The ABA surveyed 2,915 lawyers about mental wellbeing. Most of the coverage is about the gap between women and men. The part firms should be reading sits further down, and it is about the policies they already pay for.
The ABA Commission on Women in the Profession published a report on 1 August called Mental Wellbeing in the Legal Profession: The Unique Challenges of Women Lawyers and a Path Forward. It is built on an anonymous survey of 2,915 lawyers, 69 percent of them women, plus twelve focus groups. The Commission calls it the first national study centered on the mental wellbeing of women lawyers.
Most of what gets written about it will be about the gap between women and men, fairly enough. But there is a second finding further into the report that hardly anyone is picking up, and it is the one with practical consequences for a firm.
The survey used the PHQ-4, which is four questions about anxiety and depressive symptoms over the previous two weeks. A score of three or higher on either half is where the questionnaire suggests someone should be looked at more closely. That distinction is worth holding onto, because the figures below will get quoted as though they diagnose people, and they don't.
36.9 percent of women scored at or above the anxiety threshold. For men it was 22.7 percent. On depressive symptoms the figures were 19.4 and 15.1. Respondents were also asked how happy, calm and peaceful they had felt over those same two weeks, on a scale of zero to a hundred. Women averaged 55.6, men 62.9.
Women reported more of nearly every stressor the survey asked about. Financial strain, 40.0 percent against 29.5. Mental wellness issues, 35.9 against 26.1. Sleep disturbance, 30.6 against 18.6. Family relationships, 29.9 against 18.6. Of everything women raised, sleep came up most often.
The researchers also asked women about the wellbeing resources their own workplaces provide.
They knew about them. They weren't using them. And the reason wasn't that nobody had told them the resources were there.
They didn't trust them, counseling especially. Two worries came up. Whether it would really stay confidential, and whether using it would mark them out as less committed. The second showed up most in workplaces built around long hours and being permanently available.
What women were doing instead was fairly ordinary. Talking to family and friends, exercise, music, getting outside. They said those things helped. They also said it wasn't enough while the workload stayed where it was.
Then there is the finding I would want every managing partner to read. Whether a wellbeing policy actually worked had less to do with the policy existing than with whether the people running the place were seen using it, said plainly that nobody would be penalized for doing the same, and meant it.
You look at the policy, look at how few people use it, and reasonably decide the problem isn't that bad.
Think about what a firm of any size usually has in place. An assistance line, a policy document, maybe a mental health day. All of it real, all of it costing money, and a good deal of it going unused by the people it was built for.
The wasted spend is the small problem. The bigger one is what leadership concludes from it. Low uptake reads as low need, and according to this report it isn't.
That is a measurement problem, and measurement problems are how firms get blindsided. The fourth-year who resigns out of nowhere. The matter that slips because a handoff went wrong rather than because anyone lost an argument. The performance conversation that turns into an exit interview.
None of that shows up in a wellness budget. It shows up in the accounts. It is what we mean by the cost of human friction, and it is why this belongs next to conflicts checking and file supervision rather than next to the gym subsidy.
It doesn't ask for more money, better vendors or a bigger benefits package. What it asks is that firms treat wellbeing as something the organization owns rather than something individuals sort out on their own time. Look hard at workloads and billable requirements. Protect time for recovery, healthcare and caregiving. Design policy on the assumption that people are different rather than interchangeable. Karol Corbin Walker, who chairs the Commission, framed supporting wellbeing as fundamental to the profession doing good work rather than a separate concern from it.
Underneath all of that sits the leadership point. Whether any of it lands depends on senior people using it visibly and saying out loud that there is no cost to doing so.
Cheap, in that it needs no budget line. Also hard, because it asks partners to be seen doing something the culture has trained them not to be seen doing. A partner who takes the leave and mentions it changes the calculation for everyone below her. One who never does leaves the policy sitting there as decoration, however well it is drafted.
The useful part is that this sits with a small number of identifiable people, which means you can train it.
This matters for what a firm actually does about any of it.
Workload, time pressure and expectations came up across the board. But Black women, Hispanic women, and a grouped category covering Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern and North African, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and American Indian and Alaska Native lawyers, each of them small in the sample, more often described being treated inequitably, having to prove they were competent, and being pushed to the margins. White women more often described workload and the structural demands of practice itself.
One program aimed at the average will miss most of that. The recommendation to design with those differences in mind follows from the data rather than being tacked on at the end.
Worth being careful here, because anyone you are trying to convince will check.
It isn't a diagnosis. The PHQ-4 says who is worth a closer look, not who is unwell.
It doesn't price anything. It measures how people are, not what that costs you. Working out the cost is a job each firm has to do for itself.
It isn't the 2016 update. That is a different project, run by the ABA's Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, and it was still in peer review as of September. We have written separately about what to expect from it. Treat this report as those findings and you will be wrong in a way a well-read reader spots immediately.
And it isn't a census. The sample was anonymous and 69 percent women. It tells you what those lawyers said.
Most legal organizations have never measured any of this inside their own walls, and there is no great shame in that. A national figure is a starting point rather than an answer.
What the report gives you that a number wouldn't is a mechanism, and a cheap one. Whether your people use what you are already paying for depends largely on whether the people above them do, and whether they say so.
That is a handful of senior people deciding to be seen doing something. It is also the one part of this you can't buy from a vendor.
A note on sourcing. The full ABA report sits behind a member login and we have not obtained a copy. Every figure above comes from the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism's summary of the report, published 3 September 2026, and matches independent coverage published by JD Journal on 4 August 2026. If you are relying on these figures for something of your own, get the report from the ABA directly.
What the study supports, and what it doesn't.
No. The PHQ-4 is four questions about anxiety and depressive symptoms over the previous two weeks. A score of three or higher on either half is the point where the questionnaire suggests someone should be looked at more closely. It tells you who is worth a conversation. It does not tell you anyone is unwell, and an employer should not use it as though it does.
No, and it is worth keeping the two apart. This one comes from the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and has its own sample, its own questionnaire and its own question. The update to the 2016 work with the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is a separate project run by the Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, and it was still in peer review as of September 2026.
Because that is where the data pointed. Women in the survey generally knew their workplaces offered wellbeing resources and were not using them. What they described was a trust problem, not an awareness problem. The report found that whether a policy worked came down less to the policy existing than to whether senior people were seen using it and said clearly that nobody would be penalized for doing the same.
Stop treating low uptake as evidence of low need. If you offer wellbeing resources and hardly anyone uses them, this report suggests that is at least as likely to be about trust as about demand. The cheapest first move is not a new program. It is a few senior people using what already exists, in the open, and saying so.
Accredited CLE, certification, coaching and firm level engagements for the legal sector, delivered by people who have practiced. If the policies are in place and nobody is using them, that is the conversation to have.
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