Alcohol and the law.

 Should a sign like this come with your card of admission to the bar?

According to an item I received as part of a list serve I'm on for Texas lawyers (no, I'm not in Texas, long story), a frightening number of lawyers are alcoholics.  The Texas Lawyer reports:

But now, for the first time in decades, a team of researchers has verified and quantified the problem in a newly published study that shows that 21 percent of attorneys qualify as problem drinkers, 28 percent struggle with depression and 19 percent have anxiety.

Wow, that's a really high percentage.  I wouldn't have guessed it was anywhere near that amount.  I frankly doubted that but when I went to post this item, I found this one from a couple of years ago:

Studies conducted in numerous jurisdictions have pegged the rate of alcoholism in the legal profession at between 15% and 24%. Roughly 1 in 5 lawyers is addicted to alcohol. Of course, the converse is true,namely that the majority have no problem in consuming alcohol.

Hmm, the converse there isn't very comforting. 

Indeed, given the way statistics work, if 15% to 24% of lawyers are alcoholics, there must be a certain percentage above that who have some sort of problem with alcohol, assuming that a person can have a problem with alcohol and not be an alcoholic.  That does bring up the oddity that what constitutes being an alcoholic is, oddly, not universally defined.  You would think it would be, but it isn't.  Daily drinking doesn't equate with being an alcoholic, contrary to what some teetotalers feel, although in recent years some former drinking cultures have sort of headed that way, oddly enough.  Generally a male can drink up to two "drinks" per day and be regarded as a moderate drinking, but above that puts you in some other category. The amount is less for women.  Having said that, if addiction is considered, that's a different equation I guess (I"m not an expert on this, rather obviously).

Indeed, it's been interesting to note that columnist Froma Harrop has been sort of at war with the trend in some quarters in pretty strongly advocating her view that a drink a day or two for men isn't something that people ought to be up in arms about. That takes some guts on her part, as generally even people who drink a couple of drinks per day are going to be reluctant, in this environment, to admit it.  Harrop went one step further the other day and wrote a column arguing that 18 year olds should be allowed to drink, on the logical basis that if you are old enough to serve in the military, and to vote, you should be old enough to drink.  That's not going to happen here in the US, however, if for no other reason that this is one of those areas where an old Puritan ethic survives, even tough the Puritans were not teetotalers.

So, getting back on point, if 15% to 24%, or in the other calculation 21%, of lawyers are alcoholics, it must also mean that at least a few more percent are somewhere on the scale of maybe having a problem or verging on one.  And there'd be a few who must have problems with other substances, although a lot of those would be individuals who also have a problem with alcohol.  Having said that, about a year or more ago I worked on a matter where one lawyer frankly told me about another former lawyer in his firm that that the guy had a problem with marijuana, which is fully illegal here.  Of course, there was a lot of bad blood going on there, so I don't have a clue if that was really true.  I know that our bar is pretty darned aggressive about addressing lawyer misconduct, so I wonder.

Indeed, the ABA, in one of the periodic emails it sends out, reports from some ABA convention that:

On Wednesday, Hazelden and the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs released the study that showed 21 percent of licensed, employed attorneys qualify as problem drinkers, 28 percent struggle with some level of depression and 19 percent demonstrate symptoms of anxiety. It found that younger attorneys in the first 10 years of practice exhibit the highest incidence of these problems. The findings were posted online this week in the Journal of Addiction Medicine, with the print edition available in mid-February.

So it was at 21%, but went on to note:

When focusing on three of the 10 questions that measured only volume and frequency of drinking, the authors arrived at the conclusion that more than 1 in 3 practicing attorneys are problem drinkers even though the attorneys themselves might not characterize themselves as that.

So that would be 33%.  That's a stunning figure.

 Old Parr.  Apparently this Scotch whiskey was named after the oldest man in England, and is still distilled, although its no longer sold in the UK but only in export markets.  I don't know much about Parr, other than that he lived on a spartan diet, but which included a small drink of something each day, and lived to a reputed 152 years old, which is way old, if true.  Ironically, his death was precipitated by rich eating when he became famous in his advanced old age.

Anyhow, if this many lawyers have a problem, a person would still have to ask why this is the case.  One Blawg, Above the Law commented on it as follows:

Earlier this week, a tipster sent us a link to a Greedy Associates post entitled “Why Do Lawyers Drink So Much?” My initial thought was “Ugh.” Honestly, somebody writes that article every three months, and every six months we have to write another version of the same story.

The reasons given for lawyer alcoholism are always the same. “Lawyers are only alcoholic because they’re super TYPE A badasses.” “Lawyers hate their jobs and drink to forget.” “It’s not the law that makes people alcoholics, it’s alcoholics who choose the law!”

I was going to ignore this latest Drunks and the Law story, but then the scotch in my coffee kicked in and I thought, “Hey, isn’t it just that lawyers drink because they can?”

Think about it: being a lawyer is a great job to have if you want to drink as much as possible while also having a job…

Here’s my premise: being a “functional alcoholic” is the best kind of function and the best kind of alcoholic. Functional alcoholics get to do fun things like hang out with their friends, get hammered and hook-up with random people, then claim they “don’t remember” it in the morning. But they also get to hold onto their jobs, have relationships, and, of course, they don’t have to go to meetings.

Well, presumably this was written with tongue in cheek. Having said that, now I really wonder how many lawyers are functioning alcoholics?  I frankly am still stunned that the figure for the percentage who are alcoholics is up over 20%.    I don't see a lot of lawyers boozing it up, so if people are, they're doing it, I guess, in the privacy of their own homes or something.

Still, what's that say about the law and lawyers?  Whatever it is, it isn't good.

I recently sat in a computer CLE put on by the ABA regarding Introverts in the Law.  I'm fairly introverted myself, so I thought it might be interesting to hear what the had to say.  One thing I did think was really interesting is that, contrary to what people suppose, Introverts aren't necessarily shy nor non gregarious.  They can and do interact with people, it's just that they need down time and they sort of retreat into themselves at some point.  Often, the people speaking claimed, others are surprised to find out that somebody else is an introvert.  I'll be that's really true.  That's probably also why the families of introverted lawyers, supposedly up over 60% of the profession, are probably routinely frustrated with the spouses, who are busy and being engaged and engaging all day, only to come home and say "no. . . I don't want to go to a Super Bowl party. . . can't you watch it here while I work on the car?"

That's a sudden shift in this conversation, but I think the Above the Law item on "Type A" personalities is wrong, as I suspect a lot of lawyers aren't Type A, whatever Type A is, but something a lot more complex.  And I'm wondering if the severely introverted, and those folks do exist, are shutting their minds down that way.  Very bad, if true.

What that suggests is a couple of things, I suppose.  For one thing, if a person isn't they type of person who can be around others for at least 8 to 10 hours a day, and is so introverted that they hate to call that witness or opposing lawyer, maybe you ought to think twice about this as a career.  And it would seem very clear to me if you have a problem with alcohol before you are ready to take the bar, you better avoid this career as you may be setting yourself up.  And I guess I now know why so many state bars have a substance abuse program, which was a bit of a mystery to me before.

I still wonder, however.  21%?  That seems awfully high.

 Are a lot of lawyers hitting the bottle? Seems so.  Is ten years old a long time for Scotch?  I have no idea, as Scotch tastes like paint thinner and I can't imagine why anyone drinks it.