Mental Health
The System Rejected a Bipolar Lawyer
So I Became an Activist and Finally Found My Purpose
Being a lawyer meant the world to me since I was 17 years old. I dreamed of it, watched TV shows about it, then I interned for a U.S. Senator and a Judge to get a feel for it. I graduated from Stanford Law School, with distinction, at age 23, practiced for many years thereafter, starting at a major law firm, Morrison & Foerster, where I was an associate for six years.
When I was 37, after working at a small firm and then going solo, my life changed. The stress of opening my law firm and being asked to go six figures in debt for my business triggered my first ever manic episode with psychotic features one Friday night while on a business trip in Minneapolis. I was beat up by the police and charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct.
In jail, I was psychologically tortured until I asked, “What is it going to take to get the FBI down here so I can tell them that you beat me up? Do I need to say there’s a ‘dirty bomb in my underwear’ back at the hotel room?” The police officer’s response over the jail intercom was “There’s a bomb in your hotel room?” I said immediately, “Of course not you idiots.” Too late.
I later learned they sent a bomb squad to the Hilton where I was staying. They charged me with Felony Terroristic Threats under Minnesota Statutes Section 609.713, Subdivision 2, which states:
Subd. 2.Communicates to terrorize.
Whoever communicates to another with purpose to terrorize another or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror, that explosives or an explosive device or any incendiary device is present at a named place or location, whether or not the same is in fact present, may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than three years or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.
I tried to go to San Francisco for another business trip and that weekend I was involuntarily hospitalized and diagnosed with Bipolar I Disorder with a psychotic episode. I had to sign away my rights to gun ownership for five years. Little did I know I was also signing the death warrant for my legal career.
By the time I appeared on the charges in Minnesota, I had already been diagnosed as mentally ill, and the Court seemed sympathetic. The Judge said to me and my lawyer (before we got on the record) that if I accepted the guilty plea to a gross misdemeanor, with $1,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and time served, that she had spoken “with the Bar” and I would not have to report a guilty plea.
By 2019, the Judge denied any recollection of this, and so did my lawyer and the prosecutor. It was never put on the record. I had been tricked into pleading guilty.
It was not until 2006 that I resumed practicing law, once I was stabilized on my medications and after I completed all the terms of my guilty plea. I spent most of my time on inactive status. I stopped practicing law in 2010, but still was a legal writing contractor.
In 2018, the California Bar announced that it would, for the first time, be fingerprinting all current members to check criminal databases. I knew that the charges were in my record so I wrote a polite, preemptory letter disclosing my record to the California State Bar. The Bar responded by saying that while I pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in Minnesota, the comparable offense in California was a felony, and I was being pursued for summary disbarment.
An old friend volunteered to represent me before the Bar. I gave my version of events. I produced my medical records from 2003. Yet the Bar would not drop charges. Ultimately I pleaded guilty to a six month suspension. I could not get away from it. Nobody wants to hire a formerly suspended lawyer who was a “convicted felon” in the eyes of the Bar.
The whole episode in 2003 should have ended with me in a hospital. Instead, I was forced to plead guilty to what I thought was a gross misdemeanor. It was deemed a felony by the California Bar and the legal system chewed me up and spit me out. In January, I tendered my “resignation from the Bar with disciplinary charges pending.” Last month, the California Supreme Court issued the final order approving my motion for resignation.
Once COVID-19 epidemic hit, the courts closed and nobody wanted a legal writing contractor. Now that I resigned, I am “unemployable,” which is to say I am too “overqualified” for anything less than $30/hour and I am not qualified as a convicted felon for any serious job.
By June of this year, I finally hit on what to do. Using my legal skills, I formed Bipolar Lives Matter Inc, and started a magazine on Medium to raise awareness about the system’s abuse of people with bipolar and related disorders, and other mental illnesses. There I tell the detailed stories of what happened to me and to others. My work is all pleasure, and I don’t mind not getting paid for it. I have a purpose in life that was not fulfilled by my work as a lawyer. I am now in remission from my mental illnesses. One of them was being a lawyer.
