By Jill Nelson, WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE; PAGE W32 (June 12, 1988)

IT IS SATURDAY MORNING AT THE YMCA ON RHODE Island Avenue NW, and six people are taking a class in Tae Kwon Do, a martial art that emphasizes unity of mind and body in defensive strategy. Michele A. Roberts, 31, moves across the room, kicking and blocking. Five feet seven and 119 pounds, she confidently fends off the attacks of her opponent, a tall, muscular man. A thin sheen of sweat covers her face, and her breathing is slightly labored. But, on the whole, she is unruffled. She tilts slightly backward at the waist, legs bent, feet planted firmly on the floor. Her hands are clenched and her arms block her chest and face as she waits for her opponent's assault. He rushes her, kicking, turning, jumping, then kicking again. Roberts fends off the attack calmly but does not counterattack. Instead, she waits for her attacker to exhaust himself, to expose his own weakness.

The five tenets of Tae Kwon Do are courtesy, integrity, self-control, perseverance and indomitable spirit in search of the perfect defense. It is not surprising that Roberts and half of the members of this Saturday morning class are lawyers with the Public Defender Service of the District of Columbia.

IT IS 9:10 ON A WEDNESDAY, THE MORNING OF THE FIRST day of the murder trial of Tran Van Khiem. Khiem, 62, is accused of suffocating his mother and father, who once were high officials of the South Vietnamese government, allegedly after he discovered that he had been disinherited.

Michele Roberts, public defender and chief of the PDS trial division, stands half-dressed in her office. Always unable to sleep the night before a trial, Roberts has been there since 7, getting psyched for the courtroom drama scheduled to begin in 20 minutes. She bangs an iron down on the white blouse that she has spread across her desk top, her silver bangle bracelets clanking as the iron bumps carelessly into buttons. She is wearing a bra and a pair of jeans; one hip juts out. A long menthol cigarette burns in a funky ashtray; a battered coat rack laden with suits and dresses stands behind her; five or six pairs of shoes are neatly lined up against a wall. An unopened package of stockings lies on her desk, next to the ever-present cup of coffee that, along with an occasional Danish, is all she has for breakfast during a trial.

It has taken months to bring this case into a courtroom, with questions about Khiem's mental competence always lurking on the horizon. Khiem has already been through one set of lawyers, been declared incompetent to stand trial and been sent to St. Elizabeths. Now, several months later, he has been declared competent, based on psychiatric reports, and Roberts and co-counsels Mark J. Rochon and David Norman have been appointed to represent him.

Crossing Indiana Avenue NW to the Superior Court Building a few minutes before 9:30, Roberts, Rochon and Norman go over strategy for the final time. "The government's case is at best circumstantial; there is no physical evidence," Roberts had decided earlier. "Our strategy is to force the government to produce concrete evidence, which they can't. It is a 'reasonable doubt' defense. The key is having Khiem testify about his relationship with his parents, and having him state, unequivocally, that he didn't kill them."

Courtroom 45 is nearly full with spectators -- older women with neatly coiffed hair, several lawyers who stop by to watch the action for a few minutes and a sizable contingent of PDS attorneys who have come to watch Roberts in action. Slim and angular, Roberts swaggers when she approaches the bench. In a posture reminiscent of the one she takes in Tae Kwon Do class, she plants both hands on narrow hips and thrusts her chest forward.

She is polite and soft-spoken as she begins her cross-examination; it seems like a friendly conversation. Each question is politely asked and accompanied by "ma'am." Her language is familiar, everyday talk; she asks a witness how often she "laid eyes" on the deceased.

At one point, in her cross-examination of Khiem's older sister, Le Chi Oggeri, Roberts asks sweetly, "Now, ma'am, are you sure about that? Are you sure?" Head down and shoulders squared, Roberts strides to the defense table and whips out a copy of the woman's earlier statement to the police. When it appears that the woman's testimony has contradicted that statement, Roberts frowns and looks puzzled, as she wants the jurors to feel.

On the ninth day of the trial, Khiem explodes at the defense table, ranting that he is being framed in a global conspiracy, dismissing his attorneys and demanding the right to represent himself and to testify in his own defense about the conspiracy. Judge Fred Ugast declares him mentally incompetent. End of trial.

Roberts and her two co-counsels, although concurring with the judge's ruling, are disappointed. They won't be able to present a defense they've spent five months preparing.

"My perception of what I do as a defense lawyer is to examine the government's evidence and find out what the weaknesses are," says Roberts. "The lawyers here tease me all the time because I hate putting on defenses. I think it ultimately shifts the burden. My favorite cases are when I don't put on a single witness. I cross-examine government witnesses. I may put on some documentary evidence. I don't think it's in my client's interest to be put on the stand and then be subject to cross-examination. Unless I think my clients can help themselves by testifying, I consistently advise them against that. I'd much rather have the prosecutor try to explain away the weaknesses in his case than have him point out the weaknesses in ours."

A well-educated Vietnamese from a wealthy background, Khiem is an unusual client for the Public Defender Service. Most of its clients are people who cannot afford an attorney and for whom the court appoints one.

"My clients are either very poor or very angry or both. Either they've been that way all their lives, or they've been that way that day. Many of my clients are people who've been able to hold on, keep it together, most of their lives, and then suddenly . . . something happens. Sometimes they just can't deal. But once the horror of what they're facing sets in, many of them, if given the opportunity to get around the circumstances that brought them into the system in the first place, they won't be back."

IT IS 1966, AND 10-YEAR-OLD MICHELE ROBERTS IS wondering where her brothers' friends have gone. Those big boys that she loves to tag along with have disappeared from the Bronx project where they all live. It occurs to her that the big boys have simply run away. But she doesn't wonder what happened for long. "I remember going to night court with my brothers' friend's sister, because her brother had gotten busted. That was the first time I'd ever seen court. I remember some lawyer, in this very cheap polyester suit, saying, 'I'll take the case for $ 500.' People in my neighborhood would always say, 'You know so-and-so got locked up, but his mother doesn't have enough money for a good lawyer.' And so-and-so would end up being gone for two or three years.

"When I was 11 or 12, I became interested and just found myself going to night court. And I began to care. People in the office tease me because, every now and then, I tell them that some client who I adore looks 'just like one of my brothers, just like one of my uncles.' But I know what that means. I know that that could be my brother. And I'm disturbed that some lawyer who doesn't really care about the process -- or my brother's future -- was all that was available. Keep in mind that in the '60s and '70s, everyone was yelling, 'We've gotta have black lawyers, we've gotta have black doctors, we need black professionals in the community.' Well, I heard that and I believed it. I still believe it, even though the community has seemed to turn on me -- in some ways -- at this point."

In the nearly eight years she's been at PDS, Roberts has tried at least 60 criminal cases, dealt with hundreds of clients. She says she doesn't keep track of her wins or losses, although she's sure she has won three-fourths of her cases.

Each day, Roberts names three PDS attorneys to "pickup" duty -- the process by which PDS attorneys get their clients. Attorneys scheduled for pickup go to Superior Court three times a day to see if a judge has given them a case. When the attorneys receive an assignment, they go to the Superior Court cell block to interview their clients, then represent them that day through the first steps of a case -- arraignment and a bail hearing. Each attorney must do pickup three times every 35 days. As a senior staff attorney, Roberts tries only rapes and homicides, leaving the milder cases to the lawyers with less experience.

It was her defense of Alphonso Hill that first brought her to the public eye. "Alphonso Hill -- he's one of my favorite clients," says Roberts. He was accused with nine others of participating in the brutal 1986 gang murder of Catherine Fuller, a 48-year-old mother of six who was robbed on her way to the store in her Northeast Washington neighborhood and then was beaten, violated and killed. "[Hill] was young, and I hadn't had a young client in a while. God help me, I thought he was guilty when I first got the case, about four months before the trial. I, like everyone else, had this perception of all these kids just being animals. When I was asked to take the case, I remember going to the jail and thinking that this guy was going to be vicious. And he was so soft-spoken and so young, but I still thought he was guilty. But then as I picked up the investigation, I realized he hadn't done it."

Roberts, with PDS attorney Corinne Schultz, attacked the integrity of two witnesses who had turned state's evidence and had given conflicting testimony about Hill's involvement in the murder.

"I fought like hell, I fought so hard for that kid," Roberts says of Hill. "And the government just didn't have the evidence. I convinced the jury that they could not credit the testimony of snitches. I begged them not to rely on them. I dared the jury to acquit him; I begged the jury just to do its job."

Only two of the eight defendants in the trial were acquitted; Hill was one of them.

IT IS 1969, AND MICHELE ROBERTS IS GETTING READY TO leave the Melrose housing project in the Bronx for a Waspy prep school in Westchester County, N.Y. She doesn't want to go, but her mother, Elsie, with big dreams for her children, tricked her into taking a test for a scholarship and is making her go.

A native of South Carolina, Elsie Roberts left the South when she was 19. She moved first to Philadelphia and then New York, looking for adventure and independence. She dreamed of becoming a teacher. She married, had five children in nine years and separated from her husband when Michele was a toddler. With five kids and living far from home, she wound up on welfare. When her children were old enough, welfare workers got her a job as a teacher's aide.

"My mother always impressed me as being a very, very bright woman, and she obviously always wanted to teach. But she ended up, because she didn't have any college and because of marriage and five children, working as a paraprofessional, as a school aide. I used to watch her prepare for it. What does a school aide have to prepare? But the night before, she'd be working on lesson plans, as if it was her classroom. And she'd refer to 'her' students.

"I liked school, and all I wanted to do was go to school, finish up and go to college. And then I went to prep school and met these creatures: The students and some of the professors were just blatant racists. And I didn't know anything about that before I came there. I became more aggressive in my studies, because I refused to let any of these white folks think that I was stupid. It probably has some impact on how I behave in court. Most of my opponents are white, and there's no question that I'm more aggressive when I'm dealing with them. I am immediately suspicious of white people. I just assume, for better or worse, that they have preconceived notions about the intelligence of black people. Thankfully, I am often proved wrong, at least by the people in this office."

Roberts graduated from Wesleyan College in Connecticut and received her law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in May 1980. While in law school, she worked for the Legal Aid Society and in the Prison Law Project at San Quentin, a community organization that represented inmates. In August 1980 she was hired as an attorney by the D.C. Public Defender Service.  "When I go home, to the Bronx, people say to me, 'When're you going to be a real lawyer?' I can tell that they'd be prouder, in some ways, if I became rich and they could say, 'Look at Michele Roberts. She lived right here in the projects, and now she's making a half-million dollars a year.' But when I explain to them why I do what I do, they understand."

THE D.C. PUBLIC DEFENDER SERVICE IS one of the most highly regarded public legal service offices in the country. Only about six positions for attorneys open up each year, and those jobs are coveted, even though salaries begin at $ 27,000 and peak at $ 37,000. And PDS has a very structured system of training: A lawyer joining PDS first tries juvenile cases, advances to misdemeanors and then moves up through increasingly serious felonies, finally handling rapes, armed robberies and homicides. Roberts came up through this system, and since 1986 she has been trial chief, in charge of training and supervising 39 attorneys.

The attorneys are mostly young, in their late twenties; most are straight out of law school. Fiercely committed to their work, they spend 10-hour days together, sometimes six days a week.

On an average day, Roberts arrives at the office around 8. Often, one of the attorneys on a trial is waiting for her in her office to get her to critique a closing argument, to ask for tips on strategy for a particularly difficult case or to share a laugh about the previous day's conduct of a judge or prosecutor.

At 5:30 on just about any weekday evening, one of the attorneys who won an acquittal that day is in Roberts' office, and it's party time. PDS attorneys celebrate every acquittal; there are frequent parties. Lawyers in suits and dresses disappear into a bathroom or office, reappearing in jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. A collection is taken for wine and chips. People straggle into Roberts' cluttered office. Early arrivals grab a chair or a seat on the sagging naugahyde couch. Those who come later sit on the desk, the windowsill or one of the boxes of case files. Everyone pushes aside papers -- briefs, files, note pads.

In worn-out jeans, boots and a "Jamaica, No Problem" T-shirt, Roberts holds court, long legs sprawled over a beat-up chair, cigarette in hand. A young attorney, Syrie Davis, comes in to run through her opening statement in a burglary case. Roberts shifts into a serious mode, listening intently. The lawyer's defense strategy is that the complainant invited the accused into her home but was too drunk to remember it -- she'd stated in pretrial hearings that she drinks a bottle of E&J brandy every night "on the doctor's orders."

Should she show the bottle to the jury during trial? the attorney asks.

"Not unless it's a really big bottle," says Roberts with a laugh. A few days later, the big bottle is displayed to the jury, the client acquitted and another party held.

While Roberts spends her days observing lawyers in court and generally functioning as teacher, mother hen and resident shoulder to cry on, she simultaneously prepares cases of her own. And then there are regular visits to D.C. Jail and Lorton to meet with her clients.

"The drive out to Lorton is sometimes pleasant," she says with a laugh. "The body search is a little worse than the jail; they pat you down, empty your purse, once they even made me take off my shoes. You're escorted everywhere. If you visit a client in maximum security, you visit him in a room with a guard right outside, in case the client tries to kill you or escape. It's pretty impressive.

"When I first started practicing, I thought Lorton was enormously intimidating. The authorities there really do think my clients are dangerous to me, although I no longer think so. Now it's just a hassle to deal with. But whenever I bring a new lawyer out there, I can see the intimidation, the fear, and I find it depressing. When I leave, I always have to find some good music on the radio."

Roberts is very serious about the presumption of innocence and the right to a competent defense. She does not ask her clients if they are guilty. She simply collects information with the help of a PDS investigator, shares the government's information with her client and tries to build a defense.

"I'm a public defender. And there is no reason for anyone guilty of a felony to tell me that. They know nothing about me, and every stereotype about public defenders is negative. I don't think it's realistic for a public defender to think that within 20 minutes, or 20 days, or 20 weeks a client is going to trust you. They don't even know you!

"I'll say to my client, 'Look, I need to know about certain factors surrounding this offense.' For example, in rape cases, many times I will have to push the client not to tell me if he raped her, but to tell me something about the complaining witness. Because most of the time, in the cases I've had, they know each other. That's about as close as I'll come to asking about specific details at or around the time of the offense. I assume that they were present, at least the woman's not lying about him being there. But I can't remember the last time I asked a client if he did it, and I can't imagine that I ever would. As a noted jurist once said, there's not a human being who wouldn't lie if he thought that lie would get him out of trouble, poor or rich. People don't want to go to prison, guilty or not.

"The defense attorney's job is not to determine guilt or innocence. That's the job of the judge or the jury. It's just not our job. It only becomes our job if you need to know in order to do the work. But that's not true for me."

Roberts' two sisters and two brothers sometimes look askance at her passionate belief in the law, although they are used to her love of argument. Roberts sees crime in its broad legal context, not in terms of victim and victimizer, and she despairs when she sees people ignore the law once they've been a victim of crime.

It happened in her own family after her oldest brother was shot in the course of being robbed. "My brother is one of the most conservative people I've ever met. He's still searching for the guy who shot him. I think he wants to blow him away if he ever finds him.

"I had a terrible argument with my family when I went home during the [Bernhard] Goetz trial. Goetz's lawyer brought in a witness, one of the kids that Goetz had shot, who was enormously hostile and went crazy on the witness stand. I remember saying, 'It's a brilliant courtroom tactic, because you want the jury to be as frightened of the kid as Goetz was.' And my family looked at me, yelled at me and hated me. Their response to me was, 'How dare you intellectualize? This man shot our children, and there you go again with this goddam presumption of innocence!'

"I think courtroom work is the greatest thing in the world. I like the battle of trying to shape the evidence. I like dominating the courtroom. I like the dynamics of interacting with a witness, the more hostile the better. Then I love going toe to toe with the prosecutor. It's just a lot of fun to me. It's theater, where you write your own script."

But it is also exhausting, intellectually and emotionally. After eight years, Roberts is tired. She has reached a plateau at PDS and has no interest in being a full-time administrator, the next step up. She knows that it is time for a change -- she has submitted her resignation, effective in July -- but she doesn't know what that change should be. She is frightened by the thought of working in a straight, overwhelmingly white male environment, of losing touch with the people who motivated her to become a lawyer in the first place. She is afraid of taking the risk, of coming down from her success at PDS.

Since word got out that she is leaving PDS, a few attorneys have approached Roberts with job offers. One judge set up a lunch with an attorney from a major firm. "They want me to try misdemeanors," Roberts says incredulously. "And I will not do misdemeanors. Or they do mostly corporate work, but they tell me I can still do pro bono criminal defense work, but that's bull. The bulk of your work is doing what they want you to do. They pay you all this money, and they have the right to dictate the kind of work you do."

ROBERTS LIVES ALONE IN A SMALL APARTMENT RIGHT OUT- side the District, in Maryland, and keeps her phone unplugged. No cook, she describes frozen pizza as "a gift from God." When she is not working, she listens to music, watches videotapes and reads. Lately, she has been reading a lot of James A. Michener, along with whatever she can find by African American authors, especially Toni Morrison, and books about mass murderers. She describes the last taste as "sick." She is in bed most nights early, by 10. But when she is in the middle of a trial, she doesn't sleep for worrying.

The courtroom is obviously where Michele Roberts feels most at home. The little girl from the Bronx who wanted to keep her brothers' friends from disappearing is there. So is the argumentative junior high school kid who fought Elsie Roberts, and lost, on the issue of going to prep school. So is the Berkeley law student who lived off campus, in the ghetto, and dated a mailman because she felt more comfortable around poor folks and never liked lawyers. And so is the public defender who wonders if her commitment to poor defendants makes a commitment to herself impossible.

In the last year, Roberts has had two dates, both of which she characterizes as "disasters." When she socializes, it is most often with people from the office, particularly a contingent that likes to go to the race track.

"I work all the time, so I really don't have much time to meet people besides my clients and other lawyers. I don't like lawyers, and I don't date my clients. You have to really hunt to meet men here, and that is something I am not ever going to be inclined to do. I just cannot position myself at a bar like Takoma Station and hope. I'm just not going to do that. I don't have a problem going for a drink and to hear some music, but not when it is clear we are on the hunt. The disco bar scene, I just can't handle it.  "I don't want to think that I intimidate men, because I shouldn't, I'm just a kid. But men have this image of a dynamic trial lawyer. I think it may be easier for men to deal with someone who they think, in their eyes, is inferior."

Growing up poor and seeing what happens to poor people caught in the legal system are what motivated Roberts to become a lawyer. She regrets none of the decisions that led her to where she is today -- she is an experienced member of the criminal bar and making a salary that puts her, like it or not, smack dab in the middle class. Still she is not comfortable with her position. She can be self-effacing about her accomplishments, particularly when she suspects her accomplishments will separate her from her constituency -- poor black people.

Where many first-generation professionals court the trappings of success -- the foreign car, big house and nights on the town paid for by golden credit cards -- Roberts runs in the other direction. She clings to her history as an outsider. It is where she feels most comfortable, most powerful -- among the powerless. It is a choice that works well in her work, but not so well in her personal life.

But there is no time to do anything about it just now. There are 39 lawyers in and out of her office seeking her counsel. There is a seemingly endless procession of people accused of rape or murder, people to be defended.

Does her job interfere with her life?

"It's not a job," she says, and there is defiance and pride and a tinge of sadness in her voice. "It is my life."

Copyright 1988 The Washington Post

This excerpt is from the 2021 Taskforce Report of the New York State Bar Association's Attorney Well-Being Program (available at this link).

Calming the Perfect Storm: Emotional Well-Being

Given what we discovered about law education, the values of law culture and practice, ethics and discipline, and emotionally charged courtrooms, it is not surprising that, during the course of a lawyer’s career turn around the Wheel, issues of emotional ill-being can begin to affect significant aspects of both personal and professional life. The nature of our training can contribute to the development of one or more the most common coping mechanisms for us: disconnection from feelings (alexithymia), anticipatory anxiety, perfectionism, control, imposter syndrome, and substance use disorders.156 In fact, “a perfect storm can be observed where lawyers are predisposed to certain traits that cause stress and burnout, are then trained into anticipatory anxiety (professional worriers), which is known to be suboptimal psychology, and then are potentially stigmatized and perceived as weak when the burden becomes too much. Rather than seek professional help, many lawyers withdraw from peers, friends and family, or engage in ‘maladaptive coping behaviors’ such as self-medicating with alcohol and other substances.”157

Disconnection from Feelings
Lawyers are taught to always be logical. In other words, we are taught that it is essential to the proper practice of law to be disconnected from our emotional experience. Lawyers are trained in a form of pessimism that questions everyone and everything. Over time, this disconnection can make it harder and harder for lawyers to respond authentically to their own needs or the needs of others including their clients, family, friends, and partners, without exhibiting suspicion, skepticism, or trying to analyze or problem-solve the interaction.

Anticipatory Anxiety
Known for our skill of seeing every potential pitfall from every angle, lawyers become prodigious at anticipating everything that possibly could go wrong, running every scenario through our heads and playing out all possible countermoves an opponent might make.158 In other words, we become professional mind-readers – or so we think. The successful application of anticipatory anxiety requires a negative mindset. Optimism destroys the exercise. If we do it right, our work is exhaustive. Unfortunately, it also is exhausting, leads to burnout and can begin to “leak” over into other areas of our lives. 

Perfectionism
A component of anticipatory anxiety, perfectionism requires that we miss nothing.159 If we miss something, we have dropped the ball. How do we know if we have missed something? Our opponent wins. And even if we win, self-doubt creeps in. Maybe your opponent missed something; then again, you almost missed that obscure point of law upon which everything hinged. Disaster is never far.

Control
An extension of perfectionism, lawyers can become fixated on the idea that we can control the outcome by being perfect in our preparation, knowing exactly what is on our opponent’s mind and anticipating every argument the other party could possibly make160. Then, of course we win – or at least that is what we tell ourselves. Over time, this overblown sense of control begins to convince the lawyer that every success and, more importantly, every failure, is entirely on their
shoulders. 

Imposter Syndrome
Never feeling like you actually got the job done and feeling that you are working below expectations. We tell ourselves that we must work harder and someday we may be a fully functioning lawyer. The practical pessimism taught to lawyers is internalized, which can lead to profound self-doubt. It creates a negative feedback loop that can feel impossible to shake. And suddenly, we no longer can leave our lawyer mindset at the door. It is a way of life.

Soon after graduating from New York University School of Law and joining the corporate practice of a white-shoe Manhattan law firm, Will Meyerhofer gained 45 pounds, was sleep-deprived and was frequently sick. "I was a nervous wreck. I was shattered," says Meyerhofer, who'd also graduated from Harvard. "Even though I got to the very top, I was treated like an idiot and I felt I didn't belong in the field. I was a mess. At the end of the day, I really only looked forward to seeing my dog."

Not surprisingly, this experience triggered major anxiety for Meyerhofer, who often found himself "curled up in a ball, crying, losing it." Even after he left the profession, he had panic dreams about being back at the firm.

Meyerhofer's experience is not unique. A 1990 Johns Hopkins University study examined more than 100 occupations for anxiety-related issues and found that lawyers suffer from depression at a rate 3.6 times that of the other professions studied. A National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study—based on data from 1984-1998—concluded that white male lawyers are more likely to turn to suicide than nonlawyer professionals. Falling Through the Cracks, a 2014 survey of Yale Law School students, found that 70 percent of them have struggled with mental health issues during their time at law school.

"The official number is that something like a gazillion lawyers are stressed out, and that amounts to a bajillion percent of the profession," observes Meyerhofer, who became a licensed clinical social worker after benefiting tremendously from therapy he himself underwent to "get a grasp on what happened to me in BigLaw." Counseling stressed-out attorneys has since become a specialty for Meyerhofer, who's also written a book, Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: The Lawyer's Quest for Meaning. In his practice, lawyers complain frequently and primarily about depression and anxiety. "I see it like crazy."

[I've omitted the details about stress and substance abuse in the profession, as you have already read about that]

AVOIDING ANXIETY

The good news is that healthy coping mechanisms are available and are proven to reduce anxiety and depression among lawyers. Chief among them is meditation, which is not surprising given the media attention it has received in recent years. And the practice is gaining momentum in the legal profession. The law schools at Yale, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of San Francisco have begun offering mindfulness courses. In Northern California, Spirit Rock Meditation Center offers weekends solely for attorneys—the only profession-specific retreat the center offers.

In addition to her law practice, Cho teaches meditation courses for lawyers, coaches attorneys on stress and anxiety management, and produces the Resilient Lawyer podcast. She says a meditation practice will bring notable changes to stressed-out attorneys. "Start a daily meditation practice," Cho says. "It doesn't have to be long. It may just be a couple of minutes. It doesn't even have to be a formal meditation practice: Just sit at your desk, close your eyes and breathe."

Professionals such as attorneys can be resistant to meditation because of prevalent but erroneous stereotypes. Karen Gifford, a lawyer-turned-executive coach and co-founder of Broad Ventures Leadership in San Francisco, tries to demythologize meditation. "You don't have to go to the top of a mountain or wear funny clothes" to bring mindfulness to your day, she says. "The territory you're heading into is yourself, which is a very safe place to be. And it doesn't involve giving up your logical mind."

Criminal defense lawyer Brian Berson of San Francisco took Cho's meditation course after experts at the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine suggested that he try meditation to help with his profound sleep disturbances. "I have a high-stress business. All of my clients are desperate. I've had various sleep disorders, including waking in the middle of the night thinking about work," Berson says. "The meditation class was very soothing; and overall, it's helped me with everything."

The basic idea, according to Berson, is to just be in the moment. "All of us have a tendency to think about other stuff no matter what we're doing. But it's counterproductive and prevents you from enjoying life if you're doing something pleasurable—or even if you're doing something mundane that can be pleasurable, like taking a shower. You should stop and really feel the water instead of thinking about what you need to do when you get out. When you're walking down the street, enjoy it. Smell the air, look at the surroundings instead of thinking about where you're on your way to. Mindfulness is more than just meditation. It's a whole different way of thinking."

Berson continues to do online meditation sessions with Cho whenever he can fit it into his schedule. Because he has "trouble getting into that zone" on his own, he says, he likes the structure of a guided practice. "It's a really good thing for anyone with a stressful job," he says. "Most lawyers are under a lot of stress. We're advocating for people who are desperate—not just criminal defense lawyers like me whose clients are in prison. Litigators, too, are warriors. We've got to fight people. The aggressive state of mind is hard to turn off. That's stressful. It's bad for your health and for your state of mind."

Even if lawyers don't want to take a class or begin a formal meditation practice, Cho suggests they at least try adopting what's called the STOP approach to daily tasks: Stop. Take a breath. Observe. Proceed mindfully.

"Studies have shown that people literally hold their breath when they look at emails. It triggers the fight-or-flight response," Cho says. She recommends simply taking one long inhale and exhale before opening your inbox.

Small changes like mindfulness can have huge implications, particularly for lawyers who tend to be incredibly disconnected from themselves, according to Gifford. "When you sit with your own mind every single day, you see what your thought patterns are. You soon realize that certain thoughts aren't based on anything real or true—it's just a pattern. So you learn not to take yourself so seriously, which is incredibly freeing. You learn not to always think that opposing counsel is this horrible human being set out to ruin your life. All of a sudden, negotiation with that person has so many more possibilities."

FOCUSING ON THE PRESENT

Cho noticed a tremendous shift in her own law practice when she brought mindfulness and meditation into her life. For example, "You see your own role in the relationship with opposing counsel. You start to ask, 'What am I doing to contribute to this relationship?' Holding a mirror up isn't easy, but meditation creates the space to do that," she says. "Doing dishes, sitting in traffic, someone cutting you off—the knee-jerk reactions, the state of constant annoyance: That's all gone away. Because of meditation, I'm able to do everyday things with more joy. I'm not living in the future, not living to cross things off a to-do list. I live more presently."

From their first days of law school, lawyers are taught to vigilantly search the horizon for problems—to anticipate, prevent and resolve problems. But many attorneys lose the ability to choose when to approach the world that way, and a meditation practice can reverse that trend, according to Richard Carlton, acting director of the State Bar of California's Lawyer Assistance Program, which helps lawyers and bar applicants grappling with stress, anxiety, substance abuse or career concerns.

"When I teach CLE programs throughout the state, I insist that thinking like a lawyer is a legal skill, not a life skill," Carlton says. Adopting mindfulness, "just paying attention to the present moment," is a great way to combat this tendency. A mindfulness practice can be as simple as closing your eyes and counting backward from 100, he says.

Experts insist that staying present is essential not just for mental health but also for effective law practice. In the Yale Law School study, 50 percent of respondents indicated that mental health challenges affected their ability to perform academically. Stressed-out lawyers make poor decisions, leaving them open to liability. As a result, the benefits of mindfulness have become a big topic of discussion and education among professional responsibility groups, according to Terry Harrell, chair of the ABA's Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs.

"Meditation and mindfulness are not just good for us the way things like fish oil are. They actually affect the quality of legal work," Harrell says. "A mindfulness practice makes us better decision-makers, better ethical decision-makers. And that translates into better lawyering."

Along those lines, the promotional materials for Spirit Rock Meditation Center's weekend for lawyers say that "law students, law professors, corporate attorneys and public interest attorneys alike have found that incorporating mindfulness into their life and law practice leads to greater effectiveness in skills such as client interviewing, managing the stresses of oral argument or a complex trial, and cultivating greater equanimity within a challenging profession."

In addition to meditation, eating both healthfully and mindfully should not be underrated as a method of combating anxiety, according to Cho. "Most lawyers eat at their desks or in front of the TV—there's no rest or digestion. But it's important to pause and do nothing but enjoy your meal. Eating properly, sleep and exercise are such foundational practices" for managing the stress of lawyering, she insists.

Exercise, too, is one of the best natural antidepressants and cures for anxiety, Meyerhofer notes. "I strongly urge everyone to find a physical activity: karate, yoga, swimming. Exercise releases endorphins. It will do wonders. The benefits are enormous."

Even the busiest lawyers can incorporate more walking into their everyday routines as a physical boost, suggests Victor of Care for Lawyers. Yoga, with its emphasis on transferring attention to the body and to the breath, can help reduce anxiety while also releasing physical tension and restoring energy. Adequate rest, too, is essential for regulating mental health, she says. "Sleep deprivation and resulting tiredness can make you even more vulnerable to stress and anxiety."

SACRIFICING HEALTH

Lawyers "intellectually know" that sleep, diet, meditation and exercise are important, according to Latham. "We know we feel better when we get a good night's sleep. But attorneys sacrifice sleep and healthy habits to meet unrealistic expectations. They skip meals, eat out, skip exercising. It's a snowball effect. Lawyers may also start to pull away from friends and family, to withdraw. But it's important to feel connected to other people or the problem compounds with isolation and shame."

In recalling his own experience with anxiety, Meyerhofer notes that one of his "profoundest regrets" is having remained so isolated from his peers at the firm. "It would have helped so much to have someone to talk to who understood."

Despite the proven benefits of healthy habits like meditation, nutritious diet and exercise, there's no blanket panacea for anxious lawyers, Latham cautions. "What may be helpful for one person may not be especially helpful for another. I always inquire about previous coping skills and what has proved helpful in the past." That inquiry—in the form of therapy—may truly be the key to mental health for many lawyers.

Meyerhofer similarly notes that it isn't that lawyers are unaware of wellness solutions like exercising and getting a good night's sleep. "It's that they are driven by financial considerations to earn as much money as possible by billing as many hours as possible, and that means they sacrifice other things—like time with friends and family, a healthy diet and exercise—to the almighty billable hour. How are you expected to get to the gym or yoga class or the pool when you're billing 300-hour months?

"How are you supposed to get the recommended seven hours of sleep every night, which is critical to good mental health, when you're expected to pull all-nighters and work weekends?" Meyerhofer asks. "People don't need good advice on getting to the gym and eating their vegetables. They need a time out, to listen to themselves and process the static in their heads."

Because medications treating anxiety and depression only do so much and can sometimes be addicting, Meyerhofer says, it's far more effective to combat such conditions by getting to the root of a problem through therapy. Therapists can help lawyers reality-test common thoughts, such as "I'm not any good. I'm going to fail. Someone will criticize me."

Expressing feelings of anxiety to another person who listens, cares and understands can be enormously therapeutic, "simple though it may seem," Levin adds. Sadly, while attorneys are statistically the professionals most in need of therapy, they're also deeply resistant to it, instead expending precious energy to hold everything in, according to Levin.

"Lawyers are a help-rejecting population," he says. "They mistakenly believe that if you're vulnerable, you're weak. There's this notion of being the rock of Gibraltar for your clients." But lawyers who seek and get help "can be more effective helpers."

Latham adds: "There are cultural variables that contribute to lawyers' feelings of isolation from colleagues and prevent them from seeking help. There's a stigma to any perceived weakness because it runs counter to the idea of attorneys being invincible and resilient." In the Yale Law School study, a chunk of the students who considered seeking treatment for mental health challenges opted not to because they feared exclusion from faculty, administrators, peers and state bar associations, which sometimes request information about applicants' mental health history.

Professional organizations, including the ABA and state and local bar associations, can educate lawyers about these issues, encourage them to seek help and, importantly, challenge the long-standing cultural factors that contribute to attorneys avoiding aid, Latham says. "These organizations can play a role in destigmatizing therapy, making it more acceptable for lawyers who are suffering to seek help and be able to talk openly," he says. "There should be no shame in that."

In a Psychology Today article, Latham wrote: "Just as any psychologist would consult an attorney when addressing legal issues outside of their area of expertise, so, too, an attorney should be prepared to consult a mental health worker if he or she feels ill-equipped to address the psychological stressors in his or her life."

In California, all lawyers are entitled to at least two free counseling sessions with a professional who specializes in working with attorneys, says Carlton of the State Bar of California. But typically only about 200 lawyers out of more than 183,000 active bar members take advantage of this benefit at any given time.

KNOWING THERE ARE CHOICES

It's important to note that no strategy should be touted as a cure-all. "The implication can become that you're struggling with anxiety or depression because you're not doing your yoga or not meditating or not eating right or somehow choosing to go without sleep," Meyerhofer says, "that it's your fault for not having mastered some 'effective strategy' that would make all these issues disappear." The fact remains that law can be brutal, and most young associates are not equipped for what they find when they enter the profession, he says. "You're not tossing and turning in bed, roiled by anxiety, because you're choosing to eat badly or to skip your yoga class. It has a lot more to do with being thrown into the deep end in an extremely competitive, exploitive business driven not by compassion or collegiality or the desire to mentor, but by profit and money and competition for prestige."

The perfectionist and competitive ideals are so entrenched in the profession that lawyers may be unaware of those questionable values and how damaging they are, Levin says. "It's great to make $1 million a year but when all your competitors are making $1.1 million or $1.2 million, that's hugely anxiety-producing," he says. "What's missing from all of this is the notion of quality of life, of feeling a connection and belonging in a common enterprise." What's needed is, essentially, a profound shift from the four-A's-and-a-B attitude, he says.

Changing the culture of the profession can go a long way toward curbing the epidemic of lawyer anxiety and depression, according to Levin. He recounts a conversation he once had with a law firm partner who criticized a young associate for expressing lack of confidence when the associate was about to do something for the first time. The partner worried that the associate would express that insecurity to the client.

"I thought: 'Give the associate some credit for being smart enough to know the difference.' And if an associate can't get support from an older mentor in private, then where will he get it? That associate needed to hear: 'It's natural to be afraid.' An associate who hears that is going to do a much better job, as opposed to someone simply working just to avoid a mistake. Lawyers need to be willing to let go of the belief, endemic to the profession, that expressing vulnerability is weakness."

Meyerhofer, too, laments the "hypercritical environment" of law firms. "Lawyers don't understand proper management and the value of praise," he says. "You don't beat the horse or else the horse turns into a shaky mess."

In his own case, anxiety disappeared once Meyerhofer left BigLaw and found a supportive mentor at his next job.

"Often, frankly, the 'solution' to lawyers' anxiety is to take a pay cut and work at a smaller, less hectic job, whether at a smaller firm or in-house or in a different field." Meyerhofer tells his clients that everyone has a right to look forward to what they're going to do each day.

Lawyers need to understand that they're not trapped, and that changes are possible, Levin adds.

"They can go to a smaller firm, create their own practice, teach, go to a corporation," he says. "We do a lot of work in our practice about getting lawyers to realize they have choices. Lawyers don't ask themselves 'What do I really want?' They're not used to it."

This article originally appeared in the July 2015 issue of the ABA Journal with this headline: “Stressed Out: How to avoid burnout and debilitating anxiety.”

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