ABA Offers Free Program on Preventing Suicide
We’ve reported on two suicides that have happened in the legal community after attorneys have lost their jobs. The National Law Journal reports on another apparent suicide that occurred in December at King & Spalding.
Is the recession economy pushing lawyers over the edge, or is it the just the general stress of the profession?
It is difficult to gauge whether these three recent deaths indicate a rise in attorney suicides; recent statistics are hard to come by. And it has been more than 20 years since the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety released a study that ranked lawyers fifth among workers in the frequency with which they commit suicide. Psychologists and attorneys, however, say factors in the profession that may contribute to suicide have likely grown worse, not better. Lawyers, they say, may be primed for depression because of their heavy workload and legal training that accentuates the negative.“We really, as lawyers, are dunked into a bath of stress,” said Dan Lukasik, a trial lawyer whose Web site Lawyers with Depression has seen a 50 percent jump in hits in the past six months. “You’re sitting there stewing in your own stress chemicals and that goes on for years.”
After the jump, the ABA offers some resources for those who are confronting depression.
To the extent that suicide is a problem (emerging or constant) in the legal profession, law firms themselves don’t seem particularly equipped to tackle the problem head on:
Of 12 large law firms contacted for information about counseling or treatment services they provide for lawyers, including many that have cut attorneys and staff, 10 declined to comment or did not return calls. Nearly all major law firms have employee assistance programs, in which staff and attorneys have access to counselors who can help them with mental health and substance abuse programs. Still, firms don’t seem to have expanded such services since the economic downturn hit.
If this is a problem, the we need our professional governing body to try to help. This morning, the ABA made a potentially helpful program available for free. Here’s the email announcement from Rick Vittenson, the director of the ABA Center for CLE:
I wanted to let you know that [the] request to make the program entitled “What Lawyers Need to Know About Suicide During a Recession: Prevention, Identity and Law Firm Responsibility” available free of charge did not go unheeded.The program’s sponsors have agreed to make the program free as a download, including audio and program materials. Within 24 hours, the program should be available through the ABA Web Store, the ABA-CLE web pages, and the ABA’s Economic Recession Recovery pages.
The program is available here.
It’s a start. Hopefully, mental health will be an issue that individuals do not take for granted.
Economic Downturn Raising Suicide Risk Factors Among Attorneys [National Law Journal]
Disappointments Preceded Suicides by Lawyers at Three Major Law Firms [ABA Journal]
Earlier: Tragic News From Simpson Thacher
Breaking: Sad Day at Kilpatrick Stockton
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FIRST to say AHHHH HELP!!
When you come in on Monday, and you're not feelin' real well, does anyone ever say to you, 'Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays'?
In the past, I have found it amusing to make light of suicide to further my own agenda. Today is no different.
Nah man. Nah man! I imagine you'd get your ass kicked sayin' somethin' like that.
This is just a terrible terrible profession. I wonder if the American Medical Association has to offer similar resources for suicidal MDs. Something tells me no.
Newsflash: Elie joins the ABA in reporting that lawyers are killing themselves based on the dubious evidence of three (3!!) suicides in six months.
The only likely effect is to encourage copycats, thus causing the reporting to become self-fulfilling.
Just sayin'...
1,
Don't you get it bitch, no one can hear you!
7,
Now shut the fuck up and get what's coming to you!
ABA, nice gesture but where were you when you allowed Joan King to publish her inflated statistics? I am now buried under 160K of non-dischargeable debt and I can't even get a job at Starbucks. I need debt relief, not someone to chat with.
8,
You were supposed to love me!
To stop my suicide you would have to go back in time and tell me that Latham NY was going to whack half its first years. With no job prospects, a diminishing severance, massive student loan debt, and no hope what options do I have besides commiting suicide at the lipstick building during the summer program?
-suicidal laid-off latham first years.
10,
NOW BLEED, BITCH, BLEED!
Wait, Elie's been deleting my suicide comments and people have killed self anyway? I can't believe it!
Maybe now you'll listen to and help us instead of just pretending our suicides aren't imminent.
And no, it's not the stress of the work. It's knowing that I'm fucked for life now.
This is why you don't lay off first years asshole! It fucks you for life. How the fuck am I supposed to compete with the laid off 3rd years and 5th years, etc? I have little experience!
-suicidal laid-off first year
Suicide is painless...it brings on many changes
Oh yah, I'm going to go to a program on suicide prevention, that helps a lot!!!!
You know what would help? Repairing my fucked career.
-suicidal laid-off v10 (gee, wonder which one) first year
ty 14.
-suicidal laid-off v10 (gee, wonder which one) first year
ps. this is why you don't lay off first years. it fucks you for life.
Poor little law grads can't take the real world. Gosh, I would think that someone supposedly qualified to work in BigLaw and make $160K would be able to take care of themselves. If a little rain falling on their parade produces such an extreme reaction, just imagine what their life would have been like practicing law as a real lawyer. I guess this is why they want to hide out in BigLaw, where the practice of law is just practice.
3 suicides is NOTHING. Wait 'till the 70 or so laid-off Latham first years run out of severance money.
This is why you don't lay off first years. There's no coming back from it.
I pounded a Cardozo chick in the ass once at a moot court competition.
Dave Gordon REMAINS
17, biglaw people take their careers very seriously + have tons of debt. losing the thing upon which you based your self worth + financial troubles can have a devastating impact on a person.
please, shut the fuck up.
20, but how?
17--who are the "real lawyers"?
wow, this is kind of messed up. I don't know if this is encouraging that someone is taking initiative or just plain scary that this is needed.
Seriously, just call the loan people up and say you got laid-off. Either they will defer or reduce your loan payments.
In no case would they send a guy to knee-cap you.
I would rather commit hari kari than live in Houston.
UVA2L
Is incest still legal in Texas?
Comment removed by moderator.
21 said, biglaw people take their careers very seriously + have tons of debt. losing the thing upon which you based your self worth + financial troubles can have a devastating impact on a person.
Gee, I think this is the point. Someone graduating from law school hopefully would know enough not to base their self worth on whether they get and keep a particular job. Life's a bitch, the you die.
21 said, biglaw people take their careers very seriously + have tons of debt. losing the thing upon which you based your self worth + financial troubles can have a devastating impact on a person.
Gee, I think this is the point. Someone graduating from law school hopefully would know enough not to base their self worth on whether they get and keep a particular job. Life's a bitch, the you die.
ABA's Free Suicide Program (tm) requires a non-refunable $1999.95 shipping and processing fee. Other programs will follow. Keep only those you want. Cancel any time.
"Someone graduating from law school hopefully would know enough not to base their self worth on whether they get and keep a particular job."
the people wiiling to go through the trouble to get to biglaw are the ones who consider it important enough to kill self over.
31, lol. those greedy aba fuckers
This problem is more widespread than some of you think. An attorney friend of mine has been in the hospital since a suicide attempt a few weeks ago.
Although he was once a partner at a mid-sized firm, since then, my friend has slid down the attorney food chain and has supported himself since the last downturn through contract work. (It is indeed true; once you start down the contract attorney path, it is very hard to get off it, especially if you're older.)
Unable to find any kind of work since being laid off from his last contract gig in the fall, my friend recently lost his apartment, moved in with relatives and is flat broke.
I'm not sure whether he has medical insurance to cover his hospital stay; he paid for insurance as long as he could, since he has chronic medical problems, but the last I heard, he was trying to get Medicaid.
Neither am I even sure how he is doing right now. He hasn’t been answering his e-mail.
This post should be entitled.
King & Spalding murders lawyer.
Bad news, everyone?
http://theinfosphere.org/File:Suicide_Booth.jpg
34 is so correct. Things are tough for associates, but also for those of us who are contract lawyers and service partners. Many of us are middle age, with families, mortgages, kids in college or private schools because public schools in certain cities are unthinkable, and God knows, property taxes.
Now, who in this economy is going to hire a 50 something service partner? And you kids out there, don't forget that service partners are necessary. Sometimes, somebody seasoned needs to direct associates of all levels while the rain-making partner blusters, attends executive committee members and tells the clients how well the firm is doing on their matter. And remember, we are now competing with you.
Now where are these people going to go? It's a real problem for them, and I personally think, maybe you ought to take this horrible opportunity to re-think your career. This could happen to you someday when there are no parents to move back in with.
Unfortunately, some people feel they have no options. Sometimes I feel I am that situation, with no employment and no insurance. But for the fact that I have a second wife (the first a casuality of very long hours at a very big NY firm, in large part), and young kids, in addition to older ones in college, I might think I had no reason to live, as well.
It's hard.
Thanks for the candor, 37.
After years of being pushed to go to "law school," where you learn nothing of use, and years of meaningless paperpushing in mindnumbing offices, you finally wake up and realize that you are living an unhappy life and doing nothing productive with your time. Yes it is a very unhappy profession. Why there is this great push into it, or prestige surrounding it, is a mystery to me. So suicide over it - yes, I can see that. Especially if you are supporting a family from this nonsense. For such a guy, there is no way out. Odds are a guy in this situation (and layoffs affect breadwinning men more than women) is faced with his wife leaving him for some guy in bettter circumstances, yet still having to pay the bills for her and the little brats.
What does one do? Start over in some other low level profession? I suppose that is the answer. But it is not an easy one.
>
Maybe they wouldn't be "unthinkable" if people started sending their kids to them. I supposes in state universities are generally "unthinkable"?
And thank you, 25.
I "suppose", I mean.
If you read the NLJ article, you'll see that at least 1 of these 3 was nothing to do with layoffs...it was related to a devastating trial loss for a major client, and a regrettable decision to move a team to Charlotte just before the business dried up (which, admittedly, would later result in layoffs).
Point is, it was the stress & pressure of the job that did in that K&S attorney, not a layoff. And if you read the medical studies linked to in that NLJ article, you'll see there are sound reasons why our career path is more prone to such depression. Sad, really. And a good reason for all of those saying something like 'lawyers are whiners for not being able to handle the same recession that the rest of the country is going through" to STFU. Our sadness doesn't negate the pain of others...it's just...sad, all by itself.
The answer is that the people who run BigLaw firms are largely evil and don't give a fuck whether you live or die. Like when the management committee at Thacher Proffitt told everyone they were looking for a merger but then secured a lateral deal of its own with Sonnenschein, and told more than half of the firm, "Good luck and goodbye".
It's not worth doing unless you do it in a very public, dramatic way to make your point. I'm fond of press conferences. Mark Levy's effort was credible, too,
44 - I wanted to shoot a partner in our practice group meeting. Good?
I went to the lawyers service in DC and they suck. They spent more time accusing me of being an alcoholic than helping me with the issue I can in with. The whole thing makes me so angry I think I need a drink.
What will bars and liquor stores do if lawyers now turn to death rather than drink?
46 is a typical story. if you go to any counselor for the first time and they do a full evaluation, and you tell them you use alcohol-even once a week- as long as you say you use it to "relax" you have an alcohol problem and they will claim that is your main problem. in mental health religion-alcohol's only proper purpose is to recreate-and even then its dangerous.
on the other hand-if you do have an alcohol problem-its probably much more solvable than your non discharge able 6 figure debt with no job.
#44, you hit the nail on the head.
---
The answer is that the people who run BigLaw firms are largely evil and don't give a fuck whether you live or die.
37 hit the nail on the head. There myself. Watching children of friends grapple with imminent graduation - and no job or, um, 'elusive' job - and watching some decide whether to go to law school, even the (whatever you call them on this site) Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Berkley. My universal advice - GET OUT NOW. It will be DECADES before this 'learned profession' is a 'nice' and lucrative (read: able to pay student loans and live, more or less in the same lifetime) business to be in. From now till then, BLOODBATH. And, yah, service partners are being screwed just as bad, maybe worse than, incoming associates/baby associates...it will get worse before it gets better, all the way around....
signed,
Black Monday
Hopefully I can add to this discussion...
1) First, anyone who takes this issue lightly is just a flame and should be ignored. Even if they are trying to be serious, I can guarantee they are not facing similar circumstances and are by no means sharing with everyone based on how they reacted during a crisis situation that really tested their resolve and character.
2) I used to be the type of person that would tell people who were down to just snap out of it, to take control of life, move on, get a grip, or whatever until I went through a pretty intense existential crisis myself. There is no just snapping out of it as your mind and the very will that humans use to push through adversity turns against you.
3) Whether there is merit to this or not, the pressure professionals face in this country is intense and exasperates failure. Instead of being poor and a failure like everyone else, Americans tend to face adversity in isolation. In some cases it feels worse because you are inundated with the success of others and reminded that something went wrong in your own life every single day. Also, you can directly link the circumstances to decisions you made (e.g. law school, 90 hour weeks, investments, etc...) unlike circumstances following a tragic event like an earthquake. In some ways life feels worse because you feel like "you" failed rather than feeling like you are just facing a tough situation brought on by natural forces. Remember, when unemployment hits 10%, that still means that 90%!!! of your friends and neighbors are employed and not only avoiding the pain you are going through, but unfortunately also serving as a reminder of what you had and believe you should still have.
Fortunately I have made it through this recession. One thing I can say is that the circumstances do not change usually or only do so over a long period of time. Based on my own personal experience and in working with others, one thing I can say is that you absolutely must get help from a professional and do everything they tell you to do. They are not going to get rid of your debt or get you a job, but they will help you adjust your thinking so you do not feel like suicide is the only way out. They will also help you to think clearly so you can actually figure a way out of the situation you are facing with a clear mind. If you are just pissed about the situation, don't bother to call anyone. However, if you are severely depressed and even suicidal, stop drinking and call someone.
37 and 51-- Thanks for your comments. We could do with more thoughtful responses such as yours, and fewer of the snide comments which try to showcase the poster's cleverness but fail to address the substance of the issue under discussion.
yawn
35 - you got it right. sounds like the other partners at KS faked the suicide in order to steal the guy's clients. I wonder if they waited until the body was cold to take the clients ?
if we could get just one king and spalding parter to committ suicide every week ... that would be a wonderful thing
King & Spalding Socked with $90k Discovery Sanction
This is one of those "think before you leap" lessons. Lawyer A says Lawyer B had obstructed discovery and misrepresented facts to the court. Judge says he's going to figure out who's telling the truth. He did so. Essentially, the court lambasted K&S's counsel for accusing Duane Morris's counsel of being uncooperative in discovery. The order in the patent infringement suit of CBT Flint Partners v. Return Path, No. 1:07-CV-1822 (N.D. Ga. Aug. 2008) is here:
http://www.dailyreportonline.com/Editorial/PDF/PDF%20Archive/Cisco-order2-081908.pdf
and the an article about it, is here:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202423885428
Based upon my experience there, this is how they operate all of the time in all offices and in all practice areas - a cut throat, unprofessional, and, often, unethical law firm
Why would anyone in their right mind hire King and Spalding ?