Chapter 2 - Student Attitudes to Legal Education: Revisiting the Pointers to Depression and Anxiety?

Summary

INTRODUCTION

We are all now aware not only that there appears to be an epidemic of depression and anxiety in our society, but that lawyers and law students also seem to be disproportionately affected. In 2014–15 11.2 per cent of the Australian population reported that they had an anxiety-related condition, and 9.3 per cent reported depression. The figures for lawyers and law students are greater and are discussed below. While we may accept that being in the legal profession creates large stressors which might contribute to depression or anxiety, it is not so obvious why law students might suffer this. One of the big issues is the extent to which their legal education contributes to this. Seligman et al. have argued that pessimism is inherent in the nature of law and that this is a precipitating factor. But is it ? Could it be that law students self-select in some way and that the self-selection is the product of factors which might contribute to a greater likelihood of anxiety and depression developing ?

This chapter considers the possible connections between aspects of student attitudes to learning and how they might affect wellbeing in those students. We argue that student wellbeing and its opposite are important indicators of the need to develop personal and professional identity that will enhance resilience throughout not only student days but also professional life. Most of this book focuses on how the wellbeing of legal professionals may be affected by the changes to the way the legal profession is organised, and the changing use of technology in the legal profession.This chapter is intended to operate as a sort of baseline in which we examine the situation of the law student and whether we can predict students‘ likelihood of developing anxiety and depression from their early attitudes to legal education.

THE PREVALENCE OF DEPRESSION IN LAWYERS AND LAW STUDENTS

It has been clear for a long time that lawyers and law students are disproportionately affected by depression and anxiety. Early United States studies of lawyers showed a depressive illness rate of two to four times that of the general population.