Health / Wellness, Law Schools

The Addicted Lawyer: My Moot Court Partner Was Jose Cuervo

Safe to say, the booze did nothing to enhance his performance in moot court.

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Brian Cuban

Brian Cuban

One of my favorite movie lines is from a 1994 dark comedy entitled Swimming With Sharks. With “sharks” in the title, you might think it’s about lawyers, but it’s actually about the cutthroat world of Hollywood producers. In one particular scene, the character Buddy Ackerman, a top movie executive played by Kevin Spacey, is on the phone berating a subordinate over differences in opinion concerning a movie production. He closes with, “Say this one time with me: ‘Would you like that in a pump or a loafer?’. . . Good. Now memorize it, because starting tomorrow, the only job that you’re going to be able to get is selling SHOES!”

When I saw the movie as an adult, I instantly flashed back to the feeling I had as I walked out of my first (and last) moot court competition at Pitt Law.

For me, volunteering to participate in a process that could further degrade my sense of self-worth was akin to agreeing to be water-boarded. So how did I end up voluntarily sitting before a panel of third-year law student “judges” trying to argue the ins and outs of the Fourth Amendment implications of Illinois vs. Gates? I decided that if I could survive the process and argue my case well, it would be proof to other students and myself that I deserved to be there, and so it was a chance to boost my self-esteem. Unfortunately, the closer it came to oral argument day, the worse the anxiety and self-doubt got. The morning of the event, the only way I could get myself out of my apartment was to “loosen up” beforehand. Moot court, meet Jose Cuervo.

My decision to drink before the session was kin to decisions I’d make throughout my life. The only way I could face stressful and possibly self-worth-deflating situations was through the use of drugs and alcohol.

Safe to say, the booze did nothing to enhance my performance. The judges “eye-rolled” and sighed all the way through my argument ranging from barely competent to outright gibberish.  My biggest concern was not getting close enough to them so they could smell the booze on my breath.  A week later, I walked out of my evaluation and ran into my moot-court partner, Eric. We had taken different issues in the case to argue. “I think I did okay,” he said. “They told me I had the potential to be a star. How did you do?”  I told him I did about as well as I expected, then walked away thinking about my future career as a shoe salesman.

That was 1984.  I know today, in talking to others who went to Pitt Law at that time, I was not the only one dealing with substance use issues. Would my path through law school and life been any different if someone had taken notice and said something? I am not laying blame. Ultimately, recovery had to be my choice and I had no idea I was even ill. Make no mistake, addiction is an illness.

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The primary function of a law school is to turn out good lawyers, but “good” should be looked at in a broader sense than legal knowledge. Sitting back and hoping a student suddenly develops the self-awareness necessary to talk to someone is not the answer. The stigma of getting help in the general public is intense, and in an ultra-competitive law school environment it can be even worse. Law schools must be proactive. That requires a plan. That requires a systemic way of dealing with the problem. That does not mean turning a law school into a mental health clinic and the attendant need for funding of extra services.  It simply means starting with some basic education, and providing an established gateway to access mental health services at both the school and in the community. Establishing a relationship with university mental health services. Establishing one with the local Lawyers Assistance Program. Involving them in 1L orientation. Liaising them with faculty.  Encouraging faculty to take interest in more than the lesson plan. Some won’t be amenable but some will and probably already are. They may want to intervene but do not have the information necessary to empower themselves to get past the barrier of “meddling.”  Each new person taking interest is a new touch point to possibly change the course of a student’s education and life for the better. Maybe even save a life.

A great place to start that costs nothing but a little reading time, and in my opinion, should be required reading for every law school administrator and faculty member, is the recent article authored by Jerome M. Organ, David B. Jaffe, and Katherine M. Bender, Ph.D. entitled, “Suffering in Silence: The Survey of Law Student Well-Being and the Reluctance of Law Students to Seek Help for Substance Use and Mental Health Concerns.”

            Start there. Build from there. Create a stigma free, mental health gateway to recovery for students who want to take it. Selling shoes is honorable an honorable profession, but I’d have rather done my moot court sober. I just didn’t know I had a choice.  That choice was recovery.

  1. http://www.americanbar.org/groups/lawyer_assistance.html
  2. http://collegiaterecovery.org/programs/
  3. http://www.aa.org/
  4. http://www.smartrecovery.org/
  5. http://www.celebraterecovery.com/

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Brian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.

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