A common question that I receive from legal professionals who are looking to improve their mental health is this one: How do I know when I need to take time away from work? It is a good question and one that is not easy to answer.

If you follow me on LinkedIn you know that I hate email. At the height of my personal struggles, thinking about checking email would elicit so much anxiety that I might as well have been preparing to fight a tiger. I have read several books and articles lately that have led me to conclude that the reason I hate email is the overreliance on it and other communication tools in the modern workplace and the impact it has on our ability to concentrate and produce high quality work. Let me give you a short summary of the recent literature that informs my thinking.

This summer I attended an executive education program for law firm leaders at Harvard Law School’s Center for the Legal Profession. The audience was made up of lawyers from all law firm sizes, all different practice areas and from fifteen different countries. It was enlightening to see how despite all our differences, we struggled with the same issues as leaders: the mental health of our people (including our own), difficulties managing through change and managing workplaces with multiple generations chief among them. My main personal focus throughout the program was on how I could use what we had learned to improve mental health in legal workplaces.

Much has been written about the poor mental health among members of the legal professions. I have been speaking and writing about finding possible systemic solutions to this problem – one which I have suffered from personally.

I was thrilled to be invited by the Canadian Lawyers Insurance Association to write a regular column on their blog about mental health and wellness in the legal professions. It is wonderful that CLIA has turned its attention to this important issue that all of its subscribers are no doubt encountering in their day-to-day work.