South Carolina

Joseph Bias: Welcome y’all to the Direct Examination Podcast! My name is Joseph Bias.

Dane Phillips: I’m Dane Phillips.

Joseph Bias: Dane, how the heck are you?

Dane Phillips: I’m doing amazing. Once I hear your version of Batesburg-Leesville, it just warms the soul.

Joseph Bias: Amber is not with us this week. Work called to her, so me and Dane are attempting…

Dane Phillips: Are you telling me that lawyers don’t work 9 to 5?

Joseph Bias: You know what? I feel like we’ll talk about this in today’s episode. If you’re looking at the show notes today, you know what we’re talking about.

Dane Phillips: I cheated! That’s how you’re looking ahead.

Joseph Bias: If you are listening to this, we really appreciate you listening. Give us a 5-star rating and review on iTunes—or Apple Podcasts, I think it’s actually called now. Give us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts…

Dane Phillips: Google Podcasts.

Joseph Bias: Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you listen to us, say nice things about us. We really appreciate it, and we appreciate the feedback that we’ve gotten so far. If you’re listening to this in Columbia—actually really anywhere, but especially in Columbia—we have a local publication called the Free Times. Free Times nominated my colleague, my co-host, my friend Dane Phillips for DUI Lawyer of the Year in Columbia, South Carolina. So, we will put the link on our Twitter and Facebook pages. Follow that link. We have hundreds of people who listen to us each week, hundreds of folks who follow us on social media, which means there’s absolutely no excuse why Dane shouldn’t get this recognition as the best DUI lawyer in Columbia, because he is in fact the best DUI lawyer in Columbia.

Dane Phillips: All I’ll say is… (sighs)

Joseph Bias: Dane didn’t campaign for himself, so I’m doing it for him!

Dane Phillips: Yeah, I’m trying not to do the whole begging for votes, but I will beg for votes. If you just go and look at how passionate I am about defending the accused, then there’s only one person to vote for.

Joseph Bias: Dane is looking at this as his own Miss South Carolina pageant, so he has agreed that if he gets this award, we will take a picture of him wearing a sash and a tiara. He has said that, it’s going to go forward…

Dane Phillips: Did I?

Joseph Bias: Yes, you did! It’s already recorded, you can’t take it back. So, if you want to see Dane with a sash and a tiara saying “Best DUI Attorney,” please vote for him and we will treat you all with that picture—or punish you with that picture, depending on how you look at it!

Dane Phillips: It’s a punishment, but would still be amusing nonetheless.

Joseph Bias: Absolutely. We have a good time on this podcast, but we have a serious topic with possibly one of the best guests to do it. Our guest today is the Director of Risk Management for the South Carolina Bar. In that role, she administers and supervises the Bar’s Lawyer Mentoring Program, which we’ll talk about a bit, as well as operates the Ethics Hotline. She’s a graduate of the USC School of Law and received the school’s Complete Lawyer Award in 2018, which is the highest award that an alumni can get from the school. She was also the South Carolina Bar Young Lawyer of the Year in 2016, before the standards for that award went way down. She is the Chair of the Board of the RAM Foundation, which offers a 6-week summer enrichment program to underprivileged youth in Richland County. She is now one of the latest members of our Two-Timers Club. We inducted Dickey earlier this season, and so now we’re inducting Nikki Davis. Ms. Davis, thanks for joining us. She has a blog that she’s going to talk about today, The Anxious Attorney. We’ll talk about it again at the end of the episode, but if you go on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, you can follow her @theanxiousattorney.

Dane Phillips: Like, share, follow.

Joseph Bias: Absolutely. Let’s give her the podcast bump. We are welcoming Nikki Davis. Nikki, thanks for joining us again.

Nikki Davis: Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am so happy to be back at the table with the masterminds of podcasts!

Dane Phillips: You like how we come in here totally unprepared and just zig each other back and forth?

Joseph Bias: This is the magic of radio, because what you’re hearing is not probably what we’ve said, but Brindy makes us look good—other than that picture of you with the sash and the tiara.

Nikki Davis: I’m not going to lie to you, I am really looking forward to that!

Dane Phillips: Well, there’s only one way, Columbia! There’s only one way that happens.

Nikki Davis: So please, don’t deprive me of that, folks!

Joseph Bias: So, Nikki, let’s talk a little bit before we get into anxiety and depression. I want to mention a little bit about your role at the Bar. If you listened to our first season that you were on, you talked a little bit about it, but can you give us an idea for our Bar members, for South Carolina attorneys, what you do at the Bar before we get into your side project?

Nikki Davis: Sure, of course, it’d be my pleasure. As you previously stated, I am the Risk Management Director at the Bar, and in that particular role, I am the primary contact for the Ethics Hotline. So if any of our Bar members have any ethics concerns about any contemplated behavior that they are planning to engage in, they can contact me and I will help them navigate the Rules of Professional Conduct. But it’s important for them to know it’s about their own conduct—no calling about the conduct of others, no snitching!

Dane Phillips: You just respond that it’s for snitches?

Nikki Davis: It’s for self-snitches, not other snitches! And the Lawyer Mentoring Program, which is actually one of my favorite things that the Bar does.

Joseph Bias: It’s actually my favorite thing that the Bar does as well.

Nikki Davis: We’re taking lawyers entering into their first year of practice, they get to go under the wing of a seasoned practitioner, and they have an individual mentoring plan that they work out. The Court has established nine objectives they would like to be met in that individual mentoring plan, but it’s up to the mentor and mentee to figure out how they’re going to meet those particular objectives. It’s very open, they can be very creative, and I’m very fortunate in that we have some of the best mentors around doing a bang-up job helping our new lawyers stay on track.

Dane Phillips: As far as before we get too far into the topic of why you’re here, for those who are not aware of it or not fully known as to the program’s insights, what specifically do mentors really do during that one-year period?

Nikki Davis: After the Court had done a few successful pilot programs, the mentoring program became mandatory in 2012. What happens is a year-long mentorship where the mentor and mentee get together, and the mentor helps the mentee do everything from figuring out which side of the courtroom they’re supposed to stand in, the folks they need to kiss up to down at the courthouse…

Dane Phillips: All the staff! Attorneys are kind of secondary, staff first.

Nikki Davis: Exactly, exactly! But it takes seasoned folks to know those types of things because you don’t necessarily have a textbook about that in law school. Helping them navigate the Rules of Professional Conduct, helping them achieve some level of work-life balance, etc., and so forth. All of those things—that toolkit we wish we had when we were first admitted to the Bar—our mentors help our new lawyers with that.

Joseph Bias: That provides a wonderful segue from the tools that we need in the profession to the expectations of us in the profession. Let’s talk a little bit about why The Anxious Attorney blog. We’ll get into some of the details of what causes depression and how it manifests, but I want to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about your background and why you started this blog and side project.

Nikki Davis: Believe it or not, my motivation for The Anxious Attorney actually came from the Ethics Hotline. I have been very transparent with my colleagues about my mental health diagnosis. I was diagnosed with panic disorder more years ago than I can count! Which is probably why I became a lawyer to begin with! (laughs) But I realized that there were a lot of people that were suffering in silence, and I felt like the reason that they were doing so is because there’s such a negative stigma associated with mental illness. I feel like the best way to make that stigma go away is to talk about it. Take away the taboo of it, put it on the front lines and say, “Here it is.” But guess what? Just because I have panic disorder doesn’t mean that I’m not a great lawyer. Hate to go there, but as you stated in your introduction of me, I’ve received the law school’s highest honor, I was named South Carolina Young Lawyer of the Year, and I have panic disorder. Guess what? There is nothing wrong with that.

Joseph Bias: Opening it up to all of us, talking about things that cause depression in attorneys—anyone listening knows our profession is particularly susceptible to depression, anxiety, leading even to suicide. It manifests itself in alcohol and drug abuse, health issues beyond what can be caused by stress, and stress itself. Dane, we all have three different backgrounds. Talk a little bit about the stresses that you face in your practice, not only as someone who does criminal law, but also someone who has a solo practice.

Dane Phillips: As far as criminal defense is concerned, the stresses you deal with are someone coming to you charged with a crime—whether a DUI all the way up to a murder case. Every crime is going to be the most important thing in their life, weighing on their conscience, reputation, livelihood, and freedom. They come to you broken, looking for you to save them, keep them from going to jail, or keep them from losing their job or driver’s license. When someone lays all that weight on your shoulders, that stress piles on with every single client. You’re also dealing with mental health issues, substance abuse issues, intellectual disability issues, or a combination. Criminal defense is a very adversarial proceeding. Then you multiply that by running an office, managing deadlines, appeal records at the Supreme Court or Court of Appeals… It’s like a 10x multiplier where anxiety builds up regardless of whether you have a disorder or not.

Joseph Bias: And it’s important to delineate—Amber and Dane have a different level of stress from clients beating on their doors than maybe Nikki and I do. Nikki, you worked at DSS for two years, so talk to us a little bit about that experience and how stress/anxiety manifests in those situations.

Nikki Davis: At DSS, I handled child abuse and neglect cases. I love children and puppies—those are my loves! If you hurt either, it rips me apart to my core, and that’s what DSS is all about: children hurt in ways you cannot imagine. Working at DSS made me a bonafide pessimist. I lost my faith in people. It got to the point where my stress level got so bad, I blacked out twice—I woke up one day face first in my dishwasher! My hair started falling out, and I have a big head, so the thought of being bald was not appealing to me at all! (laughs) In my late 30s, I was seeing a cardiologist every other month, and he finally said, “You can either continue doing this or your family can prepare to bury you, because this is going to kill you.” So my husband made me leave. I loved the kids, but it’s not something you can leave at the door after 5:00 PM; you take it home with you.

Dane Phillips: At the end of the day, if you can’t take care of yourself, how can you take care of all the other responsibilities?

Nikki Davis: Which calls into question the competence rule in our Rules of Professional Conduct. How can I be competent or diligent if I’m falling apart?

Joseph Bias: And being a minority in the profession—a minority woman—there’s an entire level of anxiety and awareness.

Nikki Davis: You grow up hearing in most African-American homes, “What goes on in this house stays in this house.” Everything is family business. But my mother and grandmother both suffered from panic disorder, so they were always very transparent with me. They told me what to look out for and to get help if I inherited it. My advice to any lawyer or law student: don’t keep it to yourself, don’t internalize it, don’t willingly put yourself on an island! I didn’t realize how many allies I had in this battle until I spoke up.

Joseph Bias: If you could have one thing people take away from The Anxious Attorney, what would it be?

Nikki Davis: That your disorder doesn’t define you. It doesn’t have to be a ceiling; it can be a floor. My goal is to help erase the stigma, one post at a time.

Dane Phillips: One of the reasons attorneys are afraid is they fear being labeled as weak, versus seeing it as an opportunity.

Nikki Davis: Look at what I accomplished in spite of it—receiving the law school’s highest honor, SC Young Lawyer of the Year! Imagine how much of a badass I’d be if I didn’t have panic disorder! So it’s not a weakness at all.

Joseph Bias: What advice would you give to a young lawyer dealing with anxiety and depression?

Dane Phillips: For me, stay as organized as possible. Once I lose organizational processes, my personal anxiety goes through the roof.

Nikki Davis: Find a healthy outlet! There’s more to being a lawyer than practicing law. We wear many hats, including being a servant to your community. That’s why I got involved with the RAM Foundation (theramsc.org) teaching civics to kids at camp.

Joseph Bias: Enjoying victories is also key! Take a moment to pat yourself on the back when you do a good job. We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Bar resources: Lawyers Helping Lawyers is at 866-545-9590.

Dane Phillips: When you call Lawyers Helping Lawyers, they’re not snitching on you or turning you into Disciplinary Counsel. Their sole goal is to help you.

Nikki Davis: Take advantage of the confidential counseling services—you get 5 free hours a year!

Joseph Bias: Follow Nikki on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube @theanxiousattorney, and check out the RAM Foundation at theramsc.org.

Dane Phillips: Thank you so much for listening and supporting the podcast! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, like, share, and give us a 5-star review!

Nikki Davis: Vote for Dane on Free Times for Best DUI Lawyer so I can see that sash and tiara!

Joseph Bias: Follow us @SCLawPod, @JosephPBBS, @SCCrimLawyer, and @RedJudicata. Thank you all, and we’ll see you next week!