There's (Not) An App for That: Solving the Legal Profession's Mental Health Problem

Image: Shutterstock.

I'll just come out and say it and likely annoy countless tech evangelists and some well-meaning law firm leaders at the same time: Apps aren't the way to solve the legal profession's mental health and addiction problems, despite their widespread availability.

Currently, apps are out there for managing anxiety, coping with depression, meditating, quitting drinking, getting more sleep, building resilience and more. Do these products have any role to play, and can they be useful tools? Yes and yes. But that role should be an unambiguously secondary or tertiary one, and tools deployed without well-guided purpose can actually make a problem worse. I'll come back to that last point.

First, for background and context, it's clear that, as 2019 enters the home stretch, a focus on mental health has been mainstreamed in the legal profession. This is remarkable, exciting and overdue. The signatory list for the ABA Well-Being Pledge now stands at 150 and climbing, lawyer conferences and law school curricula are increasingly making space for discussion of mental health, and employers are identifying mental health and well-being as clear organizational priorities as they budget for 2020.