dealt with a number of years ago, and yet the question is opening it up again and causing a student to potentially disgorge information of a very personal nature, and also potentially re traumatize when these students have been through significant issues.I've worked with some others. I've worked with Janet Stearns, who's my counterpart and friend at Miami's Law School. We have written an article recently about it, and even on the heels of that, we think, and some other things that were going on. We've seen a couple of states even in this calendar year who have rethought their questions, New York somewhat famously, and although they had cited to our article but to their credit they had been at work at it for a while. But they actually chose to modify their questions significantly after about a year, maybe a year and a half of a working group. And we still hope, because that's still fairly current and New York is such a significant bar, that we may see, and we've indeed heard from a couple of states since that decision came down, from a couple of states and their working groups that have been asking, "What information do you have, what can you provide us, because there's some of us who would like to see some of those changes implemented in our states as well."And the argument just simply, maybe I should have started with this, is if the students were more and more savvy about looking ahead about what their future may be and what they have to do, they're looking on line. They see what the questions are. And if we're able to respond, or if their jurisdiction is able to respond, to say, "We're not going to ask questions around mental health," or the question we're [inaudible] asking is have you, if it's an issue that is maybe within the last two or three years, have you been receiving treatment for it, and if you have then we're going to be okay with that. Well that's going to allow those students, to go back to the bulk of our conversation this far, to actually get the help they need while in law school so that they can sail through with flying colors on that application and go on to lead healthy, not only professional lives as lawyers but personal lives as well.CHRIS NEWBOLD:Great. I think that's a great time for us to take our break, and we'll talk about some more of these policy initiatives that are currently being pushed by CoLAP.DAVID JAFFE:Sounds great.Your law firm is worth protecting, and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and bind coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.ALPSnet.com.BREE BUCHANAN:All right, welcome back everybody. We have David Jaffe with us today and we're talking about some really exciting policy initiatives that David has been at the forefront of, and these are things that can be game changers, really, around well-being for law students. What I wanted to, I can't miss out on asking you about, David, is your efforts to convince the ABA's law school accreditation committee to make some changes for what law schools are required to do around this. Can you talk a little bit about what your, I guess, I don't want to say lobbying but that's what it basically comes down to, efforts in this area?DAVID JAFFE:Sure, advocacy, definitely. Thanks, that's a great question. So one of the areas that we, and again a number of individuals who are interested in this would like to see more of an emphasis on, is some kind of formalized or required training around substance use and mental health awareness while in law school. Every law school is part of this. So the ABA accredits law schools, it's either every seven years or might be every 10 years now. You have to go through a process of self-evaluation and then sharing that information, and there are a lot of steps and questions around standards that have to be complied with.One of the ongoing requirements towards the completion of the degree is that students take a course in legal ethics or professional responsibility, it's more often called, and while recognizing that a number of those courses will fold in because of the nature of the topic, professional responsibility, a session may be an hour or something like that around substance use, mental health education and awareness. Oftentimes a lawyer assistance program director is brought in, maybe a volunteer to tell his or her story, and they're very engaging conversations when they're held.So it's there informally, but informally is a relevant term. No professor is required to write that into their professional responsibility textbook or case book and no faculty member is required to teach it as part of their overall assessment in that class. Since that's the most obvious class we've focused on that in a proposal to the ABA where we suggest it or at least suggest it generally, that substance use, mental health, at a minimum, two hours during a student's three or four years of education, is devoted towards that topic with the suggestion that a professional responsibility course would be the most logical place, that the ABA could be free to simply say that the requirement is there.In theory you could do it as part of orientation, you could do it prior to that although I think it would be a little bit too early, I think we'd want students to transition and get settled in and then appreciate some of the nuances and some of the things that might be affecting them before they hear this information. But we really feel that trying to build atop this informal approach and those faculty and those who do write these course books to fold it in, that we have a formal adoption so that schools are really compelled to work in an area that quite frankly they ought to be doing regardless.BREE BUCHANAN:Terrific. That's just a brilliant approach.CHRIS NEWBOLD:Yeah. David, you've also been very involved in the law school mental health day for law schools. I think last year it was in October, which I think is not coincidence, that you plan that in the first six to eight weeks of the semester, and I'd be curious on your thoughts around that particular mental health day and what the plans look like for 2020.DAVID JAFFE:Sure, thanks for that. So prior to, it might have been two years ago, mental health day was being held in the third week in March, and it was a somewhat artificial date and time that had been selected. A group of us had gotten together and said, "You know, it's way too late in the day to be having these conversations, right? You're at the end of the academic year. Why not push something up?" And so there was a determination and some advocacy to move it. It was actually a fairly easy lift, in credit to the ABA law student division, which is oftentimes very helpful in publicizing events that are going on around it. So we moved it to October 10th, which coincides with Global Mental Health Day as well. We've occasionally had to ... Well, we've only done it a couple years but we try to avoid a Saturday or sometimes even a Friday where law students are starting to check out for the weekend.What we tried to do is bring some [inaudible] leaders. The last couple of years we've done some national broadcasting and invited schools to, through a webinar, to attend live, to ask questions live, and have them anchored at a school. We're looking to finalize the plans for this coming October, but I would say the part that I'm most excited about and I do hope it comes together, because it's probably a long time in coming, is that I believe the law student division is going to play an even increasingly prominent role in the event or quite frankly series of events. We may do a couple of presentations over a few days this year, and we hope that one of them will be led by the law student division and students themselves, because they really, there's never a better moment or an opportunity than a student working peer to peer with other students around these issues.We like to stay the law students are getting younger each year. Obviously it's a joke as we age each year and still dedicate ourselves to doing this work, but when they stop and they see that they're, listen to their law students and the issues that their law students are facing and going through, it's then when they can really say, that's me, and it's really nice to hear, for some of them for the first time, I'm not the only one going through this.That's another area we probably should touch on at least lightly as well. We have students who believe, particularly when they're transitioning into school and feeling the crush of the Socratic method and the new language and the reading and everything else, that they're the only one who's going through whatever it is that they're going through. I've seen so many times when I've finally had an opportunity to counsel one of these students, when I will look them in the eye and say, "You know, you're not the only one this week, or sometimes the only one today, who's come to my office from these issues," and you almost can see the burden kind of lighten from their shoulders, that they're like, "Oh my god, I'm so happy to hear that because I really thought I was the only one who was afraid to be called on or the only one who wasn't getting what was going on in class and everything else."So coming back to mental health day, our hope is that there'll be at least one session that could be led by some of the student leaders and [inaudible] leaders, and really speak directly to students about some of these issues and inspire them to get help if that's an issue or to become leaders in their own right at their other schools across the country, and just kind of tentacle this out so that we're building on these wellness programs wherever and whenever we can.CHRIS NEWBOLD:David, one of the things that I think is interesting as we look into the future a little bit is, I'm concerned that there's just, a lot of folks who go into law school, go through law school and then ultimately, there's a failure in expectations of what practicing law is like relative to what their expectations were before they came into law school. It's an expectations gap that I think ultimately, you get through law school, you've got all this student debt. You maybe take a job that you didn't anticipate taking, and then you kind of move yourself through a profession in which maybe you don't love what you're doing, and if you can't find professional satisfaction some of these other coping mechanisms then kind of creep in. I'd be curious on your thoughts on what law schools can do to maybe better establish what practicing law is actually like, and when to do that in the law school setting, and whether you believe that there is some notion of an expectations gap.DAVID JAFFE:That's a very thoughtful question, Chris. Let me take a stab at that. I'm going to back up a little bit. I don't disagree with anything that you said but I'm going to take maybe a step back prior to law school. I've had some really helpful conversations with the counselor who's assigned to our law students through the university's counseling center, and although we have an absolute agreement that she cannot share any specific information about law students with me, we do have an ongoing agreement that if there are any kind of threads or issues in the aggregate that are worth sharing, maybe there's a faculty member who seems to be affecting a group of students or something going on at the school, that she absolutely can share it, and time and again when we've sat down what she has said to me, Chris, is that by and large the issues that the students are bringing forward in law school are not law school related.They're issues that, these kind of deep seated issues that law students have not addressed prior to coming to law school. Family issues, maybe unresolved. Personal issues. There may be issues around self-confidence and imposter syndrome and things like that, but also any issues around relationships, and maybe some diagnoses of depression and things like that as well. But things that students have not come to grips with, and then they get to law school and it's this jarring transition to start with, and then at the back end, and it's really, you know three years is a, even four years for evening students, it's a blink of an eye at the end of the day, and the student who has not sought the opportunity to work through some of these issues, which are now of course being exacerbated by the tuition and the potential prospects for employment and looking for those jobs and looking for summer opportunities and dealing with the debt and making new friends and transitioning, all these things are coming to a head.And so the student who's not dealing with it at all is simply, they're not sailing through typically. They're struggling. But then all these issues are presenting themselves again in the work force, inclusive potentially of this kind of gap which is, I haven't been able to focus on myself, let alone on what I ought to be learning while I'm in law school to make myself a better lawyer, and to have an appreciation for what it is that I want to do.I think the other part to your question in terms of the gap, and it all relates to well-being at the end. But I think the better job a law school is doing, not only around counseling students individually, collectively, but also providing some kind of experiential, solid experiential education or opportunities, variety of opportunities for education prior to the student getting out, is only going to serve the student well. And by that I simply mean whether it's a clinical program where a student's able to work as attorney student, attorneys for a year under the supervision of one of our faculty or even attorneys who are in practice, or even externships or internships where the students are going out into the field and working under the tutelage of a lawyer or a judge or a set of lawyers, and really gaining a sense, one, that it may be a subject area that they thought they were interested in and it ultimately turns them off, but they still have an opportunity to pivot and move in another direction; two, to gain some of those professional skills.Because where a lot of these students, they're coming right out of undergrad and really they may not have ever worked at all and if they did, they're more of the kind of run of the mill retail positions and whatnot, but not something that really immerses you in the day to day, the exchange, the thoughtful thinking, the analysis, the professionalism that needs to be brought. And if you're not having those experiences in school then Chris, I absolutely agree, you find yourself in the profession potentially in a position that was not something that you thought you wanted to do or knew anything about, and you're unhappy. And there's [inaudible] to do that. We only get a limited period of time to enjoy what we're doing in living, and if we're not making positive selections about it we're bringing ourselves down, we're bringing down our colleagues, those around us, and again, this is the time around family formation, relationships and all, and those aren't going to work well either if you're not grounded in what it is you expect of yourself and what's making you happy on a daily basis.BREE BUCHANAN:Absolutely. And David I can really tell that you, like we said at the very beginning, I think, visionary. You think about all of these issues so deeply. So let me just ask in our last question, where do you stand today looking forward and for our students? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Do you think things are going to get better for students, and what do you base that on if that's the case or otherwise?DAVID JAFFE:Short answer, long answer. As this podcast is being recorded, we're living in the middle of this pandemic, or if somebody's optimistic maybe a third of the way out, who knows. There are a number of us who are extremely concerned as we head into an academic year of where our students are going to be mental health wise. Social isolation is just the number one attack or deterrent towards well-being, and so while we're trying to make all this progress at law schools all of a sudden we're in this remote environment where we're staring at screens and looking desperately for other opportunities to engage, and this is going to be with us for a while. For most of us, at least the fall semester, we don't know about the year ahead.So short term we're going to have to be looking at those issues. I'll also mention here that we're dealing with some professional licensure issues about the ability or the inability to counsel across state lines, and so if we have students at a school who are not at a school physically but are now living in another state and taking classes remotely, we in many instances cannot provide them the counseling and the counseling services that we would normally be able to do when they were in person, so that is a significant challenge. There is some legislation out there that I'm tracking and others are following that we hope will continue to relax some of the provisions that were initially relaxed in some states in the immediate aftermath of COVID in March.Long term though, and again I hope it's a long term, a short long term or a short, short term where this kind of challenges go we start to have, I think we're trending towards the good. I think what we're finding, and we should give some credits to the law students as well. We're finding law students who are coming to law school, I want to say a little more self-aware. Maybe not, not self-aware and immediately well as a result of self-aware, but self-aware and comfortable enough that there are issues that they need to acknowledge to get better. I feel like there have been more open ended conversations. We've been running orientation for about five weeks now for this year's entering class and we've seen some really healthy conversations. We've received a lot of props in emails after some of our address your stress and mental health sessions during orientation, that students are really opened up and really appreciated them.So I think the generation of students may be more willing on the one hand to be more open about these issues, and in turn probably more insistent that law schools are looking to address these issues. I know in my school our students formed a mental health alliance and they were pushing us around a number of issues. Are we providing enough counseling sessions? Are the referrals appropriate if we run out of our sessions? Can we make the intake a little bit easier? On and on.And so I think the respectful, kind of gentle pounding on the table for, almost coming back to us and saying, "Hey, if Dean of Students, you're telling us that we need to be taking better care of ourselves, then we're going to turn around and say here are the things that you as law schools need to be doing to support it." And I think this is all going to coalesce in, I don't know how many years. I want to say three years, maybe five years as we're having this conversation, that I don't think we're going to turn ourselves entirely out of jobs around mental health but I think that our students are going to be taking even more and more of a look at themselves and making these requests of law schools, and I think we're going to be heading in the right direction. So I'm pretty optimistic, looking ahead.CHRIS NEWBOLD:David, do you find that that's generational in nature or societal in nature, or what do you think are some of the drivers that are kind of positioning us for that optimism?DAVID JAFFE:You know, I used to say, when I was growing up and probably a couple of generations around then, if a principal or the teacher called you in as parents and said, "We think there's a behavioral issue or something that's going on with your child," you would look at that adult and say, "How dare you accuse my child of that," and look to sue the school or take them out or go somewhere else. The pendulum then I think swung for a period of time where, and I don't mean to blame parents here but I think the notion was, if my child through medication can be achieving and overachieving, as the pendulum kind of swung to the other way. Whatever you can to do help my child, that's great. I'll do it, let's go for it.And I don't know exactly where that pendulum is right now, but I think it's some settling in the middle of a combination where students are students, when they're younger, prior to being law students, are being perhaps better diagnosed, again perhaps a little bit more self-aware. Maybe the parents now are a little bit more aware of knowing what to look for and what to avoid. So I think we're growing up a little bit healthier as families in that regard, and so I would say it's a little bit generational and maybe also a little bit societal. I mean there's just, wherever you turn there's just a push around well-being and wellness. And sometimes it's a push back against some of the challenges that we're facing around [inaudible] news and society and things like that, and so folks are looking for better answers. It can be really sobering and depressing if you're just constantly looking at negative breaking news and natural disasters and the epidemic we're living in and things of that nature.So sometimes the best response is simply to say, "I'm not going to be that person. I'm waking up every morning and eating my Wheaties and getting my exercise in and taking care of myself, and then through my own well-being I'm looking for others to do the same." And in some, you know it is that kind of village analogy. It's going to take all of us. But I think we're, even going back to the faculty, I think as we see, not to criticize older faculty but as we see faculty who are coming through law schools where they saw some of this well-being support, they're looking to mimic that because they realize that they were served well and they want to make sure that they're paying that forward with their students as they're receiving them in their classes and their experiential learning and everything else. So I think it's a combination, Chris, of a lot of those things, and again I think if we continue to sound the importance of this and continue to work in various areas, it should only continue to improve.CHRIS NEWBOLD:All right. I think that's going to be fascinating to watch over the next decade, how your graduates also come into the practice of law with better expectations as to the work life balance, and how that will play into talent acquisition by law firms and what law students ultimately are looking for out of their professional, the professional part of their journey and how that balances with their personal side. Because I think the days of Saturday Sunday working and all that, you know again, some firms are going to require it, but I think it's going to be very interesting that I think folks are coming into law school with better sense of what they want, and it'll be interesting to see kind of a clash of generations of partners and hires and how that ultimately evolves into the law firm culture within the profession generally. [crosstalk]BREE BUCHANAN:It's like a podcast episode.DAVID JAFFE:I think it's an excellent observation, and I would just respond to that briefly to say that I know that I have met with students, when they've asked, you know maybe students in recovery, students who are feeling a little more confident about themselves and they say, "What can I do to contribute?" And I say, "Well, this is going to be a really big ask, but your next interview, your set of interviews, you ought to ask about what that law firm is doing around well-being," because the more often they hear that the more they realize that that is going to have to be the next leverage point. And if you start to fall behind as a law firm you're going to have quality associates who are not interested in working there because they're not seeing it.Now it's putting a lot on the law students of course to ask, but if you're [inaudible] the right law students who are getting six, eight, 10, 15, 20 call backs for interviews, they're going to have the pick of the litter. So why not ask that question and force the hand of the firms. And you're absolutely right, Chris, the law firms are going to have to ... Some of them are doing it, to be fair, but their going to have to make some critical decisions around these issues in the coming years.CHRIS NEWBOLD:Well, David, our time's coming to a close. I want to obviously thank you for being a visionary in the law school space. Bree and I do a lot of work working with our state task forces around the country, and invariably one of the subgroups that they create within their task force is law schools, right, because I think everyone appreciates that the law school is the headwater of, the training ground for the next generation of lawyers to come into our profession, and there's critically important work issues suggested.There's a lot of issues before they even come into law school, but in terms of their introduction into the law space and the legal culture, it starts in law school, right? And there's just so many important things happening there that sets the tone for their journey into the profession, that we can't thank you enough for the work and the leadership that you've done within the law student culture. I know that there's a lot of uphill battles still to face, but I think that we all share in your optimism that there's real positive things happening in that space that I think bodes well for the culture shift that we're trying to engineer within the profession generally.DAVID JAFFE:I really, I appreciate this opportunity, and the two of you have been incredible thought leaders in the legal profession and the work with the task force and everything to come, so I thank you both in turn and again for granting me an opportunity just to have this conversation. Thanks so much.BREE BUCHANAN:Thank you, David.CHRIS NEWBOLD:Awesome. Yeah, thank you, and we'll be back in two weeks. Our next guest will be Judge David Shaheed out of Indiana. Judge Shaheed is a real thought leader in terms of bringing the nexus between well-being and the judicial sector of the legal profession, serving in a number of different capacity and leadership roles. I'm really looking forward to that podcast, because the judge element of well-being in law I think is a critical part that's oftentimes overlooked. So we'll be excited to get into the weeds with Judge Shaheed in a couple of weeks. So thank you for joining us for Episode Four. Thank you, David, and we'll be back in a couple weeks.David Jaffe is Associate Dean of Student Affairs at American University, Washington College of Law. He is co-author of the 2016 national law student study, Suffering in Silence, and a number of other publications on law student well-being. He serves on the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP) as co-chair of the Law School Assistance Committee, and in 2015, he received the CoLAP Meritorious Service Award in recognition of his commitment to improving the lives of law students. 

In episode three of the new podcast, Path to Well-Being in Law, co-hosts Chris Newbold and Bree Buchanan check in with lawyer well-being pioneer Patrick Krill.  Recognized globally as a leading authority on addiction, mental health, and well-being in the legal profession, Patrick is an attorney and a licensed, board-certified alcohol and drug counselor.  He serves as a trusted advisor to large law firms and corporate legal departments throughout North America and Europe, educating them about and helping them navigate addiction, mental health, and well-being issues on a daily basis. Patrick's groundbreaking work in the area of attorney behavioral health includes: initiating and serving as lead author of the first and only national study on the prevalence of attorney addiction and mental health problems, a joint undertaking of the American Bar Association Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation; creating the framework for the ABA Well-Being Pledge, an innovative campaign to improve the health and well-being of lawyers that was launched in September, 2018; partnering with American Lawyer Media to conduct the first-ever survey of AmLaw 200 firm leaders regarding their beliefs and attitudes related to addiction and mental health problems in the legal industry. Transcript:CHRIS NEWBOLD:                     Welcome to the Path to Lawyer Well-Being Podcast, where we talk to cool people doing awesome work in the lawyer well-being space. My name is Chris Newbold and I'm joined by my cohost, Bree Buchanan.BREE BUCHANAN:                     Hi, everybody.CHRIS:                    We are again, super excited about the opportunity to have one of the pioneers in the lawyer well-being space join us today as our guest, Patrick Krill. Patrick is somebody who really has been influential in his work on the science side to the lay the foundation for what has become a vibrant movement and a discussion in the legal profession about the current state of lawyer well-being. So let me kick it to Brie to introduce Patrick and get us going on our question.BREE:Thanks, Chris. Yeah, I think we really are so honored to have Patrick here today. I have a little disclosure. Patrick and I work together, he's my boss with Krill Strategies, but everything I say, none of this I'm saying to just flatter you, Patrick. All of it is absolutely true.PATRICK KRILL:                Oh, great.BREE:Absolutely, but some of the words that come to my mind. Chris has already tapped on it, pioneer. A pioneer in the research around substance abuse and mental health issues in the legal profession because it was Patrick's fabulous research that was published in 2016 that really kicked all of this off. We're going to talk about that research a little bit and also talk about what he's been doing since then, in regards to updating and expanding upon that research.He's also what I think of as a true thought leader and sometimes I tease him of being our guru around these issues in the legal profession because he spends all of his time reading, researching, talking to others. Really is, truly is a thought leader on this. He's authored over 70 articles, including [inaudible 00:02:13], CNN, been in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and on NPR. So we really are very lucky to have Patrick today.So Patrick, thanks for being here.PATRICK:Thank you, Bree, and thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure to be with you both.BREE:So I'm going to start off with a question that we're really trying to ask everybody that comes on the podcast, for us to get an idea a little bit about the person themselves. So what brought you to the lawyer well-being movement? So what in your life really drives your passion for this work?PATRICK:Yeah, so it's a great question and I think to really answer that meaningfully, I have to go back to before my work in the lawyer well-being space, and to really talk a little bit about my career trajectory generally.I was an attorney, I was someone who went to law school, and then as I was getting ready to wrap up law school, made the decision to go for a further degree to get an LOM in international law. I approached the legal profession with a lot of enthusiasm and with a lot of plans about the type of law that I wanted to practice. Then what I was met with was a reality that was very discordant with what I had expected. I'm a first generation lawyer in my family, I didn't have a lot of experience with or exposure to what being a lawyer actually meant. So I had all these preconceptions.Then I got into the field and while it was fine, it was pretty clear to me right off the bat that once I got out of the academic, once I got out of the classroom setting and stopped studying about law and had to do the work, it really wasn't a good fit for me. I didn't particularly enjoy it. The idea of billing my time in six minute increments really was, I just couldn't do it. It was [crosstalk 00:04:11] water, in terms of my personality, but none the less, I did practice law for a number of years and I worked in a number of different roles. Started coming to the realization that this wasn't longterm sustainable for me. It didn't get my out of bed in the morning. Right?BREE:Right.PATRICK:           A question we always ask people is, what gets you out of bed in the morning? It wasn't being an attorney, despite my best intentions, really. I'm fascinated by the law and I still think about and read about the law all the time, but the mechanics of practicing law weren't for me.I also had my own experience overcoming addiction really early out of the gate. In the first couple of years of the legal profession, my practice I should say. So I had exposure to and experience with what it takes to overcome a behavioral health problem. That experience and that exposure to that world introduced me to this idea of counseling. So I knew what a mental health counselor was, I knew what an addiction counselor was.So when it came time for me to reevaluate and think, do I want to do this longterm? I knew that there was a field that seemed a little bit more interesting to me, it seemed a little bit more aligned with my personality and intrinsically who I am. So I went back to school to become an addiction counselor. That ultimately translated into my work with lawyers specifically. I became the director a treatment program for lawyers, judges, and law students at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. So it's a long rambling answer but I think you have to understand the bigger picture view-BREE:Absolutely, yeah.PATRICK:... how I even got into the mental health space, let alone the lawyer specific mental health space.BREE:Right, well thanks for sharing that. I mean there typically is a personal story that brings us to this work. I think that what you just said, Patrick, about really not having the best vocational fit once you get into it and start seeing what it's like day to day. I hear that as a common refrain from lawyers who are really struggling. So yeah, thanks.Listen, I want to get you to share a little bit about the lawyer study that was done, now four years ago, that you did. I think you started while you were still director of the legal professionals program at Hazelden. That has proved to be the basis for really, the lawyer well-being movement. So I'm wondering, what do you think is the most important information that came out of that study now that you can look back over the past four years?PATRICK:It's hard to say. I have a hard time identifying one thing or even two things as being the most important takeaways from that study. I think the most important result, excuse me, result of that study has been its overall impact to the extent to which it raised awareness about the nature and the scope of the challenges we face. It provided much needed data to back what a lot of us who were working in the lawyer mental health space in a clinical or other capacity knew. We knew lawyers were unwell and were struggling disproportionately to other populations, but we didn't really have good data to back up our argument. So this study provided that and it really opened the door to a much needed and overdue conversation around mental health and well-being in the legal profession. So I think it was really more the impact than any one precise piece of the study.I will say, one of the things that surprised me the most was that it was younger lawyers who were the most depressed and struggling with or exhibiting the most signs of problem drinking. The drinking piece you can get, right?BREE:Mm-hmm (affirmative).PATRICK:Think about [crosstalk 00:08:11], people drink excessively, and it doesn't have as much of an impact on them. But we were surprised about the mental health piece as well. Simply because that wasn't the profile who was showing up in treatment programs or going to the Lawyers Assistance Program or who was getting disbarred because of their mental health or substance use problem. So we went into that research with a preconceived notion of who the most at-risk population was.CHRIS:                  Patrick, how much of that was, do you think, driven by the expectations gap between... it's the same type of expectations gap that you had, which was, this is what I thought the law was going to be like, this is what the law was actually like. How that's affecting, I think, the most recent generation of graduates coming out of law school.PATRICK:Yeah, it's such a great point, Chris. I think that's a profound problem. I think you have a lot of people coming out of law school and finding themselves adrift in a profession that doesn't potentially resonate with them. That it is more overwhelming than they had anticipated, assuming they're able to get a job. Right?CHRIS:                  Yeah.PATRICK:          Get a job that meets their needs and provides some opportunity, but then they get into it and they say, "Wow, this is not what I signed up for," or, and this is, I think, I'm putting the spotlight a little bit on the law school experience. It's not what they were prepared for. So there are these mismatched expectations and what that can result in, I think you're right. I mean, I think what you're getting at is, does that play into the high levels of distress among young lawyers? How could it not? I mean, how could it not? If I had done a survey 20 years ago when I was coming into the professional, I would've been scoring off the chart on all of those assessments.CHRIS:Yeah, I mean you can see a scenario where you go down a path you feel like you're too far down that path, that it's probably more rare for someone to make a pivot like you did to say, "This isn't for me, I'm going to go and pursue my studies in an area that then interconnects the behavioral health side with the law side." We know how much student debt and other factors play into the-PATRICK:                No doubt.CHRIS:[crosstalk 00:10:28] of... how do I get out of this? Then that spirals into a set of conditions that just generally move toward more unhealthy-ness for that particular community.PATRICK:Yup, I agree. I'm sure Bree has some thoughts about that as well with her background in vocational discernment. How do we bridge that gap? How do we make some progress there, because we need to. I don't know if it's modifying law school curricula or just more truth in advertising around what the legal profession is. I don't know.BREE:It makes me think about Larry Krieger's research, what makes lawyers happy. The idea of even thinking about, it's the extrinsic things, the power, the prestige, et cetera, that draws us to the practice of law but what we know now that what makes us happy are more internal factors of meaning. That's just not made known to people who are contemplating going to law school or people that are there. It's something you have to trip over and fall down to figure out. Yeah, yeah.CHRIS:Patrick, I think it's fair to say that the lawyer well-being movement likely doesn't get ignited without the study itself because we are ultimately an evidentiary based profession. We needed the data, I think, to ultimately launch the discussion. Talk to us about that notion of how important that was to kick start the national discussion. Obviously, followed by the report subsequent to that, but how important was to lay the foundation.PATRICK:           I think it was incredibly important. I think you're right, we wouldn't be where we are with this movement had we not had that predicate of the data, and had that not been something that caught the profession's attention.In addition to the data and the value of that itself, it was also a multi jurisdictional study. So we had 16, 17, 18 different bar associations from around the country participating in this survey. Participating in this research, recognizing the value. So you saw some seeds of the interest being planted there where you had all these [inaudible 00:12:52] stakeholders, but you also had... this goes back to my overarching strategy when I was conceptualizing this study, you had the ABA and Hazelden Betty Ford, two large stakeholders with a lot of credibility in their respective spheres, coming together to conduct this research. I think that was an important piece of the puzzle. This wasn't something that could just be ignored. You have all these bar associations from around the country participating, you have the ABA, you have Hazelden Betty Ford, putting their names behind this project. I think that allowed it to get the attention that it did, and to really open the door for this conversation.Something I'd be really interested in hearing both of your perspectives on is looking back on it. I have a sense that in a way we were almost pushing on an open door. What I mean by that is, there was an appetite to have this discussion. People knew that there was a problem but it was under the surface and there wasn't an easy way to bring this up or there weren't a lot of pathways into this conversation, but then once you got that ball rolling, people were basically acknowledging, yeah, we've got issues here. Finally, can we talk about this? At least that's my perspective looking back over the last five years.BREE:Yeah, and I think that societally outside of law, more and more people were talking about these issues. So law, a conservative industry, comes up last, but then you have younger people who are coming in and onboarding into the legal profession and there's just not the stigma around these issues about depression, anxiety, or even a substance abuse problem, that there used to be. So you're starting to get a shift, and I think once we got that data, it opened up the door which as you're saying was already open.Then the other thing that I found going around the country talking, inevitably, people who have been practicing law even for just a little bit, know someone who has taken his or her own life. Once that has crossed your path, it really shapes you. It's not something that you forget about. We always want to know, well, what could've been done differently? So I think that this is a manifestation of that too.PATRICK:Yeah, and at the risk of... I don't want to dominate the conversation but I do want to say something to both of you, share something with you that hasn't really received a lot of discussion because it wasn't published. With that study where we had 15,000 responses, there was the opportunity for people to submit comments at the end. There was basically like, do you have comments? We compiled all of those and I have binder of them sitting on my bookshelf. We weren't able to publish them, the format didn't lend itself to that but we had thousands and thousands of comments, overwhelmingly they reflected a theme of, this is a huge problem in the profession. We're glad you're conducting this research. Maybe that's where I began to develop this notion that people want to have this conversation, people recognize that people around them are not well. That people around them are struggling, and they feel like they're in a profession that's tone deaf to it. But overwhelmingly, that's what the comments reflected. People saying this is a big deal.BREE:Wow.PATRICK:This is a needed endeavor.BREE:Yeah, so I know that that research was so important but there were other questions that you wanted to ask. So could you tell us a little bit about the most current research you're involved in?PATRICK:Yeah, I'm actually really excited about this. Along with a colleague at the University of Minnesota Medical School, I designed a new survey that we administered to lawyers in California and the DC bar. So we partnered with the California Lawyers Association and the DC Bar to conduct new research, bi-coastal research. I had a couple of aims for this project. One, we did want it to be a random sample, so it would meet that gold standard for research. The 2016 study, while I feel very certain that those numbers were represented of what was happening in the profession, it wasn't a truly random sample. So it didn't meet that gold standard for data. So I did want to have a random sample, but I also wanted to explore the why. Not just prevalence, not how many lawyers are meeting criteria for depression or a substance abuse disorder, but why. To ask questions that could get at lawyer motivation, lawyer personality. Then look at those responses in relationship to their mental health.So we were originally supposed to launch that research project right around the time, and I mean what a year we're all in. So right around the time when the pandemic was hitting. The survey was supposed to go out, I think, the same week that California announced stay at home orders. So obviously the California Lawyers Association said, "We need to pause," and we agreed with that. What that gave us the opportunity to do was to revamp the survey and to modify some questions to actually measure the impact of COVID-19 and quarantines and all of that on lawyer mental health. It was ultimately disseminated, we finished data collection about a month ago and we're analyzing the data, getting ready to write up the manuscript.Basically what I can tell you, I can't talk about the data in any precise way at this point prior to publication, but what I can tell you is that the problems are real, there was nothing anomalous about that 2016 study. In some respects, they appear to be getting worse. Also, the impact of COVID-19 has been material. It's been real, I mean, people are feeling this as it relates to their mental health and their substance use. Beyond that though, we're going to have some really interesting insights to share about the why piece. Why are lawyers so likely to experience depression, for example.So I'm really excited about it, really grateful to the DC Bar and California Lawyers Association. They helped us get a big data set, we had really robust participation and a random sample. So it'll be useful, useful data for the profession.BREE:Do you have a sense of when it might be published?PATRICK:Yeah, well that's that million dollar question. Our goal is to have it submitted to a journal by the end of September. Then it's that sort of, out of your hands. It's journal's own publication schedule. Best case scenario it'll be published in December, but that could easily go into January of next year, February. I mean, just given all of the delays that everything seems to be experiencing and all the uncertainty, but we're moving pretty expeditiously. We're moving about as quickly as you can with a study of this size and nature.CHRIS:Patrick, how much do you think that the research side of well-being is important to the discussion, because we really don't have a lot of good... I mean we have research, we have some groundbreaking studies. We had yours, we had the law student one, we have your followup here, but it still seems like there's a lack of emphasis on the research side as we think about the well-being movement. I'd just love for your insights into, what's the next generation of research as you think on the horizon?PATRICK:Yeah, I think personally, research is a very important piece of the puzzle. That's not just because I'm involved in it, it's because you have to understand the dimensions of the challenges that you're trying to address. You can't just be spit balling about what's going on.We're also a profession that's trained weigh and evaluate evidence. Lawyers are prone to scrutinize things and want to know, is that backed by data? Is that science driven? So I think if you want to persuade people that there needs to be a change you have to back up your argument, in addition to people like us being able to understand the nature of the challenges. So I think it's vitally important.In terms of next generation or ongoing, I think further exploration of what causes the problems, which is probably going to be further exploration of the lawyer personality, beyond really important work like Krieger and Sheldon's work and other research that exists. We need to understand that a little bit better. I think we also really need to get at the disconnect that we started by talking about. That expectation gap or the mismatched expectations between what people think they're getting with a career in the law, and what they end up getting because that's got to be a big piece of the equation as to why many people find themselves, to put is charitably, less than satisfied.CHRIS:Yeah, and if we have a profession of folks who are less than satisfied, that doesn't bode well to the profession generally.PATRICK:No, right, exactly.CHRIS:Let's pivot real quickly before we take a break. I'd love to hear your perspective. Each one of us comes at this from a different angle, the well-being. Bree obviously originating from the lawyer assistance programming side. I spend a lot of time thinking about small firms and solo practitioners and preventing malpractice claims. A lot of your focus professionally has been on big law. More than anybody else, you probably have your finger on the pulse of how big law is adapting to the new emphasis on well-being. I'd just love to hear your perspectives one what you're seeing out there. Do you think big law is paying attention, because oftentimes I think big law, if they embrace it it has a trickle down effect to the totality of the profession. So I'd love to hear your perspective on big law and the interconnectedness to well-being.PATRICK:Yeah, so it's an important area of discussion. I think you're right that often, big law does have the ability to set the pace. They're almost like the pace card for the profession, who have an outsize influence on the profession despite the fact that they employ a minority of practicing lawyers.I would say if you compare where we were four years ago, big law has made a lot of progress. It started with this overdue recognition and acknowledgement that this is a real problem. We have an issue that we need to get our arms around. Five years ago, there was profound and widespread institutional denial of the scope of the problem. Maybe if it wasn't denied, it was simply a lack of awareness. You can characterize it however you want, but the reality is that these issues were not being dealt with in a deliberate way. They weren't even really being acknowledge, despite the fact that it tends to be a pressure cooker environment. It tends to be one of the most intense professional environments out there.Now what you have is widespread acknowledgement that these problems are real. Widespread acknowledgement that their competitors are taking steps to try and [inaudible 00:24:32] the problems or at least mitigate the problems. So there's momentum, there's real momentum that has developed.All of that said, there's a fundamental tension between the business model of big law, which again, tends to be really high expectations, a pressure cooker environment, a lot of billable requirements and other demands. There's a tension between that model and being able to take care of yourself the way that you might want to, and having any sense of balance in your life. So I think to try and resolve that tension is going to continue to necessitate incremental efforts that are sustained over time. It's not going to be an overnight fix. It's going to take a long time.That said, many firms are making a good faith effort. They're trying, they're trying to bridge that gap incrementally where they can. One of the problems with incremental progress, especially in an environment where so many people are not satisfied, is that it takes patience. So you have some people in those environments or some people, external to big law, commenting on big law saying, "This is all window dressing. All of these changes that they're making don't really get at the heart of the matter." But the reality is you have to start somewhere and you have to start taking steps. As long as those steps, like I said, are sustained and they continue to move in the right direction over time. I think the model can be adjusted to the point where people experience greater levels of personal well-being. To some degree, that's already happening.BREE:Yeah, and now that all three of us are being coauthors of a task force report, we can remember all the thought that went into how we make a good argument to the legal profession for this culture change. There was the financial, it's good for business. It relates to our ethical obligations. Then the humanitarian, it's the right thing to do. Which of those three do you think are motivating the firms and the people in the firms that you're dealing with? Are those [arguments 00:27:01] resonating?PATRICK:Honestly, maybe I just have the good fortune of working with some really amazing firms, but my experience has been, all three resonate. I mean, you tend to have really good people leading these organizations. It's not like they're unfeeling individuals but they have to operate within the bounds of their business model. All three points resonate.The one that is probably driving the progress the most is the financial but it's not necessarily financial the way I think that we were contemplating it in the task force where good mental health translates into less expenditure and better performance and all of that. It's financial in the sense of wanting to present a firm culture that attracts and retains the best lawyers. So it's almost a hybrid rationale, it's certain that if you boil that down, firms want to attract and retain the best talent so that they ultimately perform better financially. But it's not the precise calculation of how many specific dollars they're going to save by having fewer depressed lawyers. If that makes sense?BREE:Yeah, you bet.PATRICK:Does that make sense the way I'm explaining that?BREE:Yeah, and one thing that I hear that really resonates when I speak is the issue around the recruitment and retention. That's a big deal, and getting back to talking about those younger lawyers that we were talking about at the very beginning. They expect that they're going to work for somebody who has an interest in them personally, that cares about them as a human being. That's just what's out there and what they're dealing with, with the new folks. So yeah.CHRIS:Yeah, certainly feels like the talent acquisition side where these firms are competing for the best and brightest talent coming out of the law schools, that many of those students are coming in with a different mindset from a work life balance. That has the potential to be a real game changer, it probably has you more optimistic thinking ahead to the future, in terms of the generational change that will ultimately evolve in big law.PATRICK:      Yeah, absolutely. I do think that the younger generation of attorneys, assuming that their priorities aren't co-opted by the machines, if you will. Assuming that they maintain that level of desire to have a different work life experience. As long as they continue to prioritize well-being, then yes, I think that they can be a driver of real transformational change and sustained change in the profession. As long as they don't get co-opted or swept away by the current that exists. I don't see any evidence that they will, I'm just offering that as one potential caveat. Does the prevailing system ultimately prevail?CHRIS:Yeah, yeah. Well hey, let's take a quick break. Patrick, this has been a fascinating conversation. I love the again, your thought leadership in this space. Your experience, your ability to see the macro trends, I think is really critical as we think about the well-being movement on the horizon. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back.—Your law firm is worth protecting and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and buy coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard, our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com.—BREE:So, Patrick, continuing along the line of what is happening in big law around this whole lawyer well-being movement. There is a pledge, it's the well-being pledge for legal employers. That is being conducted by the American Bar Association, specifically, the Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs, but you really were the instigator of that. So can you talk a little bit about why you thought that was so important and how that project's going right now?PATRICK: Yeah, so I'd be happy to. I'm really, really gratified with how the pledge has turned out, especially given how it began. What I mean by that is, I first proposed the idea of a pledge campaign to ask legal lawyers to publicly state a commitment to various principles around well-being, back in, I want to say 2015 prior to the study. At the time I proposed that and had this idea, the profession was in a different place. This conversation wasn't really happening or resonating in the profession. So that idea gained no traction.So when I had the opportunity to present it again in 2018 under the [inaudible 00:32:24] of the ABA, Working Group to Advance Lawyer Well-Being, the group liked it and we ran with it and we launched it in September of 2018. Starting with 12 law firm, and those were basically firms that I or others in the working group had a relationship with. We approached them and said, "Would you like to put your name behind this campaign and help us generate momentum and interest to hopefully change the culture of the profession?" So we started with 12, I would say very courageous law firms. We're now up to close to 200 organizations.BREE:That's right.PATRICK: [crosstalk 00:33:00] pledge, which is really, really remarkable. We still have a lot of room to grow and a lot of stakeholders that we want to get on board, but it has already in my view, amounted to a vehicle for cultural change. That was the idea from the beginning. We need a vehicle for cultural change, something that provides concrete, tangible guidance about steps that organizations can take to reduce the impact and prevalence of mental health and substance abuse problems. I really couldn't be more pleased by how well it's going.I'll say it's simply signing a pledge and saying we're going to do X, Y, and Z, in it of itself is meaningless unless the organization follows through. It's not hard to imagine why some organizations may want to sign on just for PR reasons or peer pressure, whatever. But we just finished evaluating, we circulated commitment forms, recommitment forms, after organizations had been signatories for a year. We're just finishing evaluating all of those responses and the overwhelming majority of signatories are really taking meaningful steps. I mean-BREE:That's great news.PATRICK: [crosstalk 00:34:16] they're trying to live up to that commitment that they made.BREE:Yeah, wonderful. Can you talk just for a minute, because my thought is maybe some people who are listening who may be interested in getting involved in that pledge. So it's for legal employers, it's not just big law. Right?PATRICK: Yes, exactly. So we are-BREE:Bar associations?PATRICK: We have an overwhelming number of big law firms who have signed on but Bar associations, law school, corporate legal departments, sector legal employers. A large public defender's office, a state attorney's office, the Department of Justice. If anyone from the DOJ is listening, we want you to take the pledge. There are lots of other stakeholders that it would be great to get on board because this is about changing the culture of the profession, not the culture of big law firms.BREE:Right, right. So also, Chris, what do you think about the pledge as being someone who works in day to day in risk management for law firms? Do you see it as a helpful tool?CHRIS:Yeah, I think again, what we're trying to do is get the discussion going amongst partners in any size of a firm or in any type of a legal employer environment. So the more that those conversations are being had, I think that the more that you're seeing people see... I know from our perspective, we believe that happier, healthier lawyers ultimately lead to fewer claims. So the pledge, I think, has been really a catalyst for... What I would love to see is again, 200 signatories to become 1,000 signatories, to become 2,000 signatories because I think we continue to want to be able to see this filtered down if big law is the pace setter, how do we continue to see small law, solo practitioners, and others come into it? Then also, a geographic representation.I know one of my aspirations is to have pledge signers in every state in the country. So it is really a catalyst for the national discussion, the national movement, and people saying, "I'm in." We need people to say, "I'm in," because I think that that is going to be critical to the success of our ultimate goal, which is the culture shift.PATRICK: I think that's right. When we get to that point of having a really wide base of buy in and a wide base of participation, in for example, the pledge. I mean that's when you start to see this idea of well-being really associated with the idea of being a lawyer. It becomes part of the notion of what a career in the legal profession involves. Part of that role, ideally one day be a focus on taking care of yourself.CHRIS:Yeah, let's shift here quickly. I know again, we'd be remiss to not talk for a few minutes with you, Patrick, about the impacts of the pandemic. You referenced it a little bit in some of your current research. Just hear your thoughts on the effect of the pandemic on lawyers, to the legal community, substance abuse, mental health. We're seeing it amongst our [inaudible 00:37:35]. It's a tough time out there.BREE:Yeah.PATRICK: Yeah, it's an extraordinarily tough time, I think for anyone in society. Different people have been experiencing the events of 2020 differently. That's one thing that I think is important to recognize, that although we tend to say we're all in this together. That's true, but also really not true. We're in the same storm but we're not all on the same boat. That's really evident in some work environments, where you might have some people who this has amounted to a significant inconvenience for them. Maybe they're riding it out from their beach house or whatever. Then you have other people who are in a 700 square foot apartment and they've been traumatized by what's been going on over the course of the last four to five months. So that experience has not been universal.All of that said, I'm hearing on a daily basis at this point from people, from organization, from firms who are saying, "Our people are struggling." I've had four or five emails, today's a Wednesday, I've had four or five emails sent Monday on that point saying, "Can we talk? We need to talk to you about what's going on. Some of the trends we're seeing." So it's real and it's important to recognize, going back to the data that we were all discussing earlier, the legal profession was starting off on shakier ground, as it relates to our mental health and substance abuse risk. We already had higher levels of those problems. Now the pandemic has come along, and not only the pandemic. The stay at home orders, the economic uncertainty, the racial tension that's been [inaudible 00:39:25] the country. I mean, there's a lot happening in 2020 that has really pushed some people to the brink or in some cases unfortunately, over the brink.BREE:What are you telling these folks when they call? To the extent that you can share that. What is some general advice?PATRICK:            Well, almost always these conversations involve letting them know that what they're experiencing internally in their organization is not anomalous. So helping them understand the dimensions of what's happening throughout the country and around the world. Normalizing that experience, but also I think it's really important for organizations to be mindful of how they're communicating with their people around this and how they're trying to make accommodations and adjustments to culture and expectations where possible. If I were to call them several months ago, I think back in March, about this phenomenon essentially known as emotional dissonance, which is the disparity between how we feel inside and how we feel we have to present in order to conform with workplace expectations or other expectations of us. Right now for many people, that level of emotional dissonance is quite high because they are a mess inside and they're really struggling to hold it together or they're completely burnt out and they're completely frazzled, but they're a lawyer. There's a very real set expectation for how they present themselves and how they comport themselves.So I think it's important for organizations and employers to recognize that and to try to move the needle a little bit and show some flexibility around those expectations because the higher that level of emotional dissonance, the greater the risk of burn out, unwanted turnover, all sorts of problematic outcomes.CHRIS:Patrick, let's spend our last couple minutes talking about just your motivation. You are somebody again, first generation lawyer. In many respects, you're both nudging and blowing us, opening up new doors in a national discussion. I've called you at times the fire alarm puller, which means that you're shining the light on some of the problems of our profession, which I know that it's motivated by a desire to drive it in the right direction and to return it to a level of professional satisfaction that we can all be proud of and excited about.I'm just curious on, what's it like to be in your role, to be talking to lawyers about the challenges and also I know that you are amongst, in our community, one of the primary solution drivers. You're always thinking about, how do we move it forward? So as we think about this culture shift, I'd just love your perspective on both raising the alarm on one side, but yet putting the fire out and looking for a bluer sky, a better horizon in the future.PATRICK:          Yeah, well they're both, I think, equally important. I think the fire alarm has been raised at this point. That's a great question, Chris. Thank you, I should say, for asking that because I think it really gets it to equally important things. We needed to raise awareness, we needed to get this conversation going. I think on an ongoing basis we will need to keep that level of buy-in, and that level of awareness raised. So that's one of the reasons why I'm conducting new research. We can't rely on research from 2016 in perpetuity. We need current data to continually drive the conversation. But beyond that, it's only so much utility if you raise awareness, and then don't have any next steps outlined. Talk about, how do we get to a better place? It's a problem and it's a solution. Now we've identified the problem and we all have to be focused on developing good solutions.I love problem solving, not in the math sense, I'm terrible at math but just in a conceptual sense. It's always what I've enjoyed is trying to figure out problems and solutions. So that piece does really motivate me and I enjoy that. I like wrestling with concepts and theories and testing different propositions and figuring out what might work. So that's a really important piece.I've got to say, I appreciate you saying that I'm driving some efforts here, but this is a team effort. Both of you and all of our other wonderful colleagues on the national task force and other people around the profession who are contributing to this cause, we're all rowing in the same direction and contributing where we can to turn the ship. I don't know how many different lame metaphors I've used but it's certainly not just me. We really are doing this together. But I'm grateful, I experience a lot of gratitude for the opportunities that I've had in my life to allow me to be doing this work. Most days it's good to get out of bed and it's good to get up and do what I have to do that day.CHRIS:If the goal is the culture shift, I am curious on what your greatest fear is as we look ahead.PATRICK:  [inaudible 00:45:05] you stumped me, because I don't know what this says about my personality but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that. I don't know that I have one.BREE:                   I know that with the task force when we first started our greatest fear is that nobody would pay attention or we'd write this report and it would sit on a bookshelf.CHRIS:Yeah.BREE:So that's not happening.CHRIS:That's not happening. My greatest fear is always, I've been around the legal profession for 20 years now and you see issues rise to the level of national discussion, and oftentimes then peter out. I think we collectively, I think we're both trying to build the infrastructure and the sustainability of the movement and the architecture of the movement so that it continues to be front and center, a front burner issue. I feel like we've done a pretty good job thus far but boy, once we let our guard down we could lose the momentum and we can lose momentum.PATRICK: Well, I couldn't agree more fully. I have no intention of letting that happen for my part. That would be fully antithetical to who I am at my core. So I'm going to keep pushing this as long and as hard as I can. Knowing that there are so many other people invested in this process, I think will probably overcome some of the what may have been long odds at the beginning, about whether you can really achieve a cultural change in the legal profession. I think we're getting there and we will ultimately get there.BREE:Patrick, you truly are making the profession a better one. So, thank you.PATRICK: Well, that's kind, Bree. Thank you.CHRIS:Yeah, it's been awesome. Again, we talk about awesome people doing great things. You are definitely in that camp and Patrick, we thank you so much for being on the podcast and being one of our first guests.PATRICK:                 That was great. Really good to chat with you both. I hope this podcast is just a tremendous success, as I'm sure it will be.CHRIS:Awesome. Well, everyone, be well out there. We'll be coming back with a podcast in a couple weeks. Thank you.BREE:Thanks, bye, everybody.

Bree and Chris welcome lawyer well-being pioneer Anne Brafford to the podcast, best known for her roles as author of Positive Professionals, co-chair of the ABA Law Practice Division’s Attorney Well-Being Committee, editor-in-chief and co-author of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being’s report The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change, author of the ABA’s widely distributed Well-Being Toolkit for Lawyers and Legal Employers and founder and principal organizer of Lawyer Well-Being Week, an annual event occurring every May. Transcript: CHRIS NEWBOLD:Welcome to the Path to Lawyer Well-Being, a podcast series sponsored by the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, where we talk to cool people doing awesome work in the lawyer well-being space. I'm here with my cohost, Bree Buchanan.BREE BUCHANAN:Hey, Chris.CHRIS:And we're here with really one of the pioneers in our well-being space. It is always, I think, an honor to be the first guest of any podcast series and we are obviously thrilled to have Anne Brafford here with us. Bree, do you want to go ahead and kind of do a quick introduction of Anne, a dear friend of ours and again, somebody who's been doing incredible work on behalf of our profession.BREE:Absolutely. I'm delighted to introduce Anne Brafford, Anne, who is somebody I admire and who I genuinely like and I know that whenever I'm going to have a conversation with Anne, I will do it with a smile on my face. So, that goes for this podcast today too. Anne, thanks so much for being here today.BREE:So, Anne, just a little bit about her background, she started out in big law and spent some time there and then made a pivot over the course of her career and ended up going to the University of Pennsylvania and pursuing a master's in applied positive psychology and I can't wait to hear Anne talk a little bit about what is this positive psychology business.BREE:She has been a very prolific writer. She has published a book entitled, Positive Professionals. She's also been very involved in the lawyer well-being movement and has been a pivotal person. She's somebody when I think about the work that the National Task Force has done. But for her, we would not be where we are truly. She stepped into the position of editor in chief for the National Task Force Report and took seven or eight writing groups, very disparate styles and pulled it all together and added all the research and really made the report in many ways the incredibly preeminent document on lawyer well-being. And so, we owe so much to her.BREE:She's gone on to produce the ABA's Well-Being Toolkit, which is an open source document that has been downloaded and used by thousands. So, I don't want to just take all the fun away, Anne. So, I want to give people an opportunity to hear from you.BREE:One question we're asking everybody that's our guest, tell us what brought you to the lawyer well-being space. When I look at your bio, I see that pivot from big law over to pursuing that master's. Tell us a little bit about that, if you would.ANNE BRAFFORD:Yeah, good question. And thanks so much for having me as the first guest on the new podcast. And Bree, I always love speaking with you. And it leaves a smile on my face as well. So, this should be fun.ANNE:So, how I got into well-being, it's a long story that I'll try to make short. But it started as far back as I wanted to be a lawyer since I was 11 years old. That's when I first started saying I wanted to be a lawyer. And unlike so many of us, my childhood dreams came true. I actually kept the dream up, went to law school, which was pretty odd because I was the first kid in my family to even go to college, let alone law school.ANNE:So, when I got my law degree, it was really just one of the happiest and most proudest days of my life. And then I got a judicial clerkship and then I got this great job at Morgan Lewis Equity Partner. It was like, on the outside, everything looked really successful, and it was. I was very proud of my accomplishments.ANNE:But as I began getting a little bit older, I started questioning whether this was all that there was. Was I kind of living up to my 11-year-old dreams of what it was to be a lawyer, which is sort of impossible to do. But I kept asking whether is this all that I'm going to do in my one short life.ANNE:And so, really, it began to be a deterioration of meaningfulness for me. I became a lawyer because I wanted to make the world a better place. And I was an employment lawyer. As an employment litigator on behalf of defendants and I never felt bad about what I did. I thought I was protecting a law that really meant a lot to me, but wasn't enough.ANNE:And eventually, I couldn't answer yes anymore. And so, I ended up applying to get a master's of applied positive psychology from Penn while I was still practicing law thinking I was going to fix myself or fix my culture. I was going to fix something, so I could stay because I wasn't leaving.ANNE:But as I got more into it, I just started feeling a pull that I could either stay in law and kind of do this other well-being stuff part time or I could leave and really potentially make a bigger contribution to the legal profession by helping to make it a place where people have a whole kind of variety of backgrounds and interests can stay and be happy and thrive.ANNE:And so, I made a really hard decision of leaving law in 2014. And I kind of liken it to it was like tearing my arm off. I mean, it was a really hard decision.BREE:I'm sure.ANNE:Yeah. And then I resigned from my partnership position in the firm and then almost immediately started my PhD program in organizational psychology, which I'm still in the middle of. And so now, I focus entirely on the legal profession. But the individual organizationally, institutionally have really helping to use science, apply science to help make the profession, help it live up to its potential to be a place where lawyers can really feel like they're doing something good for society and also thrive themselves. And so, I didn't really leave the law. I'm contributing to the law in a different way now.BREE:I love that you've verbed thriving. That's great, thriving.CHRIS:Yeah. And I think it would be helpful for our listeners to, you've now been for the better part of five, six years, but even before that, what would be your assessment of kind of what the current state of lawyer well-being is. We know that the report was released three or four years ago, right? We think that that was a significant catalyst and a national discussion. It feels like we've been making progress but I just be curious on your current assessment of where we're at and what you think is on the horizon in terms of where we need to go.ANNE:Yeah, good question. I think it's, for me, I feel like it's a really exciting time to be in this area right now. And I've had this conversation with Bree as well. I think people who have been doing well-being legal profession for a while are feeling like there's movement now. We're starting to make progress in a way that's really exciting.ANNE:And I do think the National Task Force's report that came out in 2017 was a catalyst for that, that there already was so much talk and action going on in kind of small cells and that the report then really catalyzed thinking organizations around this idea of well-being.ANNE:And now, I don't think you can talk to a firm or a lawyer who hasn't thought in some way about your well-being and that was not true. When I was growing up as an associate, well-being wasn't talked about really at all. And it was sort of considered, it's your problem not mine, where I think now organizations are getting more onboard and saying, this is really a team effort that we are responsible to each other for this.ANNE:So, I think that's great progress. I think we're still at the very beginning though. I think, well, where I'm hoping to see the evolution will go to is from this individual level, which is really where the movement is primarily focused now. So, things like stress relief, meditation, resilience, these more individually focused programs, nutrition, physical fitness. These are a lot of the things that I see that firms are doing and I see at least around and that's fantastic. It's a great place to start. And it's probably the easiest place to start.BREE:Right, absolutely.ANNE:But I think, yeah, the next part of our evolution needs to be more organizationally where and I think firms are starting ... They're sort of at the beginning of that now. I'm seeing this as more widescale culture change that if we really want to promote well-being, we have to seriously look at the cultures that are recreating the ill health that we're seeing in lawyers, like what about the way that law firms, and I come from a law firm background, but when I say law firms, I really mean all kinds of legal employers. But what are they doing and not doing to support well-being and seriously, looking at their policies and practices. And how can we change those.ANNE:And I think then we also need to evolve to more of an institutional level. Or people raise their eyebrows when I say it, but even things about how our court system is run, how judges treat lawyers, how clients, inhouse clients treat their outside lawyers and how the outside lawyers treat their clients.ANNE:I was a litigator myself thinking about the judges, and multiple times and judges deny lawyers' request to move something because they had a vacation or they weren't feeling well, or judges just being disrespectful. And lawyers sometimes being disrespectful to judges as well.ANNE:But I do think it's an institutional wide challenge of how can we rethink our system so that lawyers can still be their best and do their best for their clients, but also be well themselves. And I think we've made great progress, but we have a long way to go.BREE:No kidding. Yeah. And I also talk a lot about the fact that it's not just individual lawyers that we're trying to get to change the way they go about their work, but it's the culture change, and that's really hard. And so, I know that when we were writing the report, there was discussion about what are sort of the levers of the legal system that we can push to try and bring about some shifts to this, and particularly around, you've talked about with legal employers. And I know that you currently go out and speak to major law firms on these topics and what they can do differently. Can you give us some examples of what a law firm, a midsize or large law firm could do to bring about some culture change so that well-being is prioritized?ANNE:Yeah, I think the first place for organizations to start, and I actually think it might be the number one recommendation the National Task Force Report, number one or number two, but it's about leaders. And I truly believe this. And my book that you mentioned when you're introducing me, Positive Professionals, that's really what it's focused on, leaders and law firms.ANNE:And by leaders, I mean, partners and anyone who is responsible for supporting and influencing others. And I think a lot of partners don't actually think of themselves as leaders if they don't have a formal leadership position, but they really are because they have such an impact on other people.ANNE:And the organizational science part of this shows that leaders really are the creators of culture. They are the most important lever when we talk about creating cultures and changing cultures. And so, often when I talk to firms, what I'm talking about is focused on partners and how they interact with associates. So, many of our firms, although this is changing, but many of our firms have not thought about doing any kind of sort of leadership development with their aspiring partners and their current partners. And so, we think there's many partners that want to be better, want to do better, but just have never had the skills, tools or training to do so.ANNE:And I so I think that is the first place to start of really talking to the partners about how their own kind of supervisory skills, but also with their role modeling to the associates and to not just associates, the staff and everyone around them that you can come out with the best well-being policy and your professional development people and your well-being director can have really good words to say. But if the partners aren't doing it, that's what everyone else is going to follow because they're what staff and associates and all the other lawyers, they want to do well. And so, they look to the partners to know what that looks like.ANNE:So, if say they see partners that are not sleeping themselves, that are typing emails in the middle of the night, that aren't taking vacation, that are rude to others, like that's the pattern that they're going to follow.BREE:Absolutely.ANNE:And so, it's one of the things that I always underscore when I'm talking to partners is that everyone is watching you very closely. The higher you get up into an organizational hierarchy, the more people are watching you, both for what is the value system here and what do you think of me.BREE:Right.ANNE:And so, although you might not think of yourself as any different, oh, I'm still the same Anne Brafford, I just have a new partner title, like nope, you're actually different because people are treating you differently, and your behavior has a much bigger impact on them both for their own well-being and for them watching what's valued.ANNE:And so, I think there are other levers, but I think that one is so important and such a challenge, that that's where we should just be focusing for a while.CHRIS:Anne, are you optimistic that the cultural elements that position those leaders to move the profession forward is going in the right direction, the wrong direction or there's generational things that are in play, right? There's societal factors in play. It certainly feels like there's more willingness for folks to be vulnerable, which is a probably a driver that could be really helpful in culture shifts within the professions. I'm just kind of curious on your outlook of how optimistic are you? And what do you think are the kind of the underlying drivers that could either accelerate or hinder our ability to engineer this shift?ANNE:I think I'm always optimistic.CHRIS:We know that of you.ANNE:But I would say that my experience is that organizations are still all over the map. I would say like the ABA has come out with a wonderful ABA Well-Being Pledge, where many organizations, especially law firms have signed up saying that they're going to really commit themselves to lawyer well-being.ANNE:And I would say, even within that group who have made a public commitment, they're all over the map, that some of them, it's nice window dressing, but everyone else is doing it. So, we need to do it to show that we care about well-being.ANNE:There's others that I would say really are trying to figure this out. So, I think that at least now they're interested and asking questions, even the ones that just have it as window dressing, that's progress. It's better than what it was before. Once you start making public statements about your commitment, you're much more likely to start taking action because people are going to start questioning you. And you also want to be consistent with your public statements.ANNE:So, I think I am optimistic, but I think there are many obstacles to getting to where we want to go. Just our billable hour system, which is going to take a really long time to change, is everyone knows it's a problem. I don't know that you could find a single law firm leader that says they like the billable hour structure, but just no one has found a way to change it yet.BREE:Anne, I think that you're a heretic for saying that, I mean. I mean, to go ahead and call it out, I get up and talk. And I usually don't do this in a big room because I'm just afraid what's going to happen but really, if I can get around to it, the billable hours, the 800, 8,000 pound gorilla in the room until we have some shift with that, it's going to be a hard time to really change culture.ANNE:It is and I'm with you. I don't often talk about it in large rooms. I talk about it in small rooms, but I will also say that the science on it, on number of hours worked is really interesting. So, there was a big study in 2014 led by Larry Krieger on what makes lawyers happy? Let's stop talking about only what makes them sad. So, what makes lawyers happy.ANNE:And their study found that number of hours alone was not related to well-being or happiness, but billable hours work were. The more that billable hours rose, the less happy that people became. So, you could have two lawyers working the same number of hours but have different levels of happiness based on whether one felt like they were doing it freely and autonomously because it was their own choice versus feeling like they were forced to because of billable hours.ANNE:So, there's this idea of a basic human need that we have is autonomy. And it supports intrinsic motivation, like am I doing this because I enjoy it, because it's my choice to be doing it. And it's highly related to happiness and energy and all sorts of well-being that we care about. And so, it's not just that.ANNE:I think when people think about billable hours, it's often, oh, because we're being overworked. And yes, there is a lot of overwork in the profession. That's absolutely true. But there's also it's just harmful cultures that it's [crosstalk 00:19:04] worst.BREE:Yeah. What are you billing your time doing, which can be really mind numbing and it gets back to that meaning piece.ANNE:Yeah. And do I feel like I'm just making up hours because I have to. Am I having to find work when I really need to go take a job just because I need billable hours rather than because I'm so engaged in what I'm doing. So, I think billable hours is a challenge for a number of problems. But firms tend to be extremely competitive. And when you get to the partnership level, the way compensation works, there's all kinds of issues. I think the billable hours is just kind of the tip of the iceberg. But I do think there are a number of the ways that have just been standard practice within the legal profession that are posing obstacles that they're going to be hard to change, but again, I'm ready remain optimistic. It's just not going to happen overnight.BREE:Yeah, and I just want to commend everybody, the study that Anne just mentioned, it's called What Makes Lawyers Happy by Professor Larry Krieger, and it's really a great piece of work and maybe we can get Larry on the podcast.CHRIS:Yeah. It's probably a good time to take a quick break here from one of our sponsors. What a great conversation. And again, thank you for being here. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. —Your law firm is worth protecting. And so is your time. ALPS has the quickest application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates and bind coverage – all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com—BREE:Welcome back, everybody. We have Anne Brafford with us today, who is the founder and owner of Aspire and also has been a pivotal leader in the National Task Force and lawyer well-being movement across the country. And one of the things we're going to talk about with Anne in this part of the presentation is about her pivotal role as being a founder of Lawyer Well-Being Week.BREE:And Chris is going to talk to her about that in just a minute but Anne, really one of the reasons I wanted you to be our first guest is that you can really speak to a foundational component of our work, which is how we defined well-being. And in fact, I remember when we were writing, you, as the editor in chief, kept pulling us back to, okay, we need to define these terms. We need to substantiate what we're saying with data and studies and all of the 200 plus whatever footnotes that were in the report and really tying us back to science. So, could you talk a little bit about how we came about to define lawyer well-being? What does that mean?ANNE:Yes, so this was set out in the report. We had a couple of pages of just saying, okay, we're all wanting to talk about lawyer well-being, let's talk about what we mean. And I need to give a shout out to Courtney Wylie and Patrick Krill, the three of us are the ones who really did the research and debated with each other and then offered it up, proposed it to the whole National Task Force for acceptance.ANNE:But what we did initially was to look at what other organizations were doing, both like corporate organizations and also organizations like the World Health Organization and other large organizations and how they were defining well-being and how they were approaching it.ANNE:And the first thing that was obvious is that this was a multidimensional concept. It's not binary, you're well, you're not well. It's a continuum and has lots of different dimensions. And the other thing that the World Health Organization agreed with, thankfully, was that it was, well-being isn't just the absence of illness. It's also the presence of full well-being.ANNE:And Bree, you'll recall that I wasn't only harping about the evidence, I also was always wanting to remind us to not only focus on the absence of illness in our report. And understandably, that's where a lot of people tend to focus because that's important of when people's lives are really being harmed and ruined by alcohol use disorders and mental health. You want to focus there on just helping those people get better.ANNE:But there's so many lawyers in the profession that although they don't have a diagnosable illness, they're not fully well. And so, we wanted to capture the full continuum of well-being and all of lawyers no matter kind of where they were in the continuum. And so, that's how we define well-being of really making sure the first thing we noted is just like the World Health Organization, we are defining this to mean both sides of this, curing illness and also promoting full well-being and then the multidimensional concept of this involves both mental health, intellectual health, physical health, of all the different areas of our lives. These work synergy synergistically to make us fully well.ANNE:And then when you look at one of the big dimensions that is important to lawyers, all of them are, but it's occupational health. As lawyers, are we fully well and we define that. And that's an area where I have focused more on lately, like what do we really mean? And how do we measure it? And is it just again, like so many people will focus on things like burnout or depression, but what else is it?ANNE:If we're looking at optimal functioning, what we want to look at is yes, we want the absence of illness, but we also want things like engagement, job satisfaction, high performance, low turnover intentions, like people who actually want to stay and thrive here.ANNE:So, I think even just getting into each dimension, there's more that we need to understand and figure out how to measure so that we know whether we're making progress or not. But that's basically the gist.CHRIS:One of the pages that I'll refer to our listeners to is page nine of the report, which I think has just a wonderful graphic of the holistic dimensions that I think you cite, the emotional well-being, the occupational well-being, intellectual, spiritual, physical, social. And I'm curious and just because of how much scientific research that you've done in your work on the occupational side, you've done some work as part of your master's program on building the positive law firm. And what does some of the research kind of say out there with respect to that part of the well-being definition that I think that you're spending considerable amount of time really waiting into?ANNE:Yeah, so my master's capstone was on building the positive law firm. And then that was further expanded in my book, Positive Professionals. And there's a lot of dimensions to that. The first thing I already covered, which is the importance of good leaders because they create culture.ANNE:I think that one of the other things that it's so important in the legal profession that gets missed is that working hard isn't the problem. That people who are highly engaged and love their work, they work hard and they work a lot of hours, but failing to take time to recover, that's when the wheels can start coming off.ANNE:And so, I don't think that there's so much focus on lawyers work too hard. I think we should just turn it and say lawyers need to recover. Good lawyers are going to work hard. Anyone who loves what they do and are passionate about what they do are going to work a lot of hours. But thinking about how we recover and there's a whole body of research just on what are the best ways to recover.ANNE:And I talk about it a little bit in my book, but it's things like just sitting on a sofa and watching TV is not actually the best way to recover and actually conserve energy. So, one of the best things for lawyers, people who are very cognitively invested in their work, so lots of brain power, one of the best ways to recover is actually physical activity. It's very engaging. It makes your mind come off your work. And also, just physical movement is really good for both our brains and our bodies.ANNE:And the disengagement from work is a really important component of recovery, of finding something that will engage your attention. So, thinking about what are called mastery activities, so art, music, sewing, knitting, anything that will fully absorb your attention is a really good and important activity for recovery because it helps you disconnect a little bit from work and also has other sorts of great benefits.ANNE:And I don't think we can talk about recovery without talking about the importance of sleep, which I do think is a challenge. When I was a lawyer at my firm, it was honestly like people would sort of be competitive about how little sleep they have had for the week. And that's toxic. Those kinds of things have to change.BREE:Yeah, and I talk about that when I go out and speak to new lawyers and just talking to them about the importance of sleep and how everything that you need to do as a lawyer is not going to be online if you're not sleeping and there's no honor in bragging about being powered by Red Bull. You're not going to get the best work product.ANNE:I was one of those people, like I'm embarrassed by some of the things. Guys, if you would know me back then, some of the things that came out of my mouth ... I was one of those people. So, I totally get it. It is hard to change. I'm still recovering on that whole sleep is good sort of thing. And I read all the science, like I'm absolutely convinced, but there's just this draw of I have to get more done. So, sleep is a really important thing to work on in our organizational cultures.CHRIS:Let's spend a couple of minutes in talking about something that in your capacity as a leader of the ABA's Law Practice Division's Attorney Well-Being committee, you kind of hatched an idea knowing that we needed to continue to keep this issue front and center and that was Lawyer Well-Being Week, which we just enjoyed.CHRIS:Anne, I just love your perspective on why you felt like that week was so important to sustain awareness of this particular issue, what will you ultimately learn from Lawyer Well-Being Week in terms of the amount of activity, which I think was enormous and encouraging and why it's so important that we continue to keep this issue front and center?ANNE:Yeah, so, Lawyer Well-Being Week had been on my mind for several years and very excited that it finally came together. And there were a number of reasons why I thought it was important. One was that there were so many people that wanted to contribute in some way but didn't know how. And so, I wanted to create one event that was big enough and diverse enough for a lot of different people to contribute.ANNE:And then second is just what you said, Chris, of keeping attention this important topic that we've all seen kind of fads come and go in the legal profession that something is there's so much energy and attention around it for a couple of years and then we move on to the next thing.ANNE:And this well-being just can't be one of those things. We have to sustain this lawyer. Well-being is too important for it just become another fad. And so, creating an annual event to really focus attention around the idea, keep attention on it, create a time and space for more innovation, discussion around it, firms get to see what other firms are doing just based on social media and by communicating with each other.ANNE:And so, we had the first Well-Being Week was just this last May. Unexpectedly, we had a global pandemic occur. And we had to pivot pretty quickly. Firms and other organizations have been planning some really cool in-person events that hopefully they'll still be able to do next year, but everything had to go remote.ANNE:And I will say I was pretty disappointed. A lot of people were pretty disappointed. But in the end, I think the silver lining was that people were even more open to the idea of needing to care about well-being in the middle of this really difficult time.ANNE:So, although we couldn't do a lot of the programming that we wanted, it may have even been better in that people were so much more open to this message than they might otherwise have been. And so, there was lots of engagement involvement by bar associations, law firms, in-house departments because I think everyone has become interested in well-being but also they were looking for stuff to get out to their lawyers during this time that they knew a lot of people were struggling.ANNE:And I do hope it continues to be absolutely raising awareness. But I also really emphasize innovation of really thinking about how do we move this forward. The meditation sessions and resilience sessions are really important, but how can we push Lawyer Well-Being Week to get organizations to think more culturally and institutionally as well.ANNE:And I've gotten very positive feedback about it. And so, we're hoping that it continues and that it will be an annual event for many years and that we just keep making it better and better and find even better ways to serve the profession.BREE:Absolutely. And it's definitely a priority for the National Task Force for 2021. So, let's hope we can get together and enjoy that in person.BREE:Anne, because you're really are, and I mean this, and it's complimentary, but I really mean it, you are a visionary and a thought leader in the space. And so, I'm going to push you a little bit to think about how do we know that lawyer well-being is done? It's fixed. We can check that box. I mean, when we sat in the room, the original founders in 2016, we talked about that this is a project that will take at least 10 years because we had a sense that it was a really a lot of heavy lifting. But we didn't really break it down to what would the world look like?CHRIS:Yeah. What does success look like?BREE:Yeah, right, Chris, what does success look like in the lawyer well-being?CHRIS:You're a metrics person, too, so, this is even better.ANNE:Yeah. So, I actually think those were two different questions. And I think what does success look like is a different question than when will we be done, because I don't think we'll ever be done.CHRIS:That's right.ANNE:Because the profession will continue to evolve. The world will continue to evolve. People's values will continue to evolve. And so, what lawyer well-being means and how we get there will be a forever project.ANNE:But the urgency that created the National Task Force Report had a lot to do with ill being, which was the statistics that got all of our attention on the level of alcohol use disorders and mental health disorders. And so, alleviating that I think is job one.ANNE:And how do we know that we've succeeded? I've thought a lot about that just with respect to Lawyer Well-Being Week, how do we know we succeeded. And I think like one, more simple one is, have we raised awareness about the importance of this issue? And how would we measure that.ANNE:But then, have we decrease the incidence of alcohol use disorders and raised the incidence of people's willingness to seek help? And I think no organization yet has been doing broad scale regular surveying to measure that, for a lot of reasons.ANNE:But I do think like that those would be the kinds of measures that I would want to look at first because those are the things that are potentially ruining people's lives. And these aren't mutually exclusive. But then also looking at the more thriving aspects of well-being or do we have high job satisfaction, high engagement? Do people feel that their work is meaningful? Those kinds of things which there's measures for all of that.ANNE:So, I think those things are hard to get out. That's costly to do all those things. But I do think that's how I would measure it. But I don't want to undermine the importance of our people realizing that this is important, like have we got people's attention. And I think, on that score, we've made incredible progress.CHRIS:Yeah.ANNE:Whether we've made a dent yet in alcohol use disorders and mental health, I'm not sure but we have to have that first level of awareness before we get to the next and then next, are we getting to full thriving, are organizational cultures fixed or institution? I'm not sure what those measures are yet, but I think that's a longer way off.CHRIS:Yeah, the full thriving I think is really an interesting component because again, the opportunity for folks to pursue a legal career and find personal and professional satisfaction, so many of I think of our colleagues ultimately will find that they may have made a wrong decision.CHRIS:And one of the questions that I ask oftentimes when I get up the podium at a regional or a state bar gathering is, would you recommend that if your son or daughter or one of their close friends came to you and said, "Should I go to law school?" That generally the answer is a little startling of a lot of people saying no. And to me, that says something about the systemic nature of problems that people can't maybe find what they are actually looking for or there's a false sense of expectation on what they thought it would be like, versus what it ultimately is.ANNE:Yeah, I think it's all those things. Even though I've left law, I would actually say yes, go to law school. There are so many great things about being a lawyer, but also stay true to the reason that you're going to law school.ANNE:That Larry Krieger, who we mentioned earlier has done on work on the evolution of values for law students throughout law school. And what he finds is that law school culture is channeled lawyers toward, well, the brightest and best go to the big firms. And that's great. There are lots of great opportunities at big firms and if that's the right fit, do that.ANNE:But there are other people like maybe me, that when I had a different value system but I wanted to do what the best kids were doing.CHRIS:Yeah.ANNE:And so, I was actually going to be a prosecutor and was looking for internships with prosecutor's offices, and a professor came to me and said, "What are you doing? You have good grades, you should go to a big firm." And I'm like, "Why would I do that?" I said, "That's not what I wanted to do when I came to law school." And he said, "You can always go from a big firm to a prosecutor's office, but you can't do the reverse. So, just go try it."ANNE:And so, I did. And I got into employment law, which I really liked, it was super interesting. And then you just get carried away with like, whatever the next thing is, I'm going to get that, I'm an achiever like so many lawyers are.ANNE:So, I do think like, yes, be a lawyer. There are so many great things about being a lawyer. It's super interesting work. You can make a positive impact, but stay in the right lane. Do what you think you'll love in 20 years and not just what seems prestigious right now.CHRIS:Yeah. Well, Anne, in our last question that I wanted to pose to you is one of the things that we're so excited about is the growing army of folks who are passionate about this issue. And this podcast was developed for those particular folks who are leading state task forces, working on subcommittees at the state and local level. Just be curious on your words of wisdom as you get to kind of address an army of well-being advocates across the country, any thoughts about just this fight, this culture shift, any recommendations or motivational words to really an incredible growing number of people who are passionate about this issue?ANNE:Well, get involved in Lawyer Well-Being Week. And part of resilience is anticipating failure along the way and figuring out when you face those failures, what are the 10 or 20 different ways that you're going to get around those obstacles?ANNE:And I think that that doesn't sound very inspiring, expect failure. I think it's absolutely important to the cause that we're undertaking because there are so many obstacles. But it's so important. So, expect that this is a long road. Things aren't going to change tomorrow and really think about what those obstacles are. And when you have a failure, don't feel like a failure, that think of the 20 different ways that you can get around whatever that obstacle is.ANNE:And that's how I've approached it, that when I have a door closed or hear a no, I'm going different ways to get to my yes, maybe not as easily as or as quickly as I wanted. But this is a long game, this isn't a short game. And so, just keep at it and really engage, get connected with people who feel as passionate as you do so that we can all help keep our energy up.BREE:I want to point out to everybody, we've been talking about Lawyer Well-Being Week and if you want to learn more about that, go to the National Task Force website, which is lawyerwellbeing.net. And all of the information, the great materials and worksheets and ideas for well-being is still up there. And it's applicable throughout the year. And so, I'm hoping people will use that.CHRIS:Anne, thank you so much again for your leadership, for your inspiration, for taking risks in your personal life to become a leader in our movement, for the work that you're doing on the science side of well-being. I mean, we are truly fortunate to have you amongst us and being a leader in our movement. So, thank you for being our first podcast guest.BREE:Thank you.CHRIS:Really cool. And we will be back with the Path to Lawyer Well-Being podcast in a couple weeks. Again, our goal is to do probably two a month, where we'll bring more great guests like Anne into the fold and talk about specific areas of lawyer well-being. So, for me, signing off. Bree, any final closing thoughts?BREE:Just a delight to get to spend time with you, Anne, as always. Thanks so much.ANNE:Yeah. Thanks for having me.CHRIS:All right. Thank you. 

Podcast co-hosts Bree Buchanan and Chris Newbold, who also serve as co-chairs of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, introduce themselves, provide perspective on how the lawyer well-being movement began, how and why the issue has sparked a national conversation, why a culture shift in the profession is needed and share their individual stories of what brought them into the lawyer well-being movement.     Transcript:  CHRIS NEWBOLD:                Welcome to the Path to Lawyer Well-Being, a podcast about cool people doing awesome work in the space of lawyer well-being. This podcast is presented by the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being. I'm Chris Newbold, and I'm joining you from Missoula, Montana, and I'm excited to be joined by my co-host Bree Buchanan.BREE BUCHANAN:               Hi, everybody. I'm Bree, and I'm joining you from Eugene, Oregon. Chris and I are both co-chairs of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being. So, a little bit just about what that group is, we're a group of lawyers representing different parts of the bar when each of us are a leader within that group. What binds us together is a passion for improving the lives of lawyers. We all hold a belief that to achieve that goal, there has to be a systemic change within our profession, so that well-being of its members is a top priority.CHRIS:             This is our inaugural podcast, and I think this is the right time to do a few things, I think, in our first podcast, which is to introduce a little bit about the well-being movement. To introduce you to the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, and most importantly, probably to introduce you to us. Why we find a personal passion in lawyer well-being, what our hopes and aspirations are as we think about the vision of this podcast series. Because there's incredible work going on around the country right now in this space of lawyer well-being launched several years ago with a legendary report that I think ignited a national discussion on this particular issue.This is, I think, just a really exciting time for us in the movement, as we have grown really a large contingent of folks who are really fundamentally hoping to see some systemic changes in our profession for the betterment, as we think about lawyer health and well-being. So, we're going to have some fun today, I think, in our first podcast, Bree.BREE:               Absolutely.CHRIS:             Let's talk about the notion of a theme around beginnings.BREE:               Sure, and I thought it would be really great today, yeah talking about beginning of this podcast, talking about the beginnings of the national task force. How did it come about? Why did we do this? How was it envisioned, and what is it that we're trying to do? Then, also I thought it would be, this is the perfect time to talk about, Chris, you and I, our beginnings in this movement. What drew us to this? There's a real passion on the part of everybody that's working in this movement. So, what got us to this point, and I think it's a pretty interesting story.CHRIS:              It is.BREE:               So, I look forward to sharing it. Yeah.CHRIS:             It's been I think a really unique journey and, again, I think something that we continue to be very optimistic about where this movement is moving and the type of change that I think that we can engineer as we grow an army of well-being advocates around the country. So, Bree, let's start. I'd love to go back to the namesake of this podcast, is the Path To Lawyer Well-Being, and that name, I think, resonates with you as someone who's really a co-founder of our movement, and the report that got started by a coalition of organizations that began to really take an interesting look at this particular issue. Can you take us back to those early days of well-being?BREE:        Sure.CHRIS:            How did it come together and what have been some of the crowning achievements as we think about it?BREE:             Sure, in some ways it's a bit of an improbable story. It sounds like sort of an official group, and it really started back in 2016. There were a group of us who were each in our own right leaders of a national organization that worked in the space of lawyer impairment, lawyer well-being. We basically commandeered an empty conference room, the ABA annual meeting in San Francisco in 2016. We don't get to see each other very often and said, "Let's sit down and talk about the fact that we now have these two really significant large studies about the rates of impairment and the state of affairs of lawyer and law student's well-being in the country."We haven't had that before. I come to this movement out of the lawyers assistance program world. I was an incoming chair of the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs. I had known, just from the work that I did and the calls that I answered every day at the L-A-P, the LAP, that there was a real problem. That the profession was experiencing with depression, and substance abuse, and alcohol use disorder, et cetera. We had a couple of folks from the National Organization of Bar Counsel, the people who regulate the profession, and a couple of folks from the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers.The lawyers who often end up defending lawyers who were in the disciplinary system, and really work around in the space of ethics and professional responsibility. So, the small group of us sat down in that room, and I don't know what was in the water or the air that day, but we decided that given that we finally had the data, the hard data, to prove what we had known all along, we felt that there was a window of opportunity for us to move with that information. On that day, we decided that we were going to gulp, create a movement to bring about systemic change within the legal profession, in regards to how the health and well-being of its members are ... basically, how that's prioritized, because we had seen too much suffering.Some of us had suffering in our own lives. I had witnessed too many lawyer suicides, and we really were so motivated to do something and do something quickly. So, we had that charge moving forward. We left that room. We brought together a coalition of national organizations, and we had some pretty, ultimately, ended up with some pretty prestigious groups, such as the Conference of Chief Justices. The National Association of Bar Executives is coming on board, et cetera. We decided that we needed to do a report to the profession and say, "We now have this information.We know that there are real issues within our profession, and we need to do something about it." Hear the best minds that we could bring together who work and think about these issues every day. These are our recommendations to the profession. Chris, you were part of that. Talk a little bit about your role in all of that.CHRIS:             Yeah. I come from the side of Lawyers Professional Liability insurance, right? So, we have a vested interest in seeing lawyers practice with the duty of competence. I think one of the things that we saw as a recurring theme in some of our claims activity is the notion that impairment oftentimes is a precursor to a malpractice claim. So, based upon a really simple premise that I think that the report kind of signaled, which is to be a good lawyer, one has to be a healthy lawyer. So, that was for Alps, the company that I worked for, which is the largest direct writer of lawyers malpractice insurance in the country, and other malpractice insurance carriers.It was that kind of a natural fit that we want to see lawyers thrive. We want to see them be just wonderful advocates on behalf of their clients. Too often, when lawyers are finding themselves in tough situations, they were reverting to things that would generally take them into a downward trajectory and open themself up to a malpractice claim. So, what I think is really cool, Bree, about the way that this movement got started, it's just the diversity of the groups were at the table. You're talking about a real sense of a grassroots. So, you got chief justices, you got disciplinary council. You got, obviously, the incredible work that our lawyer assistance programs do around the country.You got the association of professional responsibility lawyers, various entities that have associations with the American bar association, what an interesting kind of group to come together. I don't really know of many other kind of legal issues that have started from such a grassroots perspective. Let's reset the timeline a little bit. This happened in August of 2016. So, we're about four years now away from this getting started, and really I'd love for you to walk us through one year later after that. We were on the cusp of releasing the report that got everything going.That's a pretty short period of time-BREE:              Yeah, it is.CHRIS:               ... to mobilize that group to publish, produce, research what ultimately came to be known as the path to lawyer well-being.Bree Buchanan:               It really is amazing in a little touch of a miracle that it all came together. You have these disparate backgrounds, and we really did everything by consensus. You've probably heard me talk about this before Chris, but I felt like it was birthing a child. It took nine months to write the report. It was a tremendous amount of work. All of us had not only our day jobs, but we're also leaders of national organization. So, we crammed all of this work in between the little pieces of open time that there might be. Really, everything that we decided ultimately, just about, was by consensus.                         Everyone was amazingly on the same page. We broke up into to writing groups based upon the stakeholder group that we were involved in. It was just really quite miraculous. The editor in chief for the report is Anne Bradford. I'm excited to announce that she's going to be our first guest on this podcast. She was the editor-in-chief and just did an amazing job. Also, the founder of the Lawyer Well-Being Week, which we just launched this past spring. So, it was pretty incredible process. We finished the report and published it in early summer of 2017. We immediately took it to the Conference of Chief Justices and asked if they would endorse it.Effectively, they passed a resolution encouraging all members of the profession to read and take heed of the report. Then, within days of that, we were able to leverage that support and take it to the ABA. We're back there at the next annual meeting, August the 27th, and there was a resolution introduced and passed by the house of delegates supporting the report. So, so much happened so quickly. It was just, in some way, it's one of those things where it felt like it was kind of meant to be.CHRIS:               Yeah, and for our listeners out there, if you haven't had a chance to see the report, the report can be found at lawyerwellbeing.net, where you can download the report. One of the things, I work a lot in the bar association world, and it was really exciting to see just how fast that we've struck a chord, I think, with folks who really want to see the lawyers, again, thrive in being successful in law practice. I know we'll get to our personal stories and I'll talk a little bit about why I got involved in the movement. But I think that it was exciting to see the report itself, which we flirted with actually naming this podcast 44 recommendations, right?Because it was a fairly comprehensive report that outlined for various stakeholders pathways to being part of the solution when it comes to lawyer well-being. We talked a lot about the challenges of our profession. What I loved about it was it was a forward looking document that said, "If you're interested in being part of the solution, here are the pathways."BREE:              Absolutely, and everybody that got involved from the beginning all the way through to when we were passing resolutions, when the president of the ABA, Hilarie Bass picked this up and said she wanted to make it a priority, I believe that it was so successful because every person who pick this up and looked at it, he or she had experienced either maybe within their own career, but certainly over the course of their career, they had known lawyers or maybe judges, or even a law student, who had experienced some of these problems. Had experienced some severe episode of depression, or perhaps of a substance use disorder.Even though we don't talk about these things in the profession, we have all bumped up against it in one way or another, over the course of our career. Really, what most tragically motivates so many people, especially if you've been in this field for a couple of decades or more, we all have stories of someone we have worked with, have known, a colleague who has taken his or her own life. Unfortunately, the tragedy, with those tragedies comes some opportunities to look at how we can do things better and it really motivates people to make some change. So, it seems like the task force and the report, it was the right thing at the right time.Since that time, what we've really worked towards is trying to build, I guess, you'd say, grassroots movement across the country. That starts with each of the States taking the report. We actually talked about sort of, I talk about being cheeky. Because you look in the report, it's actually to the Chief Justice of each State and saying to her or him, "This is ultimately your responsibility for the well-being of the legal community under you. We're asking you to pull together a task force or commissioner committee pulling together the heads of the different stakeholder groups within the profession. Take a look at this report.See if there's something that inspires you see. If there are things that need to happen in your State, what works for you. If it doesn't work for your State, then don't do it." A large number of States are picking up that charge and it really is occurring in a, again, in a really compressed timeline. It's amazing, Chris, you've been a part of a number of those States coming together to try and pull, put together their own task force.CHRIS:              Yeah, and it's been really, again, impressive to see the amount of interest at the local level. I think change generally starts at the local level. So, when you think about, we had a number of States and I'll give a shout out to a couple of them. States like Vermont, they went really early. Put together a task force, had a very supportive Chief Justice in Chief Justice Paul Reiber, and really have done a really significant work moving it forward. Virginia's another great example.BREE:         Absolutely.CHRIS:              One of our national task force original members was the Chief Justice there.BREE:              Don LemonsCHRIS:               Don Lemons in Virginia. Again, this is just an issue that resonated with him, and we do a lot of malpractice insurance in the Commonwealth. I just think that there's a yearning to be the very best lawyers that we can possibly be and to have the support of the judiciary there, and the Virginia State Bar. Utah, another great example of a State that got out in front and really started to set the tone for a movement of state task forces or state commissions to really look at the issue. Identify how well-being is occurring at the local level.Make suggestions, make recommendations, and again, strive for systemic change to our particular profession. Bree, do you have the latest numbers on how many States have engaged in some type of activity at the state level for a task force or a commission?BREE:                Sure, yeah. One cool thing you can do is on our website, lawyerwellbeing.net, if you scroll down and there's an interactive map. So, you can see the States, it's wonderful to see it visually, the States where they have implemented a commission or a task force, so that sort of thing. In some States, they haven't done a multi-stakeholder group. Maybe it is the state bar has put together a lawyer well-being committee or commission, that's doing a lot of the work around this. Universally, or almost universally, the Lawyers Assistance Programs are very involved in this work, too.So, it's taken different forms, but I would say the last time I counted, there's about 32 to 35 States now that are working in this space. So, well over a majority. So, it's exciting.CHRIS:                Yeah, and I think ultimately, what is most exciting for those of us in the space is what started out as a small group of 20 to 25 people, really kind of concerned about the issue, has really multiplied by many, many factors in terms of, there are literally people in every state and every territory around the United States that are vested in this particular issue, are working with their respective state bars, or their regulatory entities, or their Supreme Courts. That's the underpinnings of, again, a change in the environment.A change in what we're trying to promote, which is, I think, obviously, a healthier legal profession of folks who find professional satisfaction in the practice of law. As we know from the numbers, that's not always the case. We have a lot of work to do because we work in an adversarial system. We work in a stressful system, and then, you add on top of that, some of the events of 2020, and you double down on that even further. So, there just can't be, I think, a more important time for us to be launching this podcast series to talk about the issues that are affecting the current and the future of lawyer well-being.Really bring on, again, really cool people doing awesome work in this particular field, because there are great people. We will talk to the Anne Bradfords and the Patrick Krills. But we'll also go down, those are national, I think, pioneers in our space, but we'll also, I think, go down and also look for stories that's happening at the local level. We'll look at specific topics. We have all these state task force chairs that are looking for guidance in particular areas of the well-being discussion. We have modifications to the rules of professional conduct that are happening with respect to well-being. We have incredible stories happening in our law schools.BREE:       Absolutely.CHRIS:               We have developments on character and fitness parts of bar applications. We have pathways for reducing stigma in law firm culture. I what I'm excited about is the, I think, the intellectual journey that is in front of us. As you, Bree, as you think about the vision of this podcast, what gets you excited about? What's on the horizon? Because there's just so many areas that we could go as we co-host this podcast series, and what has you excited?BREE:            Well, I'm excited now after hearing the list all of those things out. I am really jazzed about the future of what we're going to do, because again, there are so many people working in this space and anybody that starts to work on the issues around lawyer impairment and lawyer well-being. If you dig just a little bit under the surface, there's a story there, and I'm excited about bringing forward some of those stories. So, on that topic, Chris, let's talk about our stories and our [crosstalk].CHRIS:              Yeah. Bree, let's take a quick break. I want to hear from our friends at ALPS. ALPS is, obviously, the entity as you will learn is where I do my day job. We've been able to leverage the marketing department here. So, let's hear from our friends at ALPS and then we'll come back and we'll pick up and talk about our own stories.BREE:              Great.CHRIS:            Okay.—Your law firm is worth protecting. And so is your time. ALPS has the quickest application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates and bind coverage – all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard. Our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com—Welcome back. Bree, this is the part of, I think, our first podcast that I was looking forward most. Even though you and I have worked together for three to four years now,. Sometimes, we don't know the personal story about the why, right. As we think about beginnings and the beginning of this podcast, I thought it would be, I think we both thought it would be appropriate that we share our individual stories and why we bring passion, that passion, I think, originated from differing sources. So, I just thought we'd close out our first podcast with a little bit of an introduction of ourselves to our listeners.BREE:               Sure.CHRIS:                If you could start us off with your story and how you find yourself, where you are today.BREE:           Yeah. How I find myself today, it's a miracle really. It's just astounding to be in this space and be able to work on these issues because, the issues around depression, and anxiety, and substance use disorders and all of those things are things that plagued me throughout my life and my career. So, to come through that and through recovery, and on the other side, and be in a position now where I can work to make such a difference, it's just miraculous. When I started law school, I'll just give you everything. I graduated law school in 1989. So, you can do the math.But I got to law school and I was absolutely terrified. I was one of those many, I think probably many nobody ever talks about it, but feeling like an imposter, there's a thing called the imposter syndrome. Then, I was, what was I doing here? I'm not nearly as smart as all these other people who are fronting and acting so smart and covering over their own insecurities. So, by the time I got to the first end of the first semester, the first year of law school and got my grades, I ended up with a full blown panic disorder, which is miserable. Lots of anxiety every single day. So, I started doing what worked and what was certainly the go-to for anything and everything, in the legal profession, which was alcohol.I found that if I drank and drank pretty heavily, that anxiety would go away. I graduated from law school. I got the job that I had always wanted, which was to work at legal aid and was doing domestic violence litigation for about 10 years and loved it. But was absolutely terrified the whole time, particularly the first couple of years. Again, raising that issue of the imposter syndrome, being so afraid that I'm new, and every time the phone rings, that it's going to be an opposing counsel, and they're going to beat up or take advantage of this new lawyer. I also was dealing with the incredibly difficult content of the cases, the evidence, the horrific fact patterns.Later on got involved in litigation with child abuse and representing children that are in the foster care system. So, if you think about the type of facts and stories that I was living in every day, I dealt with what is now called compassion fatigue. I had no idea what that was at the time in the early 90s. Dealt with burnout, too much work, and not enough time to do it all, not enough support systems, et cetera. So, I dealt with a lot of depression. I still had some anxiety. Again, what I found worked, "worked" in the moment was to use alcohol. Over the course of my career, I really ended up taking sort of two paths.There was the public face. Then, there was the private face. So, publicly, look at my CV. It looks good. It had some jobs, leadership positions, president of this, whatever, you'd think, "Oh, she's got it together." But what was going on in my home, where no one could see, was a lot of very unhappy existence, exhaustion, not ever feeling good enough because I held myself to a standard of perfection. Ultimately, as it tends to happen, I drank more over time. We know that the prolonged sustained drinking of alcohol and heavy amounts starts to create changes in the brain.I started to become physically dependent to it, upon it. Ultimately, I lost my marriage. That wasn't enough to get me to stop drinking. I find that listening to the stories of hundreds, if not thousands of lawyers dealing with similar problems, when I was at the Lawyers Assistance Program, that was common. Lawyers will let everything else fall in their life. Then, when it gets to work, which is where it finally got to me, when it affects your career, then that's the bottom. Not too long after I lost my marriage, I lost my job. That point was my low point. I finally was ready to admit that I couldn't control my drinking anymore, and I got into recovery.Just as I tend to throw myself full on into whatever I do, I did that with recovery as well. That, for me, meant really making use of all the resources that were available. The thing that I learned early on and what I try to impart so much to people, lawyers who are suffering, is you've got to ask for help. We've got to be willing to say, "I'm suffering, I'm struggling, and I need help." I did that in spades. I called and got involved with a therapist. I saw a psychiatrist to get treatment for my depression and anxiety. I participated in a mutual support program for my drinking, worked that program.I got involved with the lawyer's assistance program and ultimately ended up getting a job there. So, fast forward, I've been in recovery now for 10 and a half years, and my life is amazing. It is beyond anything that I could have ever imagined, but I had to get to that point and that realization where I was willing to be vulnerable, ask for help, and then do the work. Ask for help and then do what I was told to do by people who are experts in the field. So, you can see, I have a real sort of homegrown passion for this. I understand really what it's like to live every day, going to work as a lawyer, and being afraid and not feeling like you're enough.Anyway, so just out of all of that, I've grown to have a real passion for making sure as few others as possible have that same experience, and will share my story when people are interested, and I think that it would be of help.CHRIS:               Well, thank you, Bree, for a couple of things. First of all, being vulnerable and telling your own personal story. I think that we will consistently encourage that to all of our guests, I think, on the podcast, because that vulnerability, I think, is something that naturally allows us to be better understanding of how you have ... The depth of personal struggles that you have endured have led you to this position of moving into leadership and helping others. That's awesome stuff. I was going to take a couple of minutes on my story. It's interesting.My story is that I take a completely different track. It's not as much developed from its core from a personal perspective as much as from an observation perspective, which is, I ... Just a history on myself, I'm a first-generation college graduate in my family. So, everything was new. So, as I looked at going to law school and understanding that I was entering a profession, that I was very much public interest oriented probably when I went into law school. Just kind of saw some things happening in law school amongst classmates and others that gave me a concern.Then, as I reflected, I'm a 2001 graduate of the University of Montana School of Law. One of the things, as I reflected on really kind of a tenure point in my legal career, was that when I queried my classmates about their professional satisfaction in the practice of law, I just, frankly, wasn't getting a response that was positive. So, when you think about the fact that folks have went down a course in terms of selection of a professional career and to not be finding professional satisfaction, and to almost actively be encouraging their kids to not think about pursuing a passion in law, it just gave me a belief that there's something systemically broken in our profession.Again, great things happening in a lot of different respects. I think our profession is one that has ... I'm always driven by seeing organizations and individuals realize their potential. If we think about the legal profession, I just kind of reflected on the notion that I don't think our legal profession is realizing its potential. Part of it has to do with the manner in which there's just a nature of unhealthiness undercurrent, beneath the hood a little bit that is pulling away from our profession, realizing its potential.I happened to be in a class of, graduating class of '75, at the University of Montana and have had to endure three suicides in our class. Again, you just sit there and go, "What's going on? Why is this happening?" It's not always related to the law. Obviously, we are human beings before we are lawyers. We always have to remember that, but I've spent a lot of my time really thinking about why are some of these things occurring? In my day job here at ALPS, I spent a lot of time working with State bar associations and doing strategic planning. I know how much this issue affects members of bar associations.So, I just felt like I'm an accidental leader in some respects in this movement, but I was drawn to it because I believe in the potential of our profession, and in working toward making it better. I felt like if I have some skills and some passion, and if I can somehow advance the conversation that this would be an appropriate venue to get involved. I happened to get introduced to the well-being movement by somebody who also, Bree, you know very well. That's our dear friend, Jim Coyle out of Colorado.BREE:           Absolutely.CHRIS:               Jim would be incredible, and Bree, we got to get Jim on to the podcast, because I think that he was single-handedly responsible for seeing something in me and seeing somehow how my perspectives would add perspective and flavor to our discussions. Jim was an original co-chair of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, after having sat and served with distinction in the office of the Disciplinary Counsel and Attorney Regulation, I guess they call it in Colorado. So, Jim introduced me and said, "You got something to give to this movement." Invited me in, and it's been a wonderful and rewarding journey thus far, and we still have a lot of work to go.BREE:            Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm hearing your story, what brought you to the movement, and that's a first for me. It really strikes me that between our two stories, it encapsulates what the issues that the National Task Force is working on. I come to this because I have a history of basically impairments, or the depression, and substance use disorder. We're really about, the national task force, is really about trying to provide, make sure that there is treatment, there are resources, there's education and information about that out there. There's providers who can talk about that.But it's also really about, so much of what we wanted to do is about the fact that so many of our colleagues are not thriving in the practice of law. What a loss, what a loss personally, and what a loss to the profession, when we're not able to work up to our full capacity. So, I think this is a great partnership, Chris.CHRIS:              Yeah, it is. I'm excited for the journey. I do think that I wanted to give a little bit of a preview of who our intended audience is, because I think that that's an important part of why we develop the podcast series in the first place. This podcast series is specifically designed for folks who are taking an active leadership role in the well-being movement, for you to hear from others around the country. To learn their stories and learn about their expertise so that you can find and connect dots into resources that you need to help us move this movement forward. There are other podcasts out there that I think focused on individual lawyers.There's, obviously, mindfulness, meditation, eating well, taking care of yourself. Those are very important attributes to taking each lawyer individually and comprising our legal profession. Our goal, I think, in this particular podcast is to think about those who are thinking about it holistically, thinking about it in terms of how they can move the needle at the local level. So, this is a podcast that's specifically developed for all those folks who have a real passion in becoming leaders in our movement, and connecting those folks through the sharing of information and education,BREE:                Right. We've always, the task force have always been about really looking at systemic change. We said from the very beginning, we're going to try and lecture individual lawyers that they need to eat their vegetables and exercise, because we knew that and an individual lawyer can meditate, and run, and eat all the broccoli in the world, but they can't change the systemic issues within the legal system that make it almost impossible for everyone to be able to really thrive. So, that's what we're trying to get at, the big picture stuff.CHRIS:                Yup, and Bree, you and I, we have a goal, right? That we want to keep these episodes to probably 20 to 45 minutes. We're targeting probably two podcasts a month as we look to continue to add new guests and new perspectives to this podcast series. So, Bree, we got to wrap this up. We got a lot of preparation to do as we nail down future speakers. We're excited, I think, by the journey that lies ahead. So, I'm wishing you well. This is Chris.BREE:              And Bree.CHRIS:                We'll sign off. Thank you for listening, and we'll be back with a podcast probably in a couple of weeks. Thank you. 

Bree Buchanan is the Co-Chair and Founder of the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being. In 2017, the American Bar Association sanctioned Task Force published the most comprehensive report to date detailing the critical need for the legal profession to address alarming rates of addiction, depression and suicide amongst its members. The Report paints a worrisome picture while also offering thoughtful insights into what can be done to make systemic change to the culture within the legal profession.Bree shares her insights gained as the Director of the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program as well as her vast knowledge acquired as the Task Force Report was compiled. Bree also takes us on her own journey through depression, anxiety and addiction. During the conversation, we grapple with the complex question of why it is that lawyers suffer at such dramatic rates, and engage in rich back and forth searching for answers. Some very healthy tips and suggestions emerge.Brew Buchanan is a must listen within every law firm and legal organization as well as by anyone with a growth mindset. Enjoy this episode of Iron Advocate as we continue to explore how lawyers can kill it on the practice of law without it killing us. The Task Force Report can be found at LawyerWellBeing.net. Bree Buchanan can be reached at Bree1964@att.net or by visiting PRKrill.com.

A 2016 study of solicitors found that 28%, 19%, and 23% were experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, respectively. In this episode, I speak to Bree Buchanan - former Director of the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program, which aims to provide recovery solutions for members of the legal profession who are experiencing substance abuse, as well as strategies to help boost well-being and resiliency in the profession. Bree and I discuss her pathway into law, substance abuse within the profession, as well as what law needs to do to improve its approach to mental wellbeing. Music provided by Audio Library: Jungle Juice - Wataboi.

Recent reports have discovered a disproportionate level of substance abuse and depression among lawyers in comparison with the general public. Bree Buchanan discusses these reports and the work of the National Task Force on Attorney Well-Being and their recommendations to address it. Did your employer sign the pledge to commit to attorney well-being?Want to get involved with the Criminal Justice Section? Join us! https://www.americanbar.org/membership/join-now

In this episode of the Mindspace podcast, Dr. Joe focuses on well-being in the legal profession. Working in law is one of the most demanding and stressful jobs in the world: tight deadlines, long hours, a hyper-competitive culture, and the weight of supporting demanding clients. In 2016 a study showed that lawyers and law students suffer from substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and stress in far greater numbers than the general population. In the first half the podcast, Joe speaks with Yan Besner, a partner at Osler, a national law firm. Yan is recognized as one of the best real estate lawyers in Canada. Joe and Yan discuss: - Yan’s struggle with depression, anxiety, and stress as a young lawyer - The therapies that helped him recover - How he maintains his mental health these days - How the culture in law firms is slowly changing to support mental health In the second half of the podcast, Joe speaks with Bree Buchanan, co-chair of the National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing. Bree is leading a cultural transformation that will help promote mental health in the legal profession. Joe and Bree discuss: - The 2016 study showing that lawyers and law students disproportionately suffer from substance abuse, anxiety, depression, and stress - How lawyers can cope with these problems - Her personal struggles with substance abuse, anxiety, and depression - How her work in this space aligns with her life purpose.

Have you or someone you know been suffering from depression or addiction? Are you unsure about what to do? In today’s episode of State Bar of Texas Podcast, host Rocky Dhir is joined with co-host Bree Buchanan and guest Brian Cuban to talk about addressing addiction and depression, how to recognize warning signs and how to reach out to those in need of your support. Brian also talks about his own personal background, how he dealt with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and how we can encourage lawyers, law students, and even judges to pick up the phone and ask for help. Bree Buchanan is the director of the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program of the State Bar of Texas and the chair of the ABA’s Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs. Brian Cuban is the author of "The Addicted Lawyer: Tales of the Bar, Booze, Blow, and Redemption." For more information about the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program, call 1-800-343-8527 or go to tlaphelps.org.

Lawyers are often seen as lone wolves but when it comes to overcoming stress, mental illness, or addiction, not even lawyers have to go it alone. In this report from On The Road at the 2018 ABA Midyear Meeting, host Jim Calloway talks to Bree Buchanan, Amanda Richards, Derek LaCroix, and Raul Ayala about the resources currently in place for lawyers who are struggling to maintain their personal and professional wellbeing. They also hit on other topics relating to lawyer wellness, including increasing resources for law students, rallying stakeholders behind mental health, and the fight to destigmatize the issue within the industry. Bree Buchanan is director of the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program of the State Bar of Texas and serves as co-chair of the National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing. Amanda Richards is a 1L at the University of British Columbia. Derek LaCroix, QC, joined LAP as the executive director in 1996. Raul Ayala is an attorney at Office of the Federal Public Defender in Los Angeles, California.

Confronting someone about a substance abuse problem--or owning that you have one--is not easy, but lawyers assistance programs can help.  Usually referred to as LAPs and offered by attorney regulation agencies, the programs guarantee confidentiality when attorneys reach out to them.  And if an attorney has committed an actionable offense, entering recovery before it comes to light and being able to show commitment to getting better can be a mitigating factor if he or she faces disciplinary charges. In this episode of Asked & Answered, the ABA Journal’s Stephanie Francis Ward speaks to Bree Buchanan about how LAPs work, and how a person can reach out for assistance.

Confronting someone about a substance abuse problem--or owning that you have one--is not easy, but lawyers assistance programs can help. Usually referred to as LAPs and offered by attorney regulation agencies, the programs guarantee confidentiality when attorneys reach out to them. And if an attorney has committed an actionable offense, entering recovery before it comes to light and being able to show commitment to getting better can be a mitigating factor if he or she faces disciplinary charges. In this episode of Asked & Answered, the ABA Journal’s Stephanie Francis Ward speaks to Bree Buchanan about how LAPs work, and how a person can reach out for assistance.

High stakes, long hours, big egos… Does this sound like another day at a law office or a recipe for addiction? Occupational wellness is import for everyone, especially lawyers.   On this episode of RecoveryPeople, Bree Buchanan, the Director of the Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program, talks about why the prevalence of addiction amongst attorneys is about twice that of the general population (18% vs 10%) and why concerns with alcohol problems increase with each year someone is in law schools and/or practices as an attorney. According to one study, 8% of prelaw students, 15% of first-year law school students, and 24% of third-year law students reported concerns with alcohol problems. In addition, 18% of attorneys who practiced for 2 to 20 years reported drinking problems. And the prevalence of drinking problems increase to 25% for attorneys who practiced for over 20 years.   Fortunately, law students, attorneys and judges in Texas can find the confidential help they need to overcome the health hazzards of their profession through the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program (TLAP) by calling at 1-800-343-8527 any time of day or night or by going to www.TexasBar.com/TLAP to learn more. The Texas Lawyers’ Assistance Program has a statewide network of attorneys in recovery provide peer support and together with the Texas Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers they provide self help support groups. Check out their youtube video AND, podcast series Episode 1: The Last Drink. A Texas lawyer explains how he reclaimed his life from alcohol and helps others to do the same. Listen now Episode 2: Depression's Black Hole - A Texas lawyer explains how clinical depression nearly claimed his life, and how he found hope to carry on.