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A Conversation About Wellness with MBA President Sarinia M. Feinman, Esq. By Jason Edwards, Esq., and James G. Schu, Jr., Esq., MBA Leadership Academy
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e both had the great pleasure as members of the MBA’s 2021 Leadership Academy to research the topic of wellness within the legal field and potential solutions and present our findings to the MBA Board of Directors. Attorneys suffered from high rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, since March 2020 those trends have been exacerbated and the stress of the legal field for some has compounded. According to ALM’s Mental Health and Substance Abuse Survey, last year 31.2% of the more than 3,800 respondents felt they were depressed, 64% felt anxiety, 10.1% felt they had an alcohol problem and 2.8% felt they had a drug problem. The MBA saw this time of major disruption and upheaval as an opportunity to evaluate wellness within the legal field and how the MBA could be a resource for its members. “The pandemic thrust us all into a world where we were living and working in the same place, blurring the lines and boundaries, and with a focus on wellness,” said MBA president Sarinia M. Feinman, Esquire, in a recent interview on the MBA’s wellness initiatives. “I am hoping to help our members reinstate some of those boundaries or establish them if they never had them before.” In response, the MBA has created an Ad-Hoc Wellness Committee, chaired by Anita Seth and Matthew Vahey, and
has made wellness a priority for the entire MBA. To learn more about the MBA’s wellness initiatives, we interviewed MBA President Feinman. (Q) Your incoming President’s message was focused in large part on the idea of wellness among MBA members. What prompted you to want to make wellness a focus of your tenure as President, and how has the pandemic helped inspire your interest in wellness as a main focus of your tenure as MBA President? (A) If there is anything we have learned during the pandemic, it is that we really need to take care of ourselves if we are going to be any good for our clients and our families. Addiction, depression, anxiety, and mental illness are prevalent in today’s society and especially among professionals. If we don’t take the time to reset ourselves, and find ways to separate from our work, we are all going to burn out. The pandemic thrust us all into a world where we were living and working in the same place, blurring the lines and boundaries, and with a focus on wellness, I am hoping to help our members reinstate some of those boundaries or establish them if they never had them before. Life in the legal arena is challenging enough in “normal” times; today’s unpredictable environment brings those challenges to a whole new level. Surviving and thriving will require a level of attention to our own self-care, as well as to our connections to each other, as never before. continued on next page > SUMMER 2022 25
