New ABA/Krill Strategies lawyer mental health study shows escalating burnout, risky alcohol use
The American Bar Association, through its Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP), and Krill Strategies, a Pittsburgh-based legal advisory firm, released a new nationwide study on lawyer mental health and burnout that updates a 10-year old benchmark and reveals substantial distress, burnout and risky alcohol use within the legal sector.
The report presents data-driven findings from the largest study of lawyer mental health and well-being ever conducted. The study analyzed survey responses from a random sample of approximately 37,000 actively licensed lawyers drawn from 28 participating jurisdictions across all four U.S. Census Bureau regions and all nine U.S Census Bureau divisions represented within those regions.
Approximately one-fifth of lawyers in the current study meet thresholds for moderate-to-extremely severe symptoms on each subscale, indicating potentially clinically meaningful distress in a substantial portion of the profession:
Depression: 21.7%
Anxiety: 20.4%
Stress: 18.9%
Burnout is pervasive, with nearly half of all lawyers (47.4%) screening positive for high burnout, including 15.6% meeting the threshold for severe burnout. This represents the first national estimate of burnout among lawyers using a scientifically validated self-report measure designed to capture work-related psychological and physical fatigue and exhaustion.
Risky alcohol use remains elevated, as 41.8% of lawyers screened positive for risky drinking under standard clinical thresholds and 26.3% screened positive on the higher cutoff used in the 2016 study to identify the higher-risk “hazardous drinking.” While the prevalence of hazardous drinking is approximately 10 percentage points lower than in 2016, alcohol risk remains notably higher than typical adult or primary-care benchmarks.
Work–family conflict is also widespread: 35.9% of lawyers report high or very high conflict between their professional and personal lives.
“This study confirms that issues surrounding lawyer well-being continue to be a concern,” ABA President Barbara J. Howard said. “This research helps us not only better understand the scope of the problems, but as importantly, aids us in better formulating strategies to address these problems. The ABA has been committed for years to understanding the mental health challenges that lawyers face and to the importance of self-care, mental health awareness and addressing professional stress or substance use in overcoming them. A mentally healthy lawyer is a better lawyer.”
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Posted: September 17, 2026