I’m 10 years old and just won enough money performing in a group at a talent show to buy the toy I’d had my eye on for months. This is how the story of my first regret begins. The show, put on by my religious community, was aimed at raising money for a capital project. […]
The legal profession has a problem. Lawyers are suffering and, far too often, they are taking their own lives. Lawyers, as a group, are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from depression than the average person. A John Hopkins study found that of 104 occupations, lawyers were the most likely to suffer depression. Further, according […]
Personal stories can be either the easiest to tell, or the hardest. Easiest, because we know our own stories so well; hardest, because they often reveal things about ourselves or those close to us that we might prefer not to disclose. This story is both. I was 30 and divorced when I fell in love […]
The LAP recently conducted an interview with a managing partner of a firm who years ago orchestrated an intervention with a leading lawyer in the firm. This example illustrates how a law firm can proactively address an issue of impairment. The following is taken from that interview and told from the point of view of […]
I am a wife. I am a lawyer. I am the wife of a lawyer. My father is a lawyer. My husband’s father is a lawyer. My first cousin on my mother’s side is a lawyer. If you have ever seen the movie My Cousin Vinny, you know where I am going here. Despite all […]
Mid-November 2000 I was lying on a couch in my office with the lights out, hoping the room would stop spinning. It was around 8:30 am and I found myself in the same situation again: hung over at work and desperate. I was desperate not to have to go to court and act like everything […]
Over the years I have heard from hundreds of you who have read this column and taken the time to say thank you for something that I said that was helpful to you. This column is my time to say thanks to you. Thank you for reading the column and thank you for reaching out […]
In September 2005 I was driving down I-95 to a Florida treatment center for what I believed would be a 90-day stay in beautiful South Florida. I really did not know much about where I was going or what I was going to do, but Ed Ward of the North Carolina Lawyers Assistance Program had […]
The legal profession is a helping profession. Most days lawyers find themselves trying to solve problems for their clients. We are paid to have answers and to fix situations that have gone awry. One of the difficulties for professionals who are supposed to have the answers for others is that it is difficult for them […]
A new evidence-based protocol offers insight into helping those at risk because of their drinking. Most people in America drink little or nothing at all, but a significant number of those who do drink develop problems. We know from cost analyses and review of morbidity and mortality statistics that alcoholism is a number one health […]
In the years between 1984 and 1993, the Mecklenburg County Bar Association in Charlotte, NC lost eight members to suicide. Put in the context of my arrival as the bar’s first executive director in 1984, this translates to eight suicides in nine years. Seven men and one woman took their lives in that span of […]
The LAP received a call on the afternoon of July 24, 2007, from the daughter of an aging attorney. She said that she needed assistance to help her 90-year-old father close his law practice. Though I did not speak with the woman, my initial impression was that she was seeking to have someone from the […]