It's Okay Not To Be Fine – Promoting Mental Health in the Legal Profession | Reid Murtaugh

Transcript

Reid Murtaugh 00:00

More people just reach out because they want to know that there’s someone else practicing law that deals with something like they do and they’re surviving. It’s great to read an article, but just to have that phone call or connection.

Candice Reed 00:18

This is Leveraging Latitude: Cultivating a Full Life in the Law. And we’re your hosts, Candice Reed.

Tim Haley 00:25

And Tim Haley.

Candice Reed 00:26

Please join us on our journey as we discover how to leverage the hard work of becoming a lawyer to achieving success and leading a rich and fulfilling life in the law.

Candice Reed 00:41

Hey, Tim.

Tim Haley 00:42

Hey, Candice. How are you doing?

Candice Reed 00:44

I’m good. How are you doing today?

Tim Haley 00:46

I’m great.

Candice Reed 00:47

Yeah?

Tim Haley 00:48

Good to talk to you today. Oh yeah. No, actually, let’s drill down a little bit. Are you really good?

Candice Reed 00:53

I am really good. I appreciate you asking. But yeah, today I’m really good. It’s a good day. It’s beautiful here. I’m feeling rested and I’m in a good place.

Tim Haley 01:03

So let’s say it wasn’t a good day and we just had the same conversation. Would you tell me the same thing?

Candice Reed 01:09

Yep. Probably. I may not be quite as chipper about it, but yeah, I think that most of us answer that question in one of only a handful of ways, right? We’re either, “Great, good, fine. Okay, how are you?” It’s pretty much a script.

Tim Haley 01:30

Yeah, keep on keeping on, whatever. Yeah, it is a script. And just today alone, how many tens of thousands of times has that script played out in the hallways of firms or companies?

Candice Reed 01:41

Yeah. I would imagine quite a bit. And as I believe you’re alluding to, the reality is that even when people may answer that first question in the way we would expect, “Great, good, fine,” it’s often not the reality.

Tim Haley 02:02

Yeah. And you’ve got some statistics to back that up too.

Candice Reed 02:05

Yeah. So we’ve discussed before that I actually teach a class at the University of Tennessee College of Law on thriving as a lawyer. And so well-being, attorney well-being specifically is a topic that I’ve researched for many years and that I like talking about because I feel like it’s so important to our profession, not just to the individual lawyers who may be struggling with well-being issues, but to the profession at large. We know that we as attorneys experience mental illness or a lack of well-being at significantly higher rates than the general population. So one of the most recent studies in this area was conducted by the American Bar Association in partnership with the Hazelden Foundation in 2016. And that study was the first study that put forth some information that we probably all suspected, but we didn’t have the data to back it up. So from that study, we know that nearly a third of all lawyers experience some form of mental illness during their time practicing law. And that could be mild depression, it could be anxiety, it could be bipolar syndrome or even addiction issues. But we know that lawyers are suffering. And one of the key points out of that study is or was that lawyers within their first 10 years of practice are suffering more so than more senior attorneys. And we can all assume or make guesses as to why that might be, but that’s what the research says.

Tim Haley 04:06

And all these attorneys are walking down the hall and they’re asked how they’re doing, and they say fine or good, or okay, or whatever the script of the day is. And these are all missed opportunities I think both for the attorney who’s asking the question, who probably trying to be polite and has a million other things going on in their mind that, “As long as this person I’m talking to is fine, I can not worry about it and go about worrying about all the other things there are to worry about.”

Candice Reed 04:30

Yeah, I think we assume that the person asking the question doesn’t really want to know how we’re doing, right? That it’s more like a hello, and they’re not really asking us how we’re doing. So I do think we need to make time and space to have conversations that go beyond just that greeting to where it becomes clear, “Hey, I’m really interested in how you’re doing,” or, “Hey, I’m not doing that well. I’d like to talk to you about it. I’m not sure what to do with it.” Just generally normalize having a conversation about whether or not we are well, we are doing okay, whether we need help. And then perhaps the person on the other end, the receiving end, how we can help or how we recognize when our colleagues may not be doing well or are on the verge of burnout or some other well-being crisis.

Tim Haley 05:30

So as our listeners can tell already, we’re going to be a little bit more serious today. Today we’re going to talk to Reid Murtaugh, who’s a co-founder of The Lawyers Depression Project. He’s going to share his story in this. And so for those of you who are listening who get asked, “How are you doing?” And if the answer’s not fine, saying not fine is really hard, but hopefully Reid’s story here can give us all some pointers on how to get over that hurdle and help us move forward as a profession.

Tim Haley 05:57

Hi everybody, welcome back to Leveraging Latitude. Today’s guest is a gentleman, a lawyer, Reid Murtaugh. Reid is the owner of the Murtaugh Law group in Lafayette, Indiana. He’s also the executive board member and the co-founder of an organization called The Lawyers Depression Project. The Lawyers Depression Project is a worldwide organization that provides peer-level support and calls for lawyers suffering from all sorts of mental distress. So it’s a great organization. I’m grateful to have him here to introduce it for us. So Reid, welcome.

Reid Murtaugh 06:36

Hi, Tim. Happy to be here today. Grateful for the opportunity.

Tim Haley 06:40

Fantastic. So Reid, first, you’re a lawyer, so tell us a little bit about your path to becoming a lawyer and your current practice.

Reid Murtaugh 06:48

So my path to being a lawyer started completely away from the law. So I went to DePauw University in Greencastle and started with a biochemistry major. I had plans of going to med school and just completely took a right turn to the law, so.

Tim Haley 07:04

A right turn. I like that.

Reid Murtaugh 07:06

Yeah. Hopefully it was right. I don’t know. So I’ve questioned that at times, but I made the turn and transitioned. So I went to Valparaiso law school, graduated in 2009, right in the middle of 2008, 2009 recession, and didn’t really have plans during law school to go back to my hometown in Lafayette, but that’s where things took me. So I started off my career as a deputy prosecuting attorney in Tippecanoe County and worked there for about two and a half years. I left there to go to private practice. I worked for a five-lawyer law firm, downtown Lafayette, doing general practice, a lot of civil litigation, some personal injury work. Just got exposed to a wide variety of things as most associates do. And then in 2015, I left there and started my own practice, Murtaugh Law. And since then I’ve focused on real estate, business, wills and trusts, estate planning, and then last couple of years I’ve been doing municipal law. So I’m the town attorney for the town of Dayton.

Tim Haley 08:10

Fantastic. So you are a practicing lawyer, you’ve made a career of it 10 years in, but you’re also dealing with your own mental health issue, mental health story. Can you share your journey with us?

Reid Murtaugh 08:21

Yeah, absolutely. So everything started for me when I was 17 years old in high school. I just went for a run one day after school, and all of a sudden I felt something just take over my body that I’d never experienced before. So I was outside running and all of a sudden I just dropped to the grass, and I just felt like… It was like my brain shutting down more so than anything physical. I really just didn’t know what was going on. It was very confusing, kind of disorienting. So I was able to gather myself, get up, walk a little bit, but I was just so drained. I had to lay down. It was just something that didn’t make sense for a healthy 17-year-old.

Reid Murtaugh 09:05

So that’s where everything started for me. And through that period, I mean because this did continue on. I went to doctors, got checked out to see if there was anything on the physical side wrong, everything came back clear. So we learned, my family learned that basically it was a mental health issue. And so at that time I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and I had to make some adjustments that fall semester of high school. I had to drop a class and basically relearn how to do everything so that I could function how I was before. And what I dealt with after that first day was I would be in school and all of a sudden the same thing would happen where it was just my brain was shutting down, I was just so tired. And I basically walked to the nurse’s office. But I did get some help. I was fortunate to work with a therapist and she would come to the school some, I would go to her office and I did take some medicine at that time.

Reid Murtaugh 10:14

So moving forward to the spring of that high school semester, I had pretty much gotten through those periods where I was not able to make it through a full day of school. A lot of it was just the tools that the therapist talked to me about, about how to prevent that from coming on, how to manage stress and anxiety, depression. All these things were just completely foreign concepts to me at the time. So fortunately I was able to graduate on time and was able to move past those initial struggles.

Reid Murtaugh 10:50

But at that time, it was a whole different period as far as mental health, and there was just a lot of fear and uncertainty around mental health in general. So as soon as I started to feel better, which a lot of people do, I just stopped doing everything that I was doing. So stopped taking the medicine, went off to college, stopped doing therapy. And for the most part, I was able to manage it pretty well throughout my undergrad, but then as I got into law school, I started to have some more struggles. And I think a big part of it for me was just the stress of going through that last year of school, the job application process, the uncertainty of going out, graduating in a tough economy. And then also I knew that I would probably have to disclose my mental health treatment as far as part of the character and fitness part of the bar exam.

Reid Murtaugh 11:49

So I think those factors kind led me to go back to treatment, which is a positive thing. So during my third year of law school, I started going to that same therapist again, but I also went to someone who did a full review of my diagnosis. And at that time I was diagnosed with cyclothymic disorder, which is not something most people are familiar with, but it’s very similar to bipolar II condition. So moving forward, that ended up being my full diagnosis. After I graduated law school and was working in the law firm, I ended up having some additional struggles, went to the psychiatrist that I see now, and I just had a fuller idea of my whole family history and everything. So my final diagnosis was the bipolar II condition.

Tim Haley 12:46

From high school to your practicing law, that’s a 10-year journey or so, right?

Reid Murtaugh 12:51

Yes.

Tim Haley 12:52

That’s quite a ways to go over the course of some really difficult years anyway.

Reid Murtaugh 12:56

Yeah, unfortunately, that’s not an uncommon thing for it to take that long to get a diagnosis of bipolar or bipolar II. I think that a lot of people are diagnosed with something like that’s maybe lesser or just depression or anxiety, that specific diagnosis can be something that’s very hard to correctly diagnose or fully diagnose, especially when you’re young. I think that sometimes it just takes getting through all of those development periods and seeing like, yes, I did have this other major episode of depression. And as those things happen throughout your life, then you are able to get a better idea of what you’re dealing with.

Tim Haley 13:42

So you’re a practicing lawyer having, I don’t want to say completed this journey because I know it’s not over yet, but you’ve reached a point where you’ve been diagnosed, so you think what you’re dealing with. What did you do then?

Reid Murtaugh 13:56

Yeah, so like I said, in 2015 I was working out at the law firm and I started to really struggle again. So one thing that I did that I’m very grateful for is I reached out to the Indiana Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program. And that was not an easy thing to do. So I had this habit when I was there and when I was struggling is I’d get up from my desk and I’d go to this back stairwell that really wasn’t used much. And I would just go there and pace just because I was struggling so much just internally, just anxiety in my chest, all those things that it was almost like too much to deal with just sitting in my office. And I was just struggling to get any kind of relief. So I knew that this was probably something that I needed help dealing with. It was too much just for me to handle on my own. So I knew about the Indiana Judge’s Lawyers Assistance Program, and I remember being in my office looking up the phone number, almost making it, but not doing it. It was days and weeks of contemplating this. And then finally one day I worked up the courage to send that email, and it was really life-changing and it really started this journey for me.

Reid Murtaugh 15:13

And then another main thing that happened was later on in a year, one day instead of doing my normal routine of going to the back stairwell, I just took out a piece of paper and I just captured exactly what was on my mind if it was negative, whatever. And that was really the first time in my life that I ever just started journaling. And I just took as a way to deal with the stress and try to get out of this depression that I’ve been dealing with for most of the year. And one thing that was on my mind, one thing that I became aware of through that process of writing was I had this new diagnosis or this full diagnosis of bipolar II, I’ve had the struggle for a long time dealing with it and getting to this point. And so this is where I came up with this idea of I’d like to disclose my condition. And I think that in doing so, it would open up connections with other people because at that time it was so much different. But I was a young lawyer and I had no idea if there were any other lawyers who struggled with anxiety or depression because there was just no way for me to know because it was all just kept private. That was just the way that the culture worked at that time. And so I just really thought that that’s something that I wanted to do.

Reid Murtaugh 16:35

Then I had to figure out how am I going to make this work? There’s a lot to think about if I’m going to do this thing, it’s not just a small little thing to do. My wife was pregnant at the time with our first child. I ended up leaving the firm and starting a business, so I had a new business. So I had every reason in the world just not to do it. There was this risk there and a lot of reasons know just to not do it. But what it’s hard for other people to see is it wasn’t easy for me just to stay private and to keep dealing with it on my own, and I was hurting so much from the pain of the day to day just dealing with the condition that it made total sense to me. And I don’t know why, but I just felt that it would be cathartic. I felt that it would be a way to help myself, and that disclosure was the only way that I could do it.

Tim Haley 17:27

Yeah. And you’re talking about disclosure to the bar or to who were you talking about disclosing to?

Reid Murtaugh 17:33

Yeah, so it started off with I had already disclosed once to two of the lawyers in my firm that spring when I was just struggling. And all of a sudden it was the first time I’m like, “I can’t make it through the day. This is what I have going on. I’ve dealt with this a long time.” And I told them. And then I just would tell a family friend at lunch. I ended up telling all the partners in my firm. I ended up talking to the staff. But this a whole idea of disclosure that I was talking about is it was a much broader, basically telling my story to the world.

Tim Haley 18:08

So you’re doing this as an attorney at a small firm, and then later on you’re a solo. And lawyers lives generally are more solitary than people think. The TV shows where everybody’s always in everyone’s office or they’re always in court and the reality is, as you know, as our listeners know, there’s a lot of alone time in this job. Those are natural obstacles to going out and co-founding a group like The Lawyers Depression Project. How did you end up making that leap?

Reid Murtaugh 18:38

Yeah. So once I left the firm and started up the business, I put off the whole idea of disclosing for a while, but eventually did it through Facebook. And then I pitched an idea to the Indiana Lawyer and say, “I’ve already disclosed on Facebook. I have this idea for basically sharing my story and then documenting how this goes.” So that’s where that initially started. So for two years, I wrote a quarterly article for the Indiana Lawyer, and at that point, I was receiving such great feedback and connections for attorneys, started off other attorneys in Indiana, but then other states. And so it just set me on this whole journey of connecting with other lawyers and getting into this whole mental health field and being a part of the mental health movement that was going on outside of what I was doing.

Reid Murtaugh 19:33

And so how I got connected with The Lawyers Depression Project is I went down to a conference in Brown County for the Indiana Judges Lawyers Association. They put on like a CLE. And so while I was down there, I talked to some of the staff and I was talking to them about what I’ve been doing and how I’d like to connect with some other lawyers who have disclosed and specifically have disclosed a mental health condition. And so I was in my office I think that next Monday after the conference, and one of the staff members emailed me this article, and it was basically exactly what I was looking for.

Reid Murtaugh 20:11

It was an article that Joe Milowic III wrote, so Joe at the time, and still is a partner at Quinn Emanuel, and he disclosed depression experience, and he also put in there at the end a line about doing a peer support group. So I immediately reached out to Joe and it was an instant connection, and I was interested in participating with whatever he was working on. And so that’s really what led me to The Lawyers Depression Project. And I was just fortunate with timing that I was able to participate in the first call.

Reid Murtaugh 20:47

So Joe and a couple other people helped him get everything set up so that we could do online peer support calls through Google Meet. So basically, you can set up an account and be anonymous if you want to, but we were doing the Zoom face-to-face calls online way before COVID and the pandemic.

Tim Haley 21:09

I was going to say, what year was this? Was this ’17 or ’18?

Reid Murtaugh 21:13

It was 2018.

Tim Haley 21:14

2018?

Reid Murtaugh 21:16

Yeah.

Tim Haley 21:16

First of all, I don’t want the listeners or anyone else to… Actually, what I want to say is this, the process that you described, it took an incredible amount of courage and bravery, and I want to commend you for that. I can’t imagine what that was like. So I just want to stop and say that because it’s important.

Reid Murtaugh 21:34

Thank you.

Tim Haley 21:35

But for people who are listening to this that maybe are going through a similar internal struggle, how do you get over that hurdle? Because it’s just you in that moment. How do you do it? Or is there a way to do it, or is there multiple ways to do it?

Reid Murtaugh 21:51

Sure. Yeah, so really I think disclosure is an individual decision for everyone, and I just want everyone who feels like it would be helpful for them to disclose that they feel comfortable doing it, but also, I don’t feel anyone should be obligated to do it. And staying private is perfectly fine too. And not everyone has to disclose to the world. It can be very meaningful and impactful to have disclosure to a friend or a coworker. And if you do it and they’re able to provide a compassionate response, basically just listen and not judge or whatever, it can be a very positive experience.

Reid Murtaugh 22:36

And that’s really what people can receive through The Lawyers Depression Project calls. That’s what it’s all about, is just connecting with a group of lawyers who practice law and have some kind of struggle. It can be anything, but it doesn’t even have to be something that rises to the level of a full diagnosis like bipolar II or anything else. If you’re just feeling off, or if you have a major life event that’s affecting your ability to work or to manage work and home, you can come and you can share your experience. And that’s all we do. We’re not mental health professionals. We don’t give any advice. We just share our experience, our lived experience. And that is so helpful because it’s just different communicating with people who have that same experience. It’s always going to be different for your family members or your friends or whoever who wants to help and wants to be supportive, but they just don’t have that same experience themselves.

Tim Haley 23:36

Just don’t understand, yeah. They can’t understand, right.

Reid Murtaugh 23:38

Yeah. So what I tell people is, “All I can do if you’re…” Honestly, a lot of people have reached out because they want to know that there’s someone else practicing law that deals with something like they do, and they’re surviving, and they want to have that… It’s great to read an article, but just to have that phone call or connection. So I get some people who just reach out privately because I’ve written the articles, basically volunteer my time for that. And then also I try to get everyone that I meet or who has that interest also to join The Lawyers Depression Project because we have built up a community. It’s more than just a group of lawyers because people come back and it has the ability to grow from something that we all need, which is peer support because of our condition, but also to fill just a more basic human need of socializing and friendship. After the pandemic, it’s already starting to happen where people in the group are setting up their own meetups so we can do in New York in person with a group of people that you’ve been just talking to on Zoom like this for the last year.

Reid Murtaugh 24:53

And so I think that that’s really one of my big hopes for the project is where it just continue to grow in both a therapeutic traditional peer support way, but also to grow just like things do in the legal profession with bar associations and all that, just to share our experience and to have friends and to do fun things and to get out, because those are all important things. When you talk about dealing with mental health, you have to do self-care, you have to do things that you enjoy or do exercise or do guided meditations or all those kinds of things are really important to be able to manage your condition. And even if you don’t have a condition, they’re very important for you to be present when you’re showing up to work, to practice law, and to be fit, and to be effective.

Tim Haley 25:42

Yeah. Reid, the first time you introduced me to The Lawyers Depression Project, I want to say it was about a year ago, maybe a little less, but in my mind, the genius about it is it’s creating community. And I don’t want to echo everything that you said, but getting people together who do understand or who can understand, and then also forming friendships and helping each other. Honestly, everybody should be doing it. Some level of that kind of interaction with other people regardless of any diagnosis or otherwise, but-

Reid Murtaugh 26:14

So true.

Tim Haley 26:15

I’m still in awe of what you were able to do from a little office in Lafayette, Indiana, and I think that’s fantastic work.

Reid Murtaugh 26:22

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it’s such a cool thing because you’re right, I literally just started with a notepad and writing down my thoughts when I was struggling, and then I’m going home and I’m thinking of these ideas in my home office with a laptop, and I knew. I’m just in Lafayette, Indiana, but I have this big idea and I want to connect, but we were talking about this a little earlier, The Lawyers Depression Project is not just lawyers across the United States, it’s global. And the people who have reached out to me, just because I’ve written an article, have been in other countries as well. And it’s amazing just how similar the experience is. You can connect with someone in Canada or in South Africa or Italy, just in the same way that we all do here in the United States.

Tim Haley 27:16

That’s fantastic. Is there a way to quantify the scope of what you’re doing in terms of people, or is that just too hard to do?

Reid Murtaugh 27:26

Yeah, so everyone who wants to participate in the calls does have to sign up to be a member. So you have to provide an emergency contact and create a username and password. So you can make that anonymous, but everyone actually has a Google Meet account. We are only able to do that because we formed a nonprofit and we don’t pay any fees through Google because we’re a nonprofit. But yeah, so because of that setup, we are able to track how many members we have. So that’s just anyone who has signed up. And when you sign up, then you’re able to participate in calls or you can participate in our online forum. You can just read or post information on the forum. Also, when you’re on the calls, you’re not required to do anything. You can just call in and say, “I want to listen.” But we’re at about 500 members and we’ve been tracking through the pandemic, and we’ve increased to about 20 to 25 new members a month.

Tim Haley 28:25

That’s fantastic. So for listeners that are interested, is there a role or a space for those who would consider themselves allies in the group?

Reid Murtaugh 28:36

Yeah, so we have a full board and we have an executive committee, but we’re constantly trying to also connect with our members. And one thing that’s very important for us with the calls is we have call facilitators. So I’ve been a facilitator basically since I started participating, and we really had just five people at the beginning, but through this past year, we’ve reached out to all our members and asked them if they’re interested in becoming facilitators. So that’s one way of getting our members to not only just participate in the peer support, but engage in service. That’s what really can also benefit you in dealing with your own condition is just helping others being part of something bigger than yourself. So what we require is that everyone has to co-facilitate. So that’s what I’m doing some now for the new people being on the call with them, and then we all have to do suicide prevention training before we become facilitators. And then that’s just another thing that I think we want to grow our community and we want to grow the social aspects of it, but I think we also just have so much opportunity to engage in any kind of service that we want to, and that’s all driven by this community of members. It’s a very organic thing, and that’s just so cool about it. There’s just a magic to it that you can’t really explain.

Tim Haley 30:08

That’s great. So where do you see the future of the project, The Lawyers Depression Project? Is the goal to keep adding at a clip of 20, 25 members each? Is there a bigger vision out there? Do you still feel like you’re getting your feet wet?

Reid Murtaugh 30:23

I think that there’s still the potential that this really does grow quite a bit faster. Obviously, it’s just all what need is there. We just knew in the beginning from our own experiences that there was a need. I had experiences with trying to do a different kind of traditional support group, and this just is a better fit. So the main thing is when we go out and we talk, when people hear about it, that increases the number of members. So that just takes time. But 500 people out of the legal profession is a small part of the pie of people in the legal profession that struggle with kind of some mental health condition. And obviously there are other organizations that are doing great things to help lawyers. But yeah, I do think that there’s always the potential that we would get a big uptick in members. We’re really set up to do that. We could even right now split off if we have… Usually it’s best to have eight to 10 people on a call, but if we have 20 to 25, we can split into two calls. We have the ability with all of the increased technology with Zoom and Google and everything that everyone’s familiar with because of the pandemic. That’s helped us out as well.

Tim Haley 31:46

Fantastic. So I’ve got one more question for you. For anyone who wants to learn more, what’s your website?

Reid Murtaugh 31:53

Yeah, so the website for Lawyers Depression project is lawyersdepressionproject.org. And then we do have social media. We have LinkedIn, Facebook, we have started a Lawyers Depression Project Zoom cast which is available on YouTube, and we’re continuing to do one new episode a month. So we’re hoping to continue to basically just put more out there and hopefully now that things are opening up, we can do more speaking engagements in person and, yeah, just continue to connect and serve and help each other and have fun.

Tim Haley 32:37

That’s great. Reid, I hope we can have you back maybe in a year or so and check in on you and see how you’re doing.

Reid Murtaugh 32:43

Yeah, I’d love to come back.

Tim Haley 32:44

See how the Depression Project’s doing, and anything we can do to help you guys. Feel free to reach out anytime. Thanks for joining us today.

Reid Murtaugh 32:52

All right, thank you, Tim. I enjoyed it.

Candice Reed 33:03

Wow, Tim, that was a great conversation with Reid and I was impressed with his willingness to be vulnerable and his authenticity and the courage that he showed both in seeking help when he needed it, but also in telling his story so that other attorneys or professionals in a variety of areas can learn from his experience and see how you can get to the other side.

Tim Haley 33:36

Yeah, and not only that, but building the infrastructure to help other attorneys that may be going through something similar in a way that is less scary than telling your supervising attorney that you’re not doing okay. It’s a really impressive project, a really impressive attorney, and it’s interesting to me as I’m listening to it and thinking back about the conversation, whether you’re doing okay, it’s not a binary answer. It’s not, “Yes, I’m okay. No, it’s not.” There’s a whole range of answers to that question. I want to call it a spectrum, but even that’s not… That’s oversimplified. It’s more like a sphere. And at any given point in time, you’re a one different point inside this giant three-dimensional sphere. It could be anything.

Candice Reed 34:22

Good point. Your well-being, your mental health is not static. You’re not either okay or not okay. There may be times or periods in your life or in your career where you are struggling, but that doesn’t mean that you will always struggle or vice versa, if you are okay now, it doesn’t mean that you will always be okay, but tending to our mental health and well-being is something that we have to do continuously. It’s never done. Just like we continue to exercise every day or almost every day to keep our physical bodies in shape, we have to keep tending to our mental health as well. And it’s fluid.

Tim Haley 35:10

Yeah. For everybody out there, and we mentioned it in the interview, the lawyer profession is a solitary one, but you can feel alone in whatever you’re suffering through, but there’s other people out there that are going through something similar. Nobody’s truly alone. And that’s the beauty of The Lawyers Depression Project in my mind, is that it’s building this community where people feel safe to share what their experiences are and to become empowered, I want to say empowered by the vulnerableness, but understand that-

Candice Reed 35:43

Now you’re sounding like Brené Brown.

Tim Haley 35:47

I know, right? It’s something that you can find strength in it, even in the most lonely period if you look in the right places.

Candice Reed 35:51

Absolutely. And I think this past year, during the pandemic with many of us moving into our homes to work and to do just about everything else too, but we lost some of the connection that we had to others. And for me anyway, it was like taking a big highlighter and showing me just how important my relationships are and the community that I have. I know that I’ve told others of our colleagues at Latitude, but I would include you among this group as well, Tim, that there were many times throughout the pandemic that my work family was my primary support. So it wasn’t just that I was continuing to work and be productive, but I was getting a lot of support, and it was what was boosting me up or holding me up at certain times because you guys were the people that I was connecting with when I couldn’t connect with my family and friends like I had been used to. And so just having you all there and having a team to step in on the days when I didn’t feel particularly productive or up to the task, that those relationships were key.

Candice Reed 37:12

So yeah, I like that idea that well-being sits within the community, that that’s the source of it, and that ties to a conversation that we’ll be having next time on the topic that has become increasingly popular over the last year or two about diversity and inclusion. Many times we think of building inclusive teams as a well-being strategy. I think that it is, and that it’s a crucial one and one that we need to think about when we’re hiring and also when we’re training and continuing to cultivate our teams after the hire.

Tim Haley 37:55

Yeah, absolutely. Diversity and inclusion has been a hot topic for a long time, but certainly over the last two years has been really put under a finer microscope, at least in our profession.

Candice Reed 38:07

This last point, I think it’s like well-being, that we’ve talked around it for a long time. And we have tried various Band-Aids hoping that they were long-term fixes. I do think in recent years we’ve seen some meaningful change in both areas and some meaningful intention. That’s exciting to me because I think that we’re moving in the right direction. I look forward to that conversation next week or in a couple of weeks, and I appreciate the conversation that you had with Reid and his willingness to share his story. Thank you.

Tim Haley 38:45

Absolutely. Thanks all for listening. This was Leveraging Latitude. See you next time.

Tim Haley 38:53

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