Tom Grden is Clinical Case Manager for the State Bar of Michigan’s Lawyers & Judges Assistance Program....
JoAnn Hathaway is the Practice Management Advisor for the State Bar of Michigan. With a multifaceted background,...
Molly Ranns is program director for the Lawyers and Judges Assistance Program at the State Bar of...
Published: | January 13, 2025 |
Podcast: | State Bar of Michigan: On Balance Podcast |
Category: | Practice Management , Wellness |
Lawyers, amongst other “safety-sensitive” professionals like doctors, police officers, etc., aren’t allowed to have a bad day at work. If you aren’t doing your best, someone could get hurt, and the weight of that responsibility can lead to mental health or wellness issues when attorneys, judges, or law students don’t have the support they need. Molly Ranns and JoAnn Hathaway welcome Tom Grden to the podcast to discuss the many resources available to legal professionals through Lawyers & Judges Assistance Programs. There is confidential help available for anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and more. Tom also shares a variety of simple coping skills for managing daily stressors.
Learn more at: Michigan – Lawyers & Judges Assistance Program
Tom Grden is Clinical Case Manager for the State Bar of Michigan’s Lawyers & Judges Assistance Program.
Special thanks to our sponsor State Bar of Michigan.
Molly Ranns:
Hello and welcome to another edition of the State Bar of Michigan’s On Balance Podcast on Legal Talk Network. I’m Molly Ranns.
JoAnn Hathaway:
And I’m JoAnn Hathaway. We are very pleased to have the State Bar of Michigan’s very own Tom Grden Join us today. Tom is licensed professional counselor and has worked for the State Bar of Michigan’s Lawyers and Judges assistance program for the past six years. He is an advisory member of the A BA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, an ICO contributor and a regular author of the Michigan Bar Journal’s practicing Wellness Column. Tom speaks nationally on topics pertaining to law student lawyer and judicial wellbeing, and we’re grateful to him for joining us today. And with that, Tom, could you share some more information about yourself with our listeners please?
Tom Grden:
Sure, JoAnn, and thanks for having me. I really got into this idea of pursuing a career in mental health way back in the seventh grade. I was inspired by my teacher, Dr. Warley, who was a doctor of psychology and a war veteran, and I thought, you know what? He’s the smartest, most authentic man I’ve ever met. And I kind of always kept that seed of psychology in my mind. Pursued a psychology degree at Michigan State class of 2010, go green. And then I went on to get a master’s in addiction counseling from University of Detroit Mercy in 2017. And then after a couple different jobs, I landed at the state bar in 2019. And so happy to be here.
Molly Ranns:
Thank you so much for joining us, Tom. So as the director of the Lawyers and Judges Assistance Program, I’m very familiar with the role of lapse and I’m so excited to have you here today to talk about those. And a lot of laps have evolved similarly over the course of time, really as starting as a group of individuals, a group of attorneys looking to help other lawyers get sober. And those were so successful that programs eventually developed. And now the program, specifically our program in Michigan is very broad brush. We do a lot more than help people get sober, although we do that too. But we address a whole host of mental health issues as well as burnout, overwhelm, the list goes on. So Tom, I’m hoping that you can educate our listeners and help them understand what the function of lawyer assistance programs are and really specifically the resources available through the State Bar of Michigan’s Lawyers and Judges Assistance program.
Tom Grden:
Sure. At our core, our function is to protect the public the same as the State Bar of Michigan at large. And the reason that’s so important is because the practice of law is considered a safety sensitive profession. So you’re grouped in with police officers, firefighters, airline pilots, doctors and the like. And what it essentially means is that these professions are not given the option of having a bad day, right? If someone in these professions has a bad day, somebody is going to get hurt. So it’s important that the Lawyers Assistance programs exist because we are working to help the public by increasing lawyer wellbeing. We are ensuring that lawyers can practice at their absolute most competent because that’s what they’re ethically required to do. Some of the resources that we offer, at least in Michigan, for starters, we are adept at consultation. If you give us a call because you’re concerned about a loved one or a coworker or a colleague, what we can do is talk you through that very difficult conversation of sharing your concern and what to do about it, what that conversation should sound like, and also how to encourage the person you’re worried about to give us a call.
Unfortunately, we cannot reach out to that person directly, but if you can convince them to give us a call at that point, we can take it from there. Another resource that we offer is short-term counseling for law students, we charge $5 a session and usually limit it to between six and 12 sessions. If we see that there’s a problem that needs longer term counseling, we’re more apt to refer out to a therapist in the community. And that leads me into another resource that our lawyer assistance program offers, and that’s referrals to properly trained and credentialed providers. We keep a list of therapists across the state of Michigan who are adept and experienced in treating the unique stressors that those in the legal profession face. So if you give me a call or shoot me an email asking for therapy referrals, I can usually find you two or three names of folks that will accept your insurance and also have experience in treating lawyers.
You will not be their first lawyer, you probably won’t be their 10th lawyer. They will understand the unique stressors that you’re facing in part of your career. We also offer clinical assessments. Sometimes you just want more insight into yourself. Sometimes these are ordered, but the State Bar of Michigan offers them at a much lower cost than the private sector. We also offer monitoring, and that kind of loops back to protecting the public piece when a legal professional ignores their mental health and wellness for so long. Eventually we start to see some maladaptive behaviors come through and naturally the maladaptive behaviors very often lead to grievances. And at that point they’re often referred to us as well, again, to ensure that the lawyer is competent, the lawyer is ready to serve the public in the most optimal manner. And finally, we also offer a virtual support group.
This is free to all legal professionals in Michigan. We run it on Wednesday evenings. Actually, I facilitate it on Wednesday evenings between six and 7:00 PM via Zoom. This is confidential, completely free, and it’s a great place for lawyers to just gather and support other lawyers. So while I am a licensed therapist, I always make very clear to them that this is not a therapy group. The intention of this group is for you all to support each other, and if I’m speaking too much, we really have a problem. So I’d encourage any folks from Michigan to please give it a look. We start our next cycle on January 8th, and I would love to see you out there virtually.
JoAnn Hathaway:
Well, thanks for that overview, Tom. And building on that, I’d like to focus now on the role of licensed mental health professionals in these programs. What do you see as the key benefits of having them involved, both here in Michigan and in other similar programs across the country?
Tom Grden:
I think one of the biggest benefits of having at least one licensed mental health professional as part of the lab is that they’re going to know what to look for when it comes to some of these maladies, the maladaptive behaviors, the red flags, the warning signs that perhaps something is starting to go wrong and they’re the people that are going to be able to catch that before something goes wrong to the point of a maladaptive behavior. So a licensed mental health professional, they’re going to know what to look for, but they’re also going to know what to do about it. So with all of the options for treatment that exists nowadays from residential and inpatient and hospitalization all the way down to outpatient therapy, 12 step community support groups, a licensed mental health professional is going to be able to tailor services and tailor a plan to each individual lawyer.
And that comes from their education and experience. Another benefit I would say, is to provide the services. Some of them that I mentioned previously there, the consultation piece, the short-term counseling, the clinical assessments, these are things that only licensed mental health practitioners can provide. And then finally, I think it helps with the trust piece. There’s so much concern about even calling a lawyer assistance program. Is it confidential? Is it really private? Is my information safe? And even after you gather the courage to make that call, you’re left wondering, did the person that they referred me to, will they really understand what I’m going through? And so because you’ve got licensed mental health professionals making these referrals, we’re able to identify a good licensed mental health professional in the community to refer to you. You can trust that referral. We vet every single one of our providers as well. So we’re having these conversations ensuring that they understand that treating a lawyer is not like treating most of their other clients.
Molly Ranns:
Tom, you just mentioned something that I want to touch on, and that is that difficulty with which people find themselves in making that first call to the lab. We know through research that for a whole host of reasons, lawyers are oftentimes really afraid to reach out and ask for help. They’re concerned about confidentiality, they’re concerned that somebody will find out that they need help. For those listening, it might be beneficial to hear about the most common reasons lawyers contact you or your program for assistance, if anything, even just to validate their experiences and encourage help seeking behaviors. Would you be able to talk a little bit about that, the reasons why people call you?
Tom Grden:
Sure. I’d say the most common reason is a very nebulous stress call. We would get it usually a call to our helpline, someone saying The stress has built to a point where it’s become unmanageable. For me, I’m not really sure what to do about it. I’m not sure what services you can even provide to me, but I just know that I need help. And we get that call a lot. That’s fantastic. I mean, it’s not great that we’re getting those calls often, obviously, but it’s something that we can help with, right? It is something that we can narrow down services, we can provide a clear plan and a clear path. So that nebulous stress call is absolutely something that we can help with. I’d say another very common reason is anxiety for folks who are able to narrow it down exactly what is causing them distress.
For a lot of folks, it is anxiety, which is understandable, right? Anxiety is what fueled these folks to hit the level of success that they have. You don’t get into law school without a certain amount of anxiety pushing you to study for an lsat. You don’t finish law school without a certain amount of anxiety telling you that it’s time to study for exams. You don’t pass theBar without a certain amount of anxiety telling you that you need to take time for bar prep. But once you get into the field, sometimes that anxiety can run out of control. This happens in law schools as well. I shouldn’t limit it to once you’re in the field of law, but if you’re experiencing that overwhelming anxiety, that anxiety that you just can’t pinpoint the reason that is also something that we can help with. And it’s a very common call that we get.
A couple other fairly common reasons that we get phone calls or people reaching out to us for help are substance use. Obviously it’s something that not a lot of folks like to talk about, but unfortunately it is present and in lawyers, it is present at a higher rate than any other white collar profession in the United States. And then finally, there are the discipline referrals. This is when the legal professionals get to that point where some of the red flags and warning signs have been missed or ignored, and we have reached the point of maladaptive behaviors. We’ve reached the point of grieveable offenses, and at that point, we’re getting calls from folks who need to get back on track, get their train back on the tracks, and ensure that they are competent and healthy to practice.
Molly Ranns:
Thank you so much, Tom. And I think it is really important to know that research shows between 40 and 70% of all malpractice claims and disciplinary proceedings in the profession are directly related to an untreated mental health and substance use issue. So the LAP really is there to help with some of these concerns. We are now going to take a short break from our conversation with Tom Grden to thank our sponsors. Welcome back.
JoAnn Hathaway:
We’re here with Tom Grden, a licensed clinician with the state bar of Michigan’s Lawyers and Judges assistance program, and we’re diving into some really valuable insights labs. Tom, your work has given you a unique perspective on the challenges lawyers face. From your experience, what have you learned about the legal profession and the individuals within it?
Tom Grden:
The biggest lesson I’ve learned since starting my work at the state bar is that lawyers are human too. I had this image of lawyers in my head that I see in many of my clients as well, and that is that lawyers have to be infallible. They’re expected to have all the answers, to know all the answers, and to be able to think their way out of their problems. And what it took me a minute to realize is that lawyers are very human in the same way that anyone else is. A human being struggling with the exact same issues. A lot of times the pressures of the profession mean that you have to put up a facade, and we don’t necessarily see those issues, but really humanizing the people that come across my desk looking for help. Another thing that I learned too is just the universality of mental illness and substance abuse.
There really are no insulating factors against mental illness or substance abuse. The amount of money you make, your race, your gender, your status, I would say addiction and mental illness cut across all of these. And the a VA put out a really great video, maybe four or five years ago illustrating this. It was a three minute video led off by the current president at the time, and you had folks from all different walks of life, a very diverse panel, sharing their 10 to 15 second vignettes on camera and really driving home the point that this is a universal issue and wellness is something that really needs to be improved upon, attacked and constantly worked on in the field of law. And then finally, I’d say I’ve learned the importance of setting healthy boundaries. First off, to model that for my clients who often don’t know when to stop working for the evening, feel that it’s important to answer emails at midnight, can’t take a vacation.
So I try and set healthy boundaries with the clients, so A, that they can see what a healthy boundary looks like, and B, to protect myself, but also learning the difference in how I treat them between sympathy and empathy. So folks may come across my desk seeking help, or they may come across my desk because of disciplinary reasons, and occasionally y’all have the urge to maybe cut them a break or take it easy on somebody. And it’s realizing that when you’re doing that, you are essentially saying to them, I feel bad for you. And a lot of times internally, we think this emotion is okay, right? It’s okay to feel bad for somebody, but you would never, ever say that to their face. They’d feel patronized. So it’s really just trying to eliminate that sympathy aspect from my practice is that when I start to feel tempted to cut people a break, it’s remembering that my number one function is to protect the public. My second priority is the health of this lawyer or legal professional sitting in front of me. And if I am trying to be lenient with them because I feel bad for them, I’m doing them no favors. So the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my six years at theBar is that empathy really means doing what is right for someone and preparing for them to be a little upset with you occasionally.
Molly Ranns:
We do find that sometimes, right? And so LJ is very focused on equal parts support and accountability, supporting the attorney or the law student or the judge and getting well and holding them accountable to get well at the same time. Tom, you talked about the reasons that people contact the Lawyer’s Assistance Program, and you mentioned things like stress and anxiety and depression. Can you talk about what are some common warning signs to look for when it comes to these issues?
Tom Grden:
Yeah, I think there’s three places where you’re going to be able to see warning signs. One, are your psychological kind of red flags, the things that you are noticing about yourself internally. The second are your physiological red flags, the things that you’re feeling and experiencing. And then finally, your functional red flags. This is where we start to get into the maladaptive behaviors. So some psychological red flags to look out for include increased relationship conflicts, a more controlling attitude towards others, feeling depressed, feeling numb, feeling helpless, feeling overwhelmed, or any exacerbation of any preexisting mental health condition. Really, a couple very notable psychological red flags are one, irritability. This is very common across multiple mental health diagnoses. A lot of people just attribute it to one or two, but really I’ll say take depression for an example. Folks believe that it’s A feeling sad or B, feeling numb.
But a lot of times what we see is that the depressed person, the one emotion that they are capable of expressing is anger. And so that’s where that increased irritability can occasionally be a red flag. Anxiety that you don’t know the cause of or that you can’t trace the root of is also a big red flag that something is going on beneath the surface and it might be time to seek help. I mentioned earlier that a certain amount of anxiety is helpful and adaptive. It is how humans evolved and roast to the top of the food chain. Unfortunately, we can’t always turn off that fight, flight or freeze. So if we’re getting those feelings and we can’t understand why, if there is no logical reasoning for them, then we start to cross into that line of clinical anxiety. And then the absolute biggest psychological red flag in my book is an inability to focus.
If you sense that your memory is starting to wane, if you find yourself struggling to pay attention, if you believed you were previously very sharp and now have an to focus, it’s because the ability to maintain focus requires multiple parts of our brain. And so when the ability to maintain focus starts to wane, it could be any number of areas in the brain that are starting to have issues, but it is a red flag. It’s really one of the best canaries in the coal mine that you can have when it comes to a psychological red flag, because your brain requires its prefrontal cortex, your parietal, your frontal, and your temporal lobe to pay attention. So there’s are a few psychological red flags to look out for some physiological red flags. Obviously this is not an exhaustive list, and all of these could mean something else that’s completely non-mental health related, but they often do have a positive correlation with a mental health issue.
So on that list, we got nausea, headaches, tightness in your chest, temperature changes, dizziness, fainting, impaired hearing, and insomnia. And then finally we see some functional red flags. And unfortunately, this is the point where the psychological and the physiological red flags have been ignored, and we start to see red flags that are presenting outwardly for other people to observe. So some functional red flags if you happen to be a legal stakeholder or supervisor, something to look for in the people you’re responsible for. Increased absenteeism, lower productivity, missed deadlines, impaired judgment, low motivation, and or a vulnerability to develop substance use problems.
JoAnn Hathaway:
So Tom, this has been such valuable and helpful information. Finally, as we wrap up, we are approaching the holiday season just around the corner, and this can be an especially challenging time for so many. What are some practical tips you’d recommend for managing stress and staying balanced during this time?
Tom Grden:
One overarching step you can take that’s going to look different for each individual is engaging in something that is meaningful to you and being fully present. So for some folks, this may be some kind of intellectual pursuit. For some folks, it might be a spiritual pursuit or feeling connected to something greater than yourself. For some folks, it’s a physical pursuit, going to the gym or extra exercise, making sure that you are intentional about how much sleep you’re getting. Identify something that is meaningful to you that you feel comfortable being intentional about engaging in and being fully present while you engage in it. So if, for example, your hobby is movies or you enjoy sitting down to watch a good movie with your partner, don’t be scrolling through your phone, checking your emails, doing other things. Be fully present in the movie. If you’ve decided that perhaps you want to engage in some kind of social activity, that’s what’s meaningful for you, be fully present.
Try to avoid waiting for your turn to talk and really hear and reflect upon what the other person is saying before you decide to speak. And then I’ve got a few very specific tips you can take away for times of very high stress or anxiety. And you remember it with the acronym tip actually. And that’s tip with two Ps, TIPP. And these are great for those times when your heart is racing, when you need to get back down to a manageable level of stress. So these are not to be used to get yourself fully back to baseline. They’re not going to fully regulate your emotion that’s uncomfortable for you all the way back down to nothing. But what they do is get you from a point of crisis back down to something that is manageable. And these are kind of a break glass in case of emergency set of coping skills, but they’re great to have in your toolbox.
And the reason I say break glass in case of emergency is that if you find yourself using these too often, it is probably time to reach out and seek outside help. So for starters, the T stands for temperature and the way that we engage this is by engaging with our mammalian dive reflex. What we do is we put a cold pack or splash cold water around our cheeks, the back of our neck, our forehead, and under our chin. What it does is trick our bodies into thinking that we are diving into a body of water, and our body then naturally redirects blood towards our heart and our brain, the two most important organs. So when our heart is racing, if we might be experiencing a panic attack, what that can then do is help us regulate our heart rate. Come back down to a manageable level of stress, and then go from there.
Obviously, if you have a history of heart disease, talk to your doctor before you try this. Don’t go manipulating your heart rate if you have any issue whatsoever, but if you’re an otherwise heart healthy human being, feel free to utilize this. The I stands for intense exercise. Obviously, most folks understand the benefit of releasing endorphins as a result of exercise. Here, the goal is A, to keep the coping skill brief, and B, to engage it intensely. What we’re trying to do is hit that anaerobic state of your body if you’ve ever exercised really, really intensely and then felt a moment of giddiness after you completed it. What that is is oxygen deprivation, and that means we’ve reached that anaerobic state. And so for some folks, it might just be a quick 32nd sprint or pushups or something that’s going to engage your cardiovascular system, and that helps release the helpful hormones and work out some of the stress and anxiety you might be feeling in the moment.
The last two I’ll talk about both peas stand for paced breathing and progressive muscle relaxation. So for paced breathing, what we’re trying to do here is exhale longer than our inhale, and we inhale through our nose and exhale through our mouth. The way I like to do it is pick two numbers between zero and 10. Obviously, the bigger numbers should be on your exhale and just focus on your count as you’re going through it. So I always like to go four and seven, an even number and an odd number because it helps me focus on the numbers themselves. If I were to pick something like seven and seven, I would get lost and my mind would start to wander. So we are pacing our breathing, and with that, what we can do is combine our progressive muscle relaxation, and for this, we are going to pick a muscle group at one end of our body, I usually start with my feet and calves, and you’re going to flex this muscle group as you do your inhale. And then as you do your long exhale, you release that muscle group and you take maybe three or four breaths and work your way up on muscle groups throughout your body. I love to finish with my forearms and fists because you’re clenching your fists for that final inhale, and then just releasing all of the tension that you’re holding onto on that final exhale.
JoAnn Hathaway:
Well, wonderful information again, Tom. With that, we have come to the end of our show. We’d like to thank our guest today, Tom Grden, for a wonderful program.
Tom Grden:
Well, thank you for having me.
Molly Ranns:
Thanks again for being here with us today. Tom, if folks would like to follow up with you personally, what is the best way to reach you?
Tom Grden:
You can feel free to call my office. My number is 3 4 6 6 3 0 6 or feel free to shoot me an email. My email address is T-G-R-D-E [email protected]. That’s M-I-C-H-B-A r.org.
Molly Ranns:
Wonderful. Thank you. Again, this has been another edition of the State Bar of Michigan On Balance Podcast. I’m JoAnn Hathaway. And I’m Molly Ranns. Until next time, thank you for listening.
Announcer:
Thank you for listening to the State Bar of Michigan On Balance Podcast, brought to you by the State Bar of Michigan, and produced by the broadcast professionals at Legal Talk Network. If you’d like more information about today’s show, please visit legal talk network.com. Subscribe via Apple Podcasts and RSS, find the State Bar of Michigan and Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or download Legal Talk Network’s, free app in Google Play and iTunes. The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network or the State Bar of Michigan or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.
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State Bar of Michigan: On Balance Podcast |
The State Bar of Michigan podcast series focuses on the need for interplay between practice management and lawyer-wellness for a thriving law practice.