In 2018, The American Bar Association unveiled its Well-Being Pledge to improve the substance abuse and mental health landscape of the legal profession, with an emphasis on helping legal employers support a healthy work environment.
To date, more than 200 law firms and in-house legal departments have signed it.
One signatory is Latham & Watkins, one of the world’s “global elite” law firms with more than 6,000 lawyers and business professionals.
“The Balancing Act” recently spoke to the firm’s director of Global Health & Well-Being, Mark Goldberg.
Listen to highlights of our interview!
Balancing Act:
Mark, you’re in charge of the “LiveWell Latham” program. What is it?
Goldberg:
“LiveWell Latham is the name of our global health and well-being platform.”
Balancing Act:
How has the program evolved?
Goldberg:
Most of what we started out with as the wellness program 101, or 1.0, was mostly around physical health. And that was also a time I think, when at law firms, nobody talked about mental health. Over time, as we started to evolve, we pushed the boundaries on that a little bit. As we got into the mental health arena, we found that the easiest way to do that was to frame it in terms of resilience and mindfulness and had a lot of success. . Then around 2017 the world changed in the legal industry … starting with a study by the ABA in conjunction with the Hazelton Betty Ford Foundation. This was really the first time, in a very scientific way, that we had research that proved lawyers were more likely to suffer from mental health issues, addiction issues, and other well-being challenges. It was a wake-up call for the legal industry.”
Balancing Act:
How should someone consider the size of their organization when designing a well-being program?
Goldberg:
“I think it really requires an organization to step back and to say: ‘What can we do given our size and constraints on budget, on critical mass, on where our people are located? What do we need to do? What are the issues that we’re seeing?’ I’ll give you an example. We opened two on-site clinics with Johns Hopkins Medicine in our New York office and our Los Angeles office. Those are two geographies where we really have a critical mass of people. We have a nurse practitioner, we’ve got part-time mental health counselors, and part-time physical therapists. There are some takeaways that we learned that we were able to implement in even our smallest offices … for example, we saw the power of having a counselor integrated with the office, and now we have a few part-time counselors who support some of our smaller offices. Some things work in a big office, some things work better in a small office, but it’s always figuring out what can we take from each approach to make it work.”
Balancing Act:
What does it mean to have an employee engaged with their health?
Goldberg:
“What we mean is folks really being focused on their health and ready to act, even if that means not taking any action. It means they’re aware, and they’re conscious of their health status and they know the resources available. One thing that we now do in all of our internal trainings regarding mental health is talk about the ‘mental health continuum,’ which basically puts well-being on a bell curve, showing that our mental health fluctuates. Sometimes we’re on the right side of the curve, we’re doing super, we’re flourishing; sometimes we’re on the left side of the curve and struggling. Most people are somewhere in the middle, which is just kind of okay. The takeaway is to think about where you are on the continuum; and understand that it’s a continuum, that it always fluctuates. And it’s not necessarily bad to be all the way to the left side or the right side. But it’s bad if you get stuck somewhere you don’t want to be. So, when we say we would like people to be engaged in their health, from the mental health perspective, it means understanding this continuum, understanding where you are, so that if you do feel stuck at some time, you know how to take action, or you even know you should take action.”
Balancing Act:
How do you get employees to engage in their well-being?
Goldberg:
“I think it’s about communicating over and over in different ways on different channels. It may not be until the 10th time somebody’s heard something that they pay attention. It may not be until the 20th time they’ve heard it, that they are actually in a position where they need it, and they need to act on it. I think the other part of that is creating a culture where we talk about these things, which is not always a given. I think in many firms, and certainly there was a time at our firm, where we didn’t talk about mental health. The more we talk about it, the more comfortable it is for folks to engage in it.”
Balancing Act:
At what point did Latham decide a family caregiving benefit was warranted?
Goldberg:
For many years, we’ve had backup care for folks who have children, for when their regular caregiving situations fall through. I think over time, as resources in the market developed, and as we’ve gotten a little more sophisticated about how we looked at things, that was the evolution. When we started working with Homethrive, it brought us to the next level.”
Balancing Act:
What’s your advice to a firm getting started on this journey on a shoestring budget?
Goldberg:
“I think it’s helpful to take stock and look at what you already have. There are probably already some talented folks at your firm who have created resources or brought in resources or partnered with organizations like Homethrive that have elements of a well-being program. It may even be a communications campaign to put that all together under an umbrella, and really explain to people how they use it.
Enjoyed these insights? Share this blog post with your peers and learn how our experts can make an impact. Also, get weekly tips conveniently delivered to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter.