Robin M. Belleau
Patrick R. Krill
Sheila M. Murphy
John E. Corkery
How can a lawyer recovering from alcoholism climb the career ladder when firm celebrations revolve around post-work drinks? How can he or she meet fellow practitioners at drinking-centric networking events?
How can a lawyer, trained to be a self-sufficient problem-solver, acknowledge when he or she is struggling with substance addiction? And what can that lawyer do once the struggle is acknowledged?
About 60 members of the profession gathered Monday at the University Club for a panel hosted by the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation to gain answers to those questions.
“We all live in our heads,” panelist John E. Corkery, dean of The John Marshall Law School, said about lawyers.
“We believe we can think our way out of emotional problems instead of dealing with emotions. After a while … these emotions begin to fight back and cause problems.”
A survey by Hazelden Betty Ford due early next year with 30,000 to 40,000 respondents will provide an updated perspective on alcoholism in the profession.
That’s because the foundation’s best data comes from a study in 1990.
That survey — by the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry — showed that while about 10 percent of non-lawyers in the United States struggled with “problem drinking,” lawyers with two to 20 years of experience are at about 18 percent.
For attorneys with more than 20 years of experience, the figure climbs to 20 to 25 percent.
According to panel host Patrick R. Krill, director of the foundation’s legal professionals program, the new numbers will likely be worse.
“That speculation is based on a number of reasons, not the least of which is the profound changes that have occurred in the profession,” Krill said. “It’s arguably more stressful, more competitive, more demanding than it’s ever been.”
Another reason the foundation’s surveyors believe new data will reveal a rise in attorney alcoholism is a rise in factors that Krill said “co-occur” with alcoholism, such as depression and anxiety.
To examine the root of these factors and the resulting addiction, Krill turned to Corkery and fellow panelist Sheila M. Murphy, a retired Cook County Circuit Court judge, now an adjunct professor at John Marshall.
“The law school experience is a time of great anxiety,” Murphy said. “The anxiety can lead to depression, and I think it’s all founded in fear — that no matter how smart you were in high school or college, you might not be smart enough now.”
Murphy suggested that the new emphasis on clinical education in law schools might have the unintended effect of preventing depression and, hence, diminishing addiction because of the hours spent outside the classroom working in groups.
Those activities can help prevent the isolation that both causes and results from alcoholism.
Corkery added that the pressure of law school leads to greater use of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder medication such as Adderall which can be as harmful as — and may lead to — alcohol abuse.
He cited monkey experiments in the 1930s as a metaphor for the law school experience.
In one experiment designed to induce neurosis, a monkey in a box received a shock when shown a square and did not receive a shock when shown a circle.
Slowly, the edges of the square were rounded while the circle was given hard edges and corners, creating identical images and driving the monkey mad.
“That’s really what you do in law school,” Corkery said. “You teach people these distinctions and then you shave off the corners, so that by the time of the exam, it’s very difficult to tell whether that’s a circle or a square.”
Corkery also identified a factor in the legal profession that creates a desire for self-medication.
“There’s not necessarily a lot of inherent satisfaction in the work that lawyers do,” Corkery said.
“They might save one corporation an eighth of a percent on some deal, and they’ll be well paid for it, but there’s not a lot of satisfaction there. Or they might do a divorce and they don’t like either of the parties.
“In law we say, ‘The best settlement is one that neither side likes.’ Well, that’s not so satisfying. ‘I got 100 settlements that neither side likes. Boy, am I proud of that.’ … There are certain aspects of our profession that will lend themselves to addiction or emotional distress.”
The event’s emcee, lawyer and journalist Lester E. Munson Jr., can relate to those pressures — he is a recovering alcoholic who told the audience about his struggle with addiction.
“I think that if somebody had been working hard to reduce the stigma of alcoholism, if somebody had been explaining the disease concept, if somebody had been explaining that life was possible without alcohol, I would have been happy to listen,” Munson said after the event. “I never heard any of that, with a few exceptions, when I was out there.”
A lawyer’s reluctance to ask for help with addiction stems in part from being “ostracized” when asking for help about legal matters in school and practice, said panelist Robin M. Belleau of the Lawyers’ Assistance Program.
“There’s a little bit of, we refer to it as ‘hazing,’ that sometimes goes on with some of these professors,” Belleau said.
“You learn, ‘I’m not going to ask a question. I’m not going to ask for help.’ That’s one of the things that we experience at the Lawyers’ Assistance Program a lot is that people ... have learned early on not to ask for help.”
For many lawyers, Belleau said, that problem continues in practice.
“I remember when I went to private practice, I was told that they had an open-door policy,” Belleau said.
“I went in and asked a question and I learned real quickly that no, you don’t do that. You’re made to feel dumb, you’re made to feel stupid — and not that this happens at every firm, but unfortunately I think it’s a bit of a trend, especially at a lot of these big firms. You just don’t ask questions. You’re a problem-solver.”
Along with offering counseling to attorneys struggling with addiction and trying to re-engage the state’s law schools via a newly formed law school advisory committee, LAP is encouraging the legal community to host events not centered around drinking.
“One of the big things we tell (our clients) is to not isolate — to go out and meet other people,” Belleau said after the event.
“But they said that a lot of these events surround alcohol. There’s really nothing that they can engage in that doesn’t have that there or push that. You’re made to feel like an outsider if you’re not using.”