Wellness – Law Society of Alberta

This competency requires a lawyer to maintain awareness of his or her mental and physical health and wellness and identify ways to maintain a healthy practice. Looking for information regarding COVID-19? Visit our COVID-19 Updates or FAQ.

Resource	Summary
Assist	The mission of the Alberta Lawyers’ Assistance Society is to provide confidential help to lawyers, law students and their immediate families with personal issues.
A Year Into Working Remotely	The move to and continuation of remote working, and the other social restrictions with which we have become all too familiar, are focused on protecting our families, our work families, our clients and society at large.
Competence and Wellness: Ethically Speaking	If competence means doing something successfully or efficiently, a lawyer’s competence includes additional esoteric components.
CPD Tips: Wellness	Wellness is vital to daily living and a key component of competency, as we cannot be competent and help others if we are not well.
Fostering a Healthy Workplace for the LGBTQ Community	Lawyers, law firms, and law societies seeking to create a culture of inclusion and to support LGBTQ colleagues, staff, or clients, may find these tips helpful
Get a Practice Plus-One	If you practice on your own, you may also have noticed how hard it is to take a vacation or just step back from the details of practice for a while.
Helping the Stressed/Distressed Individual	The stress and distress that we experience is the result of many factors including work, family, finances, parenting, health, and fear about the future, to name a few.
Immune-Compromised Work Expectations: Ethically Speaking	What should I do if I’m immune compromised or someone in my family is immune-compromised but I’m still expected to come into work?
Mental Health in the Legal Profession: Your Obligations and How to Help	If you suspect a mental health issue is affecting another lawyer’s practice, what should you do?
Preparing for Parental Leave	Preparing for maternity or parental leave may be a cause of stress and anxiety for both lawyers and law firms.
Q&A on Assist Trends over 25 Years	Alberta Lawyers’ Assistance Society (Assist) has been helping Alberta lawyers for 25 years. Bob Philp, QC, who has served as a director of Assist through this entire period, talks about how the “lawyers helping lawyers” movement has developed during this time.
Stepping Up to the Plate: Psychological First-Aid	Psychological First-Aid (PFA) is an evidence-based intervention designed to reduce an individual’s level of stress or distress and to foster short and long-term adaptive functioning and coping. It is a supportive intervention designed to help the individual help themselves.
The Well-being Matrix: Why Equity, Diversity and Inclusion are Essential to a Healthy Legal Profession	Each day in addition to the rigors of practising law, some of us, because of who we are and how we identify, weigh our words, check our facial expressions, agonize over a hand gesture and, wonder if our setting an otherwise reasonable boundary is being interpreted as rude.
Trends in Assist Usage During the Pandemic	Individual circumstances have caused large variations in individual stress and distress levels. What can we learn about how Alberta lawyers and students are managing?