Lawyers’ Assistance Program: Mental Health

A week after celebrating my twentieth wedding anniversary, I was blindsided by discovering my husband’s infidelity. Utterly devastated does not begin to describe how I felt in those first couple of weeks following the discovery. I was on autopilot during those first couple of months. As a partner in a two-person firm in a smaller collar county that focused primarily on family law (the irony was not lost on me) and traffic/criminal defense, I had difficulty concentrating at work. I knew that I had court appearances in the morning but would drive to the office instead. I had such difficulty controlling my emotions that I cried twice while in court because a well-meaning court staff person asked me how I was doing. As I went through the stages of grief of my marriage, I recognized that I was overwhelmed, severely depressed, and had suicidal ideations. After deciding that death by train would be my preferred way of dying, I reached out to my doctor. She prescribed an antidepressant and referral to a therapist. Because my health insurance was an HMO plan, I had to use the in-network therapist with the doctor’s group in my plan. The waitlist for the therapist was six weeks. During those six weeks, I filed for divorce and an emergency motion to restrict my husband’s parenting time. I was struggling. I did not know that the Lawyers’ Assistance Program (LAP) had mental health services available.

I was familiar with LAP providing alcohol-based interventions based on programming at my law school back in the early 2000s. Back when the Lawyers’ Assistance Program was founded in the mid-1980s as a non-profit organization, it dealt primarily with issues of lawyers’ alcohol dependence. A 1990 study showed that lawyers were abusing alcohol at a much higher rate (18%) as compared to the general population (10%). See “Substance Use Disorders Among Legal Professionals,” Research Update Butler Center for Research (Mar. 2017). Even now, in their most recent statistics that cover July 2025 to February 2026, 81% of the substance use services that LAP provides lawyers in Illinois dealt with alcohol. As I discussed how much I was struggling with a fellow colleague, he asked if I reached out to LAP. Because I was not drinking alcohol as part of my healing journey, LAP was not even on my radar. He was the one that told me about the mental health services that LAP provides.

LAP provides assessments, individual counseling, support groups as well as referrals for licensed Illinois judges, attorneys, and law students. Their mental health assessments can be for anxiety, depression, etc., as well as cognitive decline in aging attorneys. Their current confidential support groups include a Women’s Support Group, a Men’s Support Group, a Young Lawyers’/Law Student Group, a co-ed Depression and Anxiety Support Group, and a Relapse Prevention Group that meet weekly over Zoom. Each group is led by a clinician that informally checks in with each participant and discussions organically lead from there. You do not need to RSVP to attend. Attendance is optional without having to explain why you can’t attend if you have a scheduling conflict. Currently, LAP employs four professional clinicians, two of which are also attorneys. Reaching out to LAP to explore these services that are available to you is as simple as clicking on the “Get Help” tab on their website of www.Illinoislap.org or calling 312-726-6607. There is no fee associated with utilizing these services.

In my case, I was talking with a representative from LAP within 2 hours of filling out the form on their website. In fairness, I did complete it during work hours. I was scheduled for individual counseling over Zoom within the week. I was given the Women’s Support Group Zoom link and attended the weekly group the same week. It brought relief to me almost instantly because I did not feel like I was drowning anymore.

In conducting my research for this article, I found out that I am not alone. Over the last several years, LAP on average, received over 450 new attorneys seeking services annually. Like me, 79% of the individuals that seek services are self-referrals. Interestingly, according to the statistics from July 2025 to February 2026, only 37% of the attorneys using services by LAP are female even though the research shows that a significantly higher proportion of women had AUDIT-C (Alcohol Use Disorder Identification test) consistent with problematic [alcohol] use compared to men, and women had higher levels of anxiety and stress. See “The Prevalence of Substance Use and Other Mental Health Concerns Among American Attorneys,” Addict Med, Volume 10, Number 1, 48, 49 (Jan./Feb. 2016).

I do not know why women tend to need more help but are not reaching out to LAP as much. My goal in writing this article for the ISBA Women and the Law Standing Committee and sharing my personal story is to create awareness of the existence of these services and reduce the stigma associated with utilizing these services. I would like to thank Alison Siczek and Tony Pacione at LAP for taking the time to answer my questions and provide the most updated statistics for this article. I dedicate this article to the colleague that helped me by sharing the information and implore you to share this knowledge with any of your fellow lawyers that you think would benefit from these amazing services.

Nicole Sartori is a partner with McAdams & Sartori, LLC, located in Yorkville, Illinois.

This article was originally published in The Catalyst (April 2026, Vol. 31, No. 5), the newsletter of ISBA’s Standing Committee on Women and the Law.