WisLAP Combats Career Killers
By Dianne Molvig
As a sole practitioner, Ted loves working independently. Lately,
however, the worries have been outstripping the rewards. Every waking
moment seems consumed with work and trying to build his practice. But
the money isn't flowing, and Ted's fallen behind in paying his bills.
Desperate, he dipped into a client's trust account to meet the mortgage
payment on his house this month. He knows he's playing with fire, but
what else can he do? He can't face losing his family's home. Lying awake
at night, depressed and hopeless, Ted wonders, how did it all come to
this?
Denise felt on top of the world the day she landed a plum job at
a big law firm. But now, five years later, her life is in the pits. She
feels all she does is work, the office politics are driving her crazy,
and her marriage is teetering on divorce. Disappointment, frustration,
and hurt have become daily fare, to which she's added just "a couple of
drinks" after work to help her "cope," so she tells herself. Lately it's
been more than a couple. She's begun showing up late at work and
forgetting client appointments.
ed and Denise are fictitious. But
all lawyers, if they're totally honest with themselves, might recognize
at least one element in the above stories that rings true for them
personally. Financial pressures, self-doubts, worries, and frustrations
can cloud any lawyer's life now and then. Any lawyer probably would have
to admit to wondering at least once in his or her career: What would I
do if I felt pushed to the edge?
The Wisconsin
Lawyers' Assistance Program (WisLAP) proposes an answer: Reach out
for a hand to help you back.
"One problem lawyers have is we get isolated and tend to think we're
the only ones with a problem," points out Jim Collis, a Milwaukee
attorney and cochair of the State Bar's WisLAP Committee. "Often lawyers
feel they have no support. Their worst fears come to fruition, and it's
a downward spiral from there. WisLAP is trying to prevent that. We want
as many healthy lawyers as we can get."
Preventive medicine
WisLAP is a member service of the State Bar that provides information
and help to lawyers, judges, law students, and their families. Problem
areas WisLAP deals with include drug abuse, alcoholism, gambling
addictions, job dissatisfaction, anxiety, depression, stress, job loss,
burnout, procrastination, career fatigue anything that can
potentially destroy a lawyer's career and personal life. The program
consists of a committee of attorneys who oversee the program; two
helping professionals who are available by phone 24 hours a day, seven
days a week; and a brigade of volunteers all around the state who can be
called upon to help a fellow attorney one-on-one.
WisLAP's trained volunteers help their
colleagues deal with the stresses of lawyering, drug and alcohol abuse,
gambling addiction, job loss, procrastination, fatigue anything
that can potentially destroy a lawyer's career and personal life
while maintaining strict confidentiality. |
Larry Hanson is a Madison attorney on the WisLAP Committee who, like
all committee members, also serves as a volunteer. He's a recovering
alcoholic. "One aspect of the alcoholic I've seen over the years is an
absolute determination that I can do this alone; I shouldn't need help,"
Hanson says. "There's this attitude that says, 'I have to fight this
battle alone, and if I can't do it, there's some shame in it.' That's
one reason I'm involved to let people know that's a crock."
Alcoholic lawyers aren't the only ones who get caught in that
go-it-alone mindset, points out John Wylie, a Clintonville lawyer and
immediate past-chair of the WisLAP Committee who's volunteered on the
stress and mental health side of the program for years. "Lawyers are so
busy performing for their clients, their partners, their
associates. They're trying to impress everybody," Wylie notes. "So part
of our very public persona is a denial that anything is bothering us. We
don't allow ourselves to be human. We have to be perfect."
"The trouble is," Wylie adds, "that's a lie. None of us is perfect.
We're all just struggling human beings trying to do the best we can.
When you lose sight of that, that's when you get into really deep mud.
You get stuck in the lie, and you're going to be found out. When you're
found out, the embarrassment and shame are horrible."
WisLAP Committee members and program staff would like lawyers to seek
help long before things get to that point. "Our focus is on prevention
before someone gets in too deep," notes Shell Goar, who
administrates the WisLAP program and staffs the stress and mental health
hotline.
"We do our best to let lawyers know they don't have to lose their
licenses, their careers, their families, their lives to a disease that
is highly treatable," adds Lea Landmann, WisLAP's chemical dependency
program coordinator.
Confidentiality is key
Still, WisLAP Committee members and staff know they're up against a
few hurdles in reaching lawyers who could benefit from the program. One
major hurdle is concern about confidentiality often the first
question people bring up when calling the hotline. Lawyers worry: Who's
going to find out? Am I setting myself up for a visit from the Board of
Attorneys Professional Responsibility (BAPR)?
Critical to assuring confidentiality is the fact that WisLAP is
exempt from Supreme Court Rule 20:8.3(a) requiring attorneys to report
another attorney's professional misconduct. The exemption, found in SCR
20:8.3(c), applies to anyone involved in WisLAP: staff, committee
members, and volunteers.
WisLAP also builds confidentiality protection into the way it
conducts business. No one keeps case records, other than generic
statistics for program evaluation purposes. And there's no caller ID on
any of WisLAP's telephone lines. "We specifically discussed that issue
in our committee," recalls Tom Casper, a Beloit attorney and WisLAP
Committee member. "On the one hand, there was this notion that if we had
caller ID, then if someone called and didn't leave a number, or was too
incoherent to be understood, we could call back. But we decided it
wasn't worth the risk" of making people feel uncomfortable about
calling.
Of all obstacles to contacting WisLAP, committee members recognize
that probably the biggest is the fear of BAPR involvement. William Read,
a Madison attorney and WisLAP Committee member understands that fear. A
recovering alcoholic himself, he says, "There's this paranoia, this
feeling that you can't trust anyone. After my being around this
committee for a bunch of years, I can say with a straight face that you
can trust the committee. You can trust the contacts here. Contact with
WisLAP is not a straight shot to the disciplinary arm of BAPR. In fact,
it can be a safety net from the disciplinary arm of BAPR, and I can say
that with an equally straight face."
"Thanks to Jerry Sternberg (BAPR administrator)," Read adds, "I'm
aware how very real the separation of BAPR and this committee is. And
yet how humanely the two seem to be able to weave together whenever
BAPR's involvement is a fait accompli because the problem started
there."
First contact
Anyone seeking assistance from WisLAP can call one of two toll-free
hotlines ((800) 543-2625 for stress and mental health issues; (800)
254-9154 for alcohol and drug problems) to reach Shell Goar or Lea
Landmann. The two of them fulfill multiple roles; each is a neutral ear
for venting problems, a referral source to professionals out in the
communities, and an intermediary linking lawyers seeking help with
trained volunteer lawyers willing to provide it.
The volunteer assigned to a particular attorney may live in the same
community or some distance away. The former arrangement offers the
advantage of having someone nearby to turn to for support. But sometimes
lawyers prefer, for privacy reasons, to work with a distant
attorney.
Either way, Goar and Landmann honor the lawyer's preference in
recruiting a volunteer. From there, the volunteer initiates contact. The
connection between the two lawyers can assume various forms, such as a
phone call, a meeting over lunch, a one-shot conversation or an ongoing
interaction over time.
Peer assistance is a vital element of the program. "I don't think
there's anybody who can talk to a lawyer better than another lawyer,"
points out Michael Hausman, a Waukesha attorney and cochair of the
WisLAP Committee. "We've all been there, every one of us, in one shape
or form. A fellow lawyer can truly understand the pressures you're
dealing with."
Lawyers seeking help aren't the only ones encouraged to contact
WisLAP. Family members, friends, fellow lawyers, and judges can phone
out of concern for an attorney. "We've especially been trying to get
judges to pick up the phone to call WisLAP," notes cochair Collis. "Many
of them see problems first."
Concerned parties who make the call may wish to remain anonymous or
become involved. Sometimes it's useful for the troubled lawyer to know
who called. "When a judge calls with a concern," Goar points out, "they
sometimes want the lawyer to know, because they may have some clout" in
moving the lawyer to face up to his or her problems.
Still, lawyers often are reluctant to call about other lawyers. "They
feel they'd be interfering or ratting on someone," explains Landmann.
"But the worst thing you can do is look the other way. Because then, in
my opinion, you're really contributing to that person's illness or
problem."
And sometimes, Goar and Landmann readily acknowledge, it doesn't work
to try to help lawyers others are concerned about. "They'll tell us it's
none of our bloody business," Landmann says. "But sometimes it's still
not lost. Because a few months or years down the line, in cases
involving alcoholism, the disease will have progressed. Many lawyers
remember. They themselves will get their backs up against the wall in
too many places, and then they ask for help."
A wider reach
In the spirit of frankness that pervades the WisLAP program, those
involved admit that there have been rough spots in its history. WisLAP
is the result of a merger of two former entities, the Committee on
Assistance to Lawyers (COAL) and Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (LCL).
COAL focused on stress and mental health issues and was a State Bar
committee; LCL addressed alcoholism and drug abuse and functioned
outside the Bar.
Expressing the concerns many had when the two merged, Madison
attorney Mary Alice Coan says, "I didn't have high hopes." Coan is a
WisLAP Committee member and former LCL board member. "I was afraid that
somehow LCL would become a second-class citizen because stress is sort
of glamorous. If you're stressed out you're important and busy. But if
you use substances, you're just a drunk."
"But it hasn't turned out that way," Coan adds. "The merger has been
remarkable. The whole is much bigger than the parts we started
with."
Proof of that is evident as WisLAP now pursues new directions. The
committee is setting up a subcommittee in each of the 16 Board of
Governors' districts to extend WisLAP's reach to more attorneys.
Subcommittees will include lawyers, health-care professionals,
counselors, and others who are willing to help lawyers in distress. The
hope is that the district subcommittees will stir more volunteer help in
parts of the state where that's now scarce, to give Goar and Landmann
more of the backup support they need. Also, people in the districts will
assist in educational efforts, such as speaking to local bar
associations about WisLAP.
"It was Jerry Sternberg's idea," John Wylie says of the district
subcommittee plan, "and I think it's a great one. Perhaps this is a way
to avoid some of the disciplinary problems."
"I'd like to see the self-regulatory program of our state (BAPR) be
preventive," Sternberg says, "rather than simply coming down on people
at the point of discipline. I'd like to see WisLAP become so
comprehensive that people in any area of the state could have access to
a volunteer fairly close to where they're located. Then we'll be able to
meet people more than half way. I think this is the beginning of making
a difference in our profession."
Dianne Molvig operates Access Information Service, a Madison
research, writing and editing service. She is a frequent
contributor to area publications.
Wisconsin Lawyer