Report: Lawyers' well-being falls short.

If you really want to be a good lawyer, you must be a healthy lawyer--and that includes mental health. An already struggling legal profession is at a tipping point, and steps need to be taken now to address lawyers' well-being.

That's the underlying theme of a new report from the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being titled "The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change."

The 72-page report released August 14--initiated by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, the National Organization of Bar Counsel, and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers--outlines recommendations for taking action. Those recommendations are customized for judges, regulators, legal employers, law schools, bar associations, professional liability carriers, and lawyer assistance programs.

One recommendation for bar associations is to launch a lawyer well-being committee, and The Florida Bar can check that off its to-do list.

Dori Foster-Morales is the chair of the Bar's new Special Committee on Mental Health and Wellness for Florida Lawyers.

Calling the report "a wonderful comprehensive study," Foster-Morales said, "Having this report will help the special committee to create or enhance programs to strategically promote our agenda on mental health and well-being of Florida lawyers to create a more sustainable legal culture and greater well-being among lawyers."

Asked if anything in the report surprised her or jumped out as a key finding to share with her committee, Foster-Morales said: "While nothing new, the report emphasizes the need to end the stigma associated with lawyers seeking help for mental health and well-being issues."

Especially noteworthy, she said, is the "focus on a lawyer's well-being as an indispensable part of their duty of competence to their clients, such that a lawyer's well-being is part of their professional duty to their clients."

Also resonating was "the need for education on all levels and to take 'small steps' toward real cultural changes in the legal community to affect significant change," Foster-Morales said.

"Sadly, our profession is falling short when it comes to well-being," wrote national task force Co-Chairs Bree Buchanan, director of the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program, and James Coyle, attorney regulation counsel for the Colorado Supreme Court.

Citing two 2016 studies (the ABA CoLAP and Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation's study of mental health and substance use disorders...