Fostering Healthy Lawyers: Implementing Well-Being as a Learning Outcome for Ourselves and Our Students

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

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Good health and well-being are essential for lawyers to provide competent representation and experience fulfillment in their careers. In 2018, even before the pandemic made this point emphatically, the American Bar Association “Report from the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being” found that the legal profession is falling short in promoting and ensuring the well-being of its members. While legal employers report that resiliency, and stress and crisis management are important skills for new attorneys, law schools often fall short in focusing on the development of these skills. Rather, many students who enter law school healthy develop mental health and substance abuse problems that follow them into the profession. This year, the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has proposed two revisions to the ABA Standards: one that would require law schools provide substantial opportunity for the development of professional identity, which encompasses wellness and well-being, and the other that law schools provide information on law student well-being resources. For many clinical professors, the recent focus on student well-being is a positive development. Yet, while many clinicians are intentional about addressing student well-being while in law school and beyond, it can be difficult to maintain that same intentionality about focusing on our own well-being. For this reason, we may feel ill equipped in our efforts to help our students confront well-being challenges. This session will start with a brief discussion of key structures and pedagogical approaches shared by in-house clinics and externship courses that make them an ideal place to explore and address lawyer well-being. It will then shift to specific methods that can be used in both types of courses to implement and assess well-being as a learning outcome for both ourselves and our students.