The Maine Assistance Program for Lawyers and Judges offers free, confidential peer assistance around stress and burnout, recovery, mental health challenges and other issues.
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In the high-pressure legal industry, lawyers, judges, law students and bar applicants sometimes need help to cope.
Attorneys suffer from substance abuse and depression at a rate almost twice that of the population in general, according to the Maine Assistance Program for Lawyers and Judges.
Created in 2002, the Maine Assistance Program for Lawyers and Judges has more than 60 statewide attorney and judge volunteers who provide free, confidential peer assistance around stress and burnout, recovery support, mental health challenges and aging and cognition issues and navigating legal life in general.
By facilitating early intervention and treatment, the organization helps to protect the public from harm that might otherwise be caused by impaired members of the legal profession.
In the current fiscal year, the organization expects to have three times more new calls for assistance than in 2019.
“It’s a pretty steep uptick,” says Julia Teitel, executive director of the Maine Assistance Program.
Stress factors include increased workloads and case backlogs resulting from the pandemic, staffing shortages and isolation in rural areas, and long hours and a high-pressure environment in urban areas.
Teitel says she’s seeing an uptick of women attorneys calling in and an increasing number of reported concerns around aging and cognition.
Help ranges from single conversations to therapy referrals. The organization runs groups for mental health and stress as well as for recovery. Volunteers offer ongoing and specific support around particular issues.
“I’m of the belief that most and maybe every attorney, judge and law student will be directly or indirectly impacted by MAP’s work at one time or another,” says Teitel.