Sneak Peek: Alberta Lawyers and Phase 2 of the National Study
A little more than a month ago, Phase 2 of the National Study on the Psychological Health Determinants for Canadian Legal Professionals (https://flsc.ca/resources/resource-library/?resource-category=wellness-of-the-legal-profession) was released without fanfare. In fact, the Phase 2 Report was released on the Friday morning of the Thanksgiving Weekend—not the most auspicious time for attracting interest. Perhaps Phase 2 was deemed less newsworthy since it expands on themes introduced in Phase 1? But Phase 2 is still important because it breaks data out by province, and we all want to know how Alberta lawyers are doing.
We all like to think that we live and practice in the best province—and, if we practice in the best province, we might think that our mental health would be better.
After all, the rates of depression, anxiety, psychological distress, burnout and suicidal ideation faced by Canadian legal professionals are pretty high. And maybe the Ontario paralegals and Quebec notaries who were included in the Study as well as lawyers and articling students are the ones who are suffering more than lawyers.
So, when the National Study—Phase 1—was released two years ago, I backed out the data for paralegals and notaries.
And then when Phase 2 was released, I compared Alberta lawyers to our peers across Canada and found---not much difference:
We are slightly higher than the national average for major depressive disorder and slightly lower for generalized anxiety disorder. Our rate of suicidal ideation is on the high side, but our rates of psychological distress and burnout are on the low side.
The Phase 2 Report tells us that more than half of Alberta lawyers (51.4%) do not seek help for their mental health issues even though they felt they needed it. This is about 5% higher than the Canadian data point, where 46.9% did not seek help, which may be significant. But what does it mean?
Does it mean that Albertans are “rugged individualists” who tough out well-being challenges? Or are we so over-worked that we just can’t find the time to book appointments with our family doctors (if we have them) or an Assist counsellor? And how can Assist, and our supporters, spread the message that Assist has help that can be accessed in digestible bits?
More than 9% of Alberta lawyers reported having taken medical leaves of more than three months in the last five years—and this is higher than I expected. We hear of law firms telling lawyers who request medical leaves that taking such leaves will limit their careers, an example of stigma in action. But close to one in ten lawyers has taken medical leave in the last five years.
Here are a few more Alberta tidbits:
- 58.8% of Alberta respondents feel that they frequently to always have so many urgent matters to deal with that they don’t have enough time in a day to get everything done.
- 87.1% of Aberta respondents consider their work to be frequently to always very mentally taxing, with another 7.9% stating that their work is sometimes mentally taxing. My question: where are the 5% how state that their work is occasionally to never mentally taxing working and are they hiring? But many of us are conditioned to need a high level of challenge and would be unmotivated and unproductive in roles without enough mental taxation.
- 70.9% of Alberta lawyers with billable hour targets work more than 50 hours per week, while only 52.2% of lawyers without billable hour targets do so.
- 76.2% of women lawyers and 70.7% of male lawyers agree or strongly agree that their work drains so much of their energy that it has a negative effect on their private life.
- 63.5% of women lawyers and 58.7% of male lawyers feel that their work drains so much of their time that it has a negative effect on their private life.
This weekend, the Assist board and a group of volunteers will be looking at these and other data to determine how Assist should respond to the first concrete data showing rates of psychological disruption for Alberta lawyers and articling students.
We will keep this important conversation going through this blog by sharing more data from the National Study and strategies that Assist and our supporters can implement.
Loraine