First Aid for the Mind: Mental Health in Law, with Soumya Palreddy & Jill Kluesner

Episode Notes

Transcript

Stephanie Everett :

Hi, I’m Stephanie.

Zack Glaser:

And I’m Zack. And this is episode 5 85 of the Lawyers Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, Stephanie talks with Soumya and Jill from Mental Health First Aid about, well, mental health First Aid.

Stephanie Everett :

Pretty much.

Zack Glaser:

So we’ve actually, in full disclosure, we’ve done this intro before and Stephanie knows that It kind of blew my mind to think about first aid for mental health. And so this is a fascinating episode for me. This is something that had one of those glass breaking sort of moments of like, oh, okay. So I would suggest that people stick around and listen to it. But before we get to that, the elephant in the proverbial conference room, we just got back from Cle Ocon, Stephanie, that was some big doings, some things announced.

Stephanie Everett :

Yeah, it was a lot of news from the stage during Jack’s keynote address, and we interviewed him about some of those later. So that will be coming out soon. But if you haven’t heard a lot of people know that they acquired VE or in the process of acquiring VE once, some regulators approve the deal and they announced Clio work as a place where you can bring your practice management, your case management, and actually the work that you do as a lawyer all in one place leveraging both research tools and AI all through Clio

Zack Glaser:

Work. Yes, this is like pending regulatory approval. We have a couple of interviews related to this. As you can imagine, while we were there, we were interviewing a lot of people talking about this, but now from what I was told, you have Clio manage Clio grow. So Clio manage where you manage your firm, Clio grow, where you do your intake and your client management and things like that. And then Clio work where you do the actual work of being a lawyer and they’re going to use Vincent, at least the underlying AI of Vincent once the regulatory approval comes through. Right?

Stephanie Everett :

No, no, it’s available today.

Zack Glaser:

Is that okay?

Stephanie Everett :

Yeah, the regulatory thing is just going to allow them to close the deal. They’re just waiting on Spain to approve the final acquisition of the company, but they already have Vincent and Clio work in place today. It actually released last week at the conference. So if you’re a Clio user now you have to subscribe. If you were a duo user, you’re getting early access to this right now, but if you want to add work onto your subscription, you can do that today and start leveraging this tool.

Zack Glaser:

I’m interested to see how it essentially, I think it’s going to supersede Duo, right? It’s kind of going well, it’s

Stephanie Everett :

Different. I know it gets complicated, and I think Jack even struggled to break all this down in a quick keynote.

Zack Glaser:

We’re going to have a lot of videos on this coming up.

Stephanie Everett :

A lot of inform think I do. I think one of the things that we’re going to be helping people with, I talked to someone about this this morning, is rolling it out in their firm and training and understanding it all

Zack Glaser:

Because

Stephanie Everett :

There’s a lot of different facets to it. So work will be where you could use AI to research case law and draft a response to your pleadings, draft contracts that comply with different cases. So think about that Work is where you use AI to do the legal work, but there are also AI components previously called Clio Duo now renamed both inside of Clio Grow and inside of Clio Manage. So you may not have a work subscription, you may just be using Clio manage, but you’re going to find that there’s AI capability inside of that product now, I think called AI manage or something.

Zack Glaser:

I think it’s something like that. Like manage ai, AI manage Grow ai, not AI grow.

Stephanie Everett :

Exactly. They’re just not calling it the duo name anymore. And we’re talking about this all the time. I know everyone’s probably like, aren’t you guys sick of talking about ai? And I was like, there’s so many different avenues and facets and ways you use AI because there’s some level of personal productivity that people can use for ai, right? There’s marketing tasks that you can use for ai. So those are going to show up inside of, in this case, grow. There’s also legal work. You can do roles, specific work you can use and use ai. So

I think I appreciate that people probably, I mean, Jack even acknowledged this at Cleo’s and his final keynote last week that people were feeling a little overwhelmed, a little like, Hey, I need to process all this. It’s a lot coming at us, and I think I can speak for a lot of people that are probably listening and say, yeah, we get it. Because not only did Clio announce all these tools and all these new things, these tools are coming at us fast and furious every day there’s a new tool or new capabilities of the tools, and it’s almost a full-time job on our team that we have just to keep up with all of it.

Zack Glaser:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I’m going to take this moment to actually plug our YouTube channel. If you’re listening to this in podcast Land, we have a YouTube channel. You can go to youtube.com/ Lawyerist. I mean, it’s pretty easy. We’ve been there a while. We have videos, instructional videos, explanatory videos. We have all of our podcasts on there. So some of, you’re probably listening to this on the podcast through YouTube, but if you’re not, hop over there and there’s a lot of instructional video and we’re going to be releasing a lot of the interviews that we did at Con with Cleon with attorneys that were there. And we’re going to be trying to get a little bit of a discussion going there too. So if you’ve got questions about what this is, we want to hear those. We want to start talking about those with people, and we want to really dig into some of those issues that you think are coming out. So yeah, pop over to it’s youtube.com I think, but it’s our lawyers channel over at YouTube has a ton of resources.

Stephanie Everett :

So now let’s check out my conversation with Sonya and Joe and learning about what it means to be a mental health first aider.

Jill Kluesner:

Hello everyone. My name is Jill Leasner and I’m the owner of Jill Leasner Consulting. I’m a former provider advocate, educator and curriculum development developer, as well as a public health programming consultant. So I develop and facilitate mental health literacy programs, including mental health First aid, to a real wide variety of audiences, including law firms, professionals in the legal field, and really focusing on that intersection between mental health and the legal industry. Hi

Soumya Palreddy:

Everyone. I’m Soumya. I’m a licensed psychologist. I’m a restorative justice practitioner. I’m also a national trainer focused on mental health literacy. And as part of my work, I partner with organizations and schools to design programs that strengthen mental health and restorative practices and center relationship centered spaces specifically within the legal industry. I facilitate mental health first aid for legal professionals covering topics like how to support colleagues who are experiencing a mental health challenge, how to practice self-compassion and high pressure environments, how to build communities of practice, and how to make sure that when you take trainings, mental health first aid, they don’t just become a one and done workshop that you can continue and sustain the learning. Alright, well two

Stephanie Everett :

Impressive guests here today, and I feel like we could talk for hours about all the things that you guys just said just in that little introduction. But I was excited to talk to you today about the Mental Health First Aid training because I was fortunate enough to be your trainee. You guys both came into our team and trained me and all of the team leads, and I just found it was so impactful that I was like, we have got to share this information and get it out in the world. So maybe to kick it off, you guys could define what it is and what you do and

Jill Kluesner:

We’ll go from there. So Mental Health First aid is the help offered to somebody who’s experiencing a mental health challenge or experiencing a mental health crisis. So Mental Health First Aid in and of itself, it’s a training program. It’s a standardized curriculum that teaches those specific skills. So you not only in mental health first aid training, learn how to provide support, but you also learn about the resources that are available that you could tag in if somebody did need that extra layer of support.

Soumya Palreddy:

The other thing that I want to add to what Jill said is Mental Health First aid is a movement. So that’s the way that we like to describe it. It started about 25 years ago in Australia by Betty Kitchener and Anthony jm, and essentially they had this conversation that we know what to do and around physical health challenges and physical health crises, but we don’t know what to do when there’s mental health challenges and mental health crises. So it was kind of born out of that conversation 25 years ago. So this is the 25th anniversary year, and then it got brought to the United States in about 2008. And then since then, it’s been a movement that’s growing in a lot of different countries, I want to say 22 plus countries. So we like to think about it as it’s a training, but then it’s also a movement. We refer to all the learners, and as you probably remember Stephanie saying, mental health first aid, mental health first aid, you’re coming into the movement.

Stephanie Everett :

I so appreciate that because this is a topic. I mean, we talk about it, but we don’t really know kind of, right? For sure. There’s more talk about it in today’s world than when I was growing up, but I still think we get tripped up on like, oh, maybe we noticed something, but we’re like, is that okay? Am I supposed to acknowledge it? Am I supposed to say something? And if so, and this training really helps break all those barriers down and such a really easy, easy and nice way.

Jill Kluesner:

And Stephanie, what you’re sharing too about that pause that maybe people have about initiating the conversation. And so one of the things we teach in the course is an actual framework of what to say, what actions we can take and how to offer support. And so that framework includes everything from how we assess a situation and assessing for safety considerations as well as assessing am I the right person to be having this conversation or is there somebody who might have a stronger relationship with that individual? We’re teaching people how to utilize active listening skills, how to provide hope, how to give reassurance, and then also, again, going back to then who are those professionals? If we’re within a company organization, who are the professionals within the workspace or who are the professionals in the community? That could be helpful. And then that last part of the action plan, we focus on what are things that person can do themselves as a way of encouraging self-help and other support strategies so that framework learners find to be really helpful and having the skills that they can lean into as needed.

Stephanie Everett :

What do you guys see as some of the biggest barriers when people are showing up to this training? What are some of the maybe misconceptions people have that you love to help break down and reset for people?

Soumya Palreddy:

I love what you had said earlier when you had asked us that first question where you said people are worried about what to say, and we hope that we are able to convey that there’s not one way to provide support and also so that you’re not getting a script or you’re not a robot and there’s not one perfect way that you really to kind of honor your humanity and you do the best that you can. And so you say the words, you try your best, and then if it doesn’t land, you try again. Kind of really encouraging people that we’re not looking for perfection, like being a mental health first aider doesn’t mean being perfect, it’s just trying. Anything you would add to that, Jill?

Jill Kluesner:

I think some of the common misconceptions that sometimes we help people work through is sometimes people will have pause around having conversations around mental health and really questioning of, is it my place to actually talk to a coworker about something they might be experiencing? And so we think about what are the number one ways in which we can break through that stigma, that concern about even starting these conversations. And it’s through skill building and training and education, and we know that to be true. And so we think about how we can overcome that barrier training, education, opportunities to practice the skills, right within the mental health first aid training.

Stephanie Everett :

Yeah, I bet there’s people out listening right now that are like, is it my place? I don’t know. And maybe I’m feeling like I’m their boss and so is that uncomfortable or I’m their peer. I mean, I could sit here and talk my way out of all the reasons why I shouldn’t have to, or I shouldn’t be the one to say anything.

Soumya Palreddy:

Well, and one thing that I will add is we a lot of times in the course say just like heart attacks don’t happen in ERs or physical health, broken bones don’t happen in doctor’s offices. Mental health challenges don’t happen in therapist’s offices. And so we know that even if we are feeling a little bit reluctant, and that can be typical, especially from the communities that you might come from or your workplace culture. If you don’t then, and if everyone’s thinking that, who will? Right? And so it’s really kind of connecting this to community care. This is part of us being in community together is if you were coughing nonstop, I would be checking in with you and be like, are you okay? Right. And the same is true for if you were experiencing signs and symptoms and they were kind of getting in the way of you being able to do the things you wanted to do at work or wherever. Just checking in is part of that. It’s like creating that parallel to physical health.

Stephanie Everett :

I love that example. And in the training, one of the things that we learned is we’re not doctors, so our job isn’t to diagnose. We don’t have to approach it from that angle, but just being aware of some of the signs that we could be on the lookout for is super helpful. And so I wonder if you’d be willing to share any of those kind of initial signs or some of the bigger signs that we should be thinking about

Jill Kluesner:

When we talk about signs and symptoms. We actually talk about ’em across four different domains that we might notice changes, and we use a lot of that language noticing skills, noticing changes, and so noticing changes across appearance, so how that individual is showing up behaviors. And we also talk about noticing signs and symptoms in regards to somebody’s feelings and emotions and also thoughts. So looking at changes and noticing changes across those different domains. As a mental health first aider, that’s kind of one of our tools for our toolbox. I’m also going to pass it to Somi if you want to expand upon signs and symptoms.

Soumya Palreddy:

One of the things that we teach in Mental Health First aid is that we don’t make assumptions. And so we might notice some signs and symptoms. So let’s say I notice that Stephanie, you were late to work or late to joining a meeting, whether it’s a virtual space or coming into a work meeting and it happens once or maybe twice, it would not be appropriate or it’s not in my lane as a mental health first state, or to automatically assume that that’s a sign or symptom of mental health challenge. We’re starting to notice signs that we’re sometimes noticing patterns. We’re also noticing how much is this happening and what’s the impact really, we kind of want to come back to impact. And so is it that you come in a little late and then you dive right in, or you’re missing important deadlines? Is it you’re missing important things? You’re not responding to emails, you’re not showing up for things. So the list of signs and symptoms is pretty exhaustive. It’s across those four domains, but we really tell mental health first. Oops. We tell mental health first Staters that we don’t make assumptions that what we’re noticing is automatically connected to a mental health challenge. And also we’re looking for how long has it been going on for and what’s the impact?

Stephanie Everett :

So let’s just play it out. Let’s say that I did notice that with somebody is I guess we said it could be appropriate for me to be the one to say something. And then with the framework that you guys teach, it’s like, here are some ways that you could approach that person or that situation or I love what Jill said, maybe you decide I’m not the right person to do it, but let me tag somebody else in or get a different resource, which I think is so important because it doesn’t mean I get to ignore, it just means I might find help but in a different way.

Jill Kluesner:

And that’s one of the messages that we really like to emphasize in Mental Health First Aid is that you are still an incredible mental health first aider if you recognize signs and symptoms and you tag someone else in who has that relationship and can have that supportive conversation,

Stephanie Everett :

When do we need to be worried? This is such a problem in the legal industry. I’m just thinking as we were sitting here talking, we all know of people who’ve had serious issues. I mean, sadly everything from depression, I don’t even know what the lowest level is, right? I’m like, what’s the bottom? All the way up to sadly death by suicide. It is plaguing our profession, which is why I thought for sure this conversation is so important because we know we’re in high stress, high impact jobs, and this is a real problem for a lot of legal professionals. And I think there’s a little bit of, when we’ve talked about this on the show before in the past, there’s been a stigma around getting help because people were worried that maybe it would affect their licenses if there was worry from the state level that somebody perform their job.

Soumya Palreddy:

The literature backs that up, Stephanie. So when people have done studies on professionals within the legal industry and prevalence of mental health challenges, they are high. So it’s not like one person over here or one person over there. It’s like we us our community. And then I love that you’re bringing up what might be a barrier for people getting hurt, which is really unique to the legal industry, is people worrying about their judgment. If I have signs and symptoms of a mental health challenge, will people doubt my judgment? Will people think that my judgment is now impaired that I can’t do my job? So was that’s definitely a barrier for people getting help. And I think that the legal industry is trying to get ahead of that and naming that this is important. This is part of professionalism and professional development, that wellbeing helps you do your job and that we can’t just ignore it because we know that our colleagues need support in physical health challenges and also mental health challenges. And so I think you’re naming the prevalence, but then also naming some of the barriers that get in the way.

Stephanie Everett :

What would you say to people who are business owners? And so we have a lot of small law firm owners who listen to the show, and I feel like as a business owner or as a leader, maybe as a team leader, we have different levels of responsibility for the people who work with us. And so I guess, what do you say to those people about how they should be thinking about their role maybe even differently than just a colleague?

Jill Kluesner:

One of the things that I’ll note and then I’ll pass it to Soumya to share more too is one of the things we talk about in the course is the importance of self-care and the importance of all of these different skills. We also like there to be some reflection when it comes to leadership of looking to your leadership to be able to see that modeled. When we think about the role of leadership, one of the really powerful roles of leadership could be to model the skills and the expectations for individuals that you’re supervising. And so when we talk about these skills, it’s not one layer within an organization. It’s really looking at how is leadership modeling the skills that we’re asking folks to be able to absorb and take on.

Soumya Palreddy:

I mean, to echo what Jill is saying, a lot of times when we consult with firms and organizations, sometimes leadership might say one thing and then do another, right? And so we know for example, that a workplace environmental factor within the legal industry is kind of this work life conflict because there’s connection to billable hours and there’s perfectionism that’s expected. But if your leadership is saying, yeah, enjoy your weekends, take time off, but then they’re sending emails and messages on weekends and they’re working, that is like a mismatch. And people notice that. Whereas if leadership is modeling, I’m taking rest, I am really run down and I know I need to get ahead of this and I’m taking rest or I’m going to not be able to do this today because of this, if that kind of modeling people see that that really speaks volume.

So on a small scale modeling what you are wanting for your colleagues or for the people on your team and in your firms really goes a long way. I also think about from a training perspective, there is a difference that sometimes we notice between firms that the leadership is in the training with mental health first aid or they’re like, yes, sign off on the training. And so when they’re in the training to actually absorb the skills and are doing it alongside colleagues and their team, that really kind of lands differently. It’s promoted differently. People pay attention differently. People interact and take in that information differently versus maybe leadership that just kind of signs off on it. And I don’t want to infer, but I can guess that people are wondering top down, are people also believing in this? Are they behind this? So I think about those two as potential strategies to think about as a small firm owner.

Stephanie Everett :

What about any other kind of best practices for the team as we’re beyond just everybody should get this training. I’ll just plug that and I’ll let you guys talk about that in a second. But I’m just kind of thinking of other easy best practices. If someone was listening and I was like, I should do a little bit more when it comes to the mental health of my team, what are some of your top tips that you would share?

Jill Kluesner:

First thing that I want to mention is just in regards to dosing, and then some, I’d love to hear more strategies as well when we think about dosing of the information. So we know that a mental health first aid training is fantastic, but it needs to also be more than that if we’re really looking at changing how we show up for each other and how these conversations or what these conversations can look like in the workplace. And so whether that be a mental health first aid training as a way of that’s our baseline. Everyone has that information. But then following up with opportunities to practice skills, opportunities to develop community of practice and be able to not only practice scenarios, but also be alerted of new and emerging resources and information

Soumya Palreddy:

We talk about or we try to emphasize that we sometimes can’t our way out of things. So yes, we need to have agency and we need to do individual things to take care of ourselves and thinking about it across different dimensions. The course goes over eight different dimensions, and that’s also echoed by samso, the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration. They came out with some dimensions to think about taking care of yourself, but I also think about how can we create workplaces where we extend and receive care to really freely that I know that if I have capacity to give to you in this way, then Stephanie, you might take it and then you might give to me in another way, almost breaking down this notion that we need to power through it all by ourselves. I think that workplaces where there’s really great retention, really easy to recruit people to work and productivity and wellness are all kind of coexisting.

I really do think that they have community care going on in their workplace. They’re like, my wellbeing is connected to your wellbeing and I see you needing this and I’m going to give that to you, and you see me needing this and you’re going to give that to me. And it’s both extending and receiving care, and this is not something that’s new, right? Communities have been doing this for generations, but kind of bringing that back in, I think there’s a little bit more of when we went the self-care route and we kind of coined that, it’s like self-reliance almost, and it’s like, oh, how can we make sure that we’re saying, yes, I have agency in taking care of myself, but also how can I have a community around me that’s going to help me because we can’t do it alone. Sometimes I feel guilty.

I know Jill and I, we talk about this as practitioners in this field. We sometimes feel guilty like, I should be doing this and I should be doing more of this and I should be doing that. And it feels like another thing. Yet I failed at when reality is the structures around us are not set up for me to be able to succeed. And so the only way I can do that is if I lean on my community. And so this giving and taking has got to be, can we do that more in our workplaces and not be seen as weak, not as seen as having poor judgment, not as seen as not being good enough at our job. It’s like, no, this is just how we do things.

Jill Kluesner:

And when we think about that extending and receiving peace as well, so many times when we talk about workplace wellness, we think about literally the workplace environment. And one of the things that we emphasize in Mental Health First Aid when we’re teaching courses is we do not just put stressors and things that are happening in our personal life on a little bookshelf and then we log into work. That’s not how we live our lives. And so really thinking about looking at all of who somebody is and all of the stressors and all of the ways in which we can offer support, moving it beyond workplace wellness and thinking about, again, entire people, entire communities, and how this really fits to build capacity and support.

Soumya Palreddy:

I also think that one of the things that we’ve helped organizations do is thinking about doing relationship centered practices alongside the way they do business. And so one of those, which is so easy, and a lot of people are like, oh, of course, but it’s even just starting meetings with a check-in. And it doesn’t have to be a long check-in. It doesn’t have to be everybody gets 10 minutes for the floor, but it’s like check-ins. What’s a rose thorn or rosebud that’s happening in your life right now? Or it’s check-in like, here’s some images of 16 animals. Pick the one that captures how you’re feeling right now, or it’s your internal weather thermometer right now. And that just honors our humanity. And what a great way to be like, oh, I know that Jill right now. She just said that she feels like a tornado. Okay, I know that that’s good for me to know as her supervisor, or that’s good for me to know as her colleague, so I will care for her in that way. I might check in with her, or I might just give her a little slack if she’s a little behind on something. So just doing check-ins can be really, really helpful.

Stephanie Everett :

I love that. Really practical tip. And I think it also, I was thinking while you both were talking, we talked about modeling the leader, modeling the self-care, but also we talk a lot about authentic leadership and being willing to be your authentic self with your team. I think for a long time we’ve been told leaders have to have this wall up or these guards. You’re supposed to show up. I mean, I remember one of my law partners, this was many, many years ago, pulling me aside and being like, Stephanie, you’re sharing too much about your personal life with the team, with the staff. The staff isn’t supposed to know about your life because you’re a leader. And I was like, and I just was like, what a dumb thing to say, okay, we’re not on this weird pedestal, it’s just that I have a different role in the team than they do.

That’s just such a antiquated way of thinking about it. And so now I will share that I’ve gone to my team before and been like, Hey guys, if I seem off I’m struggling, there’s some stuff going on. Maybe I don’t want to share all of my personal life and you don’t have to, but I’ve said, Hey, there’s some stuff going on in my personal life. I just need y’all to know. I really don’t want to share all the details right now, but it may be impacting how I’m showing up on calls. It may be impacting how I’m showing up for you right now, and it may have nothing to do with you. Because I think a lot of times teams especially really, I was reading about teenagers and how they don’t perceive facial expressions always correctly, and I see that a lot with my kid where should be like, mom, why are you mad? And I’m like, I’m not mad. Why do you think? I feel like that also kind of applies to our team members sometimes they put more on us like, oh my gosh, Stephanie’s showing up at this call. She must be really mad at me, and it may have nothing to do with them, it’s just I’m mad at the teenager that we just talked about. So I think just us being willing to be that vulnerable and authentic and share that with our team that, Hey, we’re human too. And I may feel like a tornado today.

Jill Kluesner:

Absolutely. It’s our natural human tendency to want to fill in the blanks. And so if we don’t have all the information, we tend to make assumptions. Unfortunately those tend to be negative assumptions, so why is she showing up to this meeting late? Whereas if we can just be transparent and honest, it helps to fill in those blanks. We don’t have to guess. We don’t have to wonder. We just know.

Stephanie Everett :

Awesome. If people are excited as they should be to get this training and help get their team trained too, I think it’s an easy first step to me. Like you said, not the end of the story, but a good level set first step. Where can they go for more information?

Jill Kluesner:

So if you’re interested in learning more about Mental Health First Aid and specifically bringing Mental Health First Aid to your firm, you can actually reach out to Soumya or myself, Stephanie, I’m not sure if our contact information can be made available as part of this podcast, but we will make sure that that is available to listeners so that individuals are able to reach out to us and be able to get connected to the training. If we’re not able to facilitate that training, we’ll be happily able to connect you to other who would be able to offer that training to you as well. So it’s widely accessible, widely available. We’re happy to be a point of contact moving forward for folks.

Stephanie Everett :

Yeah, we’ll make sure all their contact information’s in the show notes, so please go check it out there. And thank you both for being with me today, for being my trainer, but also just sharing this information with all of our listeners in our community. I know it will help people.

Jill Kluesner:

Thank you so much, Stephanie. Thank you for having us on.

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