Director, Lawyer Assistance Program
In 1962, a City Bar report on “Mental Illness and Due Process” led directly to state legislation safeguarding the rights of mentally ill patients to be treated as a sick person first and a legal problem second. In 1986, the City Bar formed its Committee on Drugs & the Law, which in 1994 released its landmark report, “A Wiser Course: Ending Drug Prohibition,” describing unintended consequences of drug prohibition policy.
These studies essentially called for the decriminalization of mental-health and substance-use issues and for a new way of thinking about them. Focusing on its own back yard, and recognizing the high incidence of alcohol and substance-use problems among lawyers, judges, and law students, the City Bar formed the Special Committee on Lawyer Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in the 80s. And in 1999, the City Bar created the Lawyer Assistance Program (LAP), with then-President Michael A. Cooper writing in the January 1999 issue of this newsletter, “It is time, indeed, past time, that we took care of our colleagues suffering from this scourge. Consequently, we plan to establish a New York City Lawyer Assistance Program staffed by a qualified professional, who will be able to respond to self-referrals and referrals by others (i.e., colleagues, judges, disciplinary committees and family members), intervene when a lawyer threatens to harm himself or others irreparably, coordinate the monitoring of attorneys in recovery, and conduct a vigorous outreach program to inform lawyers, judges, and the community at large of the availability of the program.”
Supported by New York States’ Chief Judges and its Courts over the years, LAP has expanded its scope to include all addictive disorders, including gambling, sexual and eating disorders, specific mental health issues, including stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, trauma, ADD, and anger management, as well as any issue for which an attorney, judge, or law student needs support.
The transformation in how substance-use and mental-health issues are viewed in the legal community is a feel-good story in itself. Following a well-received and widely-discussed research study it co-sponsored in 2016, the ABA has developed a “Well-Being Pledge,” calling on legal employers to recognize that substance use and mental health problems represent a significant challenge for the legal profession and acknowledge that more can be done to address these issues. Many of the big law firms in New York City have signed on and are partnering with LAP on presentations to their lawyers and staff. A recent multipart series in The American Lawyer and first-person accounts in the New York Law Journal of lawyers struggling with addiction and depression have resonated throughout the legal community.
Today, we can look back at those 1962 and 1994 reports as pioneering the path toward a “wellness” and “well-being” mindset in the legal profession.
