Excerpts from our CBA Podcasts cross channel series on Mental Health in the Legal Profession.
Excerpts from our CBA Podcasts cross channel series on Mental Health in the Legal Profession. With Glen Hickerson from the CBA well-being subcommittee, former Chief Justice of Ontario George Strathy, Sania Chaudhry, Yves Faguy, editor of the CBA National Magazine, Jason Ward, former CBA President, Stephen Rothstein, the Hon. Justice Mahmud Jamal, the Hon. Justice Michele Hollins of King's Bench Alberta, and the author of the Report on the Psychological Health Determinants of Legal Professionals in Canada from the university of Sherbrooke, Dr. Nathalie Cadieux. Hosted by Julia Tétrault-Provencher.
The National Study on the Psychological Health Determinants of Legal Professionals in Canada
Best of CBA Podcasts on Mental Health in the Legal Profession
[Start of recorded material 00:00:01]
Julia: Welcome to our Best of CBA Podcasts on Mental Health in the Legal Profession on The Every Lawyer. I’m Julia Tetrault-Provencher. Register now for the CBA Wellbeing Conference in Toronto on November 7th, 2023, at cba.org.
Male: This is The Every Lawyer presented by the Canadian Bar Association.
Julia: Not that it wasn’t on our radars before, but the COVID pandemic, which began in December 2019 and officially ended in May 2023, put mental health squarely in the mainstream. Thanks in part to many of the voices you will hear in this episode, the stigma surrounding mental health in the legal profession, which is considerably given that we trade in mental equity, is being removed. In 2022, the Federation of Law Societies, the CBA and the University of Sherbrooke released their report on the national study on the psychological health determinants of legal professionals in Canada.
Extensive and comprehensive, it provides the facts and numbers that back up what we have all [unintelligible 00:01:09] for a while now. Legal professionals face alarming rates of mental distress. In this episode, you will hear from back-to-front, Glen Hickerson, Sania Chaudhry, Yves Faguy, editor of the CBA National Magazine, in conversation with Jason Ward. Fromer Ontario Chief Justice George R. Strathy, former CBA president Stephen Rotstein in conversation with the Honourable Justice Mahmud Jamal of the Supreme Court of Canada. As well as the Honourable Justice Michele Hollins of the Court of Queen’s Bench Alberta, and the other of author of the report from the University of Sherbrooke, Dr. Nathalie Cadieux.
Nathalie: Thank you so much. It’s a real pleasure for me to have the occasion to share with [unintelligible 00:02:01] the results of this incredible research project.
Julia: Incredible is the word. I agree with that. Can I ask you, so it’s a very broad question but a bit of the executive summary I would say of this report for those who haven’t had the chance yet to read it. But I’m sure they will after that interview. But in general how is our health?
Nathalie: That’s a great question and I thank you for that question. I have short answer but also a more extensive answer for you. If I start with the short one, I would say that the answer to that question would certainly not be very good or I would say bad. But I think that short answer deserves more nuance and also, at least some support from some of the key indicators that we have measured in this study. So we found the proportion of psychological distress was around the 59 per cent, which is still very high and we hope to, we looked [unintelligible 00:03:08] findings for burnout, we found out that 56 per cent of burnout in the legal profession, 29 per cent of [unintelligible 00:03:19] with the proportion of professionals with moderate to severe [unintelligible 00:03:25] and 36 per cent of society at a worrying level, and 24 per cent of professionals. So almost one in four professionals have had suicidal thoughts during their professional practice, which is really high unfortunately.
I was really surprised when I saw the barriers for professionals to getting help. Barriers are numerous and yet we see that resources are sometimes [unintelligible 00:04:01] for professionals. And when I talk about barriers, they are all the informational barriers. People don’t have access to information about their assistance programs, don’t remember where they should go, don’t know the services that are related to their assistance program or thinks that their problem is not enough important, it will pass.And on the other end we have many barriers related to stigma associated with mental health problems in the legal community.
And like many other high-performance environments.In the study we mentioned personal stigma and perceived stigma in the profession. So professionals [unintelligible 00:04:48] who answered some questions about what do you think about people in your, people who experience some psychological distress in their practice of law. And we asked the same question to professionals related to what do you think that people in your profession think about, about this and what do you think perception gap is. The gap is just over 14 per cent. That’s [unintelligible 00:05:19] and this gap is related to the fact that few professionals have a negative perception of professionals or colleagues who experience mental health issues during their practice. But many perceive that people in their profession have a negative perception of mental health issues.
And there is a significant gap between the perception in the profession and the actual perception of people. And there is no reason for this barrier, nothing at all. Other than the lack of communication about health and if it stays – individual belief fuelled by a lack of quality communication related to mental health. So we have to talk about it [unintelligible 00:05:58] settings and raise awareness and break down [unintelligible 00:06:01]
Julia: So that was Dr. Nathalie Cadieux from the University of Sherbrooke. We continue now with the Honourable Justice Michele Hollins. Justice Hollins has done a lot in terms of raising awareness about mental health, not least by speaking openly about her own struggle with depression. I asked her what she thought about the joint report shortly after it came out.
Michele: I think the two things that really jumped out at me, was first of all how, again how clearly the researchers were able to corelate the experience of anxiety, depression, burnout to particular factors. And of course, I would narrow in on what they call quantitative overload and its relationship to the billable hour system that at least in private practice, most firms still use. I just think that even though it’s shockingly black and white, even though it is completely unsurprising to see that correlation, we have talked about the billable hour system as feeding this monster for years. I saw in the report that ABA, the American Bar Association called the billable hour corrosive 20 years ago, in 2002.
So for 20 years we have known that this is a significant contributing factor to the mental illness that is experienced by so many of our professionals. That was one thing, and the second thing I would say that was, really jumped out at me and again, confirming something that I think most of us know intuitively, but again to see it in black and white is really helpful. Is the disproportionate impact of these things and the disproportionate experience of depression, anxiety and burnout in identifiable groups. Particularly young lawyers was the one that really stood out to me. But women, Indigenous People of colour, LGBTQ lawyers and disabled lawyers, you know it makes perfect sense. But again I think there is just huge value in having those conclusions laid out the way are.
Julie: And do you think it’s something that the profession doesn’t really want to hear? Is there anything that you think is very, you know it stays like that because people don’t want to look at it. And do you think this report will be a way to maybe change that culture that we couldn’t do 20 years ago?
Michele: Well, perhaps. I mean that’s the hope. You know I think, well first of all, in addition to the data I do want to encourage everyone to read the testimonials that are included through this report. I just think they’re so compelling. You just, you’re not going to experience, or you’re not going to absorb everything this report has to tell you if you don’t listen to those individual voices. But I think the part of the story that the profession doesn’t want to hear is that the solutions largely lay within the profession itself. There are absolutely things we can do as individuals, and I have talked about those. I’ve tried to practice those and certainly even in this report there are recommendations. There are suggestions for how we can take better care of ourselves and be more proactive with our own mental health and that is important.
But you know we can’t, young lawyer can’t just change the billable hours system by themselves. That’s going to lay with the organizations and the corporations and the private firms and the Government Departments that have structured the work in such a way that quantitative overload is almost impossible to avoid.
Julia: That was some of my conversation with the Honourable Justice Michele Hollins of Queen’s Bench Alberta. We continue with the Honourable Justice Mahmud Jamal of the Supreme Court of Canada, who in the summer of 2022 spoke to then CBA president Stephen Rotstein.
Stephen: I want to talk to you about another one of the priorities I have as CBA president this year, and it’s talking about mental health and wellness. It’s a huge issue within the legal profession and truthfully a huge issue within Canadian society as a whole. And there’s a lot of taboos about, around mental health that continue to this day. The pandemic has had a silver lining perhaps, is that it’s helped raised awareness of this issue. So I’m just wondering, your thoughts on how we can kind of remove some of the taboos surrounding mental health in the legal profession.
Mahmud: Well, I think we can look to the example of former Judge Clément Gascon and Chief Justice Strathy when leaders of the profession speak openly about their own struggles and about their family’s struggles. I think it normalizes the fact that there is pervasive mental illness not only in the legal profession but in society. Mental health is something that we should all be concerned about whether or not we suffer from mental illness. And so I think people in senior positions in the legal profession talking about it openly without stigma, with understanding, with compassion and seeking to educate, it’s enormously important. I’m sure you saw the article in the newspaper last week.
Stephen: Yeah.
Mahmud: Things like that are enormously important. And the speeches that Chief Justice Strathy has given have been powerful. And similarly with former Justice Gascon’s openness about his own experiences, I think it’s enormously important. And normalizing of the fact that it is normal to struggle with mental health issues, it doesn’t mean you can’t be an active, high performing member of the legal profession or the judiciary. So I think that’s been watershed in our profession anyway. People of that calibre speaking about these issues are important.
Stephen: Yeah. Just for the benefit of our listeners, the article that you’re referring to is a Global Mail article which interviewed Justice Strathy and former OBA president Orlando Da Silva among others, talking about mental health and wellness within the legal profession. And I think the headline or one of the comments that resonated with people was obviously Justice Strathy talking about lawyers and we need to get past the gladiator mentality. That visual, I think we all can get a sense of what that looks like. So yeah, I’m hoping that that article as well as obviously our conversation today and the words that Justice Gascon has said on his challenges with mental illness, do resonate and people realize that they’re not alone. And that they shouldn’t be ashamed, and they should seek the help that they need.
You know mental health is not just mental health, it’s just about wellness and about gaining perspective. And I’m wondering you obviously throughout your career have had difficult cases. Some you won, or as you mentioned some you learned from that you lost. How did you kind of regain focus from whatever happened and prepared for the next challenge?
Mahmud: I think everybody has their techniques to try and move on from a loss to the next case. It helps to be busy when you’re in practice because then you have another client’s problem or another client’s case to address. So I think trying to put it in perspective and moving onto the next challenge. At the end of the day though, you know the more time you spend on a case and the more you invest of yourself in the case, I think the reality is the longer it's going to take to overcome a loss. That was certainly my experience. If I, I had cases where I spent over a decade litigating an issue and then losing, and if you think you’re going to get over a loss like that in a week or a few weeks, well that wasn’t my experience. It takes months if not more to overcome that.
But I think you know time, perspective, exercise frankly helps with your sense of wellbeing, being outdoors, loving family, time with family and friends. All those things I think help put things into a longer timeframe and give you perspective. But at the end of the day you have to move on and it isn’t a personal failing. If you put your best into the case, if you put your best into everything you do, that’s all you can really ask and that’s all your clients can ask of you.
Stephen: Just along this topic, and you talked earlier in our conversation about imposter syndrome, but I’m wondering how you, you mentioned hard work and preparation. And maybe that’s the answer, but you know how have you dealt with any self-doubts that you’ve had throughout your career. Any –
Mahmud: Well –
Stephen: How do you rise above it?
Mahmud: Well, the most important thing is endurance. I mean you’ve got to still be standing like the lines from the Elton John song. You’ve got to still be standing at the end of the day, so you’ve got to just endure. I mean I tell law students that I thought about dropping out of law school in my first year because I thought it was too hard. I didn’t know if I had the wherewithal to, you know to do the hundred per cent final exams at the end of the year. So you know lots of people feel that and it’s normal to feel that. At the end of the day you’ve just got to keep going. But I think many challenges, at least in my experience, can be overcome. Those sorts of challenges anyway can be overcome just by working hard, just doing your best. At the end of the day if you do your best and you put your most into the task and into the role, then you can’t be too hard on yourself if you didn’t measure up to your own standard.
I mean the article that you mentioned from the Global Mail talked about, I think it was Chief Justice Strathy or maybe it was Justice Gascon talking about the pernicious effect of perfectionism. Well, it’s a great strength of lawyers to be perfectionists but it’s also a great weakness. And so finding that balance and finding how to wrestle with the demons of perfectionism is something that we’re all challenged to deal with. So I think at the end of the day you just do your best and just work hard. I mean I think that’s been my experience and as I said, that’s the advice of Baroness Hale as well.
Julia: One of my favourite interviews in this series was with the former Chief Justice Ontario, George R. Strathy. Mr. Strathy will be one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming CBA Conference on wellbeing in Toronto. I’m sorry, for our French speakers it will be difficult, so I’ll say that again. Thank you so much for joining us today, Chief Justice Strathy. And yeah –
George: You’ve got it absolutely right, but I’m not Chief Justice –
Julia: Yah.
George: I’m not Chief Justice anymore, so.
Julia: Oh, okay. It’s just Justice.
George: Or Mr. Strathy is fine, but whatever. You’ve got the pronunciation perfect.
Julia: So let’s jump in right away. Has the discussion on mental health in the legal profession been overdue for a long time? Do you think it’s something that should have happened before?
George: The short answer to your question is yes. It is overdue and yes, it should have happened a long time ago. I think the reason why it hasn’t happened is due to the stigma that is attached to mental health, mental illness in our society and in the legal profession. And I think the effect of stigma is that people are quite frankly afraid to talk about the subject. Afraid to bring their own experiences to the front and afraid because they fear that if they disclose their mental health challenges that they will be seen to be unable to do the job of a lawyer. Seen to, unable to withstand the stress of lawyering, will not get good work in their law firm, will not get promoted, will be regarded as unreliable and won’t advance in the profession.
And I think the key thing, or one of the key things I think that is happening now is that people are starting to talk about mental health in the profession. And by doing so and by some leaders of the profession coming forward and talking about this subject, we are destigmatizing mental illness and I hope encouraging an open dialogue so that people can get help.
Julia: Yeah, definitely. And I kind of feel like you’re one of the first, I mean as a leader you know in the profession to really open up and talk about it. I mean there has been other people. We have interviewed Justice Hollins as well. But it’s so great to see also that you opened up and also – what actually moved you to publish your article and to speak to us today? Like what was the key factor?
George: I, well there are a couple of things. One is as you’ve said, some leaders of the profession have come forward to share their own experiences. So for example former Supreme Court of Canada Judge Clément Gascon has spoken of his own experiences with mental illness. I was inspired by Orlando Da Silva, a former president of the Ontario Bar Association speaking about his challenges. And a very senior lawyer at the Ministry of the Attorney General, Beth Beattie has spoken about her challenges. What got me speaking about it initially was back in 2021, when Beth Beattie and the Treasurer of the Law Society of Ontario, Teresa Donnelly, sponsored a mental health summit in Ontario for the Law Society by the Law Society.
And I was asked whether I would speak at the summit and do kind of an introductory remarks to welcome everyone. And what I said when I was asked to do that, was I wanted to think about it for a while because I knew that if I was going to speak at an event like that I needed to speak about my mother’s own challenges with bipolar illness. And I did speak that year at the summit in 2021 about my mother’s experiences and our family’s experiences with my mother’s mental health. A mental illness that was with her essentially all her life, from the time I was a young child until she died many, many years later.
So that prompted me to start speaking about mental illness and the, my paper in 2022 entitled the Litigator in Mental Health, was kind of a second step in the same direction. All with a view to getting the discussion going and out in the open.
Julia: And I feel like what you say in your article kind of also links to, with the findings in the report because when we were talking with Dr. Cadieux last week, she said that one of the findings is that the culture in the legal profession is a lot about you being a gladiator, as you say in your article. And if you don’t want to show the people, you know this idea that you will be, people will judge you or that they will not trust you. And you say, so in your article you mention a gladiator, a lawyer and then you know if you Google that, it’s not something we usually hear. But then I kind of feel like it goes together. I felt like I had already heard that. But probably not, it’s just a feeling that we might have sometimes. It’s really how we feel, like gladiators. Could you tell us a bit more about the myth of the gladiator, the gladiator litigator, that’s how you call it. Where it comes from and why it’s so important that we finally let go of it?
George: Thanks very much. I might just add a commercial message of my own, and that is –
Julia: Yeah, please do.
George: That paper is available along with the paper I wrote about my mother’s mental health challenges, that’s available on the website of the Court of Appeal for Ontario, under the section about the court. And there’s a section on publications. So that’s where your listeners can find it if they need to find it. But let me say that in the paper I mention that the myth of the gladiator litigator is not unique to litigation. It’s embedded in the legal profession itself and it affects all lawyers whether they’re litigators, commercial lawyers, estates and family lawyers, real estate lawyers, everyone is affected by what I see as a destructive and harmful myth. That we are invisible. That we can suck it up. That we can power through working long days and nights, and we never talk about it, we just keep it to ourselves. And heal our own wounds and rely on ourselves.
And I think it’s harmful because it creates a model that some lawyers, particularly younger lawyers feel they have to aspire to. And they somehow also feel that if they don’t meet this model, they’re less than a good lawyer. And the truth is, and what I try to say in the paper, all of us, even experienced litigators, and I did litigation all my career of 30 years of practice. All of us feel nervous and apprehensive about going to court. All of us perspire, our hands shake, our stomachs grumble. It’s a natural feeling. And it’s also, it’s not healthy to keep it bottled up inside. It’s healthy to talk about it and realize that other people are affected by it.
I think the other thing that’s terribly destructive about the myth is that it leads people to think that they have to work ridiculous hours. They have to you know ignore the other important things in their lives, like family and rest and recreation. And it encourages a culture that makes us disposed to become workaholics. Whether, as I say, whether we’re litigators or others. And you know workaholism goes along with other isms, and other unhealthy habits. For example, obviously too much alcohol which is a significant problem in our profession, as the University of Sherbrooke’s study indicates.
So as I say in my paper, I think we have to recognize that in a sense that mental health is something we all have, it’s something we all have to look after, our own mental health. And getting rid of the stigma, talking about it, putting it out in the open, is a big step towards that.
Julia: We come now to Yves Faguy’s conversation on modern law with Toronto Lawyer Jason Ward, who very narrowly lost it all. Jason’s story is a cautionary tale that will tell you exactly why you need to take your mental health seriously.
Yves: So you practiced for several years, civil litigator with you know a strong reputation in your area of practice. You know how did you first realize that you were beginning to struggle perhaps with certain mental health issues?
Jason: Looking back, I think some of the key signs that I know understand are my life started to become much more organized and it had to be organized. So including at home, I became much more autocratic in my home. I have three teenage children. I became task oriented, more rigid in the way I was behaving both at work and at home. Eventually that developed into a certain level of resentment with work. So for example, my policy in my practice was no matter what time of day or night it is, if you email me, you will always hear back from me within minutes.
And I did that for most of my career including you know whatever, 11 o’clock at night. And I started to quietly resent that and that resentment kind of grew over time. So at some point for me, I became a bit of a despot both at work with my associate lawyers and at my home with my own family. Which I had awareness of, and I knew I was doing, but it was really unstoppable freight train at that point.
Yves: When was the onset of this, would you say? You know you say year 2000, your call, when did this start manifesting itself in more acute ways?
Jason: I think it materialized really for me at the age of 45. Up until that point, I had not really used alcohol at all. I was you know a drinker maybe two or three times a year. Often not to excess. Very much a social drunker. Alcohol was not part of my life. I didn’t keep alcohol in the home. My wife didn’t really consume alcohol. And then again, something happened to me at age 45. I happened to have been on a Southern Caribbean vacation and I discovered rum and coke. And starting on that trip, I started to all of the sudden drink excessively.
I recognized it and felt it to be a release and a relief. And that happened for me immediately and that developed or progressed from drinking, you know being drunk on vacation most of the time, and then it crept back and found it’s way into my home here in Ontario where I started to drink. And then it just got out of control when I started drinking uncontrollably.
Yves: So you were talking about also you know this idea that you’re behaving a bit like a despot at work or in family. And this coincides with the alcohol and the drinking or was that there before?
Jason: No, I think you know whether I had addiction issues before in my life and I just suppressed them successfully, I’m not entirely sure about that. But certainly whatever underlying issues I had materialized and took control probably in my early 40’s and progressed to mid-40’s where alcohol became a real factor in my life.
Yves: Were there other earlier warning signs that you might have missed, that something was amiss?
Jason: I don’t think so. I, you know regrettably for me, I’m an all or nothing guy, including when it came to my cases and the law. I was also very I think business driven as, in addition to being striving to be the best lawyer I could. So a lot of my focus was also on how do I build and maximise this law firm. Which now has gone from zero to the second largest in central Ontario. And I did a lot to promote the business, promote myself. I was an incessant self-promoter for much of my career and had no qualms or shames about that. Because I rationalized it as I’m building a brand, I’m building a business which continually expanded.
So for me, I think really there was a real confluence of things that came together in a perfect storm right around my mid-40’s. Whereas I’d historically been very controlled. I, you know I don’t really have a lot of other issues in my life that I can’t control or that I think I can’t control. And all of the sudden I was having these issues and feelings and thoughts that I just couldn’t manage anymore.
Yves: Did you notice the reaction of your colleagues and coworkers to some of what was going on? We’re talking about four or five years ago, am I correct in my timeline?
Jason: Yeah. I’m just 51 now.
Yves: Okay. And so what was the reaction of your colleagues?
Jason: They didn’t say anything to me. They didn’t let on like they believed, they realized I was having an issue or a problem. Certainly my immediate family did. They were well-aware and seeing what was going on with me.
Yves: And just to be clear, you do share this firm with your spouse?
Jason: Yes. Yes. I have a very supportive spouse who’s also a lawyer and who now continues on with the firm that I started and we built together. She’s been very supportive and she was always very aware of what was going on. And frankly I was, I had pretty good open dialogue with her about what was going on until maybe towards the end when I hit about 49, closer to 50. Where I started to be less communicative about what I was experiencing.
Yves: How did you cope with all these, I mean it’s, you know you’re running a firm, you’re building a firm, you’re building a brand. You’re running your own practice, I mean just that, I could ask you how did you cope with just that. But you’re managing people, you’ve got a family, you have three teenage children, is also something else to deal with and manage and grow as well. How do you cope with all that while managing a mental health issue?
Jason: I think the more my issues happened, the more I got, the more extreme I got. So a good example is during COVID when everybody was working from home, I worked at the office. But for some reason I took it upon myself to be this public informer about COVID and all things COVID. So every day I would come in and I would write five to 10 blogs per day on all the things that were going on, that I thought my community should know about. And this took off. It gained a very wide audience in my area, in my region. It became a very popular go-to source and you know at the end of the day I was given an award by the city for being the COVID hero.
But all the while, I wasn’t coping well at all and that translated into do more, do more, try to garner more recognition, try to be more publicly known. And that’s how my behavior sort of paralleled my addictions and my problems.
Yves: And so what happened ultimately?
Jason: Ultimately, you know I don’t like to use the term burnout because I don’t think that’s a medical term, but at age 48 and a half, I stopped drinking and that was not easy for me. Up to that point, an example of the volume that I was drinking would be, you know there’s a restaurant, a beautiful Italian restaurant in Lindsey, and I happened to know the owner. And at that point that owner would deliver to my porch once per week, 24 bottles of nice red wine. And every Monday he would do this and every Monday I would be, I would need more.
And that was in addition to the rum and cokes that I would start with generally after work. My days started to go shorter, so I’d start coming home earlier because I could start drinking earlier. I was always fairly good about not drinking while working, at least at the office. So I wasn’t a day-drinker per se, but you know I started to come home at 15:00, 15:30 primarily because that’s when I wanted to start to drink.
I then realized I had a very big problem and my wife intervened. And we decided that the only option for me was sobriety. I disguised it in my own mind as this would be a temporary step. I would temporarily be sober. Once I could show I had it under control, I could return to managed drinking. And that’s how I got to the point of being to stop, was tricking myself into thinking that. I then hired a sober coach in Toronto, who specializes in working with professionals who have addiction issues, particularly alcohol and drugs. And I went sober in the summer of 2000. So just after COVID started.
The problem I had is when I went, and I’ve successfully been sober since then. The problem I had is kept working. I turned it up a notch and I couldn’t be without mind-altering experience. So I had never done drugs in my life. I had smoke maybe one joint as a young person in my teenage years. And all of the sudden I found myself buying a lot of THC pills. So not smoking drugs, not you know, not doing lines. But you can buy the pills that are just concentrated THC. And you know they’re about 10 milligrams per pill, and that generally is enough to get somebody moderately high. And after I stopped drinking I discovered this and all of the sudden I was going into my recently legalized cannabis store once per day.
And I found myself walking around with a pocket of about 30 or 40 of these pills a day, that would all be gone by the time I went to bed. So you know the average person probably uses 10 to 20 milligrams of THC to get high. I was, I eventually started using up to 35 to 40 milligrams a day. To the point where I couldn’t remember the night before when I woke up in the morning. With no hangover mind you. But I just substituted THC for the alcohol.
Yves: Can I ask what is that you were escaping from?
Jason: It just turned my mind off. It just numbed my mind. I wasn’t – you know I had a rule in practice that you know I wouldn’t go home unless my inbox was empty that day. And you know how many emails lawyers get in a day. And my rule was I’m going to stay here and finish until I get all, nothing can be in my inbox. That was part of my, you’ve done a good job today, you can home and reward yourself. That went away. Thinking about cases and clients all the time went away. Worrying about what others were doing at the business or you know what I had in court the next day, or was I prepared or not. Should I do some more research before – all that went away with alcohol. And all of the sudden I just found myself in a nice quiet place where I, and I was not a conversationalist when I drank. I was one of those guys or people who sort of went insular while drinking.
So it wasn’t a loud boisterous exercise. It was a very quiet exercise. And I just found this is peace, this is tranquility, this is quiet. I really like what I’m doing right now.
Yves: So you’re really kind of getting away from the deadlines and the callbacks and the responses that are expected of you.
Jason: Yeah. I think it gave me a, you know it gave me an escape hatch to, Jason, you have to be and be perceived to be the best all of the time.
Yves: Yeah. Always on call.
Jason: Always on call. Always on show. Always be, you know be that public personality. Be that leader amongst you know your local colleagues. Be the best of the best. All of that got turned off by rum for me. And that was for me a life changing event.
Yves: And so ultimately you did you have to walk away from the law, or walk away from law practice?
Jason: I did. I worked, I hired a psychiatrist who I worked with three times a week, 45-minute sessions three times a week for a year. I worked very hard with that psychiatrist to try to regain control and try to stay in my profession. So I put a major investment into, you know I can’t leave, I’m only 50. You know I’ve got bills to pay. I’ve got teenage kids. I own this big firm. There’s no way I can walk away from this. I worked on that for a year to try to stay. The drugs got worse for me. They got heavier and worse. I worked with my sober coach during that entire time. But that was mostly focused on alcohol sobriety.
And eventually it got to the point in early, in late last year where I was just, I was just you know automaton. I was, you know I was high all the time. Even at work I started getting high in the afternoon. I couldn’t wait till I got home. I’d start popping my THC pills you know at one o’clock instead of 15:30 when I got home. And it got so out of control that you know I couldn’t, in the evenings I had trouble communicating with my family. I had trouble keeping up. I was just high all of the time. And eventually my wife said to me, “We’re done here. You’ve got to do something. This can’t continue.”
So I quietly announced that I was going to be retiring from the law and I would like to run for mayor of my municipality. And I left abruptly and I went to rehab. I went on a 30-day stint in a great immersive place in Montreal to try to get control, because at that time my drug use had escalated. And I realized then that I was heading into you know even more dangerous waters with, you know with heavier drugs that was coveting and starting to use. And I knew that will be the end of me. I knew if I let that continue, A I probably wouldn’t live much longer and B I’d certainly lose my family and probably my finances by that point.
Yves: And so when was this decision to go to Montreal?
Jason: That was in February of this year.
Yves: And so you haven’t really returned to the office in a meaningful way since then?
Jason: I have not and in fact I find it very difficult. You know before I went to rehab, leading up to the end of last year – I mean I own a firm in Lindsey and it’s a large building, I would sit in my F150 pickup truck outside the office on average for an hour every morning, working up my ability to go into the office and face the day. And that happened for about a year.
Yves: What were you afraid of?
Jason: I just couldn’t go in and deal with it. I just didn’t want to deal with it. I resented it. I, you know I experienced tremendous physical symptoms. So I had lots of headaches all of the time. It got to the point for me that you know before I went to rehab, when I would get a work-related email at night, I felt physically sick. And I had often had issues of, you know I’d get an email from a client on a problem or an issue and I vomited. Because it got so bad for me that I couldn’t process anything. I couldn’t receive anything and I started to just delegate excessively.
Yves: Was there an employee assistance program in your firm?
Jason: Interestingly enough, I appointed, I created something called a mental health first-aid officer. I did that about two years ago when I went sober, and that person’s role at the firm is to be a go-to person for mental health assistance and help. And they sort of direct a person to various resources that are out there that they need to get help. I think this was a relatively new thing for lawyers to be doing at the time. Maybe now there’s a little more of it, but I can remember encouraging other lawyers locally to do this and you know it just fell on deaf ears. There was really no reception to it at all.
Yves: So if you Jason, were suddenly face-to-face with a younger you, it doesn’t have to be you-you but you know a younger eager hunger you litigator entering the profession. You know what would you tell them?
Jason: You know that’s, I’m really, I’m having, I’m struggling these days with that very issue that you’ve raised, Yves. Because it’s a conundrum for me because on the one hand I’m here talking to you about you know forced exit from the profession because of mental health and burnout. And on the other hand I’m thinking to myself, if I was a younger Jason Ward who just got into Western Law School, I’m not sure I’d do it another way. Or that I’d be capable of doing it another way. Unless someone intervened and told me I had to do it another way.
Yves: It’s just the way it’s done.
Jason: It’s just the way I did it and to your point earlier, is you know lawyers are individuals and it’s going to be an individualized experience. There’s so much latitude and room for lawyers to do whatever they want in their profession. You know subject to some bylaws and guidelines at the Law Society about what you can and can’t do with some things. But by and large we’re not regulated. We’re not, we’re regulated financially you know. We’re regulated in terms of our practice behavior but not on everything mind you. But we’re not really that regulated and because of that I think there’s a lot of space and room for lawyers to you know move ahead in life in ways that are deleterious for their own mental health and no one’s telling them that.
No one’s stopping them and saying, “Are you sure you want, you know are you sure this is the way you want to go? What about these other options?” Or if you do have a problem, here’s some resources that I can get you with right now. Right? And that’s what I had to struggle with when I needed help. Is I couldn’t call someone and say, I couldn’t call my colleagues because again, I perceived that as you know weakness and losing competitive advantage. Not that I wasn’t prepared to tell my colleagues I was having mental health issues, I’m okay with that. I could’ve done that. But I wasn’t prepared to lose what I thought to be strength in the marketplace, including with my colleagues.
Yves: At the same time when you talk about that space that lawyers have to chart their own path I suppose a little bit individually, there is something a little hopeful in that, is there not. That you know a new generation of lawyers can start to put their foot down about some of these things. And I think, realistically I think they are beginning to do that. And saying you know, listen I just, I’m not signed up for this 12, 14-hour day every day, six days a week. Do you see anything there?
Jason: Yeah. I agree with you. I think this generation of lawyers within the last five years is taking a different view on the practice. I think they recognize that the profession itself can have these inherent issues that could be harmful. And I think they are pushing back. I don’t disagree with you. But who, it’s in a very unorganized way. It’s on an individual one-off basis. And I struggle to think about how we’re going to affect enterprise-wide change for the benefit of everyone if this is how change comes about. Because frankly it’s going to take a generation to outgrow the way we practice now, because the people that own firms like me, even though I’m a progressive lawyer with you know a very strong, I very strongly believe in work-life balance. At the end of the day when that young articling student is leaving at 16:30 every day and detaching, I’m starting to ask questions.
Right? Because that’s not good for business. And you know so there’s that aspect of it as well. Is, there’s that, there’s always going to be that pressure until these, until a younger generation of lawyers completely takes over with their own principles and policies on how they want to operate, the change isn’t going to happen.
Julia: Our penultimate segment is a portion of my conversation with employment and human rights lawyer, and winner of Alberta’s Top 30 Under 30 award for professional excellence in 2022, Sania Chaudhry. Sania provided us with some really good advice on sustainable lawyering.
Considering our topic today, Sonja, my first question is very, a loaded one. How are you? How are you feeling.
Sania: You know I’m feeling good. I’m feeling great actually. How are you?
Julia: I’m very good, thank you. Coming back from the holidays. I was on vacation so it felt very good. Did you take some time off?
Sania: I just took time off to spend with my daughter. We all fell sick with the flu so it was mostly just staying home, but it was nice to just stay home and spend time with her.
Julia: I’m asking that now because we’ve been doing these podcasts a little while now with different lawyers and one of the conclusions that we have is lawyers must take their holidays, and their vacation days. That’s what also Dr. Cadieux was telling us. So it’s very good to know that, except that you were sick, but that you took time with your daughter.
Sania: But I unplugged. I didn’t reply to any emails or doing anything, so.
Julia: Yeah. That’s good. You unplugged, that’s very important. Well, before we talk about the sort of profession as lawyers we want to have, and we will do that during the podcast for sure, we will also talk a little bit about the article that you wrote in the Global Mail in December 2021. Where you shared your experience with mental health as well as intersectionality in the legal profession. And you also made a bunch of very interesting recommendations, and I will most, well, I will be delighted to go back to that in a little bit. But before that, I’d like to talk about you. Like how you are today and maybe first – well you started in family and immigration law. Now you just started new job, right, in January. Am I right.
Sania: Mm-hmm.
Julia: Yeah, okay good. Can you tell us a little bit, like how your own concern of your own mental wellbeing has impacted your career choices and the changes you made?
Sania: I can tell you that you know when you initially graduate law school, your own mental health, at least for me was not even close to top of my mind when I was searching for a position. For me, I moved from Vancouver to Calgary right upon graduation and I was out of that normal articling recruit cycled, so all I cared was about getting an articling position. So when I was interviewing it was, “Just take me. I don’t care what the culture in your firm is, please just take me.” And a lot of people are in that situation, right. So this power dynamic of being desperate to be hired and then being desperate to stay on, you know for the firm to retain you as an associate. You know you’re afraid to show any signs of weakness. You’re afraid to do anything or disclose anything that will make you less desirable as an associate. And it's damaging for mental health.
For me, my mental health as well as my progressions and the impact of them on my mental health have been, you know a daily issue prior to the legal profession, worsened in higher education, worsened in the legal profession. Because you’re just working twice as hard to prove yourself. So you know while I was articling, I got pregnant, I gave birth, I’ve had my first face-to-face direct Islamophobic incident. I, my mom passed away six weeks after my daughter gave birth. So a lot was happening, and you know it was really impacting my mental health, plus I was just overworking you know.
I was so worried about going on mat leave that I worked myself so hard while pregnant you know. Like my mom came to visit before she passed, I obviously didn’t know she was going to pass, but I spent no time with her. I didn’t take her to visit [unintelligible 00:51:40] or anything, I just kept working you know. And all of this you know led to increase in anxiety and depression, worsened by grief and post-partum depression, worsened by the billable hour. Because my desire was to exceed in it. You know I’m very ambitious. And worsened by the pressure and stigma around speaking about your mental health.
So I decided to make a change from that firm to a different small firm that did family and immigration. I didn’t really think about it, I was just desperate to do something to change because I wasn’t feeling good. I was hoping that change would make me feel more fulfilled. But there the same things were happening. You know the billable hour really impacted me and my ambition really impacted me. And I was surrounded by well-meaning allies but I just, you know my anxiety and depression worsened. I was, I had no work-life balance whatsoever. I just wanted to bill the most, get the best client reviews. But the work got too much, and you know at this time when I made the change, my mental health was at the very top of my mind.
You know I made the decision calmly, not as a desperate escape. You know I let my mentors know at the firm that I had to make a change because of my mental health. I was terrified that I would a mistake on a file due to being overworked. And terrified that I was failing as a mother to my only daughter. So I made the move. I joined a regulator as in-house conduct counsel. So I was still doing litigation which I love. I was still in the realm of admin law which I also love. So the two years spent there were really great for my mental health, especially since the good from the pandemic was the option to work from home. And you know research has actually shown that working from home has positive impacts for, on mental health for racialized individuals, by kind of partially removing you from micro-aggressions.
And so I was really happy there. And this most recent career transition in January that I, just this month that I made, it was – so it was due to my passion for equity diversity and inclusion. And looking for how I can do that in my legal practice like without damaging my mental health. So yes, mental health was also top of mind in, at this point, you know when I was exploring returning to private practice. I actually was really honest and open and was having open and honest conversations about mental health, wellness and work-life balance. But also my career ambitions with different firms and at times that didn’t work. You know I wasn’t the right fit, but I finally found a place that’s, you know I was a right fit, here at Forte Workplace Law doing employment, labour and human rights. Which is very in line with my EDI lens but also at a firm that values wellness and wants to practice law in a way that views lawyers as humans and not just machines.
You know this time when I made this job switch, I was more intentional about my mental health and being really open to talking about how I burnt out in private practice and left. And then now I’m coming back after being at a regulator. And so I mean in addition to just like noticing red flags or noticing situations where there wasn’t a fit, the most important thing that I noticed about Forte Workplace Law is that they really do practice law totally different. They really value wellness, and they communicate that. And so I think law firms need to really communicate to their employees that we value wellness, and we can have conversations about wellness.
Without lawyers that are well, you cannot have quality work for your clients, and you can’t have a productive workforce at your firm. So it’s kind of a no-brainer. At the law firm I’m at currently, they’re really intentional about that. So like they’ll notice if you’re getting burnout, burnt out you know just from looking at your schedule or the timing in which you’re sending emails and things like that. And they’ll check in on you, you know to make sure are you okay, is there anything you need. But also the seniors are communicating their issues of wellness as well. So in meetings seniors will speak out about you know experiencing burnout with a particular type of practice group or a particular type of file.
And so you’re talking about wellness during practice group meetings and brainstorming together on what to do about burnout and wellness. You know do we need to refer some of our files to other associates in the firm. Or do we need to refer to files out. Maybe we have too much work. Or do we have more than, you know do we have a really complicated file that has only one lawyer and really, we should have two or we should have three, because it’s actually a really complicated file. Do we need to look into systems to make things more efficient you know like.
So like having that there, and I’ve noticed that at this firm so far, that and from all my talking with them and watching them on social media, that they really do value wellness. And like it’s not like we have the solution and everyone’s well, but at least we’re talking about it openly and we’re trying to figure out how to be well and how to have you know holistic performance measures you know. Not just assessing you by how much you bill but the quality of your work, the non-billable tasks you’re doing. How you’re helping the firm. Also I think a lot of the mental health and wellness issues and stress that juniors face is due to lack of training. You really don’t know how to do something, and you’re stressed and anxious about it, and you’re worried about being competent but also you have no formal training or mentoring.
So you know a firm having a formal mentoring program, and even if the firm doesn’t have that many resources, just assigning a mentor each junior so they know this is my point person that I can reach out to. I think that’s really helpful and that’s also something that my current firm does. So training is important and also, I think the issue of stability in the profession is really important too. I feel like you know time has passed and the value in stability has gone down. Maybe something has changed in the way we’re mentored, that that’s happening.
So you know keeping your mind towards stability when you’re mentoring associates, so we continue being a civil profession or become more of a civil profession. Yeah. So you know there’s lots of things that firms can do, and I think the key to start is communicating that this is of value. This is really important to the firm. We’re not just paying it lip service, we actually mean it and are actually willing to put resources towards it.
Julia: We finish with Glen Hickerson from the CBA Wellbeing Sub-committee who provided us with a roundup of some of the wellbeing resources at the CBA. How do you think we can incentivize law firm leaders and others to take the mental health and wellbeing of their employees, associates and partners more seriously?
Glen: You know we’ve got three things going on. Law firms in particular, but legal workplaces in general have had a long history of a workplace culture that I say is a lot less like How to Win Friends and Influence People, and a lot more like Game of Thrones. You know much more peer-to-peer competition. Right from the time you write an LSAT exam you’re set up for the idea that success comes with beating your peers. And let’s just stipulate for a moment, and sounding again kind of like a lawyer here, but let’s just stipulate that argument that that’s worked.
The problem is three things. One, the supply of great lawyers and great candidates is not what it once was. There’s greater competition for good lawyers out there. Secondly, you’re recruiting from a generation, you know people who were born in the 1990’s or 2000’s, who were raised not to put up with being exploited for a long period of time. I think most people who are old like me have realized, have noticed that younger people don’t put up with the stuff we put up with, and good on them.
And the third problem that law firms have in just continuing on as things were, is we just have had a massive real-life, real-time experiment in what it’s like not to go into a lousy office. And it was called the pandemic. And people have worked from home and there’s lots of problems and bad things and challenges with working from home, but people have also noticed that there’s a lot of good stuff there.
And so you know if you’re a law firm who is dedicated to pitting one lawyer against another in a competition to succeed, you’ve got to watch out that you’re not, by doing that continuing to put yourself out of the marketplace for recruiting good lawyers. And or having your best people leave because why work there.
Julia: Can you tell us about some of the resources and activities at the CBA focusing on mental health and wellbeing?
Glen: We have got a lot. I mean there’s the short answer. But the, we’ve got a series called the wellbeing hour that covers a variety of topics and builds out all kinds of solutions that, and a great deal of it unsurprisingly is already in response to things that are outlined in the report. One of the things that the report does or the recommendations certainly say is that perhaps our resources like everybody else’s resources should get organized in such a way that it’s easy to spot what’s available based on the concern or the problem or the issue that’s at hand.
So we’ll certainly be – that’s something we’ve already got but we’ll still be working on it. If you’re looking for something a little bit more fun, then we’ve got a monthly advice column called Dear Advy, and that’s at, actually all of this is at www.cba.org/sections/wellness-subcommittee. Hopefully there will be links in the show notes. But there will be something that you can get to. But you find the wellbeing hour and Dear Advy on our page. You can also find CPD course that we have. And all of those by the way are free. Not just free to CBA members but their free, thanks to our sponsor Lawyers Financial.
And the other thing that we’ve got on that same page is contact information for every lawyer assistance program across the country. And behind the scenes one of the things that we’ve been doing and of course we’re going to continue to do and we’re going to do with this study and its findings in mind, is we support the work of the frontline workers in the lawyer assistance programs in every jurisdiction. So we, you know we offer continuing professional development for those people. We offer opportunities for them to exchange good ideas and that’s sort of a benefit. And so we do that behind the scenes. Obviously that’s not something that’s a front facing service that the CBA provides.
Beyond that, if you’re, you know to the extent of what will we be doing, I see the people that are in our profession that realize there’s an issue that needs to be resolved as our customers. You know you’re the managing partner or you are the you know human resources person or you’re just an interested person in a law firm, or you know workplace, and you’re looking for a couple of things.
One, a list of things that your organization could do in order to make it a friendlier place to work for. And secondly, ammo. You’re looking for a way to convince the people that are in your firm that maybe don’t see that there’s an issue, that this really is a problem. So customers, watch this space because there’s going to be even more for you. But the, you know the business case for managing lawyer’s mental health well, is almost irresistible.
Male: This is The Every Lawyer presented by the Canadian Bar Association.
Julia: Thanks for listening and feel free to subscribe and reach out to us any time at podcasts@cba.org and take care of yourself. Bye.
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