WA mulls controversial mental health standard for lawyers

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Washington state judges report they can’t sleep at night because of the decisions they make in court and threats to their families. New lawyers stress over long work hours and law school debt. And 55 members of Washington’s legal community took their lives between 2018 and 2023.

These are among the grim findings in a new report from the Washington State Bar Association about the well-being of lawyers, law students and judges. The stress associated with their jobs, it states, has driven them to anxiety, burnout and suicidal ideation.

The report, presented Saturday to WSBA’s board of governors just ahead of National Lawyer Well-Being Week, aimed to identify obstacles that prevent the legal community from getting help, explore new ways to support them when they’re struggling and “raise awareness that well-being can affect a practitioner’s ability to represent clients.”

The board unanimously accepted the report to move forward for consideration of its recommendations.

One recommendation in the report mirrors a controversial proposal that the American Bar Association previously rejected over concerns that it could lead to discrimination. The proposed standard before WSBA would make well-being a feature of competence. Disability rights advocates have opposed similar standards nationally and in other states over concerns that competent lawyers with mental health diagnoses might be unfairly targeted in the name of wellness. Nonetheless, the report submitted to WSBA calls well-being “integral to professional competence and public protection,” with regard to a lawyer’s ability to represent clients.

“We thought it was important to bring forward as a recommendation because many states have, and the whole purpose of making it a part of competence is to reduce stigma,” said Kevin Plachy, WSBA’s director of advancement. Disability rights advocates worry it will have precisely the opposite effect.

Suffering in isolation

The WSBA board of governors in November 2023 voted to adopt member wellness as an organizational priority. It chartered the Well-Being Task Force two months later and directed it to conduct surveys of legal professionals and make recommendations to the board and the state Supreme Court, which can enact rules of the court, to improve well-being among lawyers in the state. The hope: improving legal services to clients, recognizing “that the well-being of legal professionals is essential to both competent and ethical practice.”

The task force’s report includes eight policy recommendations focused on the intersection of support and punishment, two of the bar association’s functions.

“There are a lot of issues we face in the practice of law that really do stay with you,” said Justin Bingham, Spokane City Prosecutor and chair of the task force. “If we can provide tools to people in the practice of law to deal with that trauma in a better way, we’ll all be better off.”

The study was inspired by a 2017 American Bar Association report that raised alarms about long-standing, widespread mental health and substance abuse in the profession and challenged state bar associations to adopt more aggressive approaches to identifying and helping struggling peers.

The task force mailed surveys to 10,000 bar association members and received 903 responses. The results were spliced by practice settings, career stages and demographics, revealing unique stressors facing lawyers in private practice, government attorneys and those just starting their careers.

Although more than half of respondents reported experiencing burnout and anxiety, many expressed reluctance to engage with WSBA’s wellness services because of stigma and lack of awareness.

“Respondents overwhelmingly stated that they would not consider disclosing any sort of mental health or substance use challenge to their colleagues for fear of repercussions,” the report said.

Bingham said bar wellness services are confidential by rule of the court. “There is a misconception throughout the bar that each part of the bar association shares information with the other, and that is not the case,” he said.

“It is very confidential every time they come to us,” Plachy said. “Anyone working with WSBA has a duty of confidentiality.”

Many survey respondents viewed the problems facing their profession as intractable.

“Depression and anxiety is inherent in the perfectionist adversarial system we work within,” a respondent wrote.

The recommendations include:

● WSBA’s disciplinary arm should evaluate access to and use of diversion programs that provide support in lieu of punishment.

● Continue refining bar admission questions to avoid discriminatory or invasive probing.

● Establish conditional admission parameters for applicants to the bar who may have past conduct that raises concerns but who show promise and a commitment to professional standards.

● Maintain the status quo in Washington, where lawyers are not required to report other attorneys who they suspect are suffering from mental or physical illness or substance abuse that is affecting their job performance.

● Explore creating a program similar to Oregon’s for reconciling instances when lawyers are suspected of mental health, physical or substance abuse problems without definitive proof.

Fitting in and fitness

When the ABA spotlighted concerns about wellness in the legal profession almost a decade ago, that effort included a proposal that would tie fitness to practice law to a lawyer’s well-being. But the ABA ultimately shelved the idea following objections that it could lead to discrimination against competent lawyers diagnosed with mental illness.

But that hasn’t stopped some states, including Washington, from considering adopting the policy.

“Concerns were noted that the (ABA) proposal could perpetuate stereotypes that lawyers with physical, mental or emotional conditions are less competent and tying … health with competence could be viewed as ableist,” the WSBA task force report said.

Bar associations in California, Vermont and Virginia have rules that say mental well-being is essential to a lawyer’s competence, according to the report. “These examples demonstrate a growing recognition among state courts that lawyer well-being is integral to professional competence and public protection,” it states. The task force recommended that the board of governors “investigate adopting a similar comment in Washington, engaging ethics committees and disability rights stakeholders.”

In its presentation to the WSBA governors Saturday, the task force made no specific mention of the proposed policy.

Bingham said in a phone interview that the proposal represents “good common sense about what we need to do to keep our profession healthy.”

“As we go through this process, we need to take all viewpoints and decide the best course of action,” he said. “It may not make everyone from every viewpoint happy.”

Nicholas Lawson, an attorney and Georgetown Law scholar with a diagnosed mental illness, in a phone interview called the proposal concerning and said he will urge WSBA to reject the proposal. Lawson has been a persistent voice of opposition to measures linking professional competence to general well-being. He favors using the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s interpretation of competence: “The best predictor of future performance is past performance,” he said. Otherwise, prejudice and subjectivity could harm the careers of good lawyers with mental illness diagnoses.

Lawson also urged the bar association to give at least as much weight to the sentiments of advocates for people with mental illness as they do to supporters of wellness efforts, including vendors and contractors. “You want to center the concerns of the people who are affected by these things,” he said.

Plachy said disability rights advocates from regional coalitions will be engaged, and all are welcome to share their views on the proposal during the rule-making process. He said the proposal would first need approval from WSBA’s Ethics Committee before getting consideration from the board of governors.

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This story was originally published May 2, 2026 at 4:54 PM.