Hawaii Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being: 'When attorneys are well, the community benefits'

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Well-being goes beyond stress management and encompasses preventing suicide, substance abuse and severe mental illness. | stock photo

Legal professionals consider the issue of their own well-being in a recent Report of the Hawaii Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being.

Following a 2017 comprehensive report, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change, conducted by the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, a local task force was created by Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald to assess the report, study and understand the current wellness situation of Hawaii's legal profession.

One primary recommendation is that the Hawaii State Bar Association should form a Well-Being Committee to continue the task force’s work and follow up on the recommendations stated in the recent report.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of well-being issues and provided a turning point for us,” the task force reported, according to a news release from the Governor of the State of Hawaii. "Well-being affects attorneys’ ability to adequately represent their clients, and when attorneys are well, the community benefits.”

The task force assessed the state of those who enter the legal profession. It also recommended destigmatizing mental health issues and expanding flexibility in work schedules among others.

Cochairs Associate Justice Sabrina McKenna and attorney Louise K.Y. Ing led the Hawaii Task Force.

McKenna, a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, was sworn in as associate justice in March 2011. Ing is a top-rated lawyer with a number of accolades, including Best Lawyers in America’s 2015 Hawaii Lawyer of the Year and Benchmark Litigation's Top 250 Women in Litigation. She earned her JD from University of California Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law and her BA, magna cum laude, in American studies, from Yale University.