From Attorney to Therapist

In my third year of law school, I decided to volunteer at the public defender’s office. I really enjoyed the people aspect. As a public defender, you see firsthand how you help people. I was assigned to a felony courtroom within the juvenile court system, and they had a specialized mental health/drug court. The work in this court was unique because everyone — the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the probation officer — worked as a team to find the best therapeutic solution for the defendant.

After my time as a public defender, I went into private practice, specializing in divorce law. I quickly got burned out and knew I needed a change. The very first day of my master’s in counseling program, the professor asked each of us what we did for a living, as most people in the program had other jobs. I told her I used to be an attorney. She laughed and said, “Well, what did they call you in court?” I had to think about it for a second and then responded, “Oh, they called me counselor.” It was quite a moment. There’s so much crossover between the two professions.

I first worked for Advocate Medical Group, launching an adolescent case management program. After that I worked for the Lawyers' Assistance Program (LAP), which helps attorneys with substance abuse, addiction and mental health issues, and eventually became executive director. From there, I moved into my current role at Kirkland.

I found the work fulfilling, but I also experienced stress and anxiety. When working in the juvenile court, I started to take calls from a client who was in prison. I didn’t set boundaries, and work started to bleed into other aspects of my life. There’s a term called "compassion fatigue," where you internalize a traumatic event on behalf of someone else to the point where you have no empathy left to give. That was just crushing, and I didn’t realize it was a problem until after the fact.

It’s evolved much like the world in general has. We’ve seen a major generational shift, with younger people now being much more open about their mental health and happiness, more willing to talk about it and more accepting of others’ struggles. Before this, people were more likely to keep negative feelings and stress inside and find not-so-healthy ways to cope.

A big shift in understanding mental health in the legal field, specifically, came in 2016 when the American Bar Association partnered with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation to study mental health and substance abuse among lawyers. The results shocked the legal world. It showed that a staggering number of attorneys had mental health or substance abuse issues. That study got a lot of press and catapulted the idea that this really is a big issue.

Kirkland has been ahead of its time on the wellbeing front. We’ve seen many firms develop wellbeing-focused positions in recent years, but I’m the only one, to my knowledge, who’s both a licensed therapist and attorney. This is helpful because I really understand how the attorney brain works since I have one. The pessimistic and skeptical mindset we develop as attorneys helps us deeply examine issues, and our perfectionism drives us to do remarkable work. But this mindset also comes with a bit of stress. So the fact that I understand what it’s like to think and feel that way goes a long way toward establishing trust and a connection with attorneys.

In my early days as a therapist, I thought, “I’m going to change people right away. I’m going to get them on the right path.” I’ve since learned that that’s not how it works. Wellbeing is not something that happens overnight. It’s also not something you achieve and then move on from. It’s something you have to work on your entire life. I enjoy planting that first seed and getting attorneys in the habit of practicing self-care. Some will come back to me years later and say, “Wow, what you said that day really made a difference.” That’s been really meaningful to me.