Just Released! - Highlights, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2008
In this issue of Highlights, we celebrate the ABA House of Delegates adopting the Model Rule on Conditional Admission to Practice Law. Also Sonia Buck, chair of the Women’s Law Section in Maine, takes a serious look at how depression and substance abuse affects female professionals––an important and timely subject that doesn’t get as much recognition as it should.

 For Students in Recovery: A Listserv has been developed by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP) to provide a confidential email vehicle for law students who want to get, or stay, clean and sober while in law school. This is a chance for students to connect with and ask questions of their law student peers throughout the US and share their experience, strength and hope. To be added, interested law students should email CoLAP's Director, , directly. Students should be prepared to talk a bit about their history and about their need and desire to communicate with other law students facing the similiar challenges. Ms. Spilis will make the final determination to add the student to the Listserv and will provide each student with the rules and regulations regarding use of the "Students in Recovery Listserv." When a student graduates and is admitted to the bar, he/she will be removed from the Listserv.

 Tapes and CD's from the 19th National Conference for LAPs are now available.

 LAP Job Openings

Alcoholism, drug addiction, and mental health problems are afflictions that affect a great number of professionals including lawyers and judges. Reports now estimate that while ten percent of the general population has problems with alcohol abuse, anywhere from fifteen to eighteen percent of the lawyer population battles the same problem. Because many lawyers and judges are overachievers who carry an enormous workload, the tendency to "escape" from daily problems through the use of drugs and alcohol is prevalent in the legal community. Also, the daily pressures placed on these men and women can lead to inordinate amounts of stress and mental illness. Recent reports have also shown that a majority of disciplinary problems involve chemical dependency or emotional stress.

To provide a model for assisting these lawyers, whose practices had been impaired by addictions, the American Bar Association created the Commission on Impaired Attorneys in 1988. In August 1996, its name was changed to the Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP) in order to better describe the Commission's expanded services to include stress, depression, and other mental health problems and to avoid any stigma that its former name may have implied. Its primary goal is to advance the legal community's knowledge of impairments facing lawyers and its response to those issues. The Commission consists of ten members, more than half of whom are recovering from chemical dependency. Thus far, the Commission has been quite successful in aiding the introduction and support of programs in both state and local bars. Whereas only twenty-six state bar programs existed in 1980, today all fifty states have developed lawyer assistance programs or committees focused on quality of life issues. These programs employ the use of intervention, peer counseling, and referral to 12-Step Programs to assist in the lawyer's recovery process.