Legal Remedies : The Lawyers: Stress often makes the temptation to abuse drugs too great to resist.

A new breed of lawyer has emerged in the 1990s. They’re as bright, well-educated, tough, sophisticated and relatively affluent as lawyers always have been.

But some of them also are alcoholics or drug abusers. To feed their habits, these addicted lawyers often rip off clients with inferior service. They take money for work they never provide. They have been known to take money directly from clients’ liquid assets.

As many as one in seven California lawyers has a serious substance abuse problem, according to Alan Rothenberg, president of the California State Bar. In a court system clogged with drug cases, many of the accused are prosecuted or defended by lawyers in the grip of their own addictions.

Although other professions have similar problems, the problem in law has grown so severe that the State Bar--the quasi-governmental agency responsible for licensing and disciplining the state’s 122,000 lawyers--has “decided to meet the issue head-on,” Rothenberg said. Confronted with statistics that showed that roughly half the 5,000 legal misconduct cases the Bar investigated each year were linked to substance abuse, “we felt that it would be irresponsible to sweep it under the rug,” he added.

Times staff writer David Haldane asks: Who are the lawyers with drug or alcohol problems? Who are their victims? And what is the State Bar trying to do about this problem?

Marshall Bitkower knew he shouldn’t take the money.

A former county deputy district attorney and one-time Los Angeles deputy city attorney, he had built his private legal practice into a $100,000-a-year business; the profits allowed him to buy an 8,000-square-foot Encino house and two Rolls-Royces.

But his income wouldn’t cover a lavish cocaine habit he acquired after a friend introduced him to the drug at a party.

So Bitkower decided to “borrow” from a client’s trust account. It was just for a few days, he told himself. He would put the money back as soon as he could.

The trouble was, he never could. Within a year, he had taken almost $100,000 from client accounts.

And it still wasn’t enough.

“I ended up sleeping on a mattress in Hermosa Beach,” said Bitkower, now 47. “I became a semi-recluse; I stayed in a motel room and just lived to take cocaine. I would go into the office, collect money, buy drugs and go back to my motel.”

Martin Stanley, 34, remembers appearing regularly in Los Angeles courtrooms while under the influence of drugs or alcohol: “I would stay up all night doing cocaine. At 6 a.m., I’d go get a bottle of cheap champagne . . . (and later) go to court.”

Wendy Slavkin, 35, knew she was in serious trouble when she began to receive threatening letters from the State Bar of California about professional services for which she took money but never performed. Because of drug abuse, she said, “I had a problem with showing up on time and meeting deadlines. Often I wouldn’t show up in court when I was supposed to.”

Experts offer varying opinions as to why lawyers may be prone to addiction; many say that, as a profession, lawyers are no more subject to substance abuse than any other profession with high stress.

But lawyers, other experts say, work in a world that, in some respects, worsens any tendencies they may have to alcoholism or drug abuse.

“Generally, the practice of law is a high-stress profession, where people’s lives and fortunes are literally at issue,” said Robert Talcott, chairman of a 15-member California Bar task force studying drug and alcohol abuse. “People who involve themselves with lawyers have very strong feelings about the outcome of their cases, and the time limits and other factors superimposed on that add to the general stress of (a lawyer’s) life.”

Factor in a high income, relatively easy access to others’ money and the emotional needs that draw some to the profession in the first place, and the temptation to abuse drugs or alcohol can grow too great to resist, some lawyers say.

Individuals with “low self-esteem tend to be attracted to professions that make them feel powerful and make their egos feel big,” Stanley said, adding that the legal profession “puts you in a situation where you can (financially) afford to do crazy things and the stress gives you an excuse for doing them.”

Said Slavkin, who now lives in Tarzana: “At first, the drugs make you feel powerful, like you can do anything. Then you keep taking them because you want to feel that way again. And finally you take them just to feel OK.”

There have been active efforts to combat substance abuse among lawyers for years, including The Other Bar, an Alcoholics Anonymous-type program sponsoring 36 weekly meetings statewide where up to 500 lawyers and judges discuss their addictions.

“What we offer is an introduction to sobriety,” said Ted Cohen, a Beverly Hills lawyer, recovering alcoholic and founder of The Other Bar in Los Angeles. The first goal, he said, is to get participants to attend regular AA or other appropriate support-group meetings.

“We try to get people in and then push them out,” he said, adding that within a year of joining The Other Bar program, most participants join AA.

But even after they get help with their substance abuse woes, the troubles don’t end for many troubled lawyers.

Bitkower, the former deputy district attorney, knows this. His cocaine habit cost him his marriage, house and Rolls-Royces, not to mention clients. Finally he was convicted of grand theft--a charge that was later reduced to a misdemeanor and dismissed--and eventually served time for drunk driving. In 1982, on the verge of being disbarred, he voluntarily resigned from the Bar and from the practice of law.

Stanley, who ended up serving a jail term for writing bad checks, was disbarred earlier this year.

And Slavkin, after responding to complaints by clients to the State Bar that she had accepted payment for services never rendered, was suspended from the practice of law for the 12 months beginning Jan. 1, 1990.

All three say they since have found help through The Other Bar or AA. They have repaid or are repaying any money they came by improperly. And all three, who now work for law firms in lesser roles--as office administrator, law clerk or paralegal--say they hope to be practicing lawyers again someday.

But their experiences have tempered their lifestyles and ambitions.

“It’s a lesson in humility on a daily basis,” Slavkin said of clients who still ask for her legal services only to be told she is on suspension.

Stanley said sadly that he had it all “and couldn’t handle it. I can look at it as a tragedy.”