Month: November 2019

Amid reports from across the country about attorney shortages and overwhelming caseloads, it’s not surprising that many attorneys are experiencing burnout.

Like many in the “helping professions,” lawyers are vulnerable to experiencing both physical and mental fatigue. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), lawyers in certain practice areas, such as criminal, family or juvenile law, are regularly exposed to traumatic stories and must-read reports and descriptions of traumatic events, view crime or accident scenes and view graphic evidence of victimization. Some have noted that the increasing violence of crimes today, as well as the victimization of youth, have created incredibly stressful situations for attorneys.¹

Burnout doesn’t happen overnight, and it can creep up on you if you’re not paying attention to the warning signals.

Signs of burnout

According to the Mayo Clinic, the following are just a few of the signs of work-related burnout:

• Becoming cynical, critical or disillusioned
• Lacking the motivation to get yourself to work and the energy to be productive
• Irritability or impatience with coworkers or clients
• Inability to concentrate
• Using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to not feel anything
• Disrupted sleep
• Unexplained headaches, stomach or bowel problems, or other physical complaints

The symptoms of compassion fatigue are even more intense. The ABA explains that while burnout is a predictable progression over time that leads to work dissatisfaction, compassion fatigue can harm an attorney by causing intrusive imagery and a change in worldview. It results in vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress, secondhand shock and a secondary stress reaction.²

What you can do

The North Carolina Lawyer Assistance Program (NCLAP), an assistance program funded by the State Bar of North Carolina, offers the following tips specifically to attorneys experiencing stress and burnout:

• Try a new morning ritual. Instead of immediately jumping into work mode, devote at least 15 minutes to a creative or spiritual practice such as meditating, writing in a journal, doing yoga or reading something that inspires you.
• Prioritize good food, exercise and sleep. These provide the energy and resilience to deal with the daily demands of a law practice.
• Set boundaries. Learn to say “no” to requests for your time. According to NCLAP, “It can take a while to realize clients will not fire you if you do not cater to their every whim and demand.” A successful strategy includes stating what you cannot do at the moment along with what you can do in the future. For example, if a client calls as you’re leaving the office for a vacation and demands to see you immediately, you have every reason to say, “I was just about to leave the office and will not be back until Monday. Let’s meet first thing on Monday to get this taken care of for you. What time works better for you: 9:30, 11:30 or 2:00?”
• Take a technology break each day, especially when you get home. Put away your laptop, turn off your smartphone and stop checking email.
• Nourish a creative hobby. Try something new, start a fun project or resume a favorite hobby. Choose activities that have nothing to do with work. These activities help nourish the limbic system, which provides greater emotional resilience.

NCLAP emphasizes that it’s important to take burnout very seriously. Trying to push through the exhaustion will only cause further emotional and physical damage. In more serious cases of attorney burnout, you may need to:

• Force yourself to slow down or take a break and cut back on commitments and activities. Take time to think about your hopes, goals and dreams. Are you neglecting something that is truly important to you?
• Stop doing what you’re doing and do something else, whether that means changing employers, practice areas or even careers. Ask for new duties. If you’ve been doing the exact same work for a long time, try something new such as a different practice area, practice focus or role.
• Actively address problems proactively rather than passively. Talk to a superior, or, if you are the supervisor, be willing to take the risk to delegate more.
• Take extended time off. Go on vacation, use up your sick days, ask for a temporary leave-of-absence—anything to recharge your batteries and gain some perspective.

Lastly, the ABA sponsors Lawyer Assistance Programs to provide confidential services to judges, lawyers and law students who need support. The Georgia program can be contacted here.

From the Ozarks to Houston to North Dakota, there are widespread reports of attorney shortages. Legal representation can be hard to come by, particularly in remote areas, and district attorneys’ offices across the country are overwhelmed and understaffed.

Consider some quick stats:

• One-third of New Mexico’s counties have 10 or fewer attorneys; 21% have five or fewer, and two counties have no attorneys at all.¹
• In Marathon County, Wisconsin, many defendants wait in jail for months to get assigned an attorney due to a state private bar shortage.²
• More than 60% of lawyers in rural New York said they are unable to refer people to another attorney because there is simply no one in their region with the type of expertise the client needs.³

Georgia has been cited as one of a number of states with ‘legal deserts’ – that is, rural and underserved areas where legal representation is hard to come by. The Georgia Legal Services Program serves all 154 Georgia counties outside the core Metro Atlanta counties of Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton, Cobb, and Gwinnett. According to one report, many GLSP lawyers are responsible for covering several different counties, often at quite a distance. For example, just seven attorneys work in the Albany-Valdosta office, which is responsible for covering a 29-county area. Already serving a wide area across the southwest side of the state, the Albany office had to take on additional clients from southeast Georgia when GLSP closed its Valdosta office after the recession. GLSP lawyers staffing the office sometimes travel hundreds of miles in a day.⁴

These are just a few examples of an overwhelmed system. Cities from coast to coast report that there simply aren’t enough defenders available.

In rural areas, attracting legal talent comes down to compensation and attorneys’ willingness to move to “the country” to practice law.

Fewer law graduates, high debt, and tight budgets

The number of people attending law school went through a state of decline over the past decade before finally starting to uptick again last year.⁵ Once students graduate, they’re often so burdened with student loan debt that they simply can’t afford to take a position in certain areas of the country whose pay scale isn’t as high as others. “Law school is extremely expensive. Our student loans go into repayment before we are even admitted to the bar. It is not uncommon in a private law school to accumulate upwards of $60,000 [in debt] per year,” says Heidi Dennis, Director of the Rural Law Center of New York.

Even in more urban areas, compensation for public defenders often hasn’t been adjusted for decades. As one example, in Kenosha, Wisc., private attorneys who take on cases for the Wisconsin Public Defender will be getting a pay raise for the first time in more than two decades. In the most recent state budget, Wisconsin lawmakers approved a plan to increase the reimbursement rate for attorneys who take public defender cases from $40 to $70 an hour. That $40 rate had been in place since 1995 — when the rate was actually cut from $50 an hour — and was the lowest in the United States. Until the new rate takes effect on January 1, 2020, the public defender’s office is having a difficult time finding lawyers willing to handle their cases.⁶

Overwhelming workloads and burnout

In Burleigh County, North Dakota, State Attorney Julie Lawyer says attorneys in her office are getting burned out due to an increasingly violent nature of crimes, making the turnover rate even higher. “There’s a significant increase in sexual offenses, in violent offenses that have been reported, and in the age of the victims too. They’ve gotten younger over the years, from what I’ve seen, and it takes a toll,” she says.⁷

The problem of packed court calendars and overextended county budgets is exacerbated by inmates who have been arrested multiple times. Members of the Wisconsin Public Defenders Office note that the state cannot represent two defendants charged in the same incident because it would be a conflict of interest. Ward County, North Dakota state attorney Roza Larson says that after 22 years of working in the office, she’s in the worst position she’s ever been in and is “beyond busy.” Much of the cases circulating around her office are due to a ‘revolving door’ and re-offenders. “It’s nothing for us to have a defendant who has at least two files open. We have some who have eight open files,” she says.⁸

Randy Kraft, Communications Director for the Wisconsin Public Defenders Office, notes that the more serious the felony, the more difficult it is to get someone willing to take the case, especially for attorneys outside a certain geographic range.⁹

What are the answers? Increased public spending, using licensed legal technicians¹⁰ to bridge gaps in representation, and hiring private lawyers and contract attorneys¹¹ to take on public defender cases are all cited as possible solutions to the attorney shortage crisis.