Lawyers to Launch Own Substance Abuse Battle

Citing serious alcohol and drug addiction problems among the state’s 110,000 lawyers, the State Bar of California on Saturday approved one of the nation’s most sweeping substance abuse programs and agreed to provide more than $450,000 next year to help lawyers kick the habit.

Meeting in Los Angeles, the association’s 23-member Board of Governors approved overhauling its system of dealing with drug- and alcohol-addicted lawyers to emphasize outreach and education efforts.

“Today was a significant day in a landmark approach to chemical dependency, substance abuse and emotional distress among those in the legal profession,” said Robert Talcott, chairman of the Bar Assn.’s task force studying substance abuse issues.

Association officials said as many as 50% of their misconduct cases, which numbered more than 2,500 last year, involve lawyers abusing drugs or alcohol.

At least one in 10 lawyers in California has a serious substance abuse problem, the association estimates.

Many attorneys defend or prosecute people charged with selling or abusing the same drugs to which they have become addicted, said Talcott, who is also president of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners.

To support their habits, addicted lawyers will rip off clients with inferior service, charge them for work they never provide, and even take money directly from their clients’ assets, he added.

Drug and alcohol addictions have had such an insidious effect on the legal system that Bar President Alan Rothenberg has made chemical dependency and the resulting emotional distress “key concerns” of his presidency.

In past years, the association has depended mostly on a telephone help line to reach addicted lawyers, a system that “has proved less than effective,” Talcott said.

The new program emphasizes educational and outreach programs that would begin in law school and continue throughout a lawyer’s career, possibly requiring them to attend a course on substance abuse, said Christy Carpenter, a spokeswoman for the Bar Assn.

The association earmarked $450,507 for the “Model Lawyers Personal Assistance Program,” including $196,000 for educational tapes and pamphlets on stress and chemical dependency and $47,752 to hire a full-time administrator to oversee the association’s efforts to implement the program.

Another $180,000 would go to outside groups like The Other Bar Inc., a self-help group for lawyers seeking to break their addictions. Talcott said a priority will be to upgrade the insurance system to better underwrite drug and alcohol rehabilitation and counseling programs for lawyers.

The program, which will begin Jan. 1, will be funded through Bar Assn. dues.

Lawyers often fear going to the association with problems because its primary mission is disciplinary in nature. Only 88 lawyers sought help from the Bar-sponsored telephone help line in 1989, while The Other Bar reported receiving 3,077 calls the same year.

Many lawyers deny having problems and won’t seek help even when they miss court appointments and lose cases they should be winning, a Bar Assn. report said.

Lawyers in California are not alone: Statistics cited by the association indicate that at least 10% of the U.S. population is, or will become, alcoholic, and that lawyers are nearly twice as apt to become alcoholics.

One study by the Washington State Bar Assn. found that more than 18% of its lawyers were alcohol dependent, and another study in Georgia found that 80% of the lawyer disciplinary cases that had to do with clients’ money involved substance abuse.