"Because it's law school, not lawyer school," was the stock answer of a former dean we know when asked why his school's curriculum left its students ill-prepared to be lawyers.

Sadly, he might have been doing them a favor: Lawyers abuse substances, get divorced, commit suicide and battle depression at disproportionately high rates — and even those who avoid those perils too often live mentally unhealthy lives. Though it is fallacious to view the future as merely an exaggeration of the present, it is time to do more to combat the innately unhealthy nature of lawyering before the casualties mount even higher.