Mental Health and Wellness in Law Firms: Changing the Culture, Making the Business Case, and Applying Lessons from Pro Bono and DEI

This program provides an overview of the current state of the law firm and legal industry with respect to mental health and wellness, including the statistics from various well-established surveys, and summarizes the big-picture takeaways about law firm culture in these areas. Michael Kasdan, professor of law and partner at Wiggin & Dana, examines the business case for investing in improving mental health and well-being in law firms, and for changing the culture related to well-being overall. 

Mr. Kasdan also discusses what the legal profession can learn from law firms' historical change management in the pro bono and diversity, equity, and inclusion spaces – including how client-side initiatives have the potential to turbo-charge the pace of law firm changes - and how those learnings can be applied to mental health and well-being initiatives.

This program will benefit law firm administrators, human resource officers, DEI directors, mental health and well-being directors, and law firm associates and partners in providing an integrated discussion of these critical and deeply interrelated topics.

1. Survey the current state of mental health and wellbeing in the profession

2. Discuss the methodology of institutional culture change, which applies to issues like diversity, equity and inclusion, and mental health and wellbeing

3. Make the business case for addressing and investing in mental health and wellbeing

4. Review effective strategies, best practices, and tools for creating a better workplace culture and mental health and wellbeing

5. Explore how historical tools and strategies employed in the DEI and pro bono spaces can be applied to and used in the mental health and wellbeing space in law firms