Addiction in the Legal Profession and Send a Student or Junior to Assist's Hand to Hand Event!
At the Assist office, we are getting very excited about our Hand to Hand event in Edmonton on Thursday, October 3, 2024.
And if you are wondering what a Hand to Hand event is, you are probably not alone. “Hand to Hand” is the name Assist uses for a gala education, networking and fundraising dinner that we hold every couple of years. The name is rooted in the tradition of lawyers helping lawyers—a key feature of our peer support programs. Picture a lawyer reaching a hand to help another lawyer pull themselves up, both metaphorically and physically. That’s what a Hand to Hand event is.
In normal (aka pre-pandemic) times, we alternated venues between Calgary and Edmonton, featuring speakers with a message that would resonate with the Alberta legal community while providing an opportunity to network with peers. Past speakers were Senator Romeo Dallaire, Olympian Clara Hughes, and former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Clement Gascon.
This year, our first post-pandemic Hand to Hand event, we are featuring Michael Bryant as our speaker. Michael is a lawyer who served as Ontario’s Attorney General (2003-2009) and, shortly after leaving office, was involved in a car-cycle altercation in which the cyclist was killed. He faced criminal charges, which were ultimately withdrawn after an unusual court procedure in which the Special Prosecutor (a BC lawyer was appointed to reduce the appearance of a conflict of interest) led evidence to support the withdrawal of charges against Michael. This unusual procedure was accessed because of the publicity surrounding the accident and Michael’s charges as well as concerns that the justice system could not be seen as lenient on one of its own. After the Special Prosecutor called evidence in support of his application to withdraw charges, the judge affirmed that withdrawing charges was within the purview of the Crown, stating “So at the request of the Crown, the charge is withdrawn.”
As Marie Heinen, Michael’s defence counsel, stated to the court: “Tragedies are rarely expected or intended. The little decisions we make daily, meaningless and quickly forgotten, can have a life-altering impact.” You will hear Michael talk about how his life and career trajectory were altered by tragedy. A former Bay Street, national firm lawyer with both a Supreme Court of Canada clerkship and an LLM from Harvard, he set up his own practice and served as duty counsel so that he could serve people who wound up on the “wrong” side of the justice system.
How would any of us cope with having inadvertently caused the death of another human being, let alone being charged with criminal offences?
I outlined the tragedy above, and unfortunately addiction is relevant to lawyers. The National Study on the Psychological Health Determinants of Legal Professionals in Canada found that lawyers have high rates of risky drinking and are at risk of harmful alcohol use or substance use dependence using the AUDIT-10, a well-established evidence-based screening tool. Specifically, 22.2% of Canadian male lawyers and 15.2% of female lawyers drink at a hazardous or harmful level, with about 17.5% of males and 14.1% of females being likely to be highly dependent on alcohol.
Younger lawyers have patterns of risky drinking behaviour. While alcohol consumption by legal professionals in the first five years of practice is described as “relatively stable,” the rate of men with 5 to 10 years of experience increases from 27.1% to 34.1%. This means that more than one-third of male legal professionals at this experience level are engaging in risky drinking!
Women’s rate of risky drinking is a bit different. The percentage of women legal professionals with risky drinking behaviour increases significantly during their first five years of practice to a peak of just under 25% and then tapering down.
experience and gender (n = 5,154)
These numbers are significant! And the percentage of legal professionals with risky drinking habits is much higher for lawyers with billable hours targets (27.8%) than for those without billable hours targets (19.3%).
The study also revealed that almost 20% of Canadian legal professionals use cannabis at least weekly. According to Health Canada, about 9% of people who use cannabis will develop an addiction to it, with about one-third of all users developing a problem related to their usage.
I reviewed law student alcohol consumption statistics, and they are disturbing as well. According to a 2021 study (which compared 2021 data with the results of a 2014 law student study), law student risky drinking behaviour has continued to increase. The chart below summarizes indicators of risky drinking.
| 2021 Law Students | 2014 Law Students | 1992-1994 Grad Students | |
| Vomited | 31% | 37.3% | 28.6% |
| Felt that you should cut down your drinking | 34.7% | N/A | N/A |
| Felt Guilt, remorse or regret | 31.3% | 30.2% | 21.8% |
| Had amnesia or memory loss | 19.3% | 24.8% | 14.6% |
| Missed Class | 8.3% | 19.3% | 12.3% |
| Had unplanned sex | 9.7% | 15.9% | N/A |
| Drove while under the influence of alcohol | 8% | 15.3% | 27.7% |
| Thought I had a problem—afraid I might be an alcoholic | 17.9% | 13.9% | 8.8% |
| Been annoyed with criticism about drinking or been criticized about drinking | 11.1% | 11.2% | 13.8% |
| Was hurt or injured | 4.7% | 7.3% | 4.4% |
| Had an “eye-opener” first thing in the morning to get rid of a hangover | 5.2% | 6.7% | N/A |
| Performed poorly on a test/project | 6.2% | 4.7% | 7.7% |
| Thought about suicide | 9.9% | 3.9% | 2.6% |
| Been taken advantage of sexually | 2.8% | 3.1% | 4.6% |
| Taken advantage of someone sexually | 0% | 0.1% | 2.5% |
There is a tiny pockets of good news in these stats and evidence of a bit of a shift at least with respect to driving after consuming alcohol. When I was in law school in the 1980s, the percentage of law students who drank and drove appeared to be close to the percentage of students who had cars and who consumed alcoholic beverages from time to time. I am fascinated, as a mature adult, by our collective cognitive dissonance that while we were learning the elements of the Criminal Code offence of impaired driving, we did not connect those elements with how we got home from Friday Afternoon Beer Socials!
It is possible that some of the reduction in adverse drinking behaviours reported in 2021 were due to pandemic conditions reflecting that many students may have been drinking at home rather than at events and bars. But there is a smattering of reduced harmful outcomes and this is a source of hope.
And hope is what we all need in order to exist in our complicated world. If Michael can find hope after the tragic death of Darcy Allen Sheppard, we can find hope, too. And we can find community with other lawyers who will support us when the going gets tough.
This is why Alberta lawyers, articling students and lawyers should come to Assist’s Hand to Hand event: because we are a population at risk for substance use dependence. Life may mete out tragedies to us, and we need to find, and learn to find, hope.
If you cannot attend, please consider supporting our initiative to provide tickets for law students, articling students and junior lawyers who cannot purchase tickets without support. Here are some reasons for law firms and individual lawyers to donate tickets:
- If you are a law firm, our October 3rd event is an easy CPD activity for your junior lawyers. They can include attending our event in their CPD plan, which is due on September 30th, and fulfill this objective within a few days. They could share their learnings back at your office.
- While articling students do not have to submit CPD plans, this event serves to introduce them to key support systems in our profession and lay the foundation for well-being competency activities for subsequent years. If you are a firm or a lawyer who has articling students, please consider sending them—our event will also help students to build their networks, also enhancing their resiliency.
- We are all concerned about young lawyers (and articling students) who may not be receiving mentorship including with respect to aspects of legal practice including well-being. By donating to allow us to include more articling students and junior lawyers in our event, you are helping lawyers deliver quality legal services and protect the public interest, reducing costly errors and damage to our profession’s credibility.
- We are including law students in our free ticket initiative, and we will recognize firms who purchase tickets for students which can have tangible recruiting benefits.
Michael Bryant’s compelling story is applicable to lawyers of all vintages so don’t limit your attendance to students and juniors.
Purchasing tickets and donating to support free tickets is easy. You can order and pay for tickets at https://bit.ly/ASSISTH2H. We are offering reduced pricing on tickets for articling students and junior lawyers in their first five years of practice--$200 per ticket instead of $225. Please visit our ticket purchase page, choose to donate $200 per ticket and then email Eileen at program-manager@lawyersassist.ca so we can generate the ticket. You will receive a tax receipt for the full amount of your donation.
We need to provide our final numbers, including meal selections to the hotel by September 26th, so please don’t wait until the last minute!
Educating law students, articling students and lawyers about the impact of substance use dependence on our profession is a good risk management strategy. We know that lawyers run much higher risks of addiction, particularly alcoholism, than the general public. How often do lawyers tell clients about a risk they or their businesses face and then tell them to use hope as their sole risk mitigation strategy? So, why would we see a substantial risk to ourselves, our firms and our profession and hope that it works out for everyone, and maybe even cross our fingers for luck?
Instead, we can recognize what research tells us about the risk factor of addiction and learn from lawyers who have developed strategies to mitigate or even remove risk.
Join us on October 3rd or send a newcomer to our profession—together we can make practicing law a better, safer and more enjoyable place.
Loraine