Self-Care Sunday

What does your Sunday look like? Is it spent on the couch, a football game turned on. Are you decked out in your team’s gear? Or maybe you have sweats on and are just lounging around the house? Or maybe, maybe you are dressed down for the weekend, but still have your nose to the grindstone.

In the legal community, it certainly isn’t unheard of to be busy with work all week long and weekends too. This can be caused by upcoming filing deadlines, a competitive drive to have the most billable hours in our firm, or a never-ending feeling like there is always more to do.

Yet the sobering mental health statistics of the legal community suggest that too few of us take time for ourselves on Sundays, or indeed any other day.

Perhaps we think we won’t have the competitive edge needed to win in court if we don’t have our foot on the gas 24-7-365. Perhaps the mountain of debt that comes with modern legal education has us feeling like they need to bill every waking hour. Maybe we simply think it is selfish to take time when so many of our colleagues also seem swamped.

As part of its mission to combat the stigma of mental illness within the legal community, the LegalMind Society is committed to pushing back against all these negative stereotypes that trap lawyers in the office on the weekend instead of allowing them the balance to be human first.

After all, the stigma of mental illness should not be a barrier to practicing law and there should never be stigma associated with self-care.