Biglaw Attorney With Depression Wants Other Lawyers To Know They're Not Alone

He says 'going public' with his mental health struggles changed his life for the better.

onJuly 8, 2019 at 3:15 PMJuly 8, 2019 at 2:02 PM

I am heartened for the future because we, as a profession, finally appear ready to start having a real, constructive dialogue on the complicated, and often uncomfortable, issue that is mental health. The dialogue is going to have its ebbs and flows, but it is a dialogue nonetheless—one that we were not having, and in fact actively avoided, until quite recently.

— Mark Goldstein, who works as counsel at Reed Smith, in comments made about what has happened to him since he told the Biglaw world about his mental health struggles this past February in an op-ed published in the American Lawyer. Since that time, Goldstein has received thousands of letters of support from members of the legal profession. Goldstein closes his latest op-ed piece with the following: “I suffer from mental health disabilities. And if you do too, or if you simply are passionate about or can relate to this issue, remember that you are not alone and that together, we can create the future about which I am so heartened.”

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.