Leaders from the American Bar Association’s Commission on Lawyers Assistance Programs last month spent several days in New Hampshire talking with members of the legal community about resources available here for lawyers and judges with alcohol or drug dependencies or other potentially career-threatening problems.

The ABA team’s report, expected by the end of the summer, will be used to consider how to provide outreach and counseling to members of the Bar, whether they are lawyers or judges, on issues such as substance abuse or mental illness, including depression. Chief Justice Broderick has indicated that he supports a more formalized approach to such services that would not rely solely on volunteers.

The assessment team consisted of Boston attorney Richard Soden, an attorney in the business law department at Goodwin & Proctor, who chairs the ABA Commission and also chairs the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers Oversight Committee; and David Kee, who recently was hired as the first full-time paid director of the Maine Assistance Program for Lawyers and Judges. Kee practiced law for more than 30 years and is a past president of the Maine State Bar Association and past chair of the voluntary Maine Bar’s Substance Abuse Committee.

Soden and Kee met with Chief Justice Broderick and also with the administrative judges of the superior and district courts, representatives of the Judicial Conduct Committee, the Professional Conduct Committee, the Committee on Character & Fitness, the NHBA Lawyers’ Assistance Committee, the independent Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers group, members of the Bar leadership, and Franklin Pierce Law School Dean John Hutson.

In an interview in between their packed schedule of meetings, Soden and Kee said their assessment process is designed to yield insights into how different segments of the Bench and Bar perceive problems, what mechanisms are effective today, and identify where gaps in services exist.

Studies have shown that the incidence of substance abuse and depression is higher in the legal profession than in the general population. Soden said legal professionals sometimes shy away from accessing programs available to the general public because of concerns including perceptions of their professional effectiveness.

Currently, NH’s efforts to help impaired lawyers and judges are entirely volunteer-run and receive no judicial branch funding. The Bar’s Lawyers Assistance Committee has no staff and receives modest funding from the Association to contract with a mental health agency that provides initial screening for the 24-hour Lawyers’ Helpline (224-6060). Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers is a loosely organized group that meets on the first Tuesday of most months (except July, August and January) at the Manchester Country Club at 6:15 p.m. (For additional information about LCL, call John at 603/436-8035.)

Kee said that Maine’s assistance efforts, also primarily volunteer, received formalized funding starting in 2002. It now receives funding from the state’s client protection fund and in its first year quadrupled the number of inquiries it received. Kee said half of the inquiries were self-referrals, which is typical for such programs.

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