Careers

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Experience

Innovation

Interactive Maps

Locations

About

Pages

Meet our team of innovators
Ask us how we do it

Professionals

Insights

Services

Thompson Hine LLP, a full-service business law firm with approximately 400 lawyers in 11 offices, was ranked number 1 in the category “Most innovative North American law firms: New working models” by The Financial Times and was 1 of 7 firms shortlisted for The American Lawyer’s inaugural Legal Services Innovation Award. The firm has been recognized by the National Law Journal as a Legal Technology Trailblazer and featured by Bloomberg for its innovative service delivery models, which drive accuracy and predictability. The firm’s commitment to innovation is embodied in Thompson Hine SmartPaTHTM – a smarter way to work – predictable, efficient and aligned with client goals. For more information, please visit ThompsonHine.com and ThompsonHine.com/SmartPaTH.

Home | Thompson Hine LLP

Atlanta

Chicago

Cincinnati

Cleveland

Columbus

Dayton

Los Angeles

Minneapolis

New York

Silicon Valley

Washington, D.C.

<img style="max-width: 100%;height: auto;max-width: 100%;height: auto" loading="lazy" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3467" src="https://www.thelawforlawyerstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/754/2017/07/Drugs-cropped-300x293.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="293">Hot on the heels of the publicity for&nbsp;<a href="http://www.law.com/sites/almstaff/2017/07/17/i-spent-every-cent-i-had-on-cocaine-lawyers-struggle-revealed/">Brian Cuban&rsquo;s new book</a>, &ldquo;The Addicted Lawyer:&nbsp; Tales of the Bar, Booze, Blow and Redemption,&rdquo; comes the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/business/lawyers-addiction-mental-health.html?mcubz=0">searing account in the New York Times</a> of the 2015 death of a former IP partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich &amp; Rosati, who secretly battled drug addiction and reportedly died of a bacterial infection that often afflicts intravenous drug users.
Cuban&rsquo;s book (he is the brother of billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban) is, by all accounts, a story of perseverance and&nbsp;recovery; Cuban redeemed his life, although he does not practice law any longer.
But&nbsp;the New York Times article, authored by the Wilson Sonsini partner&rsquo;s ex-wife,&nbsp;is a harrowing call to arms about the need to do a better job &mdash;&nbsp;in the organized bar, in BigLaw, small law, corporate law and everywhere else &mdash; of identifying and helping addicted lawyers.
&ldquo;Last call&rdquo; &mdash; dial-in to a work conference
The Wilson Sonsini partner, identified in the NYT article only as &ldquo;Peter,&rdquo; is described as successful, driven and&nbsp;work-obsessed.&nbsp; After a stellar law school career, in which he graduated first in his class, he&nbsp;replicated that success in a legal career that saw him regularly working&nbsp;60-hour weeks over the next 20 years.
His ex-wife, with&nbsp;whom&nbsp;Peter maintained good relations, found him dead on the floor in his&nbsp;house, near half-filled syringes, a tourniquet, and&nbsp;crushed pills.&nbsp; She had no idea that he was struggling with a severe addiction &mdash;&nbsp;reflected in detailed notes the lawyer kept of the times and amounts of his drug injections&nbsp;&mdash; although she&nbsp;writes that she noticed wild mood-swings in the months before his death, and&nbsp;voice mails consisting&nbsp;of &ldquo;meandering soliloquies.&rdquo;
Most poignantly, the lawyer kept working right up to the end.&nbsp; The last call he made from his cellphone, his ex-wife wrote, was to dial in to a work conference call, even though he was&nbsp;&ldquo;vomiting, unable to sit up, slipping in and out of consciousness.&rdquo;
At Peter&rsquo;s memorial service, his ex-wife wrote, while&nbsp;a weeping young associate eulogized&nbsp;the partner he had come to know,&nbsp;firm lawyers&nbsp;were bent over their own cellphones, tapping out e-mails &mdash; unable to put down their work even then.
Grim statistics
The statistics on lawyers and alcohol abuse are grim, and well-known.&nbsp;&nbsp;More than a fifth of all lawyers are problem drinkers, according to last year&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="http://journals.lww.com/journaladdictionmedicine/Fulltext/2016/02000/The_Prevalence_of_Substance_Use_and_Other_Mental.8.aspx">joint report </a>of the&nbsp;Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation and the American Bar Association Lawyers.
The statistically-robust&nbsp;report drew responses from&nbsp;12,825 licensed and&nbsp;practicing lawyers from&nbsp;19 states.&nbsp; But only 25 percent&nbsp;of respondents answered questions about drug use &mdash; out of fear of answering, according to the study&rsquo;s lead author.&nbsp; Quoted in the NYT story, he said that &nbsp;&ldquo;I think the incidence of drug use and abuse is significantly underreported,&rdquo; because in contrast to alcohol use, drug use is illegal.
In his book, Cuban describes snorting cocaine in his former law firm&rsquo;s bathroom, to keep going after boozing it up and using drugs the night before.&nbsp; Other memoirs, like &ldquo;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/24/the-most-terrifying-part-of-my-drug-addiction-that-my-law-firm-would-find-out/?utm_term=.c6bc3779cb02">Girl Walks Out of a Bar</a>,&rdquo; by a former Pillsbury Winthrop&nbsp;lawyer, underscore the reality of lawyer drug addiction.
What is the profession doing to help?
Accounts like Cuban&rsquo;s and the death of the Wilson Sonsini lawyer spotlight the need for the&nbsp;legal profession to step up its&nbsp;efforts to help.&nbsp;&nbsp;The <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/cle/aba_model_rule_cle.authcheckdam.pdf">ABA&rsquo;s Model Rule on Continuing Legal Education </a>calls for just one credit of CLE every three years on&nbsp;mental health or substance abuse.
Some states, like my home state of Ohio, have moved away from a specific substance-abuse requirement;&nbsp; since rule amendments in 2014, many&nbsp;subjects qualify to meet&nbsp;our &ldquo;professional conduct&rdquo; CLE requirement,&nbsp;so a lawyer never needs to have&nbsp;any&nbsp;substance abuse CLE.
Yet, in the days before that change was made, when lawyers still needed to get&nbsp;one hour of &nbsp;substance abuse training every two years, each time I spoke on ethics at a CLE seminar, I observed at least one&nbsp;lawyer going up afterwards to the person who had spoken on substance abuse, and speaking earnestly.&nbsp; These were lawyers in trouble &mdash; and we need to do more to help them.
Jurisdictions like Illinois&nbsp;seem to be&nbsp;moving in the right direction, as <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6291065276570091520/">reported</a> by Chicago ethics lawyer <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonwoodethics/">Allison Wood</a>.&nbsp; Under amended rules,&nbsp;Illinois lawyers are now required to take one hour of mental health and substance abuse CLE as part of their six-hour professional responsibility requirement.&nbsp; Both the directive to have at least some substance abuse training, and the size of the PR requirement are laudable.
Law firms also have a huge role to play &mdash; there&rsquo;s room to ask <a href="http://www.law.com/sites/almstaff/2017/07/24/do-law-firms-enable-alcoholism/?kw=Do%20Law%20Firms%20Enable%20Alcoholism?&amp;et=editorial&amp;bu=Law.com&amp;cn=20170724&amp;src=EMC-Email&amp;pt=AfternoonUpdate">whether firm culture &ldquo;enables&rdquo; alcoholism</a>.&nbsp; De-emphasizing the historic link between lawyering and drinking , including at firm events,&nbsp;would help.&nbsp; So would increasing access to law firm employee assistance programs, as highlighted in <a href="http://www.lclma.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/lawyer-benefits-article-incl-section-on-policy-reformatted-for-pdf.pdf">guidelines </a>here, from Massachusetts &ldquo;Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers.&rdquo;
And as I have done before, here&rsquo;s a <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/lawyer_assistance/resources/lap_programs_by_state.html">state-by-state list of links </a>to lawyer assistance organizations.&nbsp; No problem is ever made worse by seeking help.

core/freeform

Ethics

Legal Ethics, Professional Responsibility and the Business of Law

Death of BigLaw partner spotlights problem of lawyer drug use, need for solutions