From Church Basements to Legal Well-Being:

40 Years of Caring for the Profession

Written by

Briggs Cheney, Tenessa Eakins, and Pam Moore

"Rates of alcohol and other drug use and abuse in the legal profession significantly exceeded those of the general population."

Every movement has an origin story, and this one begins, as many do, with a small group of people who knew from hard personal experience that something had to change.

In the mid-1980s, a handful of lawyers in recovery from alcoholism and other drug addiction walked into the State Bar’s governing chambers and made a case — not for a client, but for themselves and for colleagues they feared were suffering in silence. The State Bar listened. What followed was the birth of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, or LCL, a ragtag band of recovering attorneys who began holding 12-step meetings in church basements and passing around a confidential hotline number that, on more than one occasion, reportedly found its way into a lawyer’s golf bag. It was humble. People showed up. And it was exactly what the profession needed.

In those early days, an informal professional volunteer helped guide the group’s efforts before the State Bar took a modest but meaningful step: allocating $10,000 to cover a part-time director and all program expenses. That director, Jill Yeagley, was a licensed alcohol and drug addiction counselor who would go on to define the program’s identity for decades. Rule 16-803 was approved. A small victory. LCL was off and running.

The work was personal and relentless. Jill and a cadre of lawyers who were open about their own recoveries fanned out across the state, spreading the message and urging attorneys to have the courage to call the confidential hotline — not just for themselves, but on behalf of colleagues they suspected were struggling. The program offered “drive-bys”: two recovering lawyers would show up unannounced at a struggling attorney’s office early in the morning, ask for 20 minutes, and share their own stories. No accusations. No ultimatums. Just two people saying, we’ve been there, you’re not alone, and here’s the number to call. An informal intervention without confrontation; connection without judgment.

Under Jill’s guidance, the program also facilitated formal interventions where LCL members helped usher struggling lawyers to treatment, and on occasion did their best to help manage a lawyer’s practice while that person was away getting well. The legal community was quietly, steadily and courageously learning to take care of its own.

Years passed; the program evolved. LCL became the Lawyers Assistance Committee, and later the Judges and Lawyers Assistance Program — JLAP — reflecting its expanding reach. Jill’s commitment and tenure represented something rare in institutional life: accumulated trust and the kind of quiet authority that only comes from years of genuine service.

In 2016 came a reckoning the profession had long needed. The American Bar Association and the Betty Ford/Hazelden Foundation conducted what is believed to be the first large-scale survey of lawyer well-being in the country. The results were sobering in every sense. Rates of alcohol and other drug use and abuse in the legal profession significantly exceeded those of the general population — but perhaps more striking was the revelation that lawyers were also struggling in ways the field had barely begun to acknowledge: anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. The survey didn’t just raise concern. It reframed the entire mission.

In 2017, after years of extraordinary service, Jill Yeagley retired. The State Bar hired a full-time JLAP director, and the timing, as it turned out, was exactly right. The profession had just been handed a new challenge to what the legal culture needed to become healthy, and JLAP was ready to meet it.

Under Pam Moore’s leadership, JLAP expanded its scope far beyond substance use to address the full landscape of legal well-being with education and support on topics such as burnout, boundaries, secondhand trauma and depression. In addition, in 2022, a separate program was created for the judiciary, including the hiring of a retired judge, judicial coaching services, monthly

wellness communications to the entire bench and the ever-present helpline.

Meanwhile, JLAP was meeting lawyers and law students where they lived. Outreach included a Mocktail Bar, statewide CLE presentations, event tabling, Bar Bulletin articles, podcasts, an In This Together donation fund and multiple weekly support group meetings.

A full-time diversity professional was hired in 2021, bringing intentional focus to the particular pressures and barriers faced by underrepresented members of the profession. The message has grown broader, deeper and more inclusive: everyone has a struggle. Everyone deserves support.

When Pam took the helm, she set herself an audacious goal: to change the culture of the legal profession. Cultures are stubborn things, shaped by decades of expectation and silence. But 40 years of steady work — starting with meetings in church basements and a phone number in a golf bag — have a way of adding up.

Today, what began as Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers is known as Legal Well-Being. Three words. Forty years. A name that functions less as a label than as a promise — an umbrella of care for every person who has chosen to serve the profession, and a testament to what a few determined lawyers in recovery dared to imagine one afternoon in the mid-1980s when they walked through the State Bar’s door.