We are all lumped in together in these numbers. I always tell clients, when they ask me about things I don’t handle, it would be like asking An eye doctor about an ankle injury. I am sure the numbers are driven way down by lawyers who based on their type of practice have zero stress levels. I have friends who I went to law school with who do nothing but review records and contracts. That simply is not a stressful job, it’s just a job. That doesn’t make them any less of a lawyer than I am, it’s just apples to oranges.

To answer your other question, I really haven’t had somebody very close to me take their life who was an attorney. We did have a very close friend who killed himself several years ago who was ex-military and had been significantly injured and suffering from PTSD. That was awful. The attorney aspect of it, I guess it is just sobering when we hear about a fellow attorney who was so stressed out that they took their life. But all that being said, you don’t know if it’s work, or personal, or just something that they were dealing with that had nothing to do with the practice of law.