Grief, Alcohol and Perfectionism

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, when most of us were working from home, the Law Society made it a priority to launch a revamped suite of mental health and wellbeing services tailored specifically for those working in our legal profession, including the Solicitor Outreach Service (known as SOS). One of the quiet achievers of our new services has been our Staying Well in the Law series. This provides practical and skills-based webcasts, training and resources to help our members stay well, both at home and in the law.

In just under 12 months we have built up an outstanding online catalogue of Staying Well in the Law sessions for the profession. Topics covered so far have included Life as a High-Performance Happy Lawyer, Managing Stress for Sustained Performance Over Time, Life Hacks to Manage and Prevent Burnout, How to Deal with Years Like 2020, and most recently, Talking Differently About Grief. These sessions are available on demand for all NSW solicitors and are free for members.

Our recent presentation about grief was particularly interesting, with presenter Wendy Liu explaining that grief includes death and non-death related losses (changes to work, relationships, health), which is particularly important in the time of COVID-19 when people are dealing with “a change in their imagined future”.

In our next Staying Well in the Law event, to be webcast at lunchtime on Wednesday 12 May, we are going to tackle a substance that is a deeply ingrained part of Australian culture and the most popular drug of choice in the nation – alcohol.

 As we all know, concern about alcohol and the legal profession is not new. In 2014, an ANU study involving more than 1,000 practising Australian lawyers found that as many as one in three could be problem drinkers.  That in itself is an alarming statistic, but the study also linked regular alcohol consumption to depression and anxiety – also prevalent in our profession. And studies in the United States have shown that lawyers are almost twice as likely as the general population to abuse substances. Stress, overwork, isolation and workplace culture can all contribute to a perfect storm for substance abuse.

Our presenter will be clinical psychologist Dominique Robert-Hendren. Dominque is the Head of Clinical Innovation and Digital Health at Hello Sunday Morning, an Australian not-for-profit organisation dedicated to changing our culture around alcohol. Dominque will explore how work culture, work-life imbalance and other common stressors can contribute to drinking too much, or too frequently, and importantly offer strategies on cutting back.

At a time when we have the additional pressure of living and working through a global pandemic, taking the time to reflect on our relationship with alcohol could be one of the best steps we take to stay well.

Registrations are now open for next month’s Staying Well in the Law webcast, which will explore another topic of great relevance to the profession – Understanding and Managing Perfectionism. In this webcast, clinical psychologist, Kristiina Bedford, will discuss perfectionism and its relationship to procrastination, and offer helpful tips for managing both - to minimise the impacts on mental wellbeing and maximise the value of your time in and out of the workplace.

Juliana Warner, President, the Law Society of NSW

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