Law firms have long had a problem addressing mental health issues, but this year, lawyers are feeling added stress, not just because of attacks on law firms but the broader assault on the rule of law.
The shift toward autocracy is happening in a number of places around the world, but no more so, perhaps, than in the U.S., where the Trump administration has launched attacks on immigrants, diversity, academic freedom, trans people, civil rights, the media, individual judges and the overall judiciary, and, of course, lawyers and law firms.
For lawyers, this is not a question of which end of the political spectrum you’re on. Most U.S. lawyers, who have to take an oath to uphold the Constitution and are considered officers of the court—meaning they are responsible for upholding the law and promoting justice—take that responsibility seriously. They are concerned and even anxious about what they perceive to be the weaponization of regulatory agencies and the punitive actions taken against critics of the president and his administration.
But this added anxiety is not being widely addressed by Big Law.
“I think there’s a little bit of mental health awareness fatigue at law firms right now,” Neel Chatterjee, a prominent litigator at Goodwin Procter, told me, explaining that firms have been dealing with an onslaught of issues affecting mental health for years—at least since the 2008 financial crisis and continuing through the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, ending abortion rights, then the 2019-2022 COVID crisis, subsequent return to work mandates, the reelection of Donald Trump in November, and now the intensified attacks on the rule of law.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the U.S. In the U.K., this is the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Week, while European Mental Health Week will take place May 19-25. So this is a good time to note the response, or lack of response, by Big Law to yet another threat to the mental health of partners, associates and staff.
The sometimes toxic culture of law firms—the long hours, the pressures of the billable hour, the demands from clients, the bullying by partners, and the concerns of law firm leaders about profitability and even where a firm will land on the Am Law 100 or the Global 200—are by now well-known, especially after Joanna Litt, the widow of a Sidley Austin partner who died by suicide in 2018, famously wrote in The American Lawyer “Big Law Killed My Husband,” and again when an inquest last year determined that Vanessa Ford, a Pinsents Masons partner in the U.K., had experienced “an acute mental health crisis” before “taking her own life.”
And it’s not limited to U.S. law firms. Canada published its own study on mental health in the legal profession, and a retired chief justice of Ontario has spoken publicly and written about the harm caused by the myth of the “gladiator lawyer.” In Australia, a High Court Judge accused law firms of creating a culture of exploitation.
But at a time when Big Law should be addressing mental health and wellbeing more than ever, lawyers say firms are not doing much. To be sure, some have held town halls, done internal webinars or sent emails to lawyers and staff attempting to justify their decisions, but many have just gone on lockdown, including the firms where mental health intervention may be needed most—those that have made deals with the administration.
“They’re just doing what we would tell clients to do: ‘Don’t communicate about this, don’t talk about it,’ Chatterjee said. “And you know, everyone wants to talk about it.”
