The Massachusetts Bar Association’s Lawyer Well-Being Committee encourages all MBA members to take part in an important independent survey on lawyer well-being.
In 2017, the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being published The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change that detailed lawyers’ chronic stress, high rates of depression, and substance use and made recommendations for change. As a result, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court established an initial, temporary Steering Committee to explore the state of lawyer well-being in the Commonwealth. It published a Report in July 2019 and thereafter established a permanent Standing Committee on Lawyer Well-Being. As recommended in the July 2019 Report, to better understand and address well-being among attorneys in Massachusetts specifically, Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, a non-profit organization, has partnered with NORC at the University of Chicago (NORC), a non-profit research organization, to conduct an independent assessment of the well-being of Massachusetts' attorneys.
The survey explores several topics, including:
- Work setting (e.g., type of employer, specialty)
- Experience working as an attorney in Massachusetts
- Health and wellness
- Stigma and access to well-being and mental health services
- How these topics affect different demographic populations within the Massachusetts bar
The survey should take no longer than 10-15 minutes to complete.
Responses to this survey are
voluntary and will be kept
confidential. NORC, an independent research organization, will oversee data collection, and will store survey responses on its secure servers.
NORC will not share any individual responses with Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, the Board of Bar Overseers, Standing Committee on Lawyer Well-Being, or the Massachusetts Courts. Take the survey