Lawyers face tremendous professional stress in the best of times between long hours, deadlines, and the adversarial nature of the work itself. The landmark 2016 report, The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns Among American Attorneys[1], showed that attorneys experience problematic drinking at a rate much higher than other populations
With the coronavirus pandemic surging across the US and around the world, my family, along with millions of other Americans, will be sacrificing our usual Thanksgiving celebration in order to stay safe and to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. If you’re a lawyer who’s in the same boat, I hope that, like me,
Can you ethically withdraw from representing a client if you fear contracting COVID-19 as a result of some aspect of the representation? Earlier this month, the New York State Bar Association issued an ethics opinion that said “Yes,” provided that the lawyer gets any necessary permission from a tribunal. While advisory for New York lawyers
It’s no secret that lawyers struggle at disproportionate rates with mental-health and substance-abuse issues. The National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being reported in 2017 that in a study of 13,000 practicing lawyers, 28 percent struggled with depression; 19 percent struggled with anxiety; and between 21 and 36 percent qualified as “problem drinkers.” Most at risk
In the movie “Goodfellas,” Robert De Niro famously advises that the two greatest life lessons are “Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut.” Those are good rules if you’re in a crime syndicate. But as most lawyers know, our Rules of Professional Conduct can actually require us to “rat out” our
Greetings 2018! Time for some ethics trend predictions to kick off the Year of the Dog (according to the Chinese zodiac). Let it be a year in which you doggedly pursue ethical practice (ouch). No more bad puns — here’s what’s hot as we begin the year:
Law firm cyber-security
No surprise here that the