Ignoring stress can be person’s undoing. Take it from someone who has come undone.
Jim Blackburn is living his life in Technicolor these days, but he walked a long hard road to get out of the darkness.
Anyone old enough to have paid attention to the news between the late 1970s and the 1990s knows about Blackburn’s dramatic rise and fall.
Blackburn was a young assistant U.S. Attorney who rose to great fame after he successfully prosecuted Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret soldier convicted of the 1970 murder of his young wife and daughters.
The MacDonald case cast a spotlight on everyone involved as it spawned books and a television movie. Even today, media attention swirls around the case.
Shortly after the trial, Blackburn was appointed U.S. Attorney. He resigned within a year to enter private practice in Raleigh. At that time, he had no idea his life was about to plunge out of control.
Blackburn remained a prominent attorney in his practice, and outwardly appeared successful, so friends, colleagues and the general public were shocked in 1993 when he pleaded guilty to a variety of corruption charges, lost his law license, spent a few months in prison, and underwent intense psychiatric counseling.
Throughout his stratospheric rise, he was not aware he had been harboring the deep and festering depression and personality disorder that would send him into a near death-spiral. But he was able to come out of that spiral, and today he is thriving and devoting his career to helping others.
More than 20 years have passed, and even though Blackburn admits his life is not perfect, he is much happier. He no longer practices law, but manages Jim Blackburn Seminars, an organization devoted to helping lawyers, paralegals and others in the legal community through programs on ethics, professionalism and mental health in North Carolina and across the United States.
On the phone, Blackburn is friendly and open. He is patient and kind to a caller whose phone drops three calls during a single conversation.
“I am extraordinarily nonjudgmental,” he says. “My story is fairly well-known, and yes, mine is a success story, but it took a long time and many stumbles to get here.”
Through his seminars and writings, Blackburn is reaching beyond lawyers and helping paralegals, too.
Deadline pressure
The Catawba Valley Paralegal Association of Hickory devoted an entire issue of its March 2014 newsletter, Para Sight, to mental health, and featured an essay by Blackburn.
The issue is close to Cyndy Adams’ heart.
Adams, who is the CVPA’s president, spent 10 years working for an attorney who had a significant drinking problem.
“I didn’t know about his problem for a long time,” she says. “He was good at hiding it.”
When he entered a rehabilitation program, Adams and her small team, including another paralegal and an associate, managed to keep the practice going and the attorneys’ personal and office bills paid until he returned to work.
He never completely recovered. Adams eventually took another job.
Weeks after the attorney was charged with mishandling funds in 2012, he was found dead in his home. The death was attributed to natural causes.
According to statistics, practicing law is one of the most stressful jobs in our society today.
“When you work at a law firm, you tackle many cases in which there is always someone on the other side trying to defeat you, and you work under enormous deadline pressure.” Blackburn explains.
For paralegals, this stress can be compounded.
“The paralegal’s main job is to make sure the trains run on time, and they are under a lot of pressure,” he says.
Adams, who has been a paralegal for 34 years, works with the Cody Law Firm of Hickory. She designed a survey on stress for her local legal community, and asked paralegals, lawyers and judges to complete it anonymously. She received nearly 50 responses.
Deadlines topped the chart as the greatest stressor in the legal workplace.
“I fancy myself as a juggler,” she says. “I have been in this profession for a while. I’m good at it. I can keep five apples in the air at one time. But if I’m tired, if a bee flies by and captures my attention, if my phone rings, I might drop one. Then a few others will fall. It’s like a chain reaction. You never know what might cause your entire apple cart to be upset and topple over.”
At a recent seminar, Blackburn met a paralegal who serves four attorneys.
“I can’t imagine the kind of stress that entails,” he says. “My seminar ended at 4, and she still had two or three more hours of work ahead of her, and that is hard.”
He says he knows paralegals who must also cover for attorneys when they fall behind in their workload.
“Many paralegals work through lunch. They eat at their desks. They struggle to keep up with their billable hours. If they don’t get enough done, they are a wreck. That’s a hard way to make a living, and it can be very stressful,” Blackburn says.
During his own journey to mental health, Blackburn learned a big part of his problem was his inability to say “no.”
“I tended to think I could be all things to all people, to always win, and to always please people,” he says.
Blackburn has made it his mission to help others avoid the crash and burn scenario he experienced.
‘My dog knows all my secrets’
The CVPA survey revealed a few disturbing responses. One participant admitted to dealing with stress by visiting a local watering hole, drinking booze, and a lot of it, then taking a taxi home and sleeping it off, all the while realizing a hangover would spoil the following workday.
Another survey respondent reported taking stress and frustration out on the office staff, and another reported throwing things and breaking objects.
Other survey participants offered kinder and gentler ways to deal with stress.
Adams has a network of friends who help each other.
“Some are paralegals and some are nonparalegals. We are a close-knit group and we can confide in each other,” she says. “It helps to say the words, to share our burdens.”
She also keeps a journal and takes her dog on long walks.
“My dog knows all my secrets. She’s been with me for 10 years, and she’s heard it all,” Adams says.
Walking the dog also takes her out of her house, and provides some exercise and a change of scenery, all classic stress-busters.
Too few seek counseling
For severe cases of stress and depression, it takes professional help to feel better.
“Seeing a counselor or a psychologist is tough,” Blackburn says. “It can be expensive, unless your insurance covers it, but the decision to see someone may be one of the most important decisions you can make.”
Some workplaces have employee assistance programs, either through their health insurance providers or through a separate company.
The North Carolina Bar Association offers services to legal professionals and students through its BarCARES program.
The program’s president, Ellen Hancox, says BarCARES has been in place for attorneys nearly 20 years and has been available to paralegals since 2008.
BarCARES provides confidential counseling resources through HRC Behaviorial Health & Psychiatry P.A.
The Bar Association recognized this is a service paralegals need.
“The legal support staff shares in stress as much as attorneys do,” says Hancox, a trial court administrator in Cumberland County.
“I was practicing law in 1985, and it was a big deal to have an answering machine,” Hancox says. “Later voice mail and returning phone calls started extending the work day. Thanks to technology, we now are accessible 24/7. You have your office phone, your cell phone, computer, text messaging, home computer, email, home phone, and fax machines.”
Today’s law offices also maintain web pages and a presence on social media.
“Paralegals keep things organized, and keep our offices organized. It’s a lot of work,” Hancox says. “The ability to look after your own well-being is very important.”
Any member of the North Carolina Bar Association Paralegal Division can access BarCARES, and their association dues cover the cost of three contacts a year.
Last year, the American Bar Association Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs released the findings from a 2012 survey of state and local Lawyers Assistance Programs from across the country.
The most surprising discovery was the fact that across the board these services are under-utilized.
In 2012, according to the survey, Lawyers Assistance programs across the country referred just 1,000 cases to treatment programs.
Hancox believes the BarCARES program is not used as much as it could be. He would love to have more professionals use the program.
In South Carolina, the Bar Association offers a Lawyers Helping Lawyers program to attorneys, but the organization does not offer similar services to staff.
Paralegals suffering from stress and depression in South Carolina and elsewhere could find ways to take care of each other.
While that can be rewarding, it can also be tricky, Blackburn says.
“It is hard to get people to open up and talk, and it takes a lot of guts to reach out to help people,” he says. “As a paralegal, the main thing you can do is just take your co-worker’s temperature by simply asking ‘How are you doing?’ ’’
Even on the darkest days, Blackburn tells lawyers and paralegals to keep facing forward.
“Everything can be fixed or modified and improved upon, as long as you are still here,” he says. “Regardless of how you felt yesterday, or how stressed you were last week, you can change today and tomorrow.”
See the signs, lend a hand
In his seminars on stress and ethics, former lawyer Jim Blackburn warns of the symptoms of stress:
● Inability to focus, to get work done
● Procrastinating on simple tasks until it is too late
● Failure to return phone calls
● Making up stories or lying to cover failings
● Abnormal behavior
● Being tired all the time
● Not following through on projects
● Arriving at work late or leaving early on a regular basis
● Working full days, but getting little done
● Gaining or losing weight suddenly
Blackburn suggests several ways to reach out if you notice a colleague exhibiting these signs:
● Simply ask “How are you doing?”
● Offer to go to lunch or to take a walk
● Tell a colleague one or two of your own issues to encourage them to open up
● Engage in conversation and fellowship
● Offer emotional support, understanding, patience, friendship and encouragement
● Listen
● Reassure colleagues they are not alone and their situation can be improved
● Offer assistance in finding professional help
Members of the North Carolina Bar Association’s Paralegal Division can access BarCARES at 800-640-0735 or find information at www.ncbar.org/about/barcares