This article first provides a brief overview of the history of professional identity formation in legal education. The article then explores the psychological research in the areas of well-being and mindset that influenced our work. With this backdrop, the article discusses in detail the Thriving in the Law course, providing information about the course creation, development, implementation, and lessons learned. Finally, the article provides examples of well-being practices that professors can adapt to their law school classrooms.

At the University of Pittsburgh, through the support of researcher partnerships and grants, we have developed a novel approach—listening to and highlighting students’ experiences while implementing a series of targeted, tailored, and well-timed psychological interventions that emphasize their voices and concerns. First and foremost, our goals are to improve the law school student experience and foster an environment that supports their academic and professional growth. Additionally, we believe that there are potential ancillary effects across the institution (e.g., admissions, student retention, alumni engagement). In the rest of our post, we describe the origins of The Fostering Resilience and Engagement Project, what we have learned thus far, our future directions and goals, and our recommendations for other law schools or professional programs that wish to adopt a similar model.

In this Article, we describe a dynamic program of research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law that uses mindset to promote resilience and engagement in law students. For the last three years, we have used tailored, well-timed, psychological interventions to help students bring adaptive mindsets to the challenges they face in law school. The act of listening to our students has been the first step in designing interventions to improve their experience, and it has become a kind of intervention in itself. Through this work, we have learned that simply asking our law students about their experiences and listening carefully to their answers helps create an environment that supports academic and professional growth.

This article reports the results of the Survey of Law Student Well-Being (SLSWB) implemented in spring 2014 at fifteen law schools around the country. The SLSWB is the first multischool study in over twenty years to address law student use of alcohol and street drugs, and the first-ever multischool study to explore prescription drug use and the mental health concerns and help-seeking attitudes of law students. The results of the study indicate that roughly one-quarter to one-third of respondents reported frequent binge drinking or misuse of drugs, and/or reported mental health challenges. Moreover, the results indicated that significant majorities of those law students most in need of help are reluctant to seek it. The article concludes by discussing how law school administrators and other relevant leaders within the legal academy and legal profession can promote and improve wellness so that law students are better-positioned to find success as law students and to serve their future clients well as lawyers.

We are not producing a product, but a well-balanced person.1 It is well-documented that law students experience higher levels of psychological distress than members of the general population and university students in other professional disciplines. In 2014, we published our findings on an empirical study identifying the correlations between law student wellbeing and student behaviour both at and away from law school. The results of the study informed the development of an evidence-based ‘behavioural toolkit’ to assist law students and law schools in making informed choices and decisions that promote and even improve the mental health of students. The study we undertook was not, however, limited to law students. It extended to collecting quantitative data on psychological distress and associated behaviours in psychology students. This article reports on the comparative findings of the study and provides a comparative basis for understanding the contextual influences on the wellbeing of law students.

The Survey of Law Student Well-Being. implemented in Spring 2014 [hereinafter “2014 SLSWB"], was the first multi-law school study in over twenty years to assess alcohol and drug use among law students, and it was the first multi-law school study ever to address prescription drug use, mental health, and help-seeking attitudes. The article summarizing the results of the 2014 SLSWB has been downloaded over 12,000 times. With a desire to learn what has changed since 2014 given the increased emphasis on law student and lawyer well-being among law schools and legal professionals,' the authors sought and received grant funding from AccessLex Institute to implement another survey of law student well-being.

There is growing national and international concern for the mental wellbeing of law students and law graduates. Some excellent work has been. and continues to be, done in several Australian law schools on how law schools and law teachers can promote mental health in their law students through curriculum design and teaching practices. The relationship between mental health in law students and student behaviours has, however, remained largely unexplored. To fill this void in the research, in 2013 the authors undertook an empirical study at the University of Western Australia involving over 500 law and psychology students. This article reports on the results of that study and identifies the correlations between the levels of stress, anxiety and depression in law students and certain behaviours. By exploring the impact students' own behaviours have on their wellbeing, this article provides guidance to law students and law schools on managing mental health.

Lawyer and law student well-being is finally getting the full-court press it deserves. However, the topic isn’t new. Known in the 1990s as “holistic lawyering,” the subject was well documented by the late Steven Keeva in articles and in his book, Transforming Practices: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in the Legal Life. Likewise, the question of what effects the practice of law has on the minds of individuals within the profession has been powerfully examined by Anthony Kronman in his classic, The Lost Lawyer: Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession. Much ink has been spilled on the subjects of dissatisfaction, iso-lation, and lack of work/life balance in the profession. Although even a cursory literature search will produce a plethora of scholarship and popular pieces on these topics, two recent studies—“The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns among American Attorneys,” popularly known as the Hazelden Report, and the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being’s The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change—are bringing the issue of attorney mental health and well-being to the forefront.

Previous work on law student wellness and mental health strongly suggests that the seeds of professional unhappiness are sown in law school. Law students suffer from anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and other mental health problems at alarmingly high rates. They also leave law school with different concerns, commitments, and cognitive patterns than when they entered, emerging less hopeful, less intrinsically motivated, and more concerned with prestige than they were at the outset. So what, exactly, happens to people in law school? Although a rich body of quantitative and survey-based research on law students documents these empirical trends, surprisingly little qualitative work has examined the social mechanisms and relational processes that underpin the development of negative mental health and wellness patterns. This Article draws on in-depth interviews with fifty-three law students from thirty-six law schools throughout the United States: one interview before the students started law school, then another interview in their first three to six weeks, for a total of 106 interviews with 1L students who entered law school in Fall 2020. Even at this early stage, we can already begin to identify the social and cognitive processes that set the stage for unhealthy professional development.

2009, the Brain & Mind Research Institute ('BMRI), In this article we argue that one approach to fulfilling with the financial support of the Tristan Jepson I Memorial Foundation, conducted a survey of 741 law students studying at 13 Australian law schools.' This research is part of a body of work which has raised concerns about the psychological health of Australian students.? According to the BMRI's study, 35.2 per cent of law students experience high levels of psychological distress. This can be compared with 17.8 per cent of medicine students who experience high levels of psychological distress and 13.3 per cent of people aged between 18 and 34 in the general population.' The results of the BMRI study mirror similar trends for law students in the United States.

This paper contains a blueprint born out of experience, of how to reimagine legal education with a focus on wellness. This goes beyond a general call to action, but rather presents concrete actions that faculty, law administrators, and students themselves can take to effectively man- age the stresses inherent in law school and the legal profession. These changes will be long-term and will profoundly impact the well-being of not only legal practitioners, but the very practice of law itself. There will be resistance, but making this transition is crucial.

In a country where the depression rate is ten times higher today than it was in 1960,' lawyers sit at the unenviable zenith of depressed professionals. Of all professionals in the United States, lawyers suffer from the highest rate of depression after adjusting for socio-demographic factors, and they are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from major depressive disorder than the rest of the employed population. 2 Lawyers are also at a greater risk for heart disease, alcoholism and drug use than the general population. 3 In one sample of practicing lawyers, researchers found that 70% were likely to develop alcohol-related problems over the course of their lifetime, compared to just 13.7% of the general population; of these same lawyers, 20% to 35% were "clinically distressed," as opposed to only 2% of the general population. With such disproportionate levels of unhappiness, it is not surprising that the profession itself is suffering. Alcoholism or chemical dependency is the cause of the majority of lawyer discipline cases in the United States, and a growing disaffection with the practice of law pushes 40,000 lawyers to leave the profession every year.

University students often have higher levels of psychological distress than the general population. Ibrahim et al in 2013 conducted a systematic review of literature from 1990-2010 dealing with the prevalence of depression in university students generally. Twelve of the studies related to medical students and eleven related to data from a range of different faculties. The studies, which were drawn from a wide range of countries, reported the prevalence of depression in undergraduate students as ranging from 10% to 84.5%. Studies confirming that university students have high distress levels have investigated such matters as demographic factors, students' history of mental illness, the stigma surrounding mental illness, and students' treatment-seeking behaviours.

This Article will explore some of the possible causes of law student suffering during law school, which ultimately harms the legal profession. First, it questions the way law professors and law schools teach and indoctrinate future lawyers. Second, it offers ideas to help law students cope with the stresses of law school. Finally, it attempts to keep the issue of student mental health at the forefront of law schools' and law professors' minds.

Attorneys suffer from high rates of stress, alcoholism, and mental health problems that are costly for the legal system and impair their abilities to serve their clients. There is some indication that these problems begin in law school. The present study assessed a cohort of law students at an American law school for their reported levels of stress, depression, anxiety, substance use, and overall adjustment/coping. Findings indicate that law students suffer from high levels of stress, anxiety, depression, and alcohol use, and that these problem behaviors fluctuate throughout the course of law school. We discuss the implications for law student/lawyer well-being and legal education.

Previous work on law student wellness and mental health strongly suggests that the seeds of professional unhappiness are sown in law school. Law students suffer from anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and other mental health problems at alarmingly high rates. They also leave law school with different concerns, commitments, and cognitive patterns than when they entered, emerging less hopeful, less intrinsically motivated, and more concerned with prestige than they were at the outset. So, what, exactly, happens to people in law school? Although a rich body of quantitative and survey-based research on law students documents these empirical trends, surprisingly little qualitative work has examined the social mechanisms and relational processes that underpin the development of negative mental health and wellness patterns. This Article draws on in-depth interviews with fifty-three law students from thirty-six law schools throughout the United States: one interview before the students started law school, then another interview in their first three to six weeks, for a total of106 interviews with IL students who entered law school in Fall 2020. Even at this early stage, we can already begin to identify the social and cognitive processes that set the stage for unhealthy professional development.

Law students of color have been struggling to recover from the heightened challenges they endured during the pandemic. Struggles with food insecurity, financial anxiety, and emotional strain contribute to declining academic success for populations that were marginalized on law school campuses long before COVID. Legislative support is necessary to support students through this era so they can maximize their full potential. The article draws on data from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) to understand law students’ challenges during COVID and consider ways that administrators, legislators, and others can ameliorate their struggles. The article concludes with recommendations for both institutional and legislative solutions to the identified student struggles. Law schools must allocate greater resources to student needs that range from mental health counseling to academic support—and only after first identifying the unique challenges facing women of color and other students traditionally left at the margins. Legislators must recognize that law students, while privileged in many ways, nevertheless need ongoing support to meet their basic needs; they should consider expanding Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to cover law students, providing more financial aid and loan forgiveness, and prioritizing rental assistance so that law students can focus on their academic success and reach their full potential as attorneys.