Alcoholism & depression can be a lethal combination within the profession, Jonathan Goodliffe reports
Lawyers often suffer from co-morbid alcoholism and depression. What help do they get in the profession?
A disciplinary case
X is a solicitor who has had serious problems. He was convicted of a sexual assault and fined by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Several years later he was convicted of further assaults on two girls. He believed, wrongly, that they had harmed his daughter. On both occasions he was drunk. The second time he was fined £5,000 by the tribunal, but was not restricted from practising.
X’s psychiatrist report stated: “[I]n all the circumstances X’s action [ie the assault] had been ‘a totally understandable reaction’. X had sought psychiatric help for reactive depression.”
So why should he not behave in this way a third time? Did his impairment affect his professional competence and integrity? What was the prognosis? What ongoing treatment was he receiving? What about his drinking?
Problems with alcohol and depression regularly feature in the tribunal’s judgments. But the tribunal’s procedure does not encourage lawyers to recover from their impairment, unlike
