Depression in the Legal Profession

Lawyers and prospective lawyers should be aware of the factors contributing to professional discontent (including billable hours), and then seek to correct and avoid them.

Lawyers are collectively some of the most depressed individuals in the United States.  In a study at Johns Hopkins University regarding the prevalence of major depressive disorder across a spectrum of occupations, it was discovered that three occupations had statistically significant raised levels of major depressive disorder: lawyers, pre-kindergarten teachers, and secretaries.   Among those three occupations, lawyers were the most prone toward major depressive disorder, suffering from the disorder at a rate 3.6 times higher than non-lawyers with the same basic sociodemographic traits.  The Johns Hopkins researchers were unable to determine why lawyers were more depressed than most segments of the population, and whether it was the practice of law that made lawyers depressed, or whether persons prone to major depressive disorder are attracted to the legal profession.  (See Patrick J. Schiltz, "Lawyer Well-Being in Large Firms: Choices Facing Young Lawyers: On Being a Happy, Healthy, and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession," 52 Vand. L. Rev. 874 (May 1999); see also Steven Keeva, Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life at 5 (1999); Deborah Rhode, In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession at 25 (2000); Mary Ann Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession Is Transforming American Society at 87 (1994).