"Students who matriculate law school bring with them their mental illness which influences their law school experience. Although research in this area exists, it is limited and dated. This study is the first nationwide, multi-institutional, qualitative study that investigates the lived experiences of law students with mental illness. The study reveals that students with mental illness face unique challenges in law school beyond the traditional challenges encountered by law students. This study's research question was: What are the lived experiences of law students with mental illness? Understanding these individuals' lived experiences offers a glimpse into how they interacted in their various environments and how these interactions influenced them. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach this study gathered data from eleven law students from across the United States. Participants engaged in three interviews which focused on their lived experiences. These data were then analyzed using the Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. This study reveals the ways law students with mental illness navigate their law school experience. Law students with mental illness encountered stigma, microaggressions, and other obstacles in their journey to becoming a lawyer. Because of the competitive nature of law school, students with mental illness feared speaking publicly about their mental illness. The stigma further distressed students based on mental health questions asked as part of the character and fitness application for entry into the bar. Students reported that the microsystems of family, romantic partners, friends, other law students with mental illness, and faculty influenced their development. In the exosystem, the results yield the influences of isolation, lack of institutional understanding of mental illness, the law school milieu, legal pedagogy, the legal profession, and the character and fitness portion of bar admission. This study reveals the high level of resilience that law students with mental illness possess and their ambition exhibited by the participants helped them succeed in law school. Participants offered suggestions to prospective law students, law schools, and the legal field. In addition, creating programs to reduce stigma and increase education about mental illness reflected the opinions of most of the students. Students also urged law schools to make available more services for students and to actively inform students of those opportunities. Through the course of this research several thought questions arose that are not yet ripe for further research. These questions address the future of legal education and the legal profession. This applies to not only persons with mental illness, but also the generational and global changes in the legal profession."--Pages ii-iii.
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