These days, when it comes to mental well-being in legal academia, we have gotten better at asking how law students are faring. But when was the last time we stopped to ask: Are law professors OK?

Last week, we did just that at the annual Institute for Well-Being in Law Conference, where I joined co-panelist Shailini George and moderator Kara Perry. Kara started with a grounding exercise—a show-don’t-tell example of how small, embodied practices can help us arrive fully in the moment. Shailini tackled the institutional constraints shaping faculty stress, including the inequities between different faculty ranks. I explored the issue with this question: How do we move beyond surface-level interventions to address the deeper forces impacting law professor well-being?

Law schools have started paying more attention to well-being, but many of the current solutions focus on managing stress rather than addressing its root causes. In this post, I want to challenge how we think about law professor well-being, explain why these common solutions often fall short, and offer a trauma-informed reframe that invites a more holistic conversation.

Why “Well-Being” Isn’t Enough

More than ever, law schools are rolling out creative initiatives to address well-being in the profession—from meditation rooms and therapy dog sessions to full-on for-credit courses on leadership, mindfulness, and lawyer well-being.

While these efforts primarily target students, there are also initiatives aimed at faculty and staff, including efforts to mitigate overwork, encourage mindfulness, and promote self-care. These interventions are well-intended and, in some cases, genuinely helpful. But they only scratch the surface of the problem. They fail to address the deeper, systemic forces at play.

This well-being model assumes that individual interventions —meditation, mindset shifts, and self-care—are enough to counteract the stress of legal academia. But my own experience has taught me that while these tools can be powerful, they are not always sufficient—especially when well-being spaces themselves reinforce exclusion.

Let’s just take mindfulness as one example. I am a serious, long-time meditator who recently completed two years of mindfulness training with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s program. I know firsthand the benefits of meditation, not just as a tool for stress reduction but as a way of deepening awareness and resilience.

I also know that not all well-being spaces are built to hold the full range of human experience. Too often, the very places meant to foster presence and healing become spaces where discomfort is silenced rather than explored—where “well-being” is defined by the comfort of the majority rather than by a genuine willingness to sit with difficult truths.

I was reminded of this on Inauguration Day when I logged into my usual meditation group—a community I had practiced with almost daily for two years. I was feeling unsettled, but I knew I needed to be there. During our post-meditation check-in, another Black woman spoke about how terrified she felt in her own country and what she was doing to prioritize her self-care.

Before I could respond, two White women interjected, insisting that the meditation space was not the place for discussing “outside issues.”

There is a lot I could say about the experience, but I will content myself with this: I still have a daily meditation practice, but I will never step foot in that space again.

This moment reinforced something I see in legal academia: The emphasis on “well-being” often prioritizes the comfort of the majority over the actual needs of those experiencing the most stress.

For all the praise we give meditation—and mindfulness specifically—these spaces can become tools of avoidance rather than tools of transformation. What law schools might learn from my experience is that well-being is not about avoiding discomfort but rather expanding our capacity to hold it.

If we want to move beyond surface-level interventions, we need to begin asking: Are we diagnosing the problem correctly? Or are we treating symptoms while ignoring the structural causes of law professor burnout?

It’s Not Just Overwork: Understanding the Real Drivers of Faculty Burnout

There is no question that the legal profession glorifies overwork. But lest we forget, we are the legal profession, which means we glorify it too—myself included. Lately, I have been putting in 14-hour days on a writing project no one asked for; it is a pure passion project. I do not call that overwork—I call it the end of my writer’s block. I call it joy. When people tell me I am working too hard, I know they are missing something: the deep internal rewards I get from my work, not to mention the external benefits of getting my ideas out into the world.

From my perspective, one of the most striking flaws in the well-being discourse is the assumption that work itself is the stressor. This framing is misleading. We each have different capacities for work before stress becomes harmful, and that capacity is shaped by multiple factors, including nervous system regulation, personal history, and external sociocultural pressures.

Thus, the prevailing assumption that work itself is the primary stressor in legal academia is an oversimplification. In reality, stress arises from the complex interplay of our nervous system, institutional environments, and unspoken obligations.

Nervous System Regulation

Our nervous system is constantly scanning the environment, determining whether we are safe or under threat—a process called neuroception. When we feel secure, our bodies remain in a balanced state, allowing us to focus, engage, and recover from challenges. But in high-pressure environments, our nervous system can become dysregulated, triggering chronic stress responses that make everything—teaching, writing, mentoring—feel exponentially harder.

For law professors, stress is not just about workload; it’s about how the body processes and reacts to the institutional culture we work in. Faculty navigating hierarchical power structures, student demands, institutional inequities, and political tensions may find their nervous systems stuck in a state of chronic hyperarousal (fight-or-flight) or hypoarousal (shutdown and exhaustion).

Take, for example, a professor teaching immigration law in a politically charged climate. A simple discussion can quickly escalate into an ideological battle in the classroom. If that professor already feels unsupported by their administration or under scrutiny as a faculty member (e.g., pre-tenure or a legal writing professor with few contractual protections) their nervous system may interpret these moments as high-stakes threats rather than routine challenges. This leads to persistent stress, emotional exhaustion, and even physical symptoms like fatigue, insomnia, or brain fog.

Institutional Environment

The structure and culture of legal academia do not affect all faculty equally. While all law professors experience professional stressors—publish-or-perish demands, heavy teaching loads, and administrative pressures—faculty from marginalized backgrounds, particularly women of color, face additional burdens that compound these challenges.

In Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia, Professor Meera Deo documents the systemic biases that disproportionately impact women of color in the legal academy. Drawing on empirical research, she highlights how these faculty members frequently encounter heightened scrutiny, tokenism, and isolation—stressors that go beyond the typical workload and directly affect well-being.

Faculty of color, especially women, are often presumed incompetent by students and colleagues alike. Deo’s interviews reveal how professors who are women of color routinely have their authority challenged in the classroom—particularly by White male students who “test” their expertise with confrontational questioning, disruptive behavior, or outright dismissal.

Beyond the classroom, the same pattern continues in faculty meetings. One study participant, Carla, describes the experience of “he-splaining”—a familiar scenario in which a woman makes a point that is ignored, only for a male colleague to repeat it and receive credit:

“I’ve counted over ten times on my faculty where I’ve said something and a male faculty has repeated it and another male colleague has said, ‘Good idea!’”

Moreover, Deo’s study documents disturbing instances where students felt emboldened to openly mock women of color professors. In one case, an end-of-term skit featured students caricaturing a Black woman faculty member, ridiculing her as “cold” and claiming she had a “chip on her shoulder.” That students were comfortable airing these critiques in a public setting—without fear of professional consequences—underscores the persistent racial and gender hierarchies in legal academia.

This constant need to prove legitimacy adds an additional cognitive and emotional burden, exacerbating stress in ways that standard well-being initiatives fail to acknowledge.

The law school environment remains structurally hostile to diversity, and the mere presence of more faculty of color has not meaningfully shifted student or faculty attitudes. Deo argues that numerical diversity is not enough—it does not automatically create inclusive or supportive environments.

Unspoken Obligations: The Burden of Invisible Labor

In addition to their formal teaching, research, and administrative responsibilities, women faculty—and particularly women of color—are expected to take on a disproportionate share of invisible labor in legal academia. These unwritten expectations manifest in multiple ways, from mentoring students of color to leading diversity initiatives, all while navigating institutional cultures that undervalue and often exploit this additional work.

Women of color law professors frequently serve as de facto mentors and support systems for students from historically excluded backgrounds. While mentoring is a critical part of legal education, these faculty members often take on far more of this work than their White male colleagues—and with little to no institutional recognition or compensation.

Meera Deo’s research in Unequal Profession reveals that many students actively seek out faculty who share their racial or gender identity for guidance. However, this means that women of color faculty take on significantly higher levels of informal advising, often addressing not just academic concerns but also personal struggles, identity-based challenges, and systemic barriers their students face.

Faculty of color often describe long lines outside their office doors, filled with students seeking advice, reassurance, or simply a safe space in an institution that feels hostile. Theses added responsibilities can consume enormous amounts of time and energy, leaving less capacity for research, writing, and career advancement.

While these efforts can be personally fulfilling, the labor is not evenly distributed—many White male colleagues simply do not receive the same volume of mentorship requests, nor are they expected to provide emotional support in the same way.

In summary, the data suggests that for law professors the real problem is not simply that law professors work too much. It is not merely the volume of work that leads to stress but how that work interacts with the body, the institution, and the unspoken demands placed on faculty members.

The dominant well-being discourse in legal academia focuses on individual resilience—how professors can manage their time more efficiently, implement better self-care routines, or adopt stress-reduction techniques like meditation. But these approaches fail to acknowledge the deeper realities that shape law professor stress.

Stress is Not “All in Our Heads”

It has become fashionable to claim that omitting the word stress from our vocabulary would make it disappear. This idea is not only overly simplistic—it is scientifically inaccurate. The notion that stress is merely a cognitive construct ignores what we now understand about the mind-body connection and how external, systemic forces shape individual experiences of stress and trauma.

The Mind-Body Connection: Stress is Physiological, Not Just Psychological

For decades, the medical profession has dismissed certain conditions—particularly those disproportionately affecting women and marginalized communities—as being all in their heads. From hysteria diagnoses in the 19th century to the dismissal of chronic pain and autoimmune disorders today, the tendency to delegitimize subjective experiences of distress is well-documented in the literature. But current research in the fields of trauma and neuroscience serves as an effective counterpoint:

• Bessel van der Kolk’s work in The Body Keeps the Score (2014) demonstrates how trauma and chronic stress are stored in the body, impacting everything from immune function to cognitive performance.
• Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (Our Polyvagal World: How Safety and Trauma Change Us, 2023) explains how chronic exposure to stress keeps the nervous system in a state of dysregulation, making it harder for individuals to access higher-order thinking, emotional regulation, and even basic rest.
• Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work on emotions and brain function shows that stress is not merely a perception problem—it has measurable biological consequences, influencing hormone regulation, cardiovascular function, and memory. (How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)).

In short, if stress is “in our heads,” then it is also in our bodies. No amount of rebranding or avoiding the term will change the physiological effects of chronic stress exposure, particularly for those experiencing systemic oppression.

Faculty Well-Being in an Era of Political and Institutional Backlash

Beyond the biological reality of stress, there is a deeper social and structural failure embedded in the claim that stress is primarily a mindset issue. This perspective conveniently ignores the power imbalances, institutional hierarchies, and racialized and gendered dynamics that make legal academia an inherently high-stress environment for many faculty members.

Legal academia is not an emotionally neutral space. As Meera Deo highlights in Unequal Profession, women and faculty of color experience higher levels of scrutiny, student resistance, and institutional neglect compared to their White male colleagues. Stress is not simply an individual response; it is a byproduct of navigating structural inequities.

For example, in the current climate faculty members who teach in politically charged areas (e.g., constitutional law, immigration law, critical race theory) can find themselves targeted by students, alumni, and even legislators. A recent Harvard Law School report highlighted the fear and uncertainty these concerns can cause:

Many Harvard faculty members and instructors, particularly untenured and non-ladder instructors, also reported reluctance to discuss controversial subjects inside and outside the classroom. While 59 percent of survey respondents reported that they are comfortable pursuing research on a controversial topic, only 49 percent reported that they are comfortable leading a classroom discussion about controversial issues; 32 percent reported that they are comfortable discussing such issues outside of the classroom. They cited potential damage to their professional standing as the reason for their reluctance, in particular, the prospect of negative teaching evaluations, the possibility of contract nonrenewal or tenure denial, the potential for criticism on social media, and the possibility that difficult conversations might trigger complaints about bullying and harassment.

In short, stress is not just an internal reaction—it is an institutional and political reality. Mindset shifts, mindfulness sessions, and stress-management workshops may all offer temporary relief, but they fail to address the root causes of faculty distress. What is missing from these discussions is a trauma-informed approach.

Rethinking Well-Being: Why Trauma Belongs In The Conversation

My work integrates trauma-informed principles into legal education to transform institutional approaches to well-being. Rather than relying on outdated models that frame stress as an individual burden, I advocate for systemic solutions that foster resilience, promote equity, and embed collective care into the policies and culture of the campus community.

If there is one thing that trauma research—and my own lived experience—makes clear, it is this: Well-being is not something we achieve. It is our natural birthright.

Yet, the way we structure our institutions often obscures this reality. Legal academia has long framed well-being as an individual pursuit—something faculty must cultivate through personal discipline rather than institutional support. This framing ignores how institutional culture, systemic inequities, and chronic exposure to trauma shape our stress response.

Instead of asking “How do we achieve well-being?” I maintain what we should be asking is:

✔ What gets in the way of our well-being?

✔ What is our capacity to heal—not just as individuals, but as institutions?

What Gets in the Way

Throughout this post, I have emphasized that “what gets in the way” of faculty well-being is often institutional stressors—including structural inequities, student resistance, and uncompensated labor. These factors create an environment where stress is not just temporary, but chronic and cumulative.

Not all work-related stress is the same. A difficult semester may cause acute stress, but systemic burnout arises when faculty face persistent exposure to these structural challenges, leaving them in a state of exhaustion with little opportunity for recovery. Chronic stress fundamentally alters brain function, weakening key cognitive abilities:

✔ Executive function – Impaired ability to plan, organize, and think critically.

✔ Emotional regulation – Increased difficulty managing frustration, anxiety, and self-doubt.

✔ Memory and learning – Reduced information retention and cognitive flexibility, making focus and engagement more difficult.

Left unaddressed, this ongoing stress not only harms faculty well-being but also weakens institutions themselves. Addressing these barriers requires more than individual coping strategies—it demands a fundamental shift in how legal academia supports its faculty.

What Is Our Capacity To Heal—Not Just As Individuals But As Institutions

I think part of our attraction to simply eliminating words from our vocabulary—whether it is stress or trauma—stems from a deep pessimism that we can never truly heal or protect ourselves from their effects. If suffering is inevitable, why name it? Why acknowledge something we feel powerless to change?

But this is untrue. Healing is possible—whether for the individual or the institution. And while systemic change is critical, faculty also have the power to build resilience, regulate stress, and reclaim autonomy over their well-being.

How Trauma-Informed Practices Can Address Faculty Stressors

Recognizing the Emotional Toll of Trauma and Understanding Nervous System Regulation

The legal profession is deeply analytical—we are trained to engage with problems logically, breaking them down into their component parts. Faculty, in particular, are conditioned to intellectualize stress, often attributing burnout to personal failures: I should have exercised more. I should be able to handle this workload better. I should just toughen up.

Trauma research tells us otherwise. Chronic stress is not a matter of mental toughness—it is a physiological response, shaped by neurological pathways, autonomic nervous system regulation, and cumulative emotional load.

• Understanding stress as a physiological condition rather than a personal failing helps law professors shift from self-blame to self-awareness.
• Recognizing how the nervous system responds to prolonged stress allows faculty to develop effective regulation strategies, rather than trying to “push through” exhaustion or anxiety.

A top-down understanding (intellectual knowledge of trauma and stress) is only the first step. True healing requires embodied practices that restore balance to the nervous system—giving faculty the ability to self-regulate rather than cycle between hypervigilance and collapse.

Reclaiming Autonomy: Why Agency is Essential to Healing

A central concept in trauma recovery is regaining a sense of control over one’s own fate. As Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, even in the most extreme conditions, the ability to define one’s own response to suffering is essential to resilience.

For faculty, this means:

• Developing self-care practices that are viewed not as indulgences but as mental hygiene—structured habits that maintain cognitive clarity, emotional balance, and physical health.
• Prioritizing boundaries and energy management—recognizing that rest and recovery are not luxuries, but prerequisites for sustainable engagement in teaching, research, and advocacy.
• Strengthening the connection between individual well-being and collective action—not as a substitute for institutional change, but as a necessary foundation for having the stamina to demand it.

Creating Spaces for Processing & Healing

Legal academia does not typically acknowledge the emotional weight of teaching, yet faculty—especially those in clinical, legal writing, and public interest fields—often bear witness to student trauma, systemic injustices, and the emotional burden of struggling students.

Faculty cannot carry these burdens indefinitely without consequences. Trauma-informed strategies emphasize the importance of structured spaces for debriefing and emotional processing, allowing faculty to:

• Reflect on and process emotionally heavy teaching experiences.
• Develop peer support networks to counteract isolation and burnout.
• Engage in structured training to mitigate the long-term effects of secondary trauma.

Healing at the individual level is not a distraction from systemic reform—it is a prerequisite for it. Faculty cannot push for institutional change if they are depleted, isolated, or locked in cycles of chronic stress and dysregulation.

How Trauma-Informed Practices Can Address Institutional Stressors

While individual faculty members can take steps to regulate stress and build resilience, true well-being in legal academia cannot be achieved in the absence of institutional accountability. Without systemic reform, faculty will continue to bear the burden of chronic stress, emotional labor, and burnout, while institutions offer self-care rhetoric instead of real change.

A trauma-informed legal academy is one that:

✔ Recognizes institutional stressors rather than placing responsibility on individuals.

✔ Implements policies that reduce harm rather than expecting faculty to endure it.

✔ Creates structures that foster resilience, equity, and collective well-being.

Recognizing the Structural Causes of Faculty Stress

A trauma-informed institution acknowledges that faculty well-being is not just a matter of workload—it is shaped by institutional policies, power dynamics, and systemic inequities. Many of these stressors cannot be undone overnight, but a trauma-informed approach does not ignore them. Instead, it names them, examines their impact, and actively works toward meaningful solutions.

While this post cannot cover every structural challenge, some of the most pressing institutional stressors include:

• Job Insecurity for Non-Tenured and Contingent Faculty – Faculty in non-tenure-track positions face constant uncertainty about their employment status, making it difficult to plan long-term research, advocate for change, or prioritize well-being.
• Unrealistic Work Expectations – The pressure to publish, secure funding, mentor students, and serve on committees—often without institutional support—leads to chronic overwork, exhaustion, and emotional depletion.
• Uncompensated Emotional Labor – Faculty, particularly women and faculty of color, carry a disproportionate share of mentoring, advising, and diversity-related responsibilities, often without recognition, compensation, or workload adjustments.
• Student Bias & Classroom Authority – Women, faculty of color, and LGBTQ+ professors face more frequent challenges to their authority, leading to chronic stress and the constant burden of proving their credibility.

A trauma-informed institution does not simply acknowledge these realities—it takes action to reduce harm and build systems that support faculty well-being in meaningful, lasting ways.

Building Systems That Reduce Institutional Harm

A trauma-informed legal academy must move beyond rhetoric and take concrete action to reduce institutional stressors that contribute to faculty burnout and emotional exhaustion. This means restructuring policies, power hierarchies, and evaluation systems to foster sustainable faculty well-being, rather than treating exhaustion as an unavoidable consequence of the profession. A trauma-informed institution does not just offer resources—it fundamentally shifts its culture to recognize that well-being is a collective, institutional responsibility, not an individual burden.

While this post does not cover every necessary structural change, the research is clear: faculty well-being cannot improve without addressing job security for contingent faculty and reducing administrative and mentoring burdens that disproportionately fall on certain groups. Institutions must also adopt holistic faculty evaluation models that recognize teaching, mentorship, and service as equally valuable to institutional success as research output.

To address the impact of trauma, essential trauma-informed reforms include:

✔ Trauma-Informed Pedagogical Training – Develop faculty training programs to help professors navigate emotionally charged classroom discussions and manage student trauma without sacrificing their own well-being.

✔ Structured Faculty Debriefing & Reflection Spaces – Establish regular spaces for faculty to discuss challenges, share emotional burdens, and collectively strategize responses to institutional stressors.

✔ Administrative Accountability for Well-Being – Establish faculty well-being oversight committees with the authority to recommend and implement systemic reforms that prioritize long-term institutional change over superficial fixes.

Conclusion

Well-being in legal academia is not just an individual pursuit—it is an institutional responsibility. Without meaningful change, well-being initiatives will remain superficial, offering coping strategies while faculty continue to bear the weight of systemic stress and burnout.

But transformation is possible. A trauma-informed legal academy can shift from reactive to proactive, building structures that support faculty well-being rather than leaving individuals to manage stress alone.

The question is not whether faculty can be more resilient—but whether legal academia is ready to evolve so that resilience is no longer the price of survival, but a foundation for thriving.