Study Finds Nearly 1 in 2 Attorneys Highly Burned Out, With Burnout Strongly Linked to Mental Health Distress

A randomly sampled survey of nearly 37,000 lawyers across all Census regions also finds 41% feel the profession has been detrimental to their mental health.

The results of a landmark study on lawyer mental health and well-being, published last week, included sizable responses from Kentucky Lawyers and Judges. The new study, which is the largest ever administered of actively licensed U.S. lawyers, was recently conducted through a partnership between the American Bar Association Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP) and Krill Strategies, a behavioral health consulting firm for the legal profession. Kentucky is proud of the broad participation of lawyers and judges and also that it played a pivotal role in the participation and distribution of the survey. Kentucky Lawyer Assistance Program Director, Yvette Hourigan, the current chair of the Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs, has spent much of her three-year term encouraging state and local bar associations, state lawyer assistance programs, and the courts to engage in the process so that survey results would provide a meaningful representation of the status of lawyer well-being and mental health. The response was three times larger than the original 2016 study on lawyer mental health and well-being.

Key findings include:

• 21.6% screened positive for moderate-or-higher depression, 20.4% for anxiety, and 18.9% for stress.
• 47.4% reported high or very high work-related burnout—the first largescale national estimate of its kind among lawyers.
• Higher burnout was strongly linked to greater likelihood of moderate-or-higher depression, anxiety, and stress.
• 26.4% screened positive for higher-risk hazardous drinking (41.8% met the standard clinical threshold).
• 30.8% reported encountering a legal professional in the past year whose well-being raised concerns about fitness to practice.
• 41.1% of lawyers reported that time in the legal profession has been detrimental to their mental health.
• 27% reported considering leaving the profession due to mental health, burnout or stress.
• Only 39.1% believed employers were doing enough to support lawyers’ mental health and well-being.
• Younger lawyers and those working the longest hours faced the highest risk.
• 81% of lawyers believe it is either very important (52.2%), or important (29%) for the profession to focus greater effort on reducing mental health and substance misuse among lawyers. An additional 15.7% believe it is somewhat important leaving only about 3% who believe it’s not important to reduce mental health and substance misuse problems in the profession.

These numbers are significantly higher than anticipated and represent a profession that well understands the danger of the revealed statistics and that there must be improvements from every stakeholder in our profession to take care of ourselves and our colleagues.

Additional Survey Information:

Announcement from the American Bar Association: https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2026/09/new-lawyer-mental-health-study/

Summary of the Research: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/lawyer_assistance/research/lawyer-well-being/

Published Study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032726013327

Read the KBA's Bench & Bar Article