Is alcoholism and drug abuse really a serious threat to lawyers and the administration of justice?
A study of discipline cases in Ontario, Canada, revealed that nearly 50 percent of lawyers facing serious disciplinary sanctions admit to either alcohol, drug or psychiatric impairment. For nearly 20 years, professionals involved in lawyer assistance programs in Canada and the United States have speculated that the rates of alcoholism, drug addiction and psychiatric impairment among lawyers and judges are substantially higher than those in the rest of the adult population. A number of field studies suggest that 10 percent of the adult working population is addicted to alcohol. These speculations, supported by observation and by anecdotal evidence, have lead to two working assumptions among lawyer assistance program personnel. First, addiction problems among lawyers and judges run at about 15 percent and that psychiatric impairment also runs at about 15 percent. Second, perhaps one-third of each group of lawyers and judges is in both categories. This results in an overall combined rate
