Anna Levine, the director of the New Jersey Lawyers Assistance Program (NJLAP), has been on the job for nearly two months and has already hit the ground running, meeting key players and planning ways to expand and develop the program. 
She’s also in the process of moving to New Jersey from Massachusetts, where she was the executive director of the Massachusetts Lawyers Assistance Program, known as Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers (LCL).
So, it’s understandable that her office at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick isn’t quite set up; the bookshelves not yet completely filled with volumes from her personal collection.
On a recent visit, she talked about her journey in the legal and recovery fields, and her vision for leading NJLAP, a free, confidential and independent program that assists attorneys, judges and law students struggling with alcohol and substance use disorders, stress, depression and other mental health and behavioral issues.
“Lawyers are committed and dedicated to their work, and they really want to help people. No matter your area of practice, whether you’re helping someone start a business and get venture capital, or you’re taking them through a divorce or you’re trying to save them from the electric chair, you are trying to help them with a problem or help them prevent a problem,” she said.
But, Levine added, sometimes forging an identity of always “being the one with the answers” and wanting to be seen as strong, makes it difficult for lawyers to ask for help.
Levine plans to extend outreach in New Jersey’s legal community; strengthen alliances with New Jersey’s recovering lawyers’ community, which includes New Jersey Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers; and hold a recovery summit at the Law Center. Part of the event would be devoted to participants telling their personal stories about alcoholism and recovery.
Levine sees potential partnerships with large firms that have signed the American Bar Association’s Well-Being Pledge, which affirms their commitment to improve lawyer well-being.
“Most large law firms will do educational brown-bag lunches. It would be great to go to those and do presentations on mental health or substance-use topics of relevance to the people who work there. It could be educational and a way to let people know about the resources available within NJLAP, because what we do is not just meet one-on-one with people— although that’s a great resource for people who need to talk about what’s going on with them—but also go out and give programs,” she said.
Levine also wants to help attorneys avoid discipline issues, which she said often starts with something small that they could have resolved if they had addressed it. Sometimes those issues and difficulties managing a practice obscure or are entangled with other kinds of struggles an individual may be dealing with.
“If your practice is falling apart and you’re depressed, you might start drinking a lot. Or vice versa, maybe your practice is falling apart because you’re drinking a lot,” she said.
Discovering the law and LAP
Levine took a circuitous route to a career in law and the recovery field. She grew up in West Berlin, Germany, and Seattle, before attending Columbia University. With an eye toward a career in environmental waste policy, she earned master’s degrees from Kyoto University and the University of Washington. At Western New England College School of Law, she planned to become an environmental lawyer, but discovered an aptitude and interest in tax law and finance. She also came to another realization about herself.
“In my third year in law school I decided I wanted to live a life free of drugs and alcohol,” Levine said.
After law school, she got involved with the local LCL group and worked for several years at a large regional law firm in the business and finance department before working with her husband in the firm they co-founded in Springfield, Mass.
Building on NJLAP
Levine takes the helm of an organization that was led by William J. Kane, who helped establish it in 1993, and who retired last month. She was enthusiastic in her praise for Kane and is excited about working with an “amazing team.”
“My predecessor did a great job and I want to build on what he created,” Levine said.
Robert Nies, who recently concluded his term as chair of the NJLAP Board of Trustees, said, “She has an exceptional experience record in the LAP field. When we interviewed her, everybody was just unanimously impressed by her organizational skills, her vision for what LAP would be in the future, her desire to put her own stamp on this.”
Levine is an active member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs Advisory Committee and is busy co-writing a book, Addressing Substance Abuse and Mental Health Issues Within the Legal Profession.
Seated in her office, Levine paused to reflect on the nature of her work.
“What I like about work like this is it’s really a combination of stuff I really enjoy, the passion about the issues and helping people. I really love doing that. But I also like the administrative. I like managing a program and developing techniques and mechanisms to make a machine function well.”
To contact NJLAP, call 800-246-5527 or visit njlap.org.