Historically, admission to the practice of law in the US requires applicants to pass a “character and fitness” evaluation administered by state bar licensing authorities. These evaluations often include questionnaires assessing an applicant’s mental health diagnoses or treatment history (as well as other fiscal and legal factors). Prior research indicates such questions discourage treatment-seeking among law students and early-career lawyers who may fear disclosure could jeopardize bar admission or employment. In response, the American Bar Association adopted Resolution 102 in August 2015, urging elimination of questions about mental health diagnoses or treatment in favor of focusing on conduct relevant to professional competence.

Despite the normative importance of this reform, little empirical work has examined whether the policy corresponded with increased mental health treatment utilization among law students. We examined whether Resolution 102 preceded increases in treatment seeking (therapy use) among law students relative to other students from 2007-2019. We utilized the Healthy Minds Network dataset, a nationally representative repeat cross-sectional bi-annual (Spring/Fall semesters per year) survey of US university/college students, that includes self-reported mental health indicators. We specified as our exposure, the timing of Resolution 102, i.e. Fall semester 2015 onward as a binary exposure (1 for post policy period, 0 otherwise). We specified the treated groups as law students (coded as 1) relative to controls (all other students, coded as 0) and conducted a difference-in-difference logistic regression analysis (controlling for age, gender, race, and socioeconomic status).Results show that resolution 102 corresponds with 19% increased odds (p: 0.036) for therapy service utilization in law students relative to others. This increase concentrates in year 2019 (OR: 1.35; p: 0.008), potentially indicating adoption lags.