I was fortunate to be invited to speak on a panel on Mental Health issues for law students at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law (shout out to Amanda Ramkishun – Student Disability Advisor – for organizing this session!).
Here are a few of my thoughts and reflections on this important subject:
There is this fiction that I learned early in my legal education that to be a lawyer or work in the legal profession, it was a prerequisite to keep your emotions in check (which meant hidden) and to not show any vulnerability. There was no regard or space for ideas of wellness or self-care except for lip-service and conversations of work/life balance that were almost universally spoken with sarcasm.
There was also a fundamental authenticity gap in the process of legal education and eventually in the practice of law. Everything in my legal education was about creating a persona, playing a role, or wearing a certain mask. There were many areas in which this was reinforced including conduct between lawyers and in law school between law students and professors.
In both law school and legal practice there is often active modelling and encouragement to be something or someone you may not actually want to be or that may actually be contrary to what you value. These internal conflicts and walking between the person you are told you are supposed to be as a law student or lawyer and who you are authentically, reflecting all of your lived experience, can create a feeling of perpetual crisis.
In my experience of law school and the legal practice there is also the additional barriers and fundamental silencing and invisibility of issues of intersectional impacts of oppression and trauma, specifically for the experiences of Indigenous, Black and Racialized students; poor and working class students; LGBTQ2+* students; students with disabilities; and women.
All of this forms the perfect storm for mental health challenges.
We must – absolutely must – speak about mental health and wellness in law school education and legal practice in a meaningful, real, and authentic way. This needs to be supported and modelled by leaders in the legal profession, professors, lawyers, administration, Bar associations, and judges – all levels and aspects of the law. We must walk the talk.
We must fund and resource building in concrete support mechanisms of counselling support, programs and practice that prioritize mental health and wellness, including check-ins, creating space (physical drop-in centres), and resources such as counselling or other mental health services free for all students to access.
We need to ensure all curriculum, bar admissions courses, and ongoing legal education and profession development models, incorporate and reflect best practices for mental health wellness. For example, what if each first year course needed to have a mental health component?
Finally, my note to law students:
Dear Law Students,
You are in the company of many struggling with mental health and wellness challenges – so many may not have even identified their experience.
There is no one way to be a lawyer or law student – no matter what law school or the legal profession tell you.
Your experience is important and real.
You are not alone.
Please get support. Please speak to someone. Please focus on your wellness.
With care.
