Erin Keyes is a lawyer and the Dean of Students at the University of Minnesota Law School.
In this first episode since before the world shut down, we talk about what it means for law students and lawyers with ADHD to keep themselves healthy. We talk about why ADHD can make law school harder, how law schools can support ADHD law students, and the well-known pattern of ADHD law students falling behind and struggling to get caught back up.
We talk about how ADHD looks different in women, the panic monster and negative feedback loops, and how students are helping one another with ADHD and other mental wellness issues.
And we talk about how you slay the ADHD panic monster. Just start. Start the process of figuring out a way to figure out a way.
Learn More about Erin Keyes, JD
Two Quotes
"Some students struggle with how to build meaning over the course of a semester and give themselves lots of opportunities to test their understanding of information. Because you can't cram in law school."
"There is so much shame around the manifestation of ADHD in terms of the things that are left undone. The things that were started but not finished. There's a good reason why ADHD is so highly correlated with anxiety and depression. It is not just a function issue. It's also an emotional issue."
ADHD Resources in this Episode
JDHD | For Lawyers with ADHD
Erin Keyes is a lawyer and the Dean of Students at the University of Minnesota Law School.
In this first episode since before the world shut down, we talk about what it means for law students and lawyers with ADHD to keep themselves healthy. We talk about why ADHD can make law school harder, how law schools can support ADHD law students, and the well-known pattern of ADHD law students falling behind and struggling to get caught back up.
We talk about how ADHD looks different in women, the panic monster and negative feedback loops, and how students are helping one another with ADHD and other mental wellness issues.
And we talk about how you slay the ADHD panic monster. Just start. Start the process of figuring out a way to figure out a way.
Learn More about Erin Keyes, JD
Two Quotes
"Some students struggle with how to build meaning over the course of a semester and give themselves lots of opportunities to test their understanding of information. Because you can't cram in law school."
"There is so much shame around the manifestation of ADHD in terms of the things that are left undone. The things that were started but not finished. There's a good reason why ADHD is so highly correlated with anxiety and depression. It is not just a function issue. It's also an emotional issue."
ADHD Resources in this Episode
JDHD | For Lawyers with ADHD
Marshall Lichty (00:01:06):
Hey there, friends. It is Marshall, and this is JDHD, a podcast for lawyers with ADHD. Did you miss me? I missed you. I missed you a lot. And it's hard for me right now because I feel like I have a therapist for this purpose, but I also feel like I need to share, I don't know a lot about what's been going on because, like I said, I've missed you. It's been a long time. And I take that really seriously and I've carried around a lot of it and it's heavy for me. So I feel ashamed and I feel embarrassed. I feel lazy. I feel like I haven't kept promises to my people, to my wife, to my listeners, clients, to my friends, and to a bunch of people I've met through JDHD and elsewhere. And I've really struggled. I think part of it's because my routines are completely shot, habits that I had worked for months or even years to cultivate and develop are destroyed, listeners and email contacts that I worked for months to engage and listen to and support have heard nothing from me, whatever, which would be bad enough as it is, and even worse, because this is when they need support probably more than they ever have.
Marshall Lichty (00:02:17):
And I've found that restarting something after I've stopped it, meditation, editing, podcasts, checking emails, responding to texts... The whole mess of things is really, really hard because when I stop, it feels like everything collapses. We've got COVID-19, we've got quarantine, we've got Minneapolis as a hotbed—and, for a time, a hellscape—of awfulness when it comes to our history of policing and race and injustice.
Marshall Lichty (00:02:53):
And I always had thought about this idea of "podfade." In the podcasting industry, they talk about "podfade," which is the idea that you start with a bang, and then it fades out over time, never to be heard from again. And I knew that that wasn't me. It's not what I wanted. This is such a passion for me that I knew I couldn't stop doing it. And yet it felt like all I could do was stop doing it. And I just wanted to share that because I know that there are a lot of people out there struggling. It isn't just me. Frankly, it's not even just people with ADHD. There are people everywhere struggling, and I think it's acute for us. And I wish I had been here differently. And so I am here now, and I hope to have some rejuvenated energy because I still feel this great promise and potential.
Marshall Lichty (00:03:42):
There is an incredible need for a place for people with ADHD to come to learn about it, to talk about what it means to have it, and to think about ways to make its presence a positive impact in our lives and in our businesses. And so I'm as excited as ever about it. And I was writing a chapter for a book in California for solo and small firm lawyers, and I was looking at the data about ADHD again, and I have a new appreciation for those numbers. By my math and the best data we have about the incidence of ADHD among lawyers, I think there are about 170,000 lawyers in the country that have ADHD.
Marshall Lichty (00:04:29):
That's squishy, and the science is weird and the polling is interesting and I'm not convinced that's the right number, but if we use the best data, we've got 170,000. Here's the thing that walloped me: that's almost exactly the number of lawyers who are actively practicing in the state of California. That is an astronomical number. And as I sit here and I read through emails that people have written with care and passion and pain about how important it is to be a part of JDHD and to be with me here and with all of you, I knew that I needed to kick myself in the ass. And so I'm reinvigorated and I have a new sense of obligation and optimism because I take responsibility for you and where we all are in this journey, in our professions, in our lives. And I've heard from so many people for whom becoming a JDHD is a critical part of their identity and how they're going to get through it all going forward.
Marshall Lichty (00:05:43):
And so I'm glad you're here. I know this is a huge introduction, but it felt really important because it's been laying on my chest for a long time. There are definitely things that I'm bad at. I'm bad at finances. I'm bad at communicating when I haven't completely formed the thing that I want to say. I'm bad at editing podcasts. I'm bad at keeping a cadence and asking people for help, at asking people for money, and for implementing all of the ideas in my head, particularly without help. And I'm afraid to ask for that, but there are things that I'm good and passionate about, and just like you, I want to make those primary. I'm good at teaching and engaging and supporting and evangelizing. I'm good at opening eyes. I'm good at making difficult things easy to understand. I'm great at generating ideas for great interviews and ideas about how to support people.
Marshall Lichty (00:06:39):
If you have an idea about what JDHD can do for you, please reach out to me. I have big plans. I have not implemented all of them. And that brings me a bunch of shame and a bunch of embarrassment and a whole bunch of itty bitty shitty committee things that I want to kill with fire, but they're me and they're JDHD. And I hope you'll be with me anyway. So with all of that said, I hope you're all well, I hope you're surviving COVID-19. I hope you are taking care of yourselves and your mental health and the people around you and your families. And most importantly, I hope you have time to listen to this great episode. I recorded it a long time ago. Last year. It was 2019. And it's with a woman who is the Dean of Students at a top 20-ish law school.
Marshall Lichty (00:07:33):
And I have such respect for her and the way that she thinks about what it means for law students and lawyers to be healthy. And we had a great conversation about that. We talked a lot about how law schools and our profession itself can be resources for people who are struggling. We talked about how the "panic monster" can grip you when you're in law school. And if you miss a thing or if your brain doesn't quite get it, it doesn't quite understand how to "do" law school with ADHD, whether you know you have it or not, that there are ways that we can find support and find all kinds of resources to help us strengthen our resolve and get through it. And a lot of times it comes from peers, but it comes from elsewhere too. And so we talk about deans of students and what their job is. We talk about the Hazelden Betty Ford study from 2016. We talk about a whole bunch of interesting stuff, and I hope you'll come along for the ride because this interview is with Erin Keyes, the Dean of Students at the University of Minnesota Law School, a friend of mine, and someone who brings light to the wellness of people all around her. And I'm deeply thankful. I hope you listen and enjoy.
Marshall Lichty (00:08:56):
Well, welcome to the JDHD podcast! I am overjoyed that Dean Erin Keyes is here with us and she's been an ever-present force in my life for probably the last 20 years. We went to law school near each other in terms of years and went to the same law school. And she now works for that law school. And so I've had a chance to talk with her a bunch of times since then, but it is really my pleasure to welcome Erin keys. Erin, thanks so much for being on JDHD.
Erin Keyes (00:09:27):
Thanks so much, Marshall, it's a real pleasure to join this conversation. You know, when you approached me with the topic, I, it was really something that, you know, it was filling a void based on the experience of a lot of my students and colleagues in practice looking at the, looking at the realities of living with ADHD, among lawyers and law students is a really important topic. So thank you so much for giving us this venue to explore some of the issues and opportunities.
Marshall Lichty (00:10:00):
Well, I'm glad to have you on. And you mentioned students, I want to jump right in. What does a law student with undiagnosed ADHD look like?
Erin Keyes (00:10:10):
Oh boy, I don't think there's one way that anyone looks part of that is just the reality of law school. It's a totally different way of learning for most students, no matter how successful they've been in other contexts. It's just a different way of understanding information and grappling with tough problems. And I think part of the challenge is that in most law schools, rather than simply reading what the laws are and figuring out what the right answer is, you have to use a lot of deductive reasoning. You have to be able to dig into really dense texts and make meaning out of decisions that were maybe written a hundred years ago. And also then to sort through what's important. What are the priorities in a given case, between cases that you've read on a particular topic in a class, and then knowing how to bring the arguments and analogic reasoning together to solve a new problem that's presented at a test and usually those tests have been at the end of the semester? And so the challenge is that you've got three months or so of time to be reading cases, making sense of things, maybe you're outlining or otherwise synthesizing the information. And it all runs up to this big exam at the very end of the semester where you have to be able to drawback to what you learned on the first day, on the 15th day in the 47th case you've read, and figure out how that is going to work as a tool to help you solve whatever problem is presented on the exam.
Marshall Lichty (00:11:48):
And so I assume that we know--we collectively--that there is a best practice for how to do that, right, starting on day one and ending up on test day, that there is a really, really solid plan for how to do that effectively. What I'm hearing you maybe hint at is the fact that folks with ADHD--diagnosed or otherwise--may have some struggles with that?
Erin Keyes (00:12:12):
Yes. I think for people who are really self-motivated and are good at organizing their time in terms of both long and short term activities, there is a "good way" to do law school, which is making sure that you do your reading, attending class regularly, taking notes that have some semblance of order and meaning, and compiling information over time over the course of that semester, so that when it comes to the week before exams, you're not going back to what you did in the first month and trying to figure it out. I think a lot of students with either diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD are used to performing in a different way, meaning they're taking in a ton of information in a ton of different ways, but they're not necessarily great at the "executive function" of putting it together in an organized fashion.
Marshall Lichty (00:13:09):
And holding it in their working memory for an extended period of time.
Erin Keyes (00:13:14):
Exactly, exactly. So, they might be super engaged in a class discussion and really understand what's going on on that day, but it might be gone as soon as they leave the classroom. And if they're not returning to that information again until the eve of the test, it's sort of like starting from scratch all over again. So one of the things that I think some students struggle with is how to build meaning over the course of a semester and give themselves lots of opportunities to test their understanding of information because you can't cram in law school. I think that plenty of law students were, as college students, able to, you know, write a pretty darn good paper the night before it was due, or, you know, really cram or study for another kind of exam that was maybe more amenable to their skills. Law school just doesn't work that way. So doing things last minute and not putting the time in over the course of a semester can really backfire for students when it comes to exam time.
Marshall Lichty (00:14:20):
So I think a lot about the idea of "margin" and building space in our lives for mistakes or for things to not go quite the way that they planned. And what I'm really curious about, and I remember this from my law school days, there isn't a ton of margin. And when there is margin, it's usually filled with either sleep or, you know, drinking or socializing or something. And so in a lot of ways you actually fill your margin (which is a healthy thing) with unhealthy things, particularly in the case of drinking. In any event, the question that I have really is around the idea of when folks run out of margin. I can guess when it happens. It feels to me like it happens as we are approaching exams and it becomes clear that they do not have the scaffolding in place to succeed on this all-or-nothing exam. Tell me a story about a student coming to you and what it looks like for that freak out to happen. That realization that we have not built margin, or we have not been studying in a way that is ultimately going to lead to productivity.
Erin Keyes (00:15:16):
I have dozens of potential incidents I could say, but what I will say is there's a certain pattern where students get into what I would refer to as a negative feedback loop. So at some point in the semester, they hit the wall of "I don't understand this. I'm not managing information very well. I haven't started my outlines." And that sort of sets loose the "Panic Monster." And the panic monster just sets in play a cascade of sort of additional bad things. So the student hasn't taken the time to do the intermediary work and finds a couple of weeks before exams that, yeah, they're really behind the curve and in a pickle. What a logical brain would do is take a pause and come up with a plan and then spend every waking moment executing said plan to make up for past readings, to talk with the professor about issues that are unclear working toward some kind of outline or synthesis, and then fitting in lots of practice to make sure that it all makes sense.
Marshall Lichty (00:16:43):
There's a "but" coming.
Erin Keyes (00:16:44):
Yeah. The "but" is that one of the things that is really challenging about having ADHD for students and practitioners is that it impairs your executive function and executive decision making. So if you were just one of these perfectly logical (which I think probably doesn't really exist in the real world) human beings who only operated on good logic then, Yeah, you would make a plan. You would implement it. You would have structures in place to make sure that you're meeting it. In real life, we get pulled off track. And I think, especially for those with ADHD where life is throwing you lots of opportunities to address something as important. And what's important on a day may be challenging for somebody with ADHD and that executive decision making challenges to decide on. Is it really important that I iron all of the accumulated laundry in the basement, or is it important that I do my outline?
Erin Keyes (00:17:55):
Is it important that I organize my recipes or is it important that I go back and do that reading that I haven't done? And different people have different distractions and different things that are going to send them into that loop, where they don't do what they need to be doing, and then they feel crappy about it. And when you have something that you feel crappy about your mind automatically wants to sort of say, "run away from that crappy thing." And it just sort of gets you further and further into the hole.
Marshall Lichty (00:18:27):
I feel a fair amount of shame about this, but it's time to come clean, I've come clean to others. Professor Morrison is a very well known professor at the University of Minnesota Law School. I think he just celebrated his 50th year if I'm not mistaken.
Erin Keyes (00:18:43):
He did, he did. And he remembers his first year like the back of his hand. It's crazy.
Marshall Lichty (00:18:48):
That is crazy. And I hope he doesn't remember this. Because Professor Morrison was my Con Law professor. And during that semester, I was commuting up from a suburb of Minneapolis and it was winter and it often took a long time. And I had been staying up late for a lot of reasons. Very few of them were related to studying. Most of them were related to social endeavors. I actually started a magazine called The Bar Review Weekly, which had nothing to do with bar review and it had had everything to do with organizing people to go out to the bar.
Erin Keyes (00:19:22):
Oh, I remember it quite clearly. That's a side convo.
Marshall Lichty (00:19:26):
I would stay up late and write this thing. It was a full-on, you know, it had graphics and I would go to Kinko's to get it printed and I had no margin at all. And so I remember that Con LaW in the first couple of weeks was brutal. And so I would go into Professor Morrison's classroom and he's a brilliant, brilliant man and a brilliant mind. He also has a voice that tends to lean toward the monotone and I was dying and I fell asleep 84 times in a row in the class. And on this day in particular that I remember I had my head kind of on my hand and I fell asleep and my head fell out of my hand and it literally hit the desk. Boom.
Marshall Lichty (00:20:04):
I remember looking up and no one was even looking at me. And I was like, "Have I actually fallen asleep so many times that they've all stopped paying attention?" And so it occurred to me that that was funny. And so I laughed and now everyone was looking at me. And so what I did in my rational mind was "This is literally the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me. And I need to feel a very deep shame about it." And so I got up packed up my things and I left and I didn't come back until the final.
Erin Keyes (00:20:33):
And you didn't come back until when?
Marshall Lichty (00:20:37):
The final examination. That all or nothing, end-of-semester, you gotta nail it or you're dead thing... Yeah, I did that.
Erin Keyes (00:20:44):
And you passed the class!?
Marshall Lichty (00:20:45):
You know, that's one way of looking at it. That is a positive lens that people who don't have shame and embarrassment and what my wife calls the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee in their head all the time. For me, that is just an embarrassing mortifying concept of like, you know, have a little bit of grace, figure out a way, be rational and get it sorted out. And instead, I had a very emotional and ultimately quite detrimental reaction that you know, to this day, I maybe I can look back on it and be amused. But I think about that all the time. Like that is a thing that I carry around with me every time. And that is part of my ADHD. It's part of the shame. And so you touched on that is this idea that it is not just that these folks haven't built the scaffolding around them.
Marshall Lichty (00:21:29):
It's not just that they haven't maybe taken the steps that an ideal law student would have taken to master an examination at the end of their first semester. It is also that when they don't and when they realize that they haven't it, isn't just a matter of being rational and coming up with the right choice. It is literally "how do I pull myself out of this shame spiral that is going to lead to a bunch of other really bad decisions." And so that, that for me, that really resonated when you talked about that.
Erin Keyes (00:21:57):
Well, and there's so much shame around the manifestation of ADHD in terms of the things that are left than done. The things that were started but not finished. And it has, you know, there's a good reason why ADHD is so highly correlated with anxiety and depression in a lot of people. And I think understanding that it's not just a functional issue. It's also an emotional issue that is so critical and that all of those pieces need to be addressed.
Marshall Lichty (00:22:30):
I was literally talking about that concept with my ADHD coach this morning, before our call. We were talking about the fact that in the DSM, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD are really very strict about the executive functions. It's a functional diagnosis. Do you do this well? Do you do this well? Do you do this well? If you don't, you probably have ADHD, and here's how we make the diagnosis. Boom. And when you treat ADHD, for the most part, it is about a functional diagnosis. It's about building scaffolding around executive function about, you know, externalizing it or outsourcing it or whatever. The thing that we don't talk about--and it's literally not in the DSM at all as a diagnostic criterion--is the emotional dysregulation that comes with it. It is that internal self talk. It's the shame, it's the embarrassment, it's you know, sort of rejection it's imposter syndrome on steroids.
Marshall Lichty (00:23:25):
And so I love that you're talking about, yes, we need to build scaffolding, but there's also this mental health and wellness part of it that even though it isn't formally in the DSM, by the way, my coach, who is a social worker he says the DSM is just outdated. We now know that emotional dysregulation is a very live and very diagnostic criterion of ADHD. And his expectation or his guess is that it will become a part of the diagnosis in the next round. So anyway, all of that is a, is a tangent to say that part of building the scaffolding is a part of it, but it isn't the whole thing.
Marshall Lichty (00:24:13):
Maybe that's a good time to move to wellness. You have a history of really helping... I mean, you have this really interesting background of just having dedicated a career to helping people and making the world better. And it now seems to be taking on this life at the law school where you do that for law students. But my impression is, yes, you care about law students, but really it might even be bigger than that. It's sort of this idea that if our law students are able to be well, take good care of themselves, then they can put on that oxygen mask and help their clients well or help their whatever well. So I want to talk about wellness at the law school. How are we doing at the University of Minnesota and elsewhere in the industry for lawyer wellbeing and law student wellbeing and wellness?
Erin Keyes (00:25:00):
Yeah. I think the answer to that for way too many decades is "really badly." So there are a lot of things in the legal profession that put a premium on how you look, how you come across to other people. You know, if you want to get new clients, you want them to have a sense of your abilities and competence. They're going to want to know what your record is in terms of how many awards you've gotten, how many verdicts you've had in your favor, or how successful you are in negotiations. Those are the kinds of things that are really important to be able to show to clients. What's the other side of that coin is you don't want the legal profession and individual lawyers don't want to appear weak. They don't want to appear as if they don't know what they're doing.
Erin Keyes (00:25:51):
They don't want to say, "I don't know." And I think that perpetuates this sense that if you address any underlying challenges or issues to your mental health, and you do so openly, that that will mean you are at least in public, in the legal profession, some kind of failure. So we're all looking at what's going on outside, and we're not paying enough attention to what's going on inside. And too often, what's going on inside is people who have real underlying disorders, whether it's ADHD or depression, anxiety, some other mental health issues. And rather than having space to say, well, this is real. This is something that is amenable to improvement with the appropriate supports. We say, no one can know about this, and historically, that's really been the way in the legal profession.
Marshall Lichty (00:26:48):
So why do we say that? Why is that a thing among law students, among lawyers? I want part of this to be a discussion about emotions, but there's also some actual practical implications for that or at least the impression that there is.
Erin Keyes (00:27:04):
So one of the biggest stumbling blocks for law students at least getting help for whether it's alcoholism or some other mental health issue is their perception of the impact of that help-seeking on their prospects for employment or being able to be licensed to practice. And that comes through in the fantastic study that David Jaffe and Jerry Oregon at St. Thomas did a number of years ago that really stacks up as an important complement to the Hazelden Betty Ford study...
Marshall Lichty (00:27:43):
This is the law student wellbeing study?
Erin Keyes (00:27:45):
Exactly, exactly. And the thing that they looked at for the first time, and I think is our big take away, is that how are we as a community in the legal profession and in law schools incentivizing and encouraging, supporting, rewarding students, getting help to deal with underlying mental health challenges rather than what we've done historically, which is to attach a stigma to that, Oh, if somebody has gone to get mental health care, then maybe they shouldn't have a license to practice.
Marshall Lichty (00:28:19):
Which is institutionalized in a lot of bars, right? There are bars around the country that actually have questions about mental wellness and mental fitness on their bar applications and whether or not the reality is that answering that question in the affirmative would lead to you not getting a license, there is certainly the perception of it, and it's perpetuated by a lot of regulatory agencies.
Erin Keyes (00:28:43):
Right? Here's a great example, too, of those sorts of generational shifts that we're in. I think the legal profession, I heard other people say that you know, we're a decade or two behind other professions in terms of a lot of areas, but we're catching up. We now know that rolling up your sleeves and doing things and experiential learning is a really part important part of becoming a competent professional. So we're taking things out of just the classroom and books and recognizing the importance of doing things in real life and how that contributes to learning and expertise. We're also working on understanding barriers to entry to the legal profession for people from underrepresented backgrounds whether that's based on race or gender or sexual orientation or identity.
Erin Keyes (00:29:35):
So we're trying to address all these things in the legal profession. And what I'm excited to see now is that we are finally catching up when it comes to mental health issues. I remember really distinctly working with a fantastic student. This was probably a decade ago. I don't know... It all kind of blurs together at some point. But the student was really an outstanding student and was doing well in classes and extracurriculars and was a campus leader in a lot of capacities. And the student was going through a rough time. They were having a difficult time. I can't remember if it was a family situation or a breakup, but I remember talking to the student about the difficulties they were going through. And I recommended, it really would be a good idea for you to go talk with someone in our counseling center. Or if you have a therapist already, go talk to them. And, you know, they seemed amenable initially. And I followed up a couple of months later and found out that the student had also expressed their difficulties to a supervising attorney in their job. They were working at a firm. And
Marshall Lichty (00:30:50):
Oh boy.
Erin Keyes (00:30:50):
The supervising attorney said, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you absolutely cannot go talk to somebody. Why don't you wait until after you apply for the bar and take the bar exam?
Marshall Lichty (00:31:03):
And, and after you are literally flushing your mental health down the toilet for as long as you possibly can.
Erin Keyes (00:31:10):
Right? So, so I think that's one anecdote, but it represents, I think what we've struggled with generationally is that that idea that lawyers are infallible and that they, even if they're not infallible, they can't at least show weakness by saying, "Hey, I have a mental health disorder. " That generational schism is really powerful. And so that now-graduate who's out there doing fantastic things in the legal profession didn't get the help that they needed because they were told by someone in a position of authority not only, "that's not a good idea," but "no, you should not go do that." That's just one encapsulation of a message that is out there, whether it is explicit or implicit in, in what people are picking up it's really powerful. And I think it endures even despite the best efforts of a lot of folks in the legal profession and in law schools to more openly address mental health issues.
Marshall Lichty (00:32:06):
Yeah. You know, the Jaffe study, it says that 42 percent--almost half of the students--need help for poor mental health, but only a fraction of them seek it out. That 25% were at risk for problem drinking and that only 4% of them had ever sought out any help or counseling for alcohol and drug abuse. And I think that you touched on something that's really important. This is not just that a person needs to buck up and become vulnerable or go get help or understand that there isn't actually a stigma, because in a lot of ways, there really is a stigma, and that's why we need to be talking about this. I'll tell you in a job that I had early on in my legal career, I had a client, and it was at a time when I was riding my bike a fair bit.
Marshall Lichty (00:32:52):
And so, and in the winter in Minnesota, riding your bike is cold. And so I would grow a beard and this client we had become very close and he trusted me. He came from a generation where he said, there is a time when I would have never hired you with facial hair because my father told me that it is not professional to have facial hair period, full stop. End of story. Right. And of course, ADHD is different and mental health is different than facial hair, but in a lot of ways, we have this old guard that perpetuates a bunch of myths about you know, the fact that seeking help for ADHD or for depression, or for anxiety or for substance abuse or for alcohol abuse or for relationship difficulties or for any number of other learning disabilities, dyslexia, et cetera, is going to lead to challenges with bar admission challenges, with academic status, or their job there's going to be a stigma. There'll be privacy concerns. Having a mustache is not the kind of stigma that I worry about, but I definitely worry about the kind of stigma that is leading people to live and suffer silently with a thing that we know leads to anxiety, depression, inefficiency, exhaustion, shame, et cetera. And that is why I'm glad you're talking about it.
Marshall Lichty (00:34:30):
So the law school started a mental health committee. You have a wellness room. You've actively engaged in the National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing. You even have the Theater for the Relatively Talentless. Tell me about what the law school is doing to support mental health and to support students in things other than figuring out who can log the most hours in the stacks.
Erin Keyes (00:34:54):
Right. One of the most important things I think that we are doing is talking about this a lot and in multiple venues. One of the things that I'm really always grateful for is the fact that so much of the learning and guidance and mentoring that happens within the law school is student to student. It's peer mentoring. And whether that's through legal writing instructors or our academic support student instructors orientation leaders, journal editors, moot court directors... There are so many different ways that our perhaps more experienced students can influence the inclination of newer students to take care of themselves and to value wellness as something that's just as important to their professional development as the ability to cross-examine a client. And so we have for the past five years or so convened peer leader training in the fall semester to make sure that we are thanking and providing good updated information to our students who are in peer mentorship roles. It's the law school administration that is providing some of the information, but so much of the learning and the culture shift is happening because it's important to students, and students are driving that change. And I think that that is probably the most important thing to just remark on in terms of what's changed in the last decade or so. I love hearing about students who are coaching other students to figure out where the student counseling services are on campus or talking openly with students about what they need "Oh, I can't do that on this afternoon because I have a therapy appointment, but let's try for next week," you know, just working in self-care and mental health care and other kinds of healthy activities into day to day law school life in a way that I don't think we have previously. So again, just underscoring the critical importance of that peer influence. I joke sometimes that as an administrator, I can stand in front of a group of students and drone on until we're all blue in the face.
Erin Keyes (00:37:27):
I bore myself sometimes with all the stuff I have to talk to people about. But it's just different hearing "Hey, you know, what have you, have you checked out the law school's resources page? There's a lot of great information there and what you're talking about sounds like something that I got help for at X office or Y office." You know, that kind of message I think is way more important than me or anyone else in an authority position saying "thou shalt do this or that." I think it's important because it's taking the shame away from it. It's regularizing. It's normalizing it. It's putting a value on it in a way that is really a 180-degree shift from that older practitioner who told my former student to explicitly not seek out help. Now we have a lot of students who are telling other students, "Hey, you know what, there's lots of help for that."
Erin Keyes (00:38:21):
"And here's how you can find it." And so I think that the peer-to-peer atmosphere is really powerful. And I think that it makes me really optimistic and excited about how the profession is going to continue to do a better job in the future in dealing with the day to day needs of people who might need a little extra support here and there, and that includes ADHD. You know, maybe some people are calendaring life in a way that might look a little odd to other practitioners or students, but they're using tools that they know are going to help them maintain some order and organization and to be able to execute on their clients' needs. And so I think again, it's, it's a culture change and it has to happen on both the front lines, but also from the top down.
Marshall Lichty (00:39:12):
I love that. Well, and I think when you talk about the top down, you know, in August of 2017, just about two years ago now, the National Task Force on Lawyer Wellbeing issued its report. It summed up the research that came out in 2016 about the state of abuse and pathology in our profession and really started a movement toward bringing this out and talking about it at a much higher level. And one of the very explicit recommendations in there for law schools is to create ways to empower students, to help fellow students in need. And so it sounds like you're taking that to heart and that you've built the infrastructure for that. There are obviously a ton of other recommendations in there for law schools, there are recommendations in there for regulators, and for a whole bunch of other places, law firms in particular.
Marshall Lichty (00:40:02):
But I love the idea of talking about this in a much more open way and creating places where people can find help where they need it and where they are not just sort of dictating "This is the way that you have to do it. You must go to a Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers meeting, or you must go to a private counselor, private therapist to get resources for this." You can go to a student, you can go to a professor, you can go to a support group. And so I love that you're working on systems to make that more real and a bigger part of the conversation.
Erin Keyes (00:40:45):
The other piece of this is: what help is available out there? And sometimes that can be difficult to nail down. And especially in the context of ADHD. So not every counselor or therapist has expertise in the many different ways that ADHD can manifest for students. And so I try to also coach students that when they're looking for a counselor or a therapist, that it is absolutely okay--and it may just be a reality of the process of getting support--that you might meet with multiple therapists until you find the right fit. It's saddening when I have a student who maybe has barriers about seeking help in the first place, maybe they just don't have a context for that from their family history or, again, just taking in a lot of these messages around the stigma that they finally screw up the courage to walk across campus and get to a therapeutic meeting and then it doesn't feel like a good fit and it doesn't help in the ways that they want it to on the first go.
Marshall Lichty (00:41:53):
There's an even worse outcome, right? There's one outcome, which is that just didn't feel right or felt gross, or I was uncomfortable. I don't want to go back. You know, my experience and the experience of many people like me--this is particularly true for lawyers, it's particularly true for people who have high IQ and that cohort tends to be big within the legal industry--they might even go into a therapist or a psychologist or a treater or diagnoser and say "here's my background, here's my social background." And this was my experience. I sat down with a psychologist. I was referred to her. She claimed to have expertise in ADHD. I'd been suffering from anxiety. And I went into Roberta's office and she sat down, we did my social history and she said, hold on, let me get this right.
Marshall Lichty (00:42:36):
You graduated from college? Yeah. You went to law school? Yeah. You graduated from law school? Yeah. You took the bar exam? Yeah. Did you pass the bar exam? Yeah. Did you practice as a lawyer? Yeah. "You don't have ADHD."
Marshall Lichty (00:42:49):
And then she proceeded to kind of hold her nose as we did a little bit more work. And inevitably of course, what came back was a diagnosis of anxiety, but I'd been treating for anxiety. I had medication for anxiety and it wasn't doing a thing. Not one thing. And that set me back a good half-year. And it wasn't until my son was diagnosed later that his doctor looked at me in my eye and said, "One of the biggest challenges we have with treating young boys who have ADHD is that a lot of times it's the blind leading the blind. We know it's highly hereditary, and that one parent probably has some of this and that if he or she has it, and it's undiagnosed, they're gonna have a very hard time being useful to a son or daughter who has ADHD." And he was looking at me and said, "does any of this resonate for anybody in your family?" And then looked at my wife and said, "I know you don't have ADHD!" So she was an active disincentivizer for me, it was not just a benign "this didn't feel right." It was an actively destructive experience in my journey. I remember walking out of there thinking, well, my anxiety treatment isn't working and I don't have ADHD. I am out of choices. I don't know what this is,
Erin Keyes (00:44:03):
Then it starts to feel like it's your fault.
Marshall Lichty (00:44:05):
Yup. Yup. So your point is very well taken, which is we need to encourage students to not just stop after the first one and to figure out a way to do that in a way that doesn't feel like drug-seeking or whatever, which I'm sure is the thing that happens in law schools with people who just want Adderall to study better.
Erin Keyes (00:44:23):
Right. Well, and here's another similar thing that I've seen over and over again. I'm going to say that this is often the case... It isn't exclusively for women because you went through the same challenge. But the way that ADHD manifests in people looks very different from person to person and from group to group. The hyperactivity aspect that we sort of stereotype may be more common in boys. It may show up there in a way that a teacher or a parent is going to notice and try to do something about, so there are higher rates of diagnosis in boys than there are in girls. Even though girls may be similarly impacted by the inattentive type and they have the same challenges in terms of executing the things the world and society tell them they need to do.
Erin Keyes (00:45:24):
And back to your point about people in the legal profession generally being a pretty smart group, we are folks that have been gifted with the kind of intelligence that is rewarded in many contexts (at least in the US system). You know, maybe we're good at reviewing for a test at the last minute and doing really well on that exam. We can just pull it out by dint of high innate intelligence, again, of the kind that's rewarded on tests, because I think there are many kinds of intelligence. But the challenges that I think people can have a deficit in their executive function that is often muted or hidden altogether by either killing themselves to get things done or just the fact that their intelligence allows them to solve problems in a way that they can basically, blend in.
Erin Keyes (00:46:25):
They can pass. Exactly. And so I've had students who were not diagnosed until after they started law school. And I think that's a really important thing for them to do because they need to understand, "Okay, what treatment modalities are available, what kind of medication may help me how is this going to affect my life for the rest of, of, of my professional and personal existence?"
Erin Keyes (00:46:48):
But back to the real challenge of professionals not all having the same view or approach or expertise in ADHD, because we have had graduates who have for a lot of reasons, again because perhaps they were able to mute the impact of ADHD in prior settings. Once they get to law school and the new learning environment and the many different pressures that are available here there is no way they can mask the impact of the ADHD anymore and they have to get help. But then when it comes to things like seeking accommodations on exams for the bar exam, that's where we have some professionals who basically say "Prove it." They're very skeptical about whether somebody who is diagnosed in law school really has ADHD or really needs accommodations for it, because just like you heard, well, you've been successful in all these different capacities. Yes. But at what cost? At what cost has that success come?
Marshall Lichty (00:47:58):
And what is the delta between my potential and my performance and how dramatic is it? How much more could I be delivering? How much better could I be at the things?
Marshall Lichty (00:48:09):
Well, so Erin, I want to do a couple of things before we wrap up. They're important to me. I love this conversation though. And I can't say enough about the work that you're doing, that the law school is doing, and really that the profession is starting to do around this. I don't think we're anywhere near peak ADHD awareness or mental health awareness. But it's starting and people like you are a really critical part of that.
Marshall Lichty (00:48:35):
I want to talk briefly about what is the Dean of Students? What do Deans of Students do? What are Student Affairs? When I was in law school, I had an ambient awareness of who these people were. And I actually liked one of them personally as a friend but had no idea what her job was. We had no idea why I would go there. Tell me, and tell the law students who might be listening, what is the student affairs department? What does the Dean of Students do? And if you are struggling in any way, shape, or form, or if you have a particular set of awesomeness that isn't being met somewhere what can you do?
Erin Keyes (00:49:13):
Yeah, so student affairs look a little different at every institution. And so my view is really based on my 15 years of experience at the University of Minnesota Law School. So with that caveat in our iteration of student affairs, we (myself and my fantastic team members) sort of break our work into three different areas. One is registration and records. You've got to get registered for classes. Somebody has got to enter those grades and calculate GPA and figure out things like honors and make sure that student records are protected. So that's all sort of your registrar, register, and record area.
Erin Keyes (00:49:55):
Another really important area--and this goes back to that peer leader and the cultural aspects of law school--is student community and leadership development.
Erin Keyes (00:50:10):
So we have our senior coordinator for diversity and student programs run orientation and work with student leaders to implement fantastic activities on campus. Our student organizations make the law school hallways an ongoing marketplace of ideas in a really positive sense. And so it's that real community-building aspect.
Erin Keyes (00:50:40):
And the third area is where I spend a lot of my time along with other colleagues is in support and standards. So, probably not surprisingly, when people come to law school, there's a new set of standards and expectations for the things that they need to be able to know, do, and value as future professionals.
Marshall Lichty (00:51:03):
Sure. You came in like this. You're green. And when you get to the end of the way, we know you succeeded if you have accomplished or learned or learn to develop or deploy these things.
Erin Keyes (00:51:11):
Right. And all law schools have their own version of this, but every law school has a set of learning outcomes. And what is it that a student has to know and be able to do by the time they graduate? And so for Minnesota law, our student affairs office and our support and standards role really have to do with helping make sure that students are learning about what those standards are. I always love the idea from a speaker named Wharton Bellamy that if we want to have a more open and accessible and welcoming law school learning environment, we have to be able to give everyone sightlines from the time that they step into law school. How do we help them see the various steps along the way? So there aren't people who've had access to all this information because maybe they have lawyers in their family. We want to make that information accessible to everyone. And I think that that's what the learning outcomes do.
Marshall Lichty (00:52:16):
Can I interrupt for a second because I want to flag some of these because I can tell you, there are a lot of reasons I would fail out of law school these days, but one of them is because everybody who goes to law school is way smarter than like, I, I mean, believe me, all of my classmates were really brilliant, but now, like even the brightest of the bright probably wouldn't get in because it's amazing what, you know, what's happening at the law schools and their level of talent and stuff. But as you know, that's my brief aside, what is not an aside is here are some very ADHD-relevant learning outcomes at the University of Minnesota:
Marshall Lichty (00:52:45):
Communicate directly with organization, focus, purpose, and clarity.
Marshall Lichty (00:52:51):
Listen to and engage with clients to identify client objective objectives and interests.
Marshall Lichty (00:52:56):
Manage complex workflow diligently, reliably, and within deadlines.
Marshall Lichty (00:53:01):
Respond effectively to criticism and other feedback.
Marshall Lichty (00:53:04):
Seek and use resources where necessary to address personal challenges.
Marshall Lichty (00:53:09):
There are others, but these are literally the foundational building blocks of legal education, and they are things that folks with ADHD challenged in their neocortex to do those things effectively. And basically what I want to say in the interest of time and individualized attention is if you are a person who struggles with those things.
Erin Keyes (00:53:34):
Whether or not you're diagnosed with anything...
Marshall Lichty (00:53:40):
Totally. Totally! Regardless of whether you're diagnosed, particularly if you're not diagnosed. You take your ass down to the student affairs office and you take your ass into the Dean of Students and you say, I need help. These are the ways that I am going to accomplish what you want me to accomplish as a law student. And I am struggling and mightily, and I need your help. That is what student affairs do.
Erin Keyes (00:54:03):
And here's an important clarification though. I am not the person and no one on my team is the person who's going to tell a student how specifically to address those particular challenges. I don't have the right letters after my name. I don't have that expertise. What I can do is help them evaluate the many different options that are available to them, either on campus, through the university, or offsite through other specialty clinics or very popular podcasts or get them pointed to Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, which has an ongoing support group. I think going back to that whole cultural piece, being able to sit down and talk with other people who've struggled with ADHD, diagnosed or undiagnosed, and the kinds of manifestations to be able to sit in a room with other really smart people who've had similar challenges can be really empowering.
Erin Keyes (00:55:04):
And I've gotten great feedback from folks who haven't participated in that group. And I don't think you have to show up with a diagnosis to participate. I think you can just show up and join the conversation. Again, I think that sense of empowerment can really help to bolster the sense of efficacy that someone might have when we don't feel like we have power and autonomy, where it makes it hard to make and execute on good decisions. If we have a support group around us, if we are getting a sense of support from our peers, from faculty, from student affairs, or other folks on campus, then it helps to encourage people to actually make good on and actually implement a good idea, which is getting yourself into work with a therapist or pursue a diagnosis or pursuing an evaluation and recognize that there are a ton of options out there.
Marshall Lichty (00:56:07):
The encouragement that I have, and I think that I'm hearing you echo, is really... Just start. If things that I said, and that are obvious in either your career as a lawyer or your burgeoning career as a law student, it becomes obvious there are outcomes that you are struggling with... Just start. Just start the process of figuring out a way to figure out a way. Go to the Dean, go to the Dean of Students, go to student affairs. Sure... go to a therapist.
Marshall Lichty (00:56:36):
I will tell you that the scaffolding that I have built around me since my diagnosis involves an ADHD coach, a therapist, I am now a member of an ADHD entrepreneur mastermind group. I go to the LCL ADHD support group. I have a productivity nerdery that I engage in... All of which is designed very specifically to help me with the tactics of becoming better with some biological impediments to executive function that I have.
Marshall Lichty (00:57:13):
And none of those things is the answer. But they are all part of the answer. And if you are in law school, part of finding your own answer is to start somewhere. Certainly somebody like Erin Keyes or someone in student affairs, but also you know, anyone peer to peer or, therapy or coach or whatever, just start.
Erin Keyes (00:57:34):
Yes, absolutely.
Marshall Lichty (00:57:36):
So I wanna wrap up. Thank you. Thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for bringing your voice to the conversation. I know that you have such a long history of helping people. And what's super meta about it is you actually have a history of helping people who help people with your work on the lawyers repayment assistanct program, which helps people who want to do low bono and less profitable professions actually do them in a way that they can afford without being burdened by law school loans and things like that. And also of course, helping at the law school and elsewhere. Tell me: if you could wave a magic wand, what part of ADHD do you wish that everybody on the planet had.
Erin Keyes (00:58:28):
Curiosity. "Attention deficit" is such a bad description of ADHD because what I have seen in a lot of students and a lot of people with ADHD diagnoses is a real openness to learning and a curiosity about how things work. And, you know, the reality is that once someone's curiosity is piqued, they can hyperfocus and really dive into a topic or a project and do incredible work. And so that sense of curiosity and wonder and interest can be really infectious if it's channeled in a helpful way.
Marshall Lichty (00:59:12):
And it is something just as an aside that our profession desperately needs.
Erin Keyes (00:59:16):
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Marshall Lichty (00:59:18):
And I guess the converse--and I'm not going to end on a down note because I'm then going to tell people how to find you and your awesomeness--but the quasi-downnote is if you could wave the same magic wand and across the whole wide worldb you could make one part of ADHD disappear forever, what part would that be?
Erin Keyes (00:59:37):
Analysis paralysis. That being the sort of trap of sorting through all of the options without landing on an execution? I think that a lot of folks with ADHD--and a lot of us just in life--struggle with that sometimes... Worrying over all of the possible outcomes. And, you know, we're taught to do this in law. But sometimes that means paralysis and getting stuck. And so that's something that if I could wave a wand, I would help people get rid of so they could just "get 'er done," so to speak.
Marshall Lichty (01:00:21):
Just start. And it's the perfectionism, it's the feeling that "I can craft a perfect solution if I just work harder, write longer, research more find one case, spend a bit more time, research one more solution for my law firm's technology solution...
Erin Keyes (01:00:43):
Right. "But have I found the perfect case? Have I found the perfect case?" Yep.
Marshall Lichty (01:00:50):
Yep, and until I do, I'm completely locked up and I can't move. And so I love that idea. You know, it's weird. Folks with ADHD are accused of having impulsiveness. They're accused of making choices really quickly, and yet the way that it manifests itself often times is "I can't start" or "I can't finish." I love that advice.
Marshall Lichty (01:01:08):
Well, Erin Dean Keyes, you are like I said, a soldier in this fight and I appreciate the work that you are doing so much. And I know that you have a lot to add to this conversation and a lot to offer the students who are graced with a University of Minnesota Law School education. I encourage people to track Dean Keyes down on Twitter, where she's medium involved, but you can find her at @Dean_Keyes, or the best way to probably find her is by email and it's keye0019@umn.edu. Erin, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Keep up the wonderful work, please keep talking about this and we will see you along the path.
Erin Keyes (01:02:02):
All right, thanks so much, Marshall, and thanks for keeping this important conversation going. I'm happy to take part and, and as always, I'm always learning as well.
Marshall Lichty (01:02:11):
So, listen, that's Erin Keyes. And that's law school with ADHD. Nd I'm so thankful that she joined me to talk about this stuff. We are just at the beginning of making this easier and making this better.
Erin Keyes (01:02:28):
I gave a speech not terribly long ago to a room full of people at a major law firm in Minneapolis. And as we were getting set up, I had to get some slides set up and the host was there kind of working it out. And a senior partner from that law firm walked by and asked someone what was going on. And they said, "we're going to talk about legal professionals with ADHD." And that guy rolled his eyes and said, "I guess?' And he walked away in a very dismissive way. He is just one person. And I can't lay on all of the senior partners in all of the law firms responsibility for hearing the voices of people with ADHD in our profession, but there is a hill to climb and a hurdle to overcome.
Marshall Lichty (01:03:20):
And it is the fact that there are so many people in our profession who don't understand what ADHD is, how prevalent it is, and what the ramifications of ADHD--diagnosed or undiagnosed--really are for people like us. And so I want to encourage that law firm partner, of course, but also all of you. If you have any sense at all that you or someone around you has ADHD (diagnosed or otherwise) let's be talking about it. Let's listen to Dean Keyes and think about ways that we can make this better in our profession, not just eliminate the bad stuff, but think about what it looks like for us to maximize the good stuff. And so I want to encourage you to go the website to reach out to me, to join the mailing list, to talk to your law schools, talk to your law firms about ADHD, about JDHD, and reach out. I would love to work together and I would love to help make ADHD easier. Law is hard enough. Thank you so much for staying with me, I'll see her on the way.