Is There a Solution to the Problem of Lawyer Stress? The Law School Perspective

Abstract

Terry J. Coogan, a former partner at a large law firm in Chicago where he averaged eighty hours a week, said he felt like Sisyphus. "There wasn't enough I could do to stay in place," Coogan said. "I was looking for an opportunity to get out. I got pushed out, but it turned out to be a good thing," Coogan recalls. Presently, as in-house counsel for a small, closely held company, Coogan averages just forty-five hours a week and says "a prayer of thanksgiving every day that I don't have to deal with that pressure."

The stress and pressure that Mr. Coogan felt apparently are not unusual. In their article, Lawyer Distress: Alcohol-Related Problems and Other Psychological Concerns Among a Sample of Practicing Lawyers, Connie J.A. Beck, Bruce D. Sales, and G. Andrew H. Benjamin conclude that "an alarming percentage of newly practicing lawyers are reporting a variety of significant psychological distress symptoms well beyond that expected in a normal population." In layman's terms, an ever-increasing number of attorneys are experiencing symptoms of lawyer burnout due to too much stress. The article also indicates that for many lawyers these psychological distress levels remain high throughout their careers. Noting that at least one researcher found lawyers to regularly use alcohol as a coping mechanism to reduce stress, the authors also looked at the lifetime likelihood of alcohol problems in their own sample study. They found that approximately seventy percent of the lawyers sampled were likely to develop alcohol problems over their lifetime.

The purpose of this commentary on the Beck, Sales, and Benjamin study is to focus on a significant subset of the legal community - the private law firm practitioners - and offer a few observations and suggestions. While stress is certainly a pervasive problem within the legal profession, it may be most acute in the law firm setting because of the emphasis on maximizing billable hours or increasing cash flow and file closings in firms that depend largely on contingency fees. Although a multi-pronged approach to dealing with this problem is suggested, our attention is devoted ultimately to the legal academy, where one author presently resides as a faculty member/administrator and from which the other graduated shortly after completing work on this article.