Partner Response To Tragic Loss Of Associate Strikes Core Of How Biglaw Struggles With Death
Mental health resources are critical, but management training can go a long way too.
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The loss of attorneys to suicide presents an ongoing challenge to the legal industry. Not just because it’s a loss that forces lawyers to consider the impact the stress of the profession places on people and the strain it can cause to someone’s established support group, but because it forces attorneys to confront the aftermath of tragic loss, often without a sense of the vocabulary for it.
Moreover, the distributed management style of law firms, where practice groups and individual partners often dictate the management of their teams shielded or at least quasi-shielded from direct oversight. Presenting a uniform and informed response is uniquely difficult when firms structure themselves, to some extent, as a collection of self-contained fiefdoms.
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Sheppard Mullin recently lost an associate and provided this statement:
It is with heavy hearts we confirm that one of our New York associates, [], passed away on February 4. [] joined the firm almost three years ago and quickly became a positive influence in the office and across the firm. She was a terrific attorney, a true firm citizen and a wonderful person, showing so much passion for her work and colleagues alike. She was much loved by those who knew and worked with her and will be greatly missed. The entire Sheppard Mullin community sends our deepest sympathies to []’s family and her friends.
[Ed. note: The firm statement identifies the associate and the original article included the statement verbatim. At the request of her family we’ve redacted this.]
As the firm reels from that loss, the firm’s second such loss in the span of a year, a conversation on the Fishbowl boards focused on a troubling response from an unnamed partner:
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Responses to this post generally came down hard on the partner:
And:
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Asking lawyers to suck it up and work harder after the firm experiences a trauma like this represents a cultural breakdown. It also highlights how management from silos all but guarantees someone will approach the situation without appreciating that everyone is going to deal with this differently.
When I first read this exchange, my take mirrored that of the following poster: that the partner wasn’t aiming to be malicious and shrug off the issue, but was exhorting younger associates to pick up the slack of the deceased’s senior colleagues — implying that grief would or should be isolated to the lawyer’s peer group.
Which is ridiculous. Close friends and colleagues will deal with this grief hard, but when someone is lost like this, all lawyers in the firm are going to see some of their own experiences in the event. Their feelings are no less valid just because they’re billing at a lower rate.
As the original poster replied:
That went from well-meaning but misguided to inappropriate very quickly. Though it does go back to lacking the vocabulary to address tragedy in the confines of a law firm. There’s just no method of communicating that someone needs to help cover for someone else without chastising them over their billables. Even if the logic was not “you need to bill more” but “I see you have extra bandwidth,” it still takes a stressful situation and adds a layer of surveillance with a dash of “you’re just a cog” messaging.
In any event, firms need to build the emotional bollards to guide everyone through this. Which the firm is taking steps toward offering aid to help everyone through the trauma:
Supporting our people during this tragedy is a priority. As a firm and as an industry, we must confront and openly discuss mental health. Across the firm, we have had many candid conversations about mental health – and we will continue to do so. By sharing our personal stories and by listening to those around us, we can better understand how to help others in our work and personal families. We have many resources at Sheppard Mullin dedicated to mental health and well-being, including counseling offered through Lyra Health and Wellness, a Sheppard Mullin-sponsored benefit that provides personalized mental and emotional healthcare for all partners, employees and their dependents. The firm’s “Help Starts Here Team” provides employees a safe first point of contact if they or someone they know is struggling. We also continue to work with mental health mentor and speaker Cameron Stout as an ongoing resources to help facilitate these discussions and help us identify even more ways we can support our attorneys and staff.
Offering support for people who think they need it is a huge part of coping, but ensuring that managers know how to manage matters too. Without all the distributed nodes of leadership in the firm recognizing the gravity of what’s happened and appreciating how it will reverberate through different corners of the firm, the recovery will get compromised.
This goes beyond this firm and this tragedy as well. Corporate America offers management training worked out with scientific (or at least quasi-scientific) efficiency because they want to know their managers can manage. Law firms, traditionally, take good lawyers and let them wing it as managers. It works for some people and it fails for many more. Realizing that partners are managers would resolve a lot of law firm problems. And it could go a long way to helping firms avoid the toxicity, callousness, and obliviousness that can crop up in the aftermath of a loss.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
