They're playing my song

Yow! It's as if the ABA Journal called me up and asked me for my picks! Methamphetamine, clinical depression among lawyers, Twin Falls, Idaho... it's a veritable Skelly hit parade!

Flying Under the Radar
- These Little-Noticed Legal Developments Could Be Making News This Year

To make our list, we first determined the most underrated, underreported and unappreciated issues affecting lawyers. And then we thought about how these topics are likely to play out in the future.

Among them:

METH: PUBLIC DRUG ENEMY NO. 1

If you live in a small town and run into problems with the law, methamphetamine may be the first cause that authorities suspect. Some rural justice system officials estimate that the drug is a factor in up to 80 percent of their caseloads...

Drug courts also seem to help, mainly by reducing the number of repeat offenders. These courts focus on intensive programs to help defendants quit meth rather than do jail time.

In Twin Falls, Idaho, the county has operated such a program for three years. Prosecutor Grant P. Loebs says that about 50 percent to 60 percent of those who complete the program are staying clean. Still, he sees usage of the drug in about 90 percent of the county’s presentencing reports....

DEPRESSION TAKES A TOLL

It may not quite be the disease that dares not speak its name, but in the legal profession it comes pretty close.

Where depression is concerned, there is clearly a tendency for individual lawyers, and the profession as a whole, to let it languish in the shadows rather than acknowledge its prevalence and confront the terrible toll it takes.

In a very real sense, the story of lawyers and depression is the quintessential “under the radar” item...

Big arbitrary and capricious thanks to ABAJournal.com and reporters Stephanie Francis Ward and Steven Keeva.