John Blomster: Welcome to ºìÌÒÊÓƵ. I’m John Blomster. And today we're speaking with Joe Bankman, Ralph M. Parsons Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School. Joe is a leading scholar in tax law as well as a clinical psychologist and lawyer. At Stanford, he teaches mental health law and writes extensively on the intersection of law and psychology. As part of his work, he has developed an innovative course on anxiety psycho-education that is now taught at the Stanford and Yale law schools. And he is here today to speak with us about his efforts to address mental health in legal education.
Joe, thank you very much for joining us.
Joe Bankman: Well, thank you for having me.
Blomster: First off, can you tell us a little bit about your background in clinical psychology and then how you came to practice law here?
Bankman: Well, I actually started off as a lawyer and then a law professor. And after being a law professor and loving it, for decades really, I started to feel that on balance when my students had problems in their career and in law school, it wasn't because they weren't smart enough and it wasn't because they didn't know enough, there was an emotional issue going on. So, I went into psychology in part, so I could work with them on that.
Blomster: Mental health is an issue that we as a legal community struggle with. It's a high-stakes, very pressure packed professional environment. So, for you, why have you directed so many of your efforts to dealing with mental health issues in the legal space in particular?
Bankman: Well, I think it's what you said, John. This is a big problem in law. And if the listeners out there are thinking about what could hurt them in their career, or who hasn't had the career they wanted. Often there's emotional resilience, mental health reasons for it. So, I think for a lot of us, this is where actually the marginal gains are easiest to pick up.
Blomster: For students specifically, What challenges do you see them dealing with most common, would you say?
Bankman: Well, first of all, it's hard to be a student. It's a lousy time and we know that being a student, being in say your early 20s is actually a tough time because you can do everything and nothing. Your future looks limitless, but you don't know in what direction and that's actually not conducive to happiness. So, it's a tough time being, it's a tough time being a law student, you've got to worry about getting a good job out there. Having said all of that, the big problem most people have is in law school is a big problem they had before law school, it's things like anxiety and depression.
Blomster: Do you think its inherent to the nature of the legal profession and law school that those issues are amplified? Or is it just they—or do they just exhibit in different ways?
Bankman: I do think they're amplified a little bit. I mean, if you think about anxiety, we have something called performance anxiety. Everybody's watching you, but in law people that are socially anxious feel very conscious of people evaluating them. They feel they're always being evaluated. But in law, not only might you feel that, but you are being evaluated, and there's someone else in the room whose sole goal is to make you look bad. Wow. I mean, if you're in a court room or you're doing a deal, someone else really does want to make you look bad. So that's going to ramp up whatever anxiety you have.
Blomster: It'd be like someone sitting across the table from me while I'm podcasting, just telling me everything I'm doing wrong about the podcast.
Bankman: Yeah.
Blomster: It’s terrifying.
Bankman: Saying there's a better podcast over there.
Blomster: Exactly. Right. How is it possible to reconcile the combative nature of  litigation when you run the risk of internalizing what happens in the courtroom and having that kind of seep into the rest of your life? How do you, how do you reconcile that and separate?
Bankman: Yeah, well, I think you've gotta draw boundaries between one area of your life and the others. And there's a lot of techniques that can help you. There's no one answer. For some people, mindfulness can help them because when you're mindful, it's easier to treat things that happen as external and not actually representing the core of your being. The core of your being didn't get threatened in the court room. This other thing happened.
Cognitive behavioral therapy and techniques—really just avoiding catastrophizing. Using logic on yourself, that can help. Positive psychology and doing things that make you feel good, as corny as that sounds, lots of evidence that that works. And how about exercise, and I sometimes call that the magic pill. We all carry in our back pocket, but sometimes don't use that can help too.
Blomster: So, in partnership with a number of your colleagues, you developed a pilot psycho-education program that you're here speaking to our faculty about today, based on the cognitive behavioral model of anxiety. How did you go about developing that class? And in a broad sense, why is this such a unique program to focus on?
Bankman: Well, you know, I'm a psychologist. And as I was going through my training, I was already a law professor. So, every time I heard something, I thought, what's going to be most useful to my students? So, the class is really like a greatest hits in CBD or CBD for people without much time at all. And so I tried to distill it down and I think I got a fair portion of it in just an hour at least in psycho education. But other people aren't going to do it because how many people would have the accident of being a law professor and having my training?
Blomster: How do you feel that being a psychologist influences your work as a scholar, as a lawyer and as a lawyer Professor?
Bankman: I think it really aids it. You know, even before I got my degree, I was interested—I’m a tax scholar—but I'm really interested in things like who cheats and why? Or, why do we hate filing taxes? What makes us hate that so much? And those are really psychological questions.
So, I think it's made me just a little bit more cognizant of the role that our emotions play in how we behave.
Blomster: We spoke before about some of the kind of tools and techniques that you offer to students as a, you know, resources. Can you talk a little bit about what those would be? I know that we spoke about some of them earlier, but I know that there are much more broad resources available as well.
Bankman: Yeah, well, first of all, in any campus and University of Washington is no exception, you've got centers for mindfulness and meditation. And for students and listeners out there, if you haven't explored that, spend a few hours doing it. There's just overwhelming evidence, it'll make you a better student, a happier person, actually. So, that's a pretty wild claim for someone to tell you, but I'm telling it to you. So, that's one of the resources that anybody listening that could change your life a little bit, just by doing that.
Blomster: If I'm a law student, though, and I'm hearing this I mean, I got classes, I got clinical work. This all sounds well and good, but like, I don't have time. What do you say to your students who are experiencing that and are pushing back?
Bankman: That is the great question because to some extent we're our own worst enemy. And when we get anxious, we feel pressed, we get depressed, we quit doing what actually makes us do things better. So, what I try to tell people is it's a trap. It's a trap in the hear and now. It's not clear it’s even better for tomorrow. But it's certainly much worse for four months if you don't take care of yourself. And so what I try to get people to do is take the long view, think where you want to be in two years to be successful professionally. Being in charge of your emotions, being happy, having a sense of self efficacy, it's going to be so important. It's going to give you confidence. So, this is the thing you should do for your career.
Blomster: What is the transition from being a law student to becoming a lawyer, or someone practicing in the legal field, what kind of impact does that transition have on people's mental health? Because I would imagine that when you think once I get past this one major goal, then things are going to change. What do you see in your work?
Bankman: Well, everyone is so different, and everyone that's listening is going to have a different reaction. But I think as your question asks, if you have problems now of emotion regulation, if you're too anxious, if you're depressed, if you're not feeling fulfilled, you probably won't feel fulfilled after graduation either, because it's another stressful time. And after that, they'll come another stressful time. So, you really have to develop within yourself these ways of enjoying every moment.
Blomster: The work you're doing in this space is obviously very important. And also, it's something that is really just now coming to the surface as a top of mind conversation, given the stigmas around, you know, mental health. What is the biggest challenge that you see in terms of spreading this message to a broader audience within the legal community in specific?
Bankman: You know, it's a great question. Everybody is interested in the message. That's the great news. The bad news is we really don't know how to spread it. And we really don't know how to convince people to act on it. So, your last question is said in effect, I feel too pressed to take this into account. I hear you, but I can't do this now. That's the problem. We actually have, it's odd, we actually have the solution. But we can't get people to take the pill, so to speak. There's lots of solutions. I could divide one for almost all of the listeners, if I had limitless time—probably would work. You'd be a little bit of back and forth to figure out what worked for you say you, john, Jut we could do it. But we don't know how to convince people to give us a chance.
Blomster: And then finally, we work with students at all levels, including prospective students or you know, the new incoming class that we just welcomed this fall. If you could give one piece of advice to an overwhelmed, scared, first incoming 1L, what would that be?
Bankman: Can I make it two?
Blomster: You can absolutely make it two.
Bankman: Everyone feels like you do. That's the first piece of advice. And the second is, think about the long term. The long term is you'll be graduating and what will make a meaningful life for you. And if you focus on building a meaningful life, a lot of things that happened in law school, you can look at with a better perspective.
Blomster: Joe Bankman is Ralph M. Parsons Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School. He is a tax scholar, clinical psychologist and lawyer who is an expert on issues central to the intersection of law and psychology in legal education. You can learn more about his work at law.stanford.edu and we will put links in our show notes for additional resources and information.
Joe, thank you very much for joining us today.
Bankman: Thank you.
