Lawyers and the Bottle
An interview with Eileen Travis and Meredith Heller
Every television lawyer ends the day with a scotch. Real lawyers, it turns out, are not far behind: roughly one in five has a problem with alcohol, twice the rate of the general population, and rates of depression run higher still. Why does a profession built on judgment produce so many people who lose it, what happens when the drink stops being a comfort and starts being a requirement, and what stands between a struggling lawyer and the end of a career?
In this TalksOnLaw interview, Joel Cohen sits down at the New York City Bar Association with Eileen Travis, founding director of its Lawyer Assistance Program, and Meredith Heller, a criminal defense lawyer, then chair of the program's committee, and — as she explains — one of its early beneficiaries. They begin with the scope of the problem and the culture that feeds it, then follow a lawyer in trouble through what comes next: drugs beyond alcohol, the escrow account, monitoring, discipline, and the diversion rules that let a sick lawyer get treatment instead of a record.
Twice as Likely
Travis opens with the numbers: about ten percent of adults develop a substance-use problem in their lifetime; among lawyers it is about twenty. Depression is roughly three times more prevalent than in comparable professions. The drivers, in the program's casework, are stress, hours, and personality — the profession attracts perfectionists, and perfectionists have trouble being human. Heller draws the line that matters: a drink to celebrate a verdict is not the problem; the problem is when the drink is scheduled, when five o'clock creeps toward noon, when a lawyer returns from lunch unable to see clients.
"I Had People's Lives in My Hands"
Heller tells her own story. Fresh out of law school and working on a federal death penalty case, she was so consumed by anxiety that she told strangers in bodega lines she held people's lives in her hands — until one asked whether she drove a bus. Years sober already, she felt herself about to drink again, heard someone speak about the Lawyer Assistance Program, and walked up afterward: "I'm either going to start drinking or stop practicing, and I need help." That was how she met Travis. Their exchange becomes a case study in the pattern Travis sees constantly: anxiety or depression, a drink that works, a drink taken for effect, and a tolerance that keeps climbing.
Why Law?
Why lawyers in particular? Travis and Heller assemble the answer. Clients arrive on the worst day of their lives; deadlines preclude claims; the adversarial posture seeps into everything; and the lawyer is supposed to be the one in the room who has it together, which makes asking for help feel like admitting fraud. It starts early: a study of first-year law students found rates of alcohol problems already matching practicing lawyers', and depression doubling between the first year and graduation — a consequence, they suggest, of being trained to look for what can go wrong. And the culture reinforces it: the associate asked by a partner why there is no drink in her hand, the Thursday scotch parties at which Heller, sober, sensed she was not going to make partner. Firms use alcohol because it is a cheap way to loosen up a profession of introverts, Travis observes, and it can be done more responsibly.
Free, Confidential, and Exempt
The final segment introduces the program itself: free and confidential help for lawyers, judges, law students, and their families, protected by Judiciary Law § 499 with confidentiality equivalent to attorney-client privilege, and — critically — exempt from the duty to report misconduct under Rule 8.3, so that a lawyer can admit anything to a LAP representative without fear. Travis describes the intake conversation and the range of responses, from peer support to referral; Heller describes the lawyers' AA meeting she chairs on Thursday nights in the very room where the interview was taped, its door marked only "Lawyers Meeting," open to law students, bar applicants, retired and disbarred lawyers, and people who simply need someone to talk to.
Beyond the Bottle
Travis begins with what else comes through the door: cocaine and heroin, and increasingly prescription drugs — painkillers, and stimulants like Adderall that are prevalent in law schools. Using someone else's prescription is a crime, which is exactly why the program's privilege and reporting exemption exist: lawyers admit illegal conduct to LAP because they can. She describes the trajectory that ends in discipline — neglect, then the escrow account — and the Lawyers' Fund for Client Protection's annual finding that the typical lawyer who misappropriates funds has an alcohol, drug, gambling, or mental health problem underneath.
Monitoring: More Probation Officer Than Sponsor
The heart of the conversation's second half is the program's monitoring system. Heller explains the formal track, usually triggered by a disciplinary letter: a signed agreement, an assigned monitor, random drug screens, required meetings, monthly face-to-face contact, weekly calls, and a compliance report to the disciplinary or character and fitness committee that says only whether the lawyer complied. The informal track serves bar applicants with DWIs or other history who need to document rehabilitation. Cohen asks whether it works, and Travis offers the profession's paradox: lawyers have higher rates of addiction and higher rates of recovery — once they decide, they do it full on. Lawyers ordered into monitoring "kicking and screaming," Heller adds, tend to say afterward it was the best thing that ever happened to them.
High-Functioning, Until You Aren't
The conversation turns to the high-functioning alcoholic — the partner who practices well for fifteen or twenty years until health, mental or physical, gives way — and to a Nevada courtroom video of the other kind, a lawyer arriving late and intoxicated while a patient judge tries to hand him an adjournment. Travis describes the calls she gets from judges with impaired lawyers in their courtrooms and from partners who have known about a colleague's drinking for years and finally have a client who smelled it. Doing nothing, she says, is tacit agreement that the problem does not exist. Marijuana, legal or not, gets the same treatment: for some lawyers it is simply the drug that stops them functioning, and a drug is a drug.
Discipline, and the New Diversion Rules
Heller walks through the disciplinary process as it stood on the eve of New York's uniform rules: the complaint, most often "I can't reach my lawyer"; the lawyer who is too frightened to open the letter and is suspended for failing to cooperate; the ladder from a letter of advisement through private admonition to suspension and disbarment. Then the change she and Travis had been waiting for: as of July 2016, a lawyer who can show a causal connection between a substance-use or mental-health problem and the misconduct can be diverted into LAP monitoring, with the proceeding held in abeyance and, on successful completion, potentially no discipline at all. Lawyers should not lose their licenses because they are sick, she says; they should get help so their clients are not at risk. The pair close on the stakes — the profession's high suicide rate — and the offer that any lawyer can take up.
What to Know Now
The research Travis cites, the 2016 study by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, surveyed nearly 13,000 lawyers and found problematic drinking among 20.6 percent, depression among 28 percent, and anxiety among 19 percent, with the highest rates among younger lawyers. It launched the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being, whose 2017 report prompted well-being pledges at major firms, wellness programming in law schools, and changes in bar admission; New York removed the mental-health question from its bar application in 2020. A follow-up national study released by the ABA in September 2026, surveying some 37,000 lawyers, found hazardous drinking roughly ten points below the 2016 level but burnout affecting nearly half of respondents. The diversion program Heller describes took effect as scheduled: under 22 NYCRR § 1240.11, in force since October 2016, a lawyer whose misconduct is attributable to substance use or a mental-health condition may be diverted to monitoring by a lawyer assistance program, with the proceeding stayed and eligible for dismissal on successful completion. The Lawyers' Fund for Client Protection now reimburses up to $450,000 per client and continues to report that substance use, gambling, and mental illness underlie a large share of escrow thefts. Misuse of prescription opioids has declined since 2016, while counterfeit pills containing fentanyl now drive most overdose deaths, and New York legalized adult-use marijuana in 2021. Rule 8.3(c)'s exemption for lawyer assistance programs and Judiciary Law § 499's confidentiality are unchanged. The people have changed places: in February 2026, Eileen Travis retired after more than twenty-five years as LAP's founding director, and Meredith Heller, the lawyer who once walked into the program for help, succeeded her. The program's confidential helpline is 212-302-5787.
About Eileen Travis and Meredith Heller
“Even though the incidence of alcohol and substance abuse is higher in the legal profession, so is the rates of recovery higher.”
Eileen Travis was the founding Director of the New York City Bar Association's Lawyer Assistance Program, which she led from its creation in 1999 until her retirement in 2026. Under her leadership the program became a national model, providing free and confidential assessment, intervention, counseling, monitoring, and peer support to thousands of lawyers, judges, law students, and their families, and working closely with the Character and Fitness and Grievance Committees of the Appellate Divisions. Before joining the City Bar she directed the outpatient chemical dependency program at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens and served as Director of Outreach Family Services. She received the New York State Bar Association's Ray of Hope Award for her work on lawyer wellness.
Meredith Heller is the Director of the New York City Bar Association's Lawyer Assistance Program, appointed in February 2026 to succeed Eileen Travis. A criminal defense attorney with extensive experience in state and federal litigation, she has won reversals of convictions in the New York Court of Appeals and the Second Circuit, and has represented attorneys in disciplinary proceedings and bar applicants before the character and fitness committees. She previously chaired the City Bar's Lawyer Assistance Program Committee and served on its Professional Ethics Committee, and she speaks regularly at First Department orientation programs and law schools about substance use in the profession and the resources available to lawyers.
