“Actually according to the CDC Lawyers don’t even make the top ten as far as professions with the highest suicide rates.”
That’s not what your source says. Your source says the legal profession, which includes all occupations in the legal profession, is ranked 11th in the list. So, yes just outside the top ten, which is still a high rate compared to the general population.
Studies that have looked just at lawyers have found an even higher rate:
The suicide rate among lawyers is six times the rate in the general population. Most high pressure professions show similar trends.
I hope you realize that I am just having fun with you here, but according to the CDC, most “high pressure professions” are way down the list”. Corporate execs and managers are number ten and the legal profession is number ten. Looking at the list it just seems to me that your premise is skewed a long ways from the reality.
I am assuming that you have known people who have killed themselves. Responding to medical emergencies for 25 years on a fire department... I have been to a lot of suicides. I know that lawyers do sometimes kill themselves, but I never went to one, which is actually quite surprising to me.
I am surprised, because we have a glut of lawyers in our society and even though they do a pretty good job of convincing our litigious society to be even more litigious, supply and demand dictates that there is not enough work for all of them to do. Many of them are underemployed and have side jobs. So we have a situation where a bunch of people have spent a fortune on schooling and then end up switching professions to make ends meat. So to me it is surprising that more of them do not take their own life.
Most people who commit suicide are not the successful go getters like Julian Assange’s lawyer who was highly respected and regarded... its far more often the failures or the underachievers. It is far more often people who are at a crossroads and do not know which direction to go, or have a lot of time on their hands to feel sorry for themselves. That is a pattern that I have seen first hand. So no, I am still skeptical that a highly successful lawyer with a highly successful practice, a wonderful family and a lot of stuff going on jumped in front of a train.