Help Is Within Reach
LCL provides assistance to employers, family members, and others who are concerned about a colleague, a family member, or a friend. Each call is handled confidentially and individually. Our assistance ranges from coaching when you are concerned about another to interventions.
If you are concerned about a lawyer, judge, or law student who appears to be impaired, LCL can provide you with an assessment of the situation and assist you in getting help for your colleague. Call us. We can help you. If you are a lawyer, judge, or law student who is concerned about your family member, LCL will assist them, too. Call us. We can help.
When you become concerned about another, you may be emotionally and behaviorally affected too. LCL can help you understand the illness, see how you and others have been affected, and suggest resources for personal and family support.
Coaching
LCL can guide you in reaching out to another to discuss potential options. You may see that someone needs help but they don‘t realize it and have resisted outreach from you or others. Work or family relationships may be impaired. If the person is open to getting help, encourage them to call LCL, or sit with them and make the call yourself. Some guidelines for reaching out are:
- Learn about the issues you believe may be present.
- Understand you are not to blame for their condition and you are not responsible for their recovery.
- Be calm when you approach them; if you can’t be, wait.
- Consider whether you are enabling the individual by covering up for them, making excuses, or otherwise helping the behavior to continue.
- Be careful of a lecturing tone or using guilt or shame.
- Understand that someone who is dealing with addiction or mental illness may see a different reality than you do.
- Be supportive not only in outreach but during recovery as well. The problem did not occur overnight, and recovery takes time and access to continued resources and support.
- Find support for yourself and don’t give up hope.
Interventions
If the person you are concerned about cannot see the problem, we can help. Trained LCL volunteers can work with you and concerned others to plan and carry out an intervention or provide another method of outreach. By turning to LCL, those who are concerned can focus on what they need to do while LCL facilitates the meeting and helps arrange access to whatever treatment or other assistance is agreed upon. We can also provide referrals to other professional interventionists.